Imagine you're sitting in a performance review,
your manager is going over your recent projects,
and they describe your approach to the company
budget as thrifty. Oh, yeah. That's a good word.
You'd probably smile. Right. Right. You'd take
it as a compliment, maybe even expect a bonus.
But what if instead a different manager looked
at the exact same spending habits, the exact
same spreadsheets, and called you cheap? Rouch.
Yeah, completely different vibe. Exactly. I mean,
one word gets you promoted, and the other might
totally stall your career. And the crazy thing
is, they're describing the exact same physical
actions in the world, yet the impact is, well,
it's entirely different. So today, we're looking
at the secret agents of human language. It's
so true. We usually think of the words we use
every day as just Neutral messengers like kind
of like tiny delivery drivers just dropping off
a fact just clocking in and clocking out right
exactly You say a word it describes a piece of
reality and that's the end of the transaction
It's supposed to be this simple one -to -one
exchange of information because you know We really
like things to be categorized neatly either.
It's a cold hard fact or it's a subjective opinion
Totally. And when I first realized that some
of the most common words we use are basically
actively refusing to play by those rules, it
Completely broke my brain. So we're doing a deep
dive today into this dense but amazing philosophical
concept from Wikipedia called thick concepts.
Fantastic topic. It really is. And for you listening,
once you see how these words are doing double
duty, I mean, pretending to just describe reality
while simultaneously forcing a moral opinion
about it right into your brain, you will literally
never read a news headline or argue with a coworker
the exact same way again. And exploring this
goes way beyond just linguistic wordplay or,
you know, debating. dictionary definitions, the
whole debate over thick concepts sits at the
very heart of how we understand ethical knowledge.
It gets deep fast. It really does. It's this
profound inquiry into whether the universe is
just a collection of cold, neutral atoms or if
human values are, well, actually woven into the
fabric of reality itself. Okay, so to even wrap
our heads around what makes a concept thick.
I think we first need to look at the extremes
on either end of the linguistic spectrum, the
thin concepts. Yeah, that's the best place to
start. Because you really can't appreciate how
sneaky a thick concept is until you realize what
a normal, well -behaved word looks like. Let's
look at the purely factual side of things first,
what philosophers call thin descriptive concepts.
So the quintessential examples of thin descriptive
concepts are words like water, gold, length,
mass. Just the basics. Right. These are terms
that simply pick out genuine, measurable features
of the physical world. They're completely, totally
morally neutral. So if I tell you a ring is made
of gold, I'm not judging it. Exactly. When you
tell someone that a ring is gold or a box has
a certain mass, you aren't projecting any kind
of moral judgment onto those objects. You're
just pointing to physical reality. Those words
do not in themselves provide you with any any
reasons for action. Like, if I tell you a glass
is full of water, I haven't told you if it's
pristine delicious water or, you know, stagnant
dangerous water. No, not at all. I haven't told
you if you should drink it. I've literally just
handed you raw data. But then, on the complete
opposite end of the spectrum, we have the other
extreme, right? the thin, evaluative concepts.
Right. And the classic examples here are words
like right, wrong, good, and bad. And these function
in the exact opposite way of the descriptive
concepts. Opposite how? Well, they don't pick
out genuine, measurable features of the physical
world. Instead, they provide you with reasons
for action. They are pure evaluation. Oh, I see
because you can't take a tape measure and find
the goodness of a couch Like good doesn't describe
the physics of the upholstery or the wood It
just tells you how we are evaluating the experience
of sitting on it. It's a great way to put it
Okay, let's untack this because this is where
the star of our show comes in the thick concept
This is a concept that occupies a middle position.
It merges both of those extremes together. It
does. It has a significant degree of descriptive
content, so it points to physical reality, but
it is also heavily evaluatively loaded. The classic
examples philosophers use are virtues and vices.
So, courage, cruelty, truthfulness, kindness.
So it's basically doing two things at once. Right,
it acts as a double feature. It's carrying both
a fact about the world and a judgment about that
fact simultaneously packed into a single word.
Let's throw out the standard academic examples
for just a second to really visualize how this
works for everyone listening. Think about baking.
