## 1. What Are Thick Concepts? Background and Preliminaries



The designation "thick concept" for concepts that combine
evaluation and non-evaluative description originates in Bernard
Williams's *Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy*
(Williams 1985). Williams seems to have drawn the label
"thick" from the notion of "thick description"
introduced by Gilbert Ryle and adapted to other purposes by the
anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Ryle characterizes thick descriptions
as descriptions of human activities not as mere bodily motions but as
involving intentional and purposive detail which help us to understand
those activities (Ryle 1968). In Geertz's terminology thickness
is a matter of the culturally specific significance of such details
(Geertz 1973). Unlike thick concepts, thick descriptions in
Ryle's and Geertz's senses needn't involve
evaluation. But one connection to Williams's terminology is that
many thick concepts incorporate culturally specific information (cf.
Scanlon 2003). Different societies might have sufficiently different
understandings of courage to have distinct concepts of it, and some
might lack a concept altogether. There is similar cultural specificity
to the kind of sexual morality in which chaste
plays a role and the kind of honor culture in which noble
has a point (cf. Williams 1985: 141ff.). While
the terminology of "thick" and "thin" concepts
originates in Williams, he wasn't the first to spot the
distinction he uses these labels to pick out. For instance, when R.M.
Hare distinguishes "primarily" and
"secondarily" evaluative words in *The Language of
Morals*, his examples of the former are paradigmatic thin concepts
and some of his examples of the latter are paradigmatic thick
concepts. (Hare 1952: 121-2; see also the discussion of
persuasive definitions in Stevenson 1938.)



The examples of thick and thin terms and concepts with which we began
exhibit an intuitive contrast: terms like *generous*,
*cruel*, and *tactful* appear descriptively more
specific or rich in content than terms such as *wrong* or
*good*, which seem more general or more purely evaluative. Even
if calling something selfish evaluates it as bad in some way or
respect, not just any bad act can count as selfish; it must also
involve the agent giving some significant degree of priority to
herself over others. How this intuitive contrast is best understood is
subject to several controversies and may have no theory-neutral
answer.



First, in saying that thick terms and concepts are in some sense both
evaluative and descriptive, what is meant by these notions?
Illustrative examples of descriptive terms include *square*,
*gold*, *wombat*, *spotted*, *recursive*,
*beer*, *unequal in income*, and (plausibly)
*painful*. Paradigmatic examples of evaluative terms include
thin terms such as *good*, *bad*, *ought*,
*right*, and *wrong*. We cannot distinguish the
evaluative and the descriptive simply in terms of different functions
in our thought and talk. For if judgments involving thick concepts are
evaluative judgments, then cognitivists and non-cognitivists disagree
about their function. According to non-cognitivists, the primary
function of evaluative terms is to express and induce conative
attitudes, such as desire, preference, or (dis)approval, which
aren't truth-apt. (A desire for world peace is no more the sort
of thing that can be true or false than a command like "Shut
up!") But according to cognitivists, evaluative terms are like
descriptive terms in that their primary function is to express
cognitive states such as beliefs, which are apt to be assessed as
(robustly) true or false. Nor can we capture the distinction between
thick and thin terms by identifying the descriptive with the factual:
to assume that evaluations cannot be factual would be to assume the
kind of distinction between "facts" and
"values" which thick concepts are sometimes thought to
undermine (see
 section 2.1).
 In neutral terms we may not be able to do much better than to say
that the purely descriptive terms are given by a big list of terms
that would generally be classified as falling on the *is-*side
of the distinction between *is* and *ought* and all the
rest are evaluative terms (Jackson 1998: 120). Descriptive terms would
thus be purely non-evaluative. This boundary may not be sharp; in
particular, it might be vague whether thick terms such as
*honest* should be classified as purely descriptive or partly
evaluative (Jackson 1998: 120). And even if not vague, it is a matter
of controversy, as we'll see in
 section 4.
 In any case, if we take the evaluative to exclude only the
*purely* non-evaluative, then non-evaluative description will
be something given in purely non-evaluative terms. The interesting
feature of thick terms and concepts is that even if they count as
evaluative on a binary distinction, they are supposed to straddle the
distinction.



Second, it is remarkably difficult to find a suitably neutral positive
characterization of what thick concepts are, beyond the idea that they
somehow combine evaluation and non-evaluative description. Williams
characterizes the application of thick concepts as both
"action-guiding" and "guided by the world":
their application depends on the way the world is, but also "if
a concept of this kind applies, this often provides someone with a
reason for action" (Williams 1985: 140; see also Moore 2006;
Heuer 2012; Smith 2013: 102-5). By contrast, the application of
thin evaluative concepts is supposed to be purely action-guiding and
not world-guided. But moral realists presumably think that the
application of thin concepts is also world-guided: whether a thin
concept truly applies depends on how the world of objective values
lies. Other existing characterizations either suffer from similar
problems in failing to characterize thick concepts, or else are either
not very informative or too theory-laden (see, e.g., Gibbard 1992,
Dancy 1995, Scanlon 2003, Kyle 2020, and for critical discussion
Eklund 2011).



Third, the intuitive contrast between thick and thin terms as terms
that somehow combine evaluation and non-evaluative description
classifies as thick not only paradigmatic thick concepts in the style
of cruel, courageous,
and kind, but also
"respect-relative" evaluative concepts, pejorative terms,
and more. The claims "This is a good knife" or
"Charlie is good with children" ascribe ways of being good
in certain non-evaluatively described respects. Not just any good
thing can be a good knife; it must also be a knife, and knife
is a non-evaluative concept. Similarly,
speaking of people as "krauts" or "wingnuts"
involves evaluating them negatively on the basis of, respectively,
their nationality and political affiliation, and calling someone a
jerk involves evaluating him (it usually is a he) negatively for
having certain sorts of non-evaluative features that make a person
unlikeable. But it is controversial whether paradigmatic thick
concepts work in the same way as concepts for specific ways of being
good and pejoratives. It is also unclear whether
"affective" terms such as *admirable* and
*contemptible* are substantially similar to paradigmatic thick
terms and concepts. Finally, some philosophers investigate "dual
character concepts" (for an overview and references, see Reuter
2019). These are supposed to be similar to thick concepts in involving
both description and evaluation, but distinctive in that their
descriptive and evaluative dimensions, while related, are independent.
For instance, there is a sense in which a person may count as an
artist if certain descriptive conditions, such as making sculptures
for a living, are met. But there is also a sense in which a person may
count as an artist if she satisfies norms concerning what an artist
*should* be or do. A person may count as an artist in one sense
but not the other. This might be regarded as evidence that
*artist* encodes two independent dimensions of content, which
are weighted differently in different contexts of use. One alternative
analysis of such different uses of words like *artist* is that
these words are polysemous. In that case they would stand for
different concepts in different occurrences, rather than one concept
with multiple dimensions of content. The relationship between dual
character and thick concepts may thus depend on what notion of
concepts we work with. This issue has rarely been addressed in detail
in the literature on thick concepts. Either way, questions arise
concerning whether dual character concepts and thick concepts are
normative or evaluative in the same kind of way and whether some
concepts might be both thick and dual character. Some suggest that empirical
investigation can shed light on the nature of dual character concepts
and their relation to thick concepts (Reuter 2019; Liao *et
al*. 2020). 



Despite these complications in characterizing thick terms and
concepts, they are widely agreed to be of potentially high
significance. An important assumption in many metaethical debates is
that the evaluative and the non-evaluative can be sharply
distinguished. If the evaluative and non-evaluative aspects of thick
terms or concepts aren't separable into distinct components,
these debates may be impacted in a fundamental way. Starting with some
prominent arguments in the literature concerning the significance of
thick concepts will naturally lead us to fundamental questions about
their nature.


## 2. Do Thick Concepts Have Distinctive Significance?



It is one thing to say that thick concepts are a distinctive kind of
evaluative concepts, another to say that this gives them distinctive
philosophical significance not carried by thin concepts. Among various
arguments which attribute distinctive significance to thick terms and
concepts, two have been particularly influential: arguments concerning
the "*is-ought* gap" and the distinction between
facts and values, and the "anti-disentangling" argument.
We'll also briefly address questions bearing on the relative
priority of thick and thin concepts in evaluative thought.


