Thick concepts
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Bibliographic Information
Thick concepts
（Mind Association occasional series）
Oxford University Press, 2013
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Includes bibliographical references and indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
What is the difference between judging someone to be good and judging them to be kind? Both judgements are typically positive, but the latter seems to offer more description of the person: we get a more specific sense of what they are like. Very general evaluative concepts (such as good, bad, right and wrong) are referred to as thin concepts, whilst more specific ones (including brave, rude, gracious, wicked, sympathetic, and mean) are termed thick concepts. In this
volume, an international team of experts addresses the questions that this distinction opens up. How do the descriptive and evaluative functions or elements of thick concepts combine with each other? Are these functions or elements separable in the first place? Is there a sharp division between
thin and thick concepts? Can we mark interesting further distinctions between how thick ethical concepts work and how other thick concepts work, such as those found in aesthetics and epistemology? How, if at all, are thick concepts related to reasons and action? These questions, and others, touch on some of the deepest philosophical issues about the evaluative and normative. They force us to think hard about the place of the evaluative in a (seemingly) nonevaluative world, and raise
fascinating issues about how language works.
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction: Thick and Thin Concepts
- 2. Thick Concepts, Analysis, and Reductionism
- 3. Practical Concepts
- 4. Thick Concepts and Thick Descriptions
- 5. It's Evaluation, only Thicker
- 6. On the Nature and Significance of the Distinction between Thick and Thin Ethical Concepts
- 7. Disentangling Disentangling
- 8. Thick Concepts and Underdetermination
- 9. Evaluative Language and Evaluative Reality
- 10. There are no Thin Concepts
- 11. Moral Metaphor and Thick Concepts: what Moral Philosophy can Learn from Aesthetics
- 12. Williams on Thick Ethical Concepts and Reasons for Action
- 13. Well-being, Wisdom, and Thick Theorizing: on the Division of Labor between Moral Philosophy and Positive Psychology
- Index
by "Nielsen BookData"