Okay, I like where this is going. So the thin
descriptive concepts, those are like your raw
list of ingredients. You've got flour, sugar,
eggs. Just physical facts. Right. Morally neutral
ingredients. Exactly. And the thin evaluative
concept is like someone just standing in the
kitchen yelling, yum. Just pure feeling. Right.
But the thick concept, that's the actual baked
cake. It's the combination of the physical ingredients
and the resulting enjoyment all baked into one
thing that you can't just easily pull apart.
Or here's another one. Think about a weed growing
in your garden. Oh, that's a classic one. Descriptively,
what is a weed? I mean, it's just a plant. It
has leaves, roots, it photosynthesizes. Those
are thin descriptive facts. Yes. But evaluatively,
the word weed means something bad. It means an
undesirable plant that needs to be, you know,
destroyed or pulled out. And the crucial thing
there is you really cannot separate the physical
plant from the negative judgment. Why not? Because
the only thing that makes that specific plant
a weed is our negative evaluation of where it's
growing. I mean, a dandelion is a beautiful flower
to a toddler, right? No, totally. They love them.
But it's a wheat to a landscaper. The judgment
actually creates the category itself. That is
wild. What's fascinating here is how this plays
out when we look at the specific example of courage
from the source material. So, descriptively,
courage can be given this rough characterization
as... opposing danger to promote a valued end.
Opposing danger to promote a valued end. Right.
That's the factual, physical part of the action.
You can physically observe someone opposing danger.
But evaluatively, characterizing someone as courageous
typically involves expressing an attitude of
esteem. Like giving them a mental high five.
Basically, yeah. The text actually refers to
this as a pro attitude. It asserts that the action
has a prima facie good -making quality. Wait,
prima facie good -making quality? That is some
seriously heavy academic jargon right there.
It is a bit of a mouthful. So you mean that on
its face, just at first glance, the very act
of doing this thing inherently makes the world
a slightly better place. You've got it perfectly.
The word itself carries this built -in assumption
that the action is commendable. By choosing the
word courage, you aren't just saying the person
faced danger, you're literally cheering them
on. The approval is just baked right into the
vocabulary. And this brings up a massive problem
for a certain group of philosophers, doesn't
it? Oh, a huge problem. Because if courage is
this inextricable mix of fact and feeling, it
completely ruins the neat categorization of a
purely objective reality. Like, if I'm someone
who believes the universe is just math and physics,
Thick concepts must be absolutely terrifying.
They are. This double feature is the absolute
center of a war between two groups, the moral
expressivists and the moral realists. And you
hit on exactly why the expressivists are so troubled
by thick concepts. Let's talk about the expressivists
first. What's their deal? Well, expressivists
favor an account of moral values as simply being
attitudes that humans project onto a blank, neutral
world. For them, the universe itself doesn't
contain goodness or badness. So it's all just
in our heads. Exactly. Those are just human emotions
we're pasting onto physical events. They want
a tidy universe, right? Like facts over here
in the science department and feelings over there
in the poetry department. That is exactly what
they want. And to maintain that clean division,
They desperately need to prove that we can maintain
a strict distinction between the morally neutral
descriptive features of a thick concept and the
evaluative attitudes that typically go with them.
So they want to prove that you can always pull
the fact and the feeling apart, like unbaking
the cake. Yes, precisely. OK, so if I'm an expressivist,
I must look at the word courage and think it's
just a math equation. I'm guessing they think
you can just decouple the feeling from the fact,
isolate the two variables, and prove that the
word is just a mashup of two entirely separate
things. You just described the conjunctive account
perfectly. The conjunctive account. Yeah. Many
theorists in the expressivist camp argue that
a thick concept should be analyzed as a conjunction,
basically a simple joining of a descriptive part
and an evaluative part. A fundamental feature
of this analysis is the claim that the descriptive
content of a thick concept can be perfectly understood
in the complete absence of the evaluative content.