### 2.1 The *Is-Ought* Gap and the Fact-Value Distinction



It is common to think that the intuitive contrast between *is*
and *ought* marks an important gap between distinct domains,
and sometimes this gap is identified as a distinction between
"facts" and "values". Thick concepts may be
thought to challenge such dichotomies between facts and values
(Murdoch 1970; Williams 1985: 140-5; Dancy 1995; Putnam 2002:
34-45). To avoid misunderstanding, note that an important gap
can be held to exist even if values are a special kind of facts. For
instance, according to so-called Hume's Law, one cannot derive
an *ought* from an *is* (Hume 1739-40:
SS3.1.1). Any (non-trivial) valid argument for an evaluative
conclusion must somehow (perhaps implicitly) involve evaluative
content in its premises. This logical or conceptual barrier can be
generalized to concern various relations of reasonable inference
between the non-evaluative and the evaluative. The underlying thought
is that evaluative and normative statements commend things and guide
action, whereas purely non-evaluative statements play no such
practical role by themselves. The resulting claim that there is no
reasonable (non-trivial) inference to any evaluative conclusion from
any set of purely non-evaluative premises is sometimes called
"the autonomy of ethics" (Rynin 1957; Prior 1960).



Even if evaluative conclusions that deploy thin terms such as
*right* and *wrong* cannot be derived from purely
non-evaluative premises, a conceptual gap between evaluative and
non-evaluative statements requires the same to be true also of
evaluative conclusions that deploy thick terms. Philippa Foot argues
that thick terms such as *rude* undermine the *is-ought*
gap: calling something rude is evaluative because it expresses
condemnation in the same kind of way as *bad* and
*wrong* do, but this evaluation can be derived from a
non-evaluative description (Foot 1958). Consider the following
inference:



> 
> *O*: *x* causes offense by indicating lack of respect
>   
> 
>  So,
>   
> 
> *R*: *x* is rude
> 



Foot claims that it would be inconsistent to accept *O* but deny
*R* (Foot 1958: 507-9). But then it would seem that a thick
evaluative claim, namely that *x* is rude, is an analytic
consequence of a purely non-evaluative claim: part of what
*rude* means is that anything that causes offense by indicating
lack of respect is rude. (Foot targets her argument at
non-cognitivists such as R.M. Hare, but the issue arises wherever a
statement deploying a thick term is counted as evaluative in
meaning.)



A common reply is that Foot's argument yields absurd
consequences when applied to thick terms that one regards as
objectionable, as embodying values that should be rejected. Many
people regard the thick terms *chaste* and *lewd* as
objectionable because they reject the kind of sexual morality these
terms are normally used to convey. Atheists are likely to regard
*blasphemous* and *sinful* as objectionable on similar
grounds, and a *laissez-faire* capitalist who thinks that there
is nothing bad about selfishness may well regard *selfish* as
objectionable in its normal negative use. Whether one regards a
concept as objectionable depends on whether the values the concept is
associated with are ruled out by one's own values; a concept is
in fact objectionable if the values it embodies ought in fact to be
rejected. Consider now inferences that are identical in form to
Foot's but deploy objectionable thick terms:



> 
> *O*\*: *x* is an overt sexual display
>   
> 
>  So,
>   
> 
> *L*: *x* is lewd
> 



If *O* analytically entails *R* and *R* commits us to a
condemnation of its object, then *O* already commits us to this
negative attitude. *O*\* should then likewise commit us to a
negative attitude towards its object. But there is no inconsistency in
accepting that some actions are overt sexual displays and yet refusing
to condemn anything merely for being an overt sexual display. The
point is clearer still if thick claims entail thinner claims to the
effect that something is good or bad in a certain way.



> 
> 
> *x* causes offense by indicating lack of respect.
>   
> 
> So, *x* is rude.
>   
> 
> So, *x* is bad in a certain way.
> 
> 
> 
> *x* is an overt sexual display.
>   
> 
> So, *x* is lewd.
>   
> 
> So, *x* is bad in a certain way.
> 
> 
> 



If these entailments hold, then, by the transitivity of entailment,
the non-evaluative claim "*x* is an overt sexual
display" commits anyone who accepts it to the claim that
*x* is bad in a certain way. But there is no inconsistency in
accepting the former and rejecting the latter. What one seems to be at
most required to accept is that *x* is lewd in some
non-evaluative sense. The English language might have no other word
for expressing that evaluatively neutral sense, but there are various
ways to indicate that one means *lewd* in that way, such as
using scare quotes or a certain tone of voice. Exactly the same should
then go for *rude*. So Foot is mistaken about what
"*x* is rude" entails. (This reply is modeled on R.M.
Hare's reply that Foot's argument delivers the wrong
results for formally identical inferences that involve racial or
ethnic slurs; see Hare 1963: 188-9, and also Eklund 2011.
Substituting slurs with objectionable thick terms allows us to bracket
the issue whether slurs and thick terms are evaluative in the same
way. Hare's basic reply to Foot needn't suppose that they
are. For discussion, see
 section 4
 of the supplementary document
 "Additional Debates about Thick Concepts and Their Significance".)



It is unclear whether this reply shows that the *is-ought*
inferences Foot asks us to consider are invalid. The fact that someone
who regards *lewd* as objectionable refuses to condemn overt
sexual displays doesn't show that it is impossible for *O*\*
to be true while *L* is false. Perhaps someone who accepts
*O*\* but refuses to assert *L* (unless it is clear that she
is using *lewd* in an evaluatively neutral sense) is like
someone who refuses to say about prunes what she has already accepted
about dried plums (Foot 1958: 509). Refusing to call something a prune
makes it no less true that it is a prune. Perhaps the same is true of
thick terms and the non-evaluative descriptions that Foot claims can
be used in their stead. Either way, these complications prompt the
question of how tightly thick and thin terms are connected.



Whether thick terms help undermine the *is-ought* gap depends
on the way in which thick terms are evaluative. If at least some thick
terms are such that the sentences in which they figure are entailed by
non-evaluative sentences and the evaluations they convey belong to
their meanings or truth-conditions, then thick terms would constitute
counterexamples to the *is-ought* gap. It couldn't be
that *O* is true but *R* is false. If thick terms like
*rude* have truth-conditional equivalents such as *O* that
are evaluatively neutral, the evaluation might attach to *rude*
only as a matter of linguistic convention and not be entailed by the
propositions that *rude* is used to express. If the evaluative
contents of thick terms were in this way "detachable" from
the propositions they are used to express, they would undermine at
most a linguistic *is-ought* gap at the level of thick terms
and sentences, but not a conceptual *is-ought* gap at the level
of thick concepts and propositions. Another possible view is that
thick terms aren't evaluative even by linguistic convention, but
are merely commonly used evaluatively. Then thick terms couldn't
be invoked to undermine even a linguistic *is-ought* gap. (Here
note a terminological matter. Some who think that evaluation is only
pragmatically associated with terms like *courageous* or
*rude* take this to mean that there are no thick concepts, but
only loaded words; see Blackburn 1992 and, on the general phenomenon,
Stevenson 1938. This is what we should say if a thick concept must be
both evaluative and descriptive as a matter of meaning. Others who
accept a pragmatic view are happy to talk about terms or concepts such
as *courageous* or *rude* as thick, using
"thick" to refer to terms and concepts that
characteristically involve both evaluation and non-evaluative
description in some way or other; see Vayrynen 2013. This entry
adopts the latter usage.) This "location question"
concerning how thick terms are related to the evaluations they
normally convey is the topic of
 section 4.



The *is-ought* gap discussed above is a gap between different
kinds of representations, whether linguistic or conceptual. This kind
of gap is what philosophers sometimes have in mind when they
distinguish "facts" and "values". But
sometimes they mean an ontological gap between facts and values or
evaluative and non-evaluative facts and properties. Even if there is a
linguistic or conceptual gap among our evaluative and non-evaluative
representations, it doesn't directly follow that there are no
thick evaluative properties that aren't separable into distinct
evaluative and non-evaluative components (Eklund forthcoming). Such
properties would violate a sharp ontological distinction between
values and non-evaluative facts. But that debate concerns moral
metaphysics rather than thick concepts.


