  We tend to recalibrate apparent violations of LNC as conforming to a version of the law that incorporates the Aristotelian qualifications: a sincere defense of “p and not-p” plausibly involves a change in the context of evaluation or a shift in viewpoint, or alternatively a suppression of modal or epistemic operators. This practice can be seen as an instance of a general methodological principle associated with  Davidson  and Quine that has come to be called the principle of charity (or, alternately, the principle of rational accommodation): when it is unclear how to interpret another's argument, interpret it in a way that makes the most sense. At the same time, this procedure evokes the standard Gricean mode of explanation  (Grice 1989; see the entry on    implicature): granted the operation of the Cooperative Principle and, more broadly, the shared premise of rationality, we reinterpret apparent violations of valid principles or maxims so as to conserve the assumption that one's interlocutor is a rational and cooperative agent. And as Aristotle would remind us, no principle is more worthy of conservation than the Law of Non-Contradiction.