In Defence of Thick Concepts

This paper focuses on the way in which thick concepts manage to combine the descriptive and the evaluative. It accepts Blackburn’s suggestion that thick terms have variable relevance, but disputes his conclusion that there are no thick concepts. The views of Wiggins and McDowell on these topics play an important role in the discussion. In the process a richer picture of the thick begins to emerge. The paper ends by considering the question whether the doctrine of the supervenience of the evaluative on the natural can still be sustained as a result.

Practical Concepts

This paper is a successor to the author’s ‘In Defence of Thick Concepts’. It asks first whether all thick concepts have a default valence. It then considers how to account for the combination of the descriptive and the evaluative (which is sometimes called ‘interpenetration’) in a thick concept, and suggests that the so-called ‘no-priority’ view fails to do this. We might also wonder why the descriptive element is not always capable of separate instantiation. Various alternative moves are considered. The paper offers a considerably more varied list of supposedly thick concepts than is normal. It ends by suggesting that thick concepts are evaluative because competence with them involves grasp of their evaluative point.

Thick Concepts in Economics: The Case of Becker and Murphy’s Theory of Rational Addiction

In this paper, we examine the viability of avoiding value judgments encoded in thick concepts when these concepts are used in economic theories. We focus on what implications the use of such thick concepts might have for the tenability of the fact/value dichotomy in economics. Thick concepts have an evaluative and a descriptive component. Our suggestion is that despite attempts to rid thick concepts of their evaluative component, economists are often not successful. We focus on the strategy of explication to remove the evaluative component of thick concepts and argue that often economists either have to make value judgments or are unable to individuate out the phenomenon under analysis. We support our claim with a case study, namely the concept of addiction in Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy’s Theory of Rational Addiction (1988). One consequence of our analysis is that theories containing thick concepts could commit economists to making value judgments and as such undermine the fact/value dichotomy.

Has Virtue Ethics Sold Out?

This chapter discusses a contemporary criticism of virtue ethics as focusing too much on providing a criterion of right action. I claim that the criticism is off the mark on a variety of fronts, including a misinterpretation of Anscombe, a misguided view that what is offered is a criterion of right action as opposed to a framework, and that what is offered is a criterion of morally right action in a suspect sense of “moral.” I show how the important deontic notions can have a place in virtue ethics. The chapter explores also further problems with the notion of rightness in ethics: the essential contestedness of even core concepts of rightness and both combinatorial and degree vagueness in the relation between the thick concepts and rightness.

Thick Concept Centralism and Objectivity

This chapter defends the objectivity of ethics against Bernard Williams’ claim to the contrary. According to Williams, understandings of ethics through the thick concepts (such as patience, humility, justice) are relative to “insider perspectives.” A form of relativism threatens. This defence is illustrated by an interpretation of Nietzsche who transcends the insider perspective in his attack on “slave morality.” On the interpretation offered, Nietzsche can be read as an objectivist (suitably understood) about virtue and vice. Much vice in particular is, for example, expressive of resentment, psychoanalytically understood; is reactive and weak and in the service of a morality that is altruistic in a highly problematic sense. My interpretation of Nietzsche, I argue, has implications for the Williams’ critique. It allows for a way of transcending the “insider perspective” by appeal to the human sciences, an appeal that Nietzsche’s own form of naturalism in ethics itself makes.

The Wrong Logos

Reasons of beneficence are at the core of ethics, and also of many of its most intractable theoretical problems, indeed paradoxes. What is needed for the resolution of these problems is an appreciation of the distinctive nature of the logos of ethics. In brief that logos is seen as an openness to a practical reality of notably reasons, for the understanding of which a familiarity with the thick ethical concepts is required. Such reasons provide direct intentional access to ethical reality. But if we attempt to gain intentional access to ethical facts through the wrong logos where the thick concepts are invisible or not central paradoxes ensue. This chapter discusses three: the paradox of supererogation, the ‘It Makes no Difference’ Paradox (e.g., that of ‘pooled beneficence’), and that of the underdetermination by reasons for action (e.g., of what charity to support).

Prudential Normativity, Moral Scepticisms, and Metaethics

In earlier chapters it was argued that prudential value gives agents normative, prudential reasons and that prudential judgements are normative judgements on a par with moral judgements. This chapter spells out some ramifications of these theses by examining four different areas of inquiry about morality and moral discourse, showing how the theses hitherto defended in this book affect them. It begins with the form of moral scepticism found within the ‘why be moral?’ debate. It then examines hermeneutic moral error theory and proposes a companions-in-guilt argument based on the normativity of prudential discourse. Third, it examines arguments given within the literature on revisionary metaethical views, pointing out and questioning their commitment to prudential justifications. Finally, it is shown how the normativity of prudential properties applies to a central debate about thick concepts, that between reductionists and non-reductionists about such concepts.

Thick Concepts in Social Research: What, Why, and How?

Thick concepts are concepts that describe and evaluate at once. Academic discussion on thick concepts originated in meta-ethics, but thick concepts increasingly draw attention from qualitative researchers working in the social sciences, too. However, these scholars work in relative isolation from each other, and an overview of their ideas is missing. This article has two aims. The first is to provide such an overview, by bringing together these disparate voices on why thick concepts matter for the social sciences and how to work with them in qualitative social research. The second aim is to reflect on the methodological difficulties of working with thick concepts, by thinking through the example of my research on a specific thick concept—the concept of dependency. The article argues that thick concepts are invoked by social researchers for either epistemological or methodological purposes. It then goes on to claim that if we want to take thick concepts as our sensitizing concepts or as our objects of research, these two purposes really ought to be considered in unison: any methodological approach involving thick concepts must factor in the epistemological challenge thick concepts pose to social-scientific research. To show why—and to consider what this requires from qualitative researchers—I draw on insights acquired during my study on dependency. I end with practical recommendations for working with thick concepts in social research.