### 2.2 The "Anti-Disentangling" Argument



Thick terms and concepts challenge the *is-ought* gap only if
they are evaluative in meaning and have analytically sufficient
non-evaluative application conditions. It also seems plausible that
thick terms and concepts have some necessary non-evaluative
application conditions. A bad act can be selfish only if it involves
giving greater priority to oneself over others in some way and rude
only if it causes offense, a good act can be generous only if it
involves giving to others out of one's own resources. An
argument offered by John McDowell is often interpreted as showing that
there can be no non-evaluative description that is both necessary and
sufficient for the application of a thick term and, moreover, that
this bears on whether the evaluative and non-evaluative aspects of
thick terms and concepts are separable into distinct components
(Williams 1985: 140-1; Dancy 1995; Kirchin 2010).



McDowell is concerned with



> 
> 
> whether, corresponding to any value concept, one can always isolate
> ... a feature that is there ... independently of
> anyone's value experience being as it is. (McDowell 1981 [1998]:
> 200-1)
> 
> 
> 



He targets non-cognitivism in particular as a view that requires the
possibility of isolating a non-evaluative feature of this kind.
McDowell's argument against this possibility is often called the
"disentangling argument" (1981 [1998]: 202; cf. 216).



(D1)
If an evaluative concept *E* can be
"disentangled" into a non-evaluative description *D*
that is co-extensive with *E* and an evaluation that gives the
evaluative orientation of *E*, then it would be possible to
master the extension of *E*, and thus group together exactly the
items to which competent users would apply *E*, without
understanding its evaluative orientation.
(D2)
It isn't possible to anticipate the usage of *E* in a
way required for mastering its extension without understanding the
evaluative orientation of *E*.
(C)
Therefore, *E* cannot be disentangled into non-evaluative
description *D* that is co-extensive with *E* plus an
evaluation that gives the evaluative orientation of *E*.


Given the conclusion, the label "anti-disentangling
argument" would seem more accurate (Roberts 2011). In support of
(D2), McDowell asks us to imagine "a specific conception of some
moral virtue ... current in a reasonably cohesive moral
community" and then consider an "outsider" to the
evaluative perspective of those who deploy the concept (McDowell 1981
[1998]: 201). An example might be someone who cannot even
imaginatively engage with the kind of sexual morality that is normally
conveyed by applying *lewd* to overt sexual display. Many
people find it implausible that such an outsider could master the
extension of *lewd* by grasping a non-evaluative content that
applies to all and only the items the insiders call *lewd*
(assuming there is one), and that this is so in principle, not merely
because of the contingent limitations of our language. Unless there is
a way to grasp the extension without engaging with insiders'
evaluative perspective, it would seem that evaluative classifications
are in principle not graspable with purely non-evaluative
representational resources (McDowell 1981 [1998]: 216).



The key question for present purposes is how the anti-disentangling
argument bears on thick terms and concepts. (On the argument itself,
see Lang 2001; Miller 2003: 250-4; and Roberts 2011, 2013a.) The
question isn't straightforward. McDowell makes a general claim
about evaluative terms. But many writers take it to bear on how thick
terms and concepts combine evaluation and non-evaluative description,
specifically by favoring Inseparability over Separability (Williams
1985; Kirchin 2010):




*Separability:* The evaluative and non-evaluative aspects of
thick terms and concepts are distinct components that can at least in
principle be "disentangled" from one another. (Hare 1952:
121-2; Hare 1981: 17-8, 73-5; Blackburn 1992, 1998:
101ff.; Burton 1992; Miller 2003: 244-54; Richard 2008:
28-33; Elstein and Hurka 2009; Smith 2013; Kyle 2020)



*Inseparability:* Thick terms and concepts are or represent
irreducible fusions of evaluation and non-evaluative description which
cannot be "disentangled". (Williams 1985: 129-30,
140-1; Putnam 2002: ch. 2; Kirchin 2010, 2017: ch. 2; Roberts
2011; Harcourt and Thomas 2013)




Saying that the anti-disentangling argument favors Inseparability over
Separability misstates the case, however. The argument gets a grip on
thick terms only under the following assumption:




*Descriptive Equivalence:* For every thick term or concept,
someone has or could acquire an independently intelligible purely
non-evaluative description with the same extension.




According to Descriptive Equivalence, the extensions of thick terms
are determined only by their non-evaluative content; evaluative
content makes no difference to what things fall under a thick term. If
this means that an outsider who doesn't share the evaluative
outlook associated with a thick concept should nonetheless be able to
anticipate the insiders' use, then the anti-disentangling
argument rules out Descriptive Equivalence. But that favors
Inseparability only if Separability entails Descriptive Equivalence;
as we'll see in
 section 3,
 that assumption is highly controversial. (For problems with
Descriptive Equivalence itself, see Sreenivasan 2001.)



Significant issues are at stake here. If Separability entails
Descriptive Equivalence but Descriptive Equivalence is false, then
thick terms and concepts cannot be analyzed or reduced to thin
evaluation plus non-evaluative description. For instance,
*rude* couldn't mean *bad for causing offense by
indicating lack of respect*. In that case, thin terms
wouldn't enjoy conceptual or explanatory priority over the
thick, and moral theorists would risk ignoring or distorting a
substantial range of moral phenomena if they focused exclusively on
the thin. But if Separability doesn't entail Descriptive
Equivalence, thick concepts may be explicable in terms of thin
evaluation plus non-evaluative description even if the
anti-disentangling argument is sound.



The debate discussed above has largely supposed that a descriptive
equivalent would be encoded in the meaning of a thick term, and thus
would presumably be something that competent speakers should in
principle be able to articulate. But we would struggle to say what the
very many ways of being cruel, for instance, have in common without
relying on our understanding of *cruel* (Little 2000: 279). Our
poor track record in capturing the extensions of thick terms in
independently intelligible non-evaluative terms should then count
against Descriptive Equivalence. But note that, so far as the
anti-disentangling argument goes, a non-evaluative description could
be necessarily extensionally equivalent to an evaluative term or
concept without belonging to the latter's meaning. An evaluative
concept could be held to have a non-evaluative "shape" as
a matter of a necessary *a posteriori* equivalence, perhaps in
the way that the necessary synthetic equivalence of "*x* is
water" and "*x* is H2O" is
discoverable only *a posteriori*. (D1) clearly allows this
possibility. (D2) must then remain plausible if 'possible'
is read as including the possibility of mastering the extension of an
evaluative term by latching onto a non-evaluative necessary
extensional equivalent (provided there is one) in an *a
posteriori* way. The notion of disentangling in McDowell's
argument is therefore not semantic or conceptual. The argument's
real conclusion seems rather to be:




*Shapelessness:* The extensions of evaluative terms and
concepts aren't unified under independently intelligible
non-evaluative relations of real similarity, not even as a matter of
synthetic *a posteriori* truth that isn't settled by the
meanings of evaluative terms or concepts. (Miller 2003: 250-4;
Kirchin 2010; Roberts 2011, 2013a; Vayrynen 2014)




If Shapelessness were true, that would explain why the sort of
disentanglement targeted by McDowell's argument isn't
possible. Indeed, the non-evaluative shapelessness of the evaluative
is often thought to provide a particularly good explanation of why
(D2) is plausible (Roberts 2011: 506).



Although Shapelessness is a general issue about evaluative concepts,
its bearing on thick concepts is worth noting. Suppose an outsider
could anticipate insiders' use of an evaluative term in new
cases by using similarities between old cases and new cases to infer
whether the evaluative term applies in the new cases. Shapelessness
entails that such similarities would have to be evaluative. If so,
Descriptive Equivalence is false. Conversely, insofar as the
extensions of evaluative terms can be mastered on the basis of
non-evaluative similarities, Shapelessness is false. The way thick
terms involve non-evaluative description may be thought to make them a
particularly suitable test case for these general issues about
evaluative concepts. But note, finally, that thick concepts do so only
if their evaluative aspects are somehow built into them, such as
perhaps as a matter of meaning. The commitment here is to:




*Inherently Evaluative:* The meanings of thick terms and
concepts somehow contain evaluation.




