Abstract

I consider a problem from pragmatics for the radical interpretation project, relying on the principle of charity. If a speaker X in a context c manifests the attitude of holding a sentence s true, this might be because of believing, not the content of s in c, but what results from a pragmatic enrichment of that content. In this case, the connection between the holding-true attitude and the meaning of s might be too loose for charity to confirm the correct interpretation hypothesis. To solve this problem, I apply the coherence raising account of pragmatic enrichment developed in Pagin 2014. The result is that in upward entailing linguistic contexts, the enriched content entails the prior content, and so charity prevails: the speaker also believes the prior content. In downward entailing contexts this would not hold, but I argue that enrichments tend not to occur in downward entailing contexts.