Wait, really? So how does the conjunctive account
handle our courage example mechanically? Do they
just treat it like two separate clauses in a
sentence? Pretty much. On this account, saying
someone is courageous is just sticking two completely
separate ideas together. Idea one is the descriptive
part. you know, opposing danger to promote a
valued end. Okay, the facts. Right. And idea
two is the evaluative part, and I approve of
this. The evaluative part is really just a label.
The text notes that on this view, the evaluative
part can be characterized as a prescriptive flag.
A prescriptive flag. Yeah, we just happen to
pin this little flag of approval onto the physical
action. It's just pinning a little ribbon that
says, yay, onto the cold factual mechanics of
someone running into a burning building. That's
a great visual, yes. So under this theory, the
expressivists are arguing I could theoretically
strip away the goodness of courage, invent a
totally new, purely descriptive word for the
exact same physical action, and I'd have a completely
accurate leftover concept that means the exact
same thing just without the emotion. That is
exactly what they argue. They say it is, in principle,
completely possible to construct a totally descriptive
concept with zero evaluative force that picks
out the exact same features of the world. Wow.
One theorist in the references actually calls
this the skeleton account. You strip away the
flesh of the human moral judgment and you are
left with a neutral bony skeleton of the physical
action. I gotta say, that feels incredibly robotic
to me. It does feel a bit clinical. Like if I
just described someone opposing danger to promote
a valued end without any of the admiration or
the pro attitude that comes with the word courage,
it feels like I'm missing the entire point of
what is actually happening. I completely agree.
It's like describing a beautiful, heartbreaking
symphony as just a series of varying air pressure
waves hitting an eardrum. I mean, it's technically
true on a physical level, but you've lost the
actual reality of the music. And that feeling
you have, that raises the pivotal question of
the entire debate. If the skeleton account feels
robotic and incomplete, is it actually an accurate
model of how human language and ethics work?
I'm guessing not everyone thinks so. Definitely
not. That lingering feeling you have of missing
the point is exactly the fuel for the opposing
philosophical camp. the moral realists. Ah, the
realists. The rebellion against the skeleton
account. Exactly. So if the expressivists want
to separate the facts from the feelings, I assume
the realists are arguing that the fact and the
feeling are permanently fused together. Yes.
The realists entirely reject the conjunctive
account. They heavily criticize the whole idea
that you can just unpin the prescriptive flag
from a thick concept. They don't buy the flag
analogy at all. Not even a little bit. In their
view, the world -guided content The facts and
the action -guiding content, the values, cannot
be usefully separated at all. The source points
out that for a moral realist, competent use of
a thick concept actually constitutes ethical
knowledge. Ethical knowledge, meaning it's not
just a subjective opinion you're projecting onto
a blank canvas. It's an objective truth that
you know about the world. You are perceiving
something real. Exactly. For the realist, the
only way to understand a thick concept is to
understand the descriptive and the evaluative
aspects as a unified whole. You just can't reduce
it to its parts. So the emotion is part of the
definition. The evaluative aspect is profoundly
involved in the very practice of using the word.
You literally cannot understand a thick concept
without also understanding its evaluative point.
Okay, here's where it gets really interesting.
Let's look at the mechanism of how this actually
works. Like, how did the evaluation fuse with
the fact? Let's apply this to another example
from the text, the concept of cruelty. Oh, that's
a powerful example. Let's say I try to play the
expressivist game, right? And I use neutral,
thin terms to describe someone causing harm to
someone else. Maybe I say person A inflicted
severe physical damage on person B. OK, purely
descriptive. Right. But according to the realist,
if I stop there, I haven't just removed a Boo
flag. I am actually failing to capture the reality
of the situation. That's right. The text specifically
notes that the rationale for choosing the word
cruel, rather than merely describing it in neutral
terms, is to tune into that specific evaluative
aspect. Why is that tuning in so important? Because
inflicting severe physical damage could describe
a sadistic torturer, but it could also describe
a trauma surgeon performing a desperate life
-saving amputation without anesthesia. Oh, wow.
Yeah. Both cause severe physical harm. Both cause
immense pain. That is a boundary drawing mechanism.