This generic thesis covers a range of options regarding what sort of
evaluation the meanings of thick terms and concepts might be thought
to contain and how they contain it. Some version of Inherently
Evaluative clearly is presupposed by Inseparability. By contrast,
Separability allows (though doesn't entail) that thick terms and
concepts might convey evaluation only pragmatically, as a matter of
use. Different answers to this location question are, again, the topic
of
 section 4.


### 2.3 Reflection, Knowledge, and Priority



Thick concepts and their relation to the thin bear also on knowledge
in ethics. Bernard Williams famously claims that, unlike in science,
in ethics "reflection can destroy knowledge" (1985: 148;
see also Williams 1995). Thick terms and concepts are parochial, in
that they tend to have "interest" or a "point"
only in the context of some particular evaluative outlooks or
practices. The notion of lewdness as we know it really only has a life
within a particular kind of sexual morality. That is why those who
regard *lewd* as an objectionable term typically refrain from
using it. Industriousness seems to count as a positive quality only
against some such evaluative frame as the Protestant work ethic.
(Otherwise, what's the point?) This would explain why, as (D2)
in the anti-disentangling argument claims, an unsympathetic outsider
might not be able to master the extensions that particular moral
communities assign to their thick terms. Now consider what Williams
calls a "hypertraditional society": a maximally homogenous
and minimally reflective society whose ethical reflection only employs
thick concepts (Williams 1985: 142). Suppose *T* expresses one of
their thick concepts in their language. And suppose that claims of the
form **x* is *T** can express truths and qualify as
knowledge (see also Williams 1995). Williams suggests that a judgment
involving a thin concept such as good or bad
"is essentially the product of
reflection" (Williams 1985: 146). Since the hypertraditional
society is unreflective, its members don't deploy good
or bad. In that case we
cannot suppose that *T* entails either. Now suppose a person from
the hypertraditional society has knowledge that *x* is *T*
but comes to reflect on her practices and acquires thin concepts. If
thick concepts reflect social worlds, reflection that stands back from
social practices must rely on thin concepts. Through reflection, the
person may come to reject her traditional way of life and the
evaluative perspective that goes with it, inferring from **x*
is *T** that *x* is bad. Or she may come to endorse it,
inferring that *x* is okay. Williams suggests that "when
someone stands back from the practices of the society and its use of
these concepts and asks whether this is the right way to go on",
the sort of reflection that occurs "characteristically disturbs,
unseats, or replaces ... traditional concepts" (Williams
1985: 146, 148). But if the person ceases to possess her traditional
concept *T* through thinly evaluative reflection, then presumably
her previous knowledge that *x* is *T* is destroyed.
Williams's thinking rests on controversial assumptions about
ethical knowledge which we cannot pursue here. Nor can we pursue
fascinating issues concerning the implications of being deprived of
certain concepts (Fricker 2007: ch. 7). Let's simply note that
it isn't clear that losing traditional convictions through
reflection leads to a loss of concepts. You might instead retain your
concepts shorn of their traditional evaluative trappings, and either
find them a new evaluative point (such as using what was a positive
concept negatively) or shelve those concepts as ones that have no
distinctive point or use in structuring your experience (Richard 2008:
33; Vayrynen 2013: 123-5, 245). In the latter case the
evaluative point of a thick concept wouldn't be constitutive of
the concept.



An important general issue about thick concepts is in the mix here
either way. Consider the following widely accepted view about the
relation between thick and thin concepts:




*Thin Centralism:* Thin terms and concepts are conceptually
and/or explanatorily prior to thick terms and concepts. (Hare 1952,
1963, 1981; Blackburn 1992, 1998, 2013; Elstein and Hurka 2009; Smith
2013)




If good and bad are
conceptually prior to *T*, the members of a hypertraditional
society cannot grasp *T* without also grasping them. But then
they cannot lose *T* when they draw a reflective inference from
**x* is *T** to a thin evaluation. Similarly the
truth or falsity of **x* is *T**, and the status of
its acceptance as knowledge, will depend partly on whether *x* is
good or bad. But these thin evaluative facts may be discernible to an
outsider, thereby limiting the extent to which thick concepts resist
mastery by those who cannot imaginatively inhabit the evaluative
outlook within which it has a point. The same consequences would seem
to follow from:




*No Priority:* Thick and thin terms and concepts are
conceptually and explanatorily interdependent, with neither being
prior to the other. (Hurley 1989: 13; Dancy 1995; Tappolet 2004)




Like Thin Centralism, No Priority entails that one cannot grasp thick
concepts without grasping thin concepts. Thus it seems that Williams
must reject Thin Centralism and No Priority, and must instead accept
one of the following views about the relationship between thick and
thin concepts:




*Non-Centralism:* Thick and thin terms and concepts in general
exhibit no interesting relations of conceptual and/or explanatory
priority or interdependence. (Vayrynen 2013: 250)



*Thick Centralism:* Thick terms and concepts are conceptually
and/or explanatorily prior to thin terms and concepts. (Explicit
statements are rare, but see Chappell 2013 and Annas 2016.)




Under Non-Centralism it might be difficult to explain why thin
evaluative reflection should tend to lead to a loss of traditional
thick concepts. Thick Centralism rules out Separability (see
 section 3),
 but note in addition that Williams needs a version of Thick
Centralism on which the claim that grasping thin concepts requires
grasping specific thick concepts is compatible with the possibility of
subsequently losing those thick concepts through reflection that
deploys thin concepts. Regarding thick concepts in this way as a
throwaway ladder might not yield a stable form of Thick Centralism. An
important potential implication of Thick Centralism is that since not
everyone shares the same thick concepts, there might be no evaluative
language that is "conceptually homogeneous" across
cultures or across disagreements within a culture (cf. Williams 1995).
Williams further argues that we can draw significant conclusions about
the nature of not just ethical knowledge but also of evaluative truths
and their objectivity specifically from reflection on thick terms and
concepts, but these arguments are highly controversial (see Williams
1985: 135-6, 146-55; Quinn 1987; Scheffler 1987; Williams
1995; Lang 2001; Moore 2003; Kirchin 2017: ch. 172-80).



For a summary of some further questions about the significance of
thick concepts, see
 section 1
 of the supplementary document
 "Additional Debates about Thick Concepts and Their Significance".



All these arguments regarding the distinctive significance of thick
concepts point us to the same cluster of issues: the combination
question regarding how thick terms combine evaluation and
non-evaluative description, the location question regarding how the
evaluations they may be used to convey relate to their meaning or
content, and the delineation question regarding how thick terms and
concepts differ from the thin (and other evaluative terms).
Let's now turn to consider these debates in their own right.


## 3. The Combination Question: How Do Thick Concepts Relate Evaluation and Description?



The combination question concerns in what way the evaluation and
non-evaluative description involved in thick terms and concepts
relate. Calling something selfish normally conveys that it is bad, but
not just any bad action can qualify as selfish; selfish acts must
involve the agent giving greater priority to some of her own interests
over others'. (Those interests may be different in different
circumstances: one can be emotionally selfish, financially selfish,
and so on.) Separabilists hold that thick concepts are a combination
of distinct non-evaluative concepts and other (usually thin)
evaluative concepts. Philosophers who accept Thin Centralism typically
accept Separability. And philosophers (often the same ones) who reject
Shapelessness or aim to avoid the anti-disentangling argument also
typically accept Separability. But as we'll see, Separability
commits you to neither Thin Centralism nor Shapelessness. While some
philosophers writer as if Separabilist views were essentially
non-cognitivist (Dancy 1995; Kirchin 2010), cognitivists can well
accept Separability (Elstein and Hurka 2009; Smith 2013). Separabilist
views are sometimes called "reductive" (Kirchin 2010;
Roberts 2013a; Harcourt and Thomas 2013). A word of caution about this
label is that Separabilist views needn't be reductionist in the
sense of reducing evaluative properties to non-evaluative ones. By
contrast, Inseparabilists hold that the meanings of thick terms and
concepts are both evaluative and descriptive but cannot be divided
into distinct contents; talk of "combining" evaluation and
non-evaluative description is liable to mislead if it suggests putting
together distinct elements (Dancy 1995: 268). Thick concepts are a
distinct kind of fundamental evaluative concepts. Accordingly
Inseparabilist Views are often called "non-reductive", or
views on which thick concepts are "irreducibly thick".
Philosophers who accept Thick Centralism typically accept
Inseparability, and those who accept Inseparability typically accept
Shapelessness and express sympathy for the anti-disentangling
argument. (As we'll see, these views needn't cluster as
neatly as is sometimes assumed.)


### 3.1 Separabilist Views



According to Separability, the evaluative and non-evaluative aspects
of thick terms and concepts are distinct components that can at least
in principle be disentangled from one another. In this section
we'll discuss how Separabilists may specify the non-evaluative
descriptive content and its relation to the evaluative content. By way
of preliminaries, note that many Separabilists take the evaluative
content of thick terms to be located in their truth-conditions, but if
those evaluations are some other kind of features of thick terms or
their uses, they will be separable from the non-evaluative descriptive
contents of thick terms in whatever way such features are in general
separable from truth-conditional meaning (see
 section 4).
 While Separabilists often take this evaluative content to be thin,
Separability as such doesn't require this. The evaluative
content of "What you did was tactless" might not be
"What you did was *pro tanto* bad" but more like
"What did you did was bad in a certain way", where the
specification of the "certain way" will introduce
descriptive information, such as "pertaining to manners".
Alternatively the evaluative contents of thick terms might be given by
affective concepts such as admirable or amusing
(Tappolet 2004; for criticism, see Harcourt
and Thomas 2013). On neither view does Separability entail Thin
Centralism, although if *admirable* means simply *worthy of
admiration*, Thin Centralism can be maintained. Note that when we
see below some Separabilists proposing an "analysis" of
thick terms, they needn't be understood as claiming that any
actual language allows us to give a satisfactory statement of a
putative analysis of a thick term or concept. Our inability to provide
such a statement doesn't show that the term or concept is
unanalyzable or that Inseparability is true.



In what kind of relation does the evaluative content *E* of a
thick term stand to its non-evaluative descriptive content *D* if
they are separable? In
 section 2.1
 we saw a simple view about the connection: *D* entails *E*.
But this threatens an *is-ought* gap which many want to
maintain, commits you to Descriptive Equivalence, and makes you
vulnerable to the anti-disentangling argument. (From any such
*D* we can construct an independently intelligible purely
non-evaluative description with the same extension as the thick term
in question.) We also think that in some way selfish actions are bad
in a certain way *because* or *in virtue of* the agent
giving a certain degree of priority to herself over others; the
connection doesn't seem merely conjunctive. Separabilists might
then seek to analyze thick terms or concepts as featuring a relation
which is explanatory but where *D* doesn't entail
*E*. In this vein, Stephan Burton suggests that thick terms can
be analyzed as meaning "*x* is *E* in virtue of some
particular instance of *D*" (Burton 1992; see also Tappolet
2004). *Selfish*, for instance, would mean something like
"bad in a certain way in virtue of some particular instance of
giving priority to oneself over others". For *E* to hold in
virtue of some particular instance of *D* is for *E* to
depend on "the various different characteristics and
contexts" of *D*. You might not count as selfish if you
benefit yourself over benefiting two other people to the same degree
each as you benefit yourself but things may be different if seven
other people are in the mix, and what counts as the relevant kind of
prioritizing of oneself varies depending on whether the context
concerns emotional or financial selfishness, and so on. So *D*
alone isn't sufficient for *E*, and the further
non-evaluative detail about particular instances of *D* which is
needed for *E* isn't built into the meaning of
*selfish* (Burton 1992: 31). This avoids the anti-disentangling
argument. For although *E* is still (contextually) separable from
*D*, *D* won't be coextensive with *selfish*
and an outsider's grasp of the extension of *D* won't
be enough for her to master how insiders apply *selfish*.
Separabilists might also have other ways of securing these benefits.
Brent Kyle argues that Separabilists have no reason to accept an
analysis which inserts an explanatory relation into the content of
thick concepts, and offers an alternative (discussed below) which also
avoids the anti-disentangling argument (Kyle 2020: 916-17, 923).




Since Separabilists can deny Descriptive Equivalence, the
anti-disentangling argument cannot establish Inseparability. But what
is meant to constrain the selection of the non-evaluative
"characteristics and contexts" which are needed to
determine whether a thick term applies? And can these be grasped
without drawing on our antecedent understanding of the thick term? If
not, those drawn to Thin Centralism won't be satisfied, and
Burton's proposal will also fall short as a non-circular
analysis of meaning. Here we'll consider two other Separabilist
proposals for solving these problems about how thick terms combine
evaluative and non-evaluative information.



Daniel Elstein and Thomas Hurka offer two patterns of analysis for
thick terms as "sketches intended to illustrate the general
resources the reductive view has" in solving these problems
(Elstein and Hurka 2009: 531). Each allows Separabilists to accept
Thin Centralism while explaining why an outsider to the relevant
evaluative practice couldn't grasp the extension of a given
thick term. Each of Elstein and Hurka's patterns of analysis
locates evaluation in the meanings of thick terms. On the first, the
non-evaluative content of a thick term is only partially specified
within its meaning: its meaning specifies good-making (or bad-making)
non-evaluative properties of a general type, but may not specify what
exactly these good-making properties are. An example they give is that
"*x* is distributively just" means



> 
> 
> *x* is good, and there are properties *X*, *Y*, and
> *Z* (not specified) that distributions have as distributions, or
> in virtue of their distributive shape, such that *x* has
> *X*, *Y*, and *Z*, and *X*, *Y*, and *Z*
> make any distribution that has them good. (Elstein and Hurka 2009:
> 522)
> 
> 
> 



This analysis separates non-evaluative description from evaluation,
and grasping it requires grasping good. But
grasping the non-evaluative information that *distributively
just* only applies to distributions won't be enough to know
just which distributions fall into its extension. That requires
knowing which properties of distributions are good making. Similarly,
mastering how insiders apply *distributively just* requires
knowing which properties they take to make distributions good. In this
way, Separabilists can agree that "evaluation drives
extension" (a phrase from Blackburn 1992; see also Gibbard
1992). Thus they can accept the second premise of the
anti-disentangling argument while rejecting its first premise (which
presupposes Descriptive Equivalence).



On Elstein and Hurka's first pattern of analysis, a thick term
involves only a "global" evaluation that "governs
the whole concept": anything to which *distributively
just* applies is good, and we can identify the general
non-evaluative type to which it belongs independently of any
evaluation. Their second pattern of analysis, which is meant to fit
many virtue and vice concepts, supplements the global thin evaluation
with a further thin evaluation that is embedded within non-evaluative
description. An example they give is that "act *x* is
courageous" means something like



> 
> 
> *x* is good, and *x* involves an agent's accepting
> harm or the risk of harm for himself for the sake of goods greater
> than the evil of that harm, where this property makes any act that has
> it good. (Elstein and Hurka 2009: 527)
> 
> 
> 



The reference to "goods" is an "embedded"
evaluation: you can't even specify the general type of those
actions which *courageous* evaluates globally as good without
knowing what count as good goals. But determining this will again
require evaluations which an outsider cannot access simply by knowing
the non-evaluative content of *courageous* (Elstein and Hurka
2009: 526-7). Note how global and embedded evaluations differ:
you can grasp the embedded evaluation of what count as good goals
without any view on what counts as courageous (or even without having
the concept), but not so with the global evaluation. (To have a view
of what property of the relevant type makes anything that has it good
*is* to have a view on what counts as courageous, on their
analysis.) Below "evaluation" means global evaluation
unless noted otherwise.



Brent Kyle proposes a different way for Separabilists to avoid the
anti-disentangling argument. According to his positive account of the
meaning of thick concepts, the Expansion View, thick concepts are
expanded contents of thin terms. An expanded content is, roughly, the
semantic content of a predicate with modifiers: that Chuck is ready to
party and that Chuck is ready for work are among the expanded contents
that "Chuck is ready" can express in different contexts of
utterance, and likewise for "Shaq is agile" and the
proposition that Shaq is agile for a basketball player. Kyle proposes
that, similarly, admirable is an expanded
content of worthy, namely worthy-[of-admiration],
that courageous
can be analyzed as some such expanded
content of true as true-[to-a-good-cause-despite-risk],
and that kind
can be analyzed as some such expanded content
of good as good-[to-someone-as-an-end]
(Kyle 2020:
918-22). The Expansion View contends that all thick concepts
have correct analyses of the sort which these rough approximations
aim to illustrate. One question about it is how to distinguish, say,
*courageous* from at least certain utterances of
*reckless* in a non-circular way. Many reckless acts satisfy at
least the toy analysis of courageous as true-[to-a-good-cause-despite-risk].
The Expansion View is
a form of Separability because it requires that thick concepts are
composed in part of thin ones (for details, see Kyle 2020:
924-25). But it doesn't imply that any thick concept can
be disentangled into a thin evaluative content plus a non-evaluative
description that is co-extensive with the thick concept. 



Separability promises to make it clear how thick terms are both
evaluative and descriptive. Unless we accept also Descriptive
Equivalence, the evaluative contents of thick terms will be provided
by independently intelligible evaluative concepts (thin concepts, or
affective concepts, or good-in-a-way concepts), and their
non-evaluative meanings will be inherited from distinct non-evaluative
information. Conjoining Separability with Thin Centralism would also
promise theoretical economy: we could explicate a wide range of
evaluative concepts on the basis of just a few basic thin concepts and
non-evaluative concepts which we need to recognize anyway. (This
putative advantage assumes Inherently Evaluative. It isn't
guaranteed by Separability as such; Kyle's Expansion View yields
a form of Separability which accepts Inherently Evaluative but
doesn't require Thin Centralism.) The converse won't
follow from Inseparabilism even if Thick Centralism is true, since
thick terms are much more numerous than thin terms. Below we'll
discuss whether Inseparabilists can provide as clear an
explanation.



Separability has also been claimed vital for normative criticism of
thick concepts. Simon Blackburn claims that those who apply
*cute* to adult women



> 
> 
> react to an infantile, unthreatening appearance or self-presentation
> in women ... with admiration or desire (the men) or envy and
> emulation (the women)
> 
> 
> 



and that we couldn't criticize this attitude as objectionable if
the non-evaluative aspects of *cute* were inseparable from the
admirability or enviability which those non-evaluative aspects are
taken to ground (Blackburn 1998: 101). In response one might point out
that Inseparability allows that thick terms and concepts entail
non-evaluative descriptions of the sort of general type that figures
in Elstein and Hurka's analyses ("has to do with
infantile, unthreatening appearance"), so long as these
entailments don't exhaust their descriptive aspects. This in
turn opens up room for the specifically normative criticism that no
specific features of this general type make admiration or envy
appropriate when possessed by adult women. But Inseparabilists must be
able to square this idea with their account of how thick terms are
evaluative. So let's now turn to Inseparability.


### 3.2 Inseparabilist Views



According to Inseparabilists, thick terms and concepts are irreducibly
thick: their meanings involve both evaluation and non-evaluative
description without this being a matter of combining constituent
evaluative and non-evaluative contents. For instance, *cruel*
expresses a *sui generis* evaluative concept which isn't
a combination of *pro tanto bad* or *bad in way
*W** with some non-evaluative content. How then is the idea
that thick terms are both descriptive and evaluative to be understood,
if not in terms of combining evaluative and descriptive components? It
cannot be that their meanings are both wholly evaluative and wholly
non-evaluative (which is how we are understanding the descriptive);
that would be contradictory.



The challenge to Inseparabilists is to pin down more precisely how
thick terms are both evaluative and descriptive in ways that are
continuous with, respectively, thin evaluative concepts and
non-evaluative concepts. Simply stipulating new technical notions
would leave their claims about the distinctive philosophical
significance of thick concepts unsatisfactory. Not just any conceptual
entailment of a term seems constitutive of its meaning; while
"*x* is a horse" entails that *x* is a mammal,
it also entails that *x* isn't a wombat (or a mountain, or
a beer bottle), but not being a wombat (etc.) isn't part of the
meaning of *horse* (Dancy 2013: 49). But some entailments are
such that competence with the term requires grasping them, and thick
concepts and descriptive concepts are similar in having non-evaluative
entailments of this sort. It is a matter of meaning that lewd acts
involve overt sexual display, selfish acts involve the agent giving
priority to herself over others, and so on. There is also a
methodological rationale for focusing on entailments: linguists study
word meanings by considering patterns in competent speakers'
entailment and contradiction judgments, synonymy judgments, and
judgments about truth-conditions because these reflect relations among
the sorts of entities that semantic theories assign to linguistic
expressions as their meanings (Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet 2000: ch.
1). (A complication is that the meanings of words may not map
one-to-one onto the concepts those words may be used to express.
Writers on thick concepts often don't say what they take
concepts and their relation to word meanings to be.)



What should Inseparabilists say about the common way in which thick
and thin concepts are evaluative? Several views have been proposed,
but a simple proposal will hopefully suffice to give a feel for the
issue. Thick and thin concepts might be thought similar in that both
have intrinsic practical relevance (Dancy 2013: 56-7). Whereas
the relevance of a non-evaluative concept such as water
to your actions needs to be explained by
citing other considerations, such as your desire to quench thirst or
the fact that you are stranded in the desert, no further explanation
is needed for the practical relevance of thin concepts like ought
or thick concepts such as courage.
It is "to be expected" that
courageousness makes a practical difference: it is normally, even if
not always, something to aspire to and admire. Whereas competence with
non-evaluative concepts requires only the ability to determine whether
the concept applies, competence with an evaluative concept requires
also grasping its general evaluative point--the sorts of
practical difference its instantiation can make in a particular case.
For thick concepts, the sort of difference may vary from case to case:
rudeness is usually inappropriate, but sometimes neutral and sometimes
positively called for. One problem with this view is that its
metaethical commitments are too controversial for a general
distinction between evaluative and non-evaluative concepts. For
example, under the "internalist" view of normative
reasons, according to which there is a reason for an agent to perform
a particular action only if the action is suitably related to the
agent's motivations, courageous and
morally good have no more intrinsic practical
relevance than water and wombat
(Williams 1981). Whether their application
makes a difference to your reasons will depend on your motivations. It
is also controversial that "objectionable" thick concepts
have intrinsic practical relevance. Why then should other thick
concepts?



For a summary of other Inseparabilist views on how thick and thin
concepts are evaluative, see
 section 2
 of the supplementary document
 "Additional Debates about Thick Concepts and Their Significance".



Debates about Separability and Inseparability frequently lead to two
further issues. The first is that Inseparability requires that thick
terms and concepts are inherently evaluative in meaning and that most
Separabilists also take evaluation and non-evaluative description to
be combined within the meanings of thick terms and concepts, not
merely their use. The second issue is that if thick terms and concepts
are inherently evaluative, it isn't enough to specify the shared
sense in which both thick and thin concepts are evaluative. To
preserve a distinction, we must also ask specify how they differ. (And
if thick terms and concepts aren't inherently evaluative, we
must instead say how they differ from other non-evaluative descriptive
concepts.) The next two sections address these issues in turn.


## 4. The Location Question: How Are Thick Concepts Evaluative?



Both the debate about Separability and Inseparability and the putative
broader significance of the thick depend on assumptions about how
thick terms are evaluative. While everyone agrees that thick terms are
somehow linguistically associated with evaluations, the crucial
assumption of many of these arguments is that utterances involving
thick terms (T-utterances, for short) are evaluative specifically as a
matter of the conditions that must hold for such utterances to express
true propositions. If the extension of a thick term has a descriptive
equivalent, then evaluation makes no difference to the
truth-conditions of the utterances involving that term. A natural
explanation of why an outsider who grasps the non-evaluative content
of a thick term couldn't master the extension of a thick term
would be be that its truth-conditions include some evaluative
condition which the outsider doesn't grasp. And thick terms can
challenge a logical *is-ought* gap only if T-utterances have an
evaluative truth-condition, since logical relations are relations
between truth-conditions. Accordingly Inseparabilists and many
Separabilists take evaluation to contribute to semantic
content--the kind of meaning that determines the reference or
truth-conditions of sentences involving thick terms.



The view that the evaluations normally conveyed by T-utterances are
conveyed by the same mechanism as semantic or truth-conditional
content in general is, however, controversial. Utterances can
communicate information that doesn't contribute to their
truth-conditions, and in
 section 4.2
 we'll see several ways they can do so, either in virtue of
other linguistic conventions or conversational principles and
mechanisms. If we use the label "semantic" narrowly to
refer only to truth-conditional properties of utterances, and use the
label "pragmatic" broadly to cover the other ways for
utterances to convey information, then the view that thick terms are
globally evaluative as a matter of the truth-conditions of
T-utterances may be called the "Semantic View" and the
views according which thick terms convey global evaluation through
some other mechanism of information transfer may be called
"Pragmatic Views". (To avoid confusion, also bear in mind
that "pragmatic" is often used more narrowly to refer only
to features of utterances that are explained by conversational
principles rather than linguistic conventions.)


### 4.1 The Semantic View



The most widely accepted view of the relation between thick terms and
evaluation is:




*Semantic View:* The semantic (truth-conditional) meanings of
thick terms and concepts contain global evaluations.




We can assess the relative plausibility of Semantic and Pragmatic
Views by seeing how well they explain various patterns of the kinds of
linguistic behavior on which linguists rely in assessing claims about
whether some feature of an utterance is part of its truth-conditions
or not. The data we'll briefly consider below focus on what we
called global evaluations in
 section 3.1;
 Pragmatic Views can allow the meanings of thick terms to contain
embedded evaluation (Vayrynen 2013: 42-3). The data
don't by themselves entail either the Semantic View or any
version of the Pragmatic View. These views should rather be understood
as claiming to constitute part of the best explanation of a wide body
of linguistic data involving thick terms.



Some of the relevant linguistic data seem easy to explain if thick
terms are semantically evaluative. Consider the assertions in
(1)-(2):



(1)
# Making fun of an insecure person just for fun is cruel and not
bad in any way for it.
(2)
Speaker *A*: It was courageous of Sue to stand up to that
racist on the bus.
# Speaker *B*: Sure, courageous--and not good in any way
for it.


In both
 (1)
 and the exchange in
 (2),
 the denial of an evaluation that is normally conveyed by
*cruel* and *courageous* sounds odd, or infelicitous
(indicated by "#"). If the first half of
 (1)
 has a global evaluation of something as bad in a certain way as part
of its truth-conditions, the oddness of
 (1)
 can be neatly explained as reflecting a logical contradiction between
its two halves. The same would go for the exchange in
 (2):
 *A*'s and *B*'s utterances entail contradictory
claims about whether Sue's act was good in any way. (See Kyle
2013a for a discussion of how the Semantic View might allow that
 (1)
 isn't odd in all contexts.)



It is natural to assume that if a thick term conveys an evaluation as
a matter of truth-conditions, that evaluation is either positive or
negative but not both and the evaluation is the same in all contexts
where the term is used to make an assertion. (We'll discuss
non-assertive contexts below.) But many paradigmatic thick terms can
be used to evaluate negatively in some contexts while positively in
others. Some philosophers claim that the Semantic View cannot explain
this "contextual variability" in the evaluative valence of
T-utterances. Although *frugal* normally conveys a positive
evaluation, calling someone whose "main job is dispensing
hospitality" frugal counts as a criticism (Blackburn 1992: 286).
Similarly, although *cruel* normally conveys a negative
evaluation, it might be thought to convey positive evaluation when the
cruelty of an action is "just what made it such fun" (Hare
1981: 73). Such variability might be thought to show that thick virtue
concepts aren't evaluative concepts (Brower 1988). However,
variability in valence is compatible with the Semantic View
(Vayrynen 2011). These examples might be thought to involve a
non-literal use of the thick term or to convey the non-typical
evaluation not by way of word meaning but by way of speaker meaning.
(What the speaker means in using some word can come apart from the
meaning that the word has in the language. I can intend to be speaking
about plums of any kind when I use the word *prune* but that
doesn't make it any less the case that in English *prune*
means dried plums.) Or it might be that the normal evaluation is built
into the truth-conditions of the sentences involving it and the
opposite evaluation can be explained in terms of one of the pragmatic
mechanisms we'll consider in
 section 4.2.
 Or it might be that although thick terms are semantically evaluative,
their valence isn't fixed but rather their meanings allow
involve different evaluations in different contexts (Dancy 1995).
These also don't exhaust the options for a semantic explanation
of variability (Kyle 2020: 926). More generally, it doesn't seem
promising to explain valence reversal by appeal to lexical
deflationism, ambiguity, or echoic use of language (Cepollaro 2018).




A stronger challenge to the Semantic View is based on two more complex
sets of linguistic data about thick terms: the evaluations normally
conveyed by T-utterances seem to survive embedding in various complex
sentences that usually block truth-conditional content, and those
evaluations seem to be defeasible in ways that truth-conditional
content isn't.



The first set of data concern what happens when atomic sentences
involving thick terms are embedded in various complex sentences;
truth-conditional content often doesn't survive such embedding.
The data are clearest in the case of objectionable thick concepts
which were introduced in
 section 2.1.
 (The most comprehensive presentation of the data can be found in
Vayrynen 2013: ch. 3.) The word *chaste* applies to a
certain kind of sexual restraint. It is typically used to convey
positive evaluation to the effect that such restraint is praiseworthy
or good in a certain way. If *chaste* is in fact objectionable
and the evaluation that makes it so is part of its truth-conditions,
then nothing is chaste; *chaste* fails to refer. If instead the
associated evaluation that makes *chaste* objectionable is
truth-conditionally irrelevant, *chaste* may be true of things
which just don't "fit" the evaluation; it will
"misevaluate" (Eklund 2011).



Those who reject the evaluation of sexual restraint as good and thus
find *chaste* objectionable in its customary positive use (call
them *chaste*-objectors) are at least typically reluctant to
utter sentences like (3):



(3)
Isolde is chaste.


Interestingly, *chaste*-objectors are also reluctant to use
*chaste* when it is embedded in negation, questions, modal
operators such as *possibly* and *might*, and the
antecedent of the conditional.



(4)


a.
Isolde isn't chaste.
b.
Is Isolde chaste?
c.
Isolde might be chaste.
d.
If Isolde is chaste, so is Tristan.
 


None of
 (4a-d)
 entail that Isolde is chaste. So *chaste*-objectors'
reluctance to utter
 (4a-d)
 seems hard to explain if the positive evaluation associated with
*chaste* is part of the truth-conditions of
 (3).
 Since the evaluation survives when *chaste* is embedded under
operators that block truth-conditional content, it appears to
"project" outside of the truth-conditions of
*chaste*. This kind of projection behavior is a general feature
of T-utterances, since virtually any thick term seems to be in
principle open to being regarded as objectionable. As we'll see
in
 section 4.2
 below, this projection behavior is characteristic of certain
truth-conditionally irrelevant pragmatic contents and is thus well
explained by many Pragmatic Views.



The Semantic View may, however, offer a different explanation of these
projection data. One option is that T-utterances normally convey two
kinds of evaluations. Perhaps *chaste* is semantically
evaluative and, in addition, someone who uses the word thereby conveys
that she approves of the semantically associated way of valuing
(namely, valuing people or behavior positively for showing sexual
restraint). Insofar as this latter aspect projects from embeddings
that block truth-conditional content and the reluctance of
*chaste*-objectors to utter
 (4a-d)
 can be explained as being due only to the latter aspect, their
reluctance doesn't show that chaste isn't also
semantically evaluative. (Eklund forthcoming.) This proposal seems,
however, unable by itself to explain the defeasibility data discussed
below, which suggest that even the associated evaluations themselves
can be suspended without infelicity.



Another explanation of the projection data is due to Brent Kyle. It
comes in two pieces. The first concerns (4a). When you say someone is
not happy, you only say that they lack the quality of being happy, not
that they are unhappy. But normally, in the absence of an explicit
note to the contrary, we tend to interpret the claim that someone
isn't happy as conversationally implicating (conveying,
suggesting) that they are unhappy. It should then be equally plausible
that *not chaste* similarly conversationally implicates
*unchaste*. Since those who find *chaste* objectionable
should also be reluctant to imply that anyone is unchaste, this would
explain why *chaste*-objectors are reluctant to utter (4a). So
what about (4b-d)? To be a *chaste*-objector you must
have concluded that things aren't good simply for showing a
certain kind of sexual restraint. If the Semantic View is true, it
follows that nothing can be chaste. But each of (4b-d) implies
that the speaker considers it a live possibility that Isolde is
chaste. No wonder, then, that *chaste*-objectors are reluctant
to assert (4b-d). Since these explanations focus on
truth-conditionally irrelevant implications of
 (4a-d),
 they are compatible with the Semantic View (Kyle 2013a: 13-19).
In appealing to two distinct types of implicature, this piecemeal
explanation is less parsimonious than Pragmatic Views which make do
with just one mechanism, but whether that makes the explanation worse
overall is a complex question up for debate. (For this methodological
issue, see
 section 3
 of the supplementary document
 "Additional Debates about Thick Concepts and Their Significance".)



The second set of data concern the possibility of denying or
suspending an evaluation that a T-utterance normally conveys without
rejecting the utterance itself. Truth-conditional contents cannot be
denied in this way. If I say "Gerald asked three questions at
Heather's talk" and you reply "No, he asked
two", you reject my utterance as false. But if you reply "
No, he asked four", you aren't rejecting the truth of my
utterance but only its conversational implicature that Gerald asked
*exactly* three questions. In
 (1)
 and
 (2)
 direct denials of evaluation following assertive T-utterances are
odd. But consider:



(5)
Whether or not Isolde is chaste, she is in no way good for her
sexual restraint. (Cf. Vayrynen 2013: 66)
(6)
Whether or not this is a good thing, Isolde can be truthfully and
neutrally described as being chaste. (Cf. Bergstrom 2002: 5)
(7)
The carnival was a lot of fun. But something was missing. It just
wasn't lewd. I hope it'll be lewd next year. (Due to Matti
Eklund)


If these utterances can be acceptable, that would be evidence that the
evaluation normally conveyed by *chaste* isn't part of
its truth-conditions. A speaker of
 (7)
 makes it clear that she would rejoice in a more sexually explicit
carnival, thus shedding a commitment to evaluating the carnival
negatively if it were more explicit. If that evaluation were part of
the truth-conditions of *lewd*, we would expect
 (7)
 not to sound coherent on a literal use of *lewd*. The denial
in
 (5)
 and suspension in
 (6)
 don't concern only whether the speaker approves of the way of
valuing associated with the thick term but also that evaluation
itself. An utterance of
 (5)
 brackets the question whether the truth-conditions of
 (3)
 hold and denies the evaluation either way. If you forced a
*chaste*-objector to judge
 (3)
 as either true or false, she might prefer to classify it as true
while using something like
 (5)
 to signal that she is using *chaste* non-evaluatively.
Uttering
 (6)
 would be a way for someone who is agnostic about whether chastity is
good in any way to suspend the evaluation while conceding that the
truth-conditions of
 (3)
 hold. It isn't clear how either
 (5)
 or
 (6)
 could be compatible with locating the evaluation in the
truth-conditions of
 (3).
 So the proponents of the Semantic View may need to claim that
utterances of
 (5)-(7)
 either don't involve literal uses of thick terms or are
infelicitous despite the fact that many speakers don't find them
to be linguistically odd as utterances.



One radical way to reconcile the Semantic View with the defeasibility
data is to argue that a condition can be part of what constitutes the
meaning of an expression even if the expression doesn't satisfy
the condition and even if the condition can be competently rejected by
users of the expression. On this view, *chaste* might entail
*good for showing sexual restraint* as a matter of meaning even
if things to which *chaste* applies in fact aren't good
in any way and even if some semantically competent speakers reject the
evaluation without rejecting
 (1).
 In developing this view, Matti Eklund argues that it isn't
*ad hoc* because there are other concepts that can plausibly be
treated as inconsistent in this kind of way (Eklund 2011).



The debate about whether the evaluations normally conveyed by thick
terms are defeasible quickly gets complex and technical. (A fuller
discussion of the defeasibility data and their explanation can be
found in Vayrynen 2013: 66-95.) Sometimes the linguistic
intuitions on which we rely in assessing competing explanations may
also be less firm or not as widely shared as we would like. An
additional complication is that some evidence about how people in fact
reason with positive and negative thick terms suggests that
evaluations are more easily defeasible for positive thick terms than
for negative ones (Willemsen and Reuter 2020). Existing work largely
assumes that positive and negative thick terms behave in largely the
same ways. Asymmetrical valence effects would thus complicate matters
for both Semantic and Pragmatic Views. How much they would do so
depends on how deep a difference in meaning the asymmetry would reflect.
Pascale Willemsen and Kevin Reuter (2020) propose that the valence
effect is due to a difference in the social norms guiding positive and
negative evaluative language, but the issue is under-explored. Another
further issue concerns whether certain kinds of denials of
T-utterances focused on the evaluations that they normally convey are
better understood as instances of the truth-conditional negation that
we learn about in logic classes, or of "metalinguistic"
negation which targets aspects of utterances other than their
truth-conditional content.


### 4.2 Pragmatic Views



Understanding how else thick terms might be related to evaluation than
by way of truth-conditions requires a brief look at how utterances can
in general communicate information that isn't part of their
truth-conditions. Linguists and philosophers of language have
identified several other mechanisms of information transfer by which a
speaker can communicate information, such as a proposition, that
isn't part of the truth-conditions of her utterance. If this
further information is false, that isn't usually thought to make
the utterance itself false, but merely odd in some way. Some of these
mechanisms operate on other features besides truth-conditions which
terms may have in virtue of linguistic conventions, others operate
through distinct conversational mechanisms. (For a fuller discussion
of these mechanisms in the context of thick terms, see Vayrynen
2013: ch. 5.)



One way for utterances to communicate further information is
presupposition:



(8)
*A*: "I don't regret being a member of the
Communist party."
  

Presupposition: *A* was a member of the Communist party.


How exactly presuppositions of utterances are related to their
truth-conditions is a complex topic. Perhaps *A*'s
utterance can be true even if the presupposition is false: you
can't regret something you never did. Either way, linguists
largely think that the presupposition isn't part of the
truth-conditions of *A*'s utterance, but only part of the
"common ground" of the conversation. Among writers on
thick concepts, Allan Gibbard and Gopal Sreenivasan speak of the
evaluations conveyed by T-utterances as presuppositions, but without
developing the view in detail (Gibbard 1992; Sreenivasan 2001: 26).
More detailed and sophisticated developments can be found in Cepollaro
and Stojanovic (2016) and Cepollaro (2020). An open question about
this view is whether the relevant presuppositions are better
understood pragmatically, as conveying the speaker's beliefs
about the conversation's common ground, or semantically, as
something that expressions carry as part of their meaning. A worry
about presuppositional views is that the evaluations normally conveyed
by objectionable thick concepts have no prospect of being added to the
common ground of the conversation when some addressees find them
objectionable, whereas presuppositions not already in the common
ground are expected to be added to it unless challenged. Resources for
addressing both of these issues might, however, be available in the
complex and subtle contemporary work on presupposition in linguistics
(cf. Cepollaro 2020: ch. 4). 



Utterances can communicate further information by way of conventional
implicature (Grice 1975: 25).



(9)
*A*: "Shaq is tall but agile."
  

Conventional implicature: Shaq's agility is unexpected given his
tallness.


There is significant consensus that "Shaq is tall but
agile" and "Shaq is tall and agile" are true in all
the same circumstances. But the latter doesn't communicate a
contrast between tallness and agility. The implicated contrast
proposition isn't part of the truth-conditions of
*B*'s utterance. The implicature is widely regarded as
conventional because the contrast seems to be part of the standing
meaning of *but* in English; a speaker who finds no difference
between what *and* and *but* communicate is in some
sense not fully