To know where the boundary is, to know which
acts of causing physical harm are cruel and which
ones are not, you have to understand the badness
of cruelty. Exactly. The badness isn't just a
flag you pin on the action after the fact. The
badness is the lens you need to even be able
to see the boundary of the action in the first
place. The evaluation itself draws the boundary
line around the facts. If you do not grasp the
evaluative perspective of cruelty, if you don't
understand why it is bad, you will not be able
to reliably identify new instances of cruelty
in the real world. Because they look the same
physically. Exactly. You'd look at the surgeon
and the torturer and be totally unable to distinguish
them based purely on their physical movements.
So the evaluation is part of the fact. That completely
destroys the skeleton account. It really does.
If you strip away the moral flesh, the skeleton
literally falls apart. You cannot invent a totally
neutral, purely descriptive word for cruelty,
because the badness is what actually groups those
specific actions together. Which is exactly how
the realists explain the process of someone learning
one of these words. The source outlines this
fascinating distinction between the novice and
the competent user. How does that work? Well,
a descriptive summary. like our phrase inflicting
physical damage, might allow a novice to see
the salient features of what is happening. It
gives them the general shape of the action. But
descriptive terms alone... cannot completely
fill in the blanks. So the novice can memorize
the physical traits, but they don't really get
the word yet? Right. To fully understand the
thick concept and become a competent user, a
person has to perform a hooking on to the evaluative
perspective. Hooking on. I like that. Yeah, they
have to basically step inside the moral framework.
And this is why realists argue that the descriptive
and evaluative just cannot be untangled. The
evaluative point guides the descriptive application.
In the realist's view, the world itself contains
these moral dimensions, and our sick concepts
are the tools we use to perceive them. So what
does this all mean? Like, why does this philosophical
tug of war matter for you, listening to this
deep dive right now? It's a great question. It
matters because the words you use, and the words
used against you, are incredibly powerful tools.
When someone in a meeting calls a business strategy
bold instead of reckless... Ah, happens all the
time. You know, when a news article describes
a political protester as a freedom fighter instead
of a terrorist, they are not just giving you
a neutral sequence of events. No, not at all.
They are deploying thick concepts. They're handing
you a fact that has an ethical judgment, a pro
attitude, or a negative attitude already baked
right into the DNA of the sentence. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, this entire debate
over thick concepts is really a profound argument
about the nature of reality. It asks us to consider
our place in the universe. Are we just observers
or are we part of it? Exactly. Are our values
just arbitrary, prescriptive flags that we invent
to comfort ourselves in a cold, neutral, mechanical
universe? Or are our values actually woven into
the very fabric of how we experience and understand
the world? It's massive. It is. Because if competent
use of these words constitutes actual ethical
knowledge, then ethics isn't just a matter of
personal taste. It is a matter of accurately
perceiving the world around you. It changes everything
about how you listen to people talk. You start
looking for these secret agents hiding in plain
sight. You realize that true neutrality might
honestly be an illusion. It's very hard to unsee
it once you notice it. And the source material
leaves us with a brilliant breadcrumb trail at
the very end in the related concepts section
that perfectly illustrates this. It mentions
a phenomenon called emotive conjugation. Oh yes.
It is a devastatingly simple demonstration of
everything we've discussed today. A mode of conjugation
is basically the idea that we change the thick
concept we use depending on who we are talking
about, even if the physical action is exactly
the same. The classic example goes like this,
I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig -headed
fool. That is so good. Right. It's the exact
same behavior, basically refusing to change your
mind. But when I do it, I use a word with a built
-in pro attitude. When you do it, I use a word
with a negative attitude. The physical reality
remains completely static. But the ethical knowledge
conveyed shifts entirely based on the speaker's
perspective. So it leaves you wondering the next
time you're describing a frustrating situation
to a friend or reading a headline about a controversial
event. Are you actively, consciously choosing
the facts? Or is the thick concept you've selected
secretly doing all the judging for you without
you even realizing it? A very unsettling thought.
It is. And if values and facts are as deeply,
beautifully intertwined as the moral realists
claim, is it even possible for any of us to ever
be truly, completely objective? A question that
ensures you will definitely never look at a dictionary
the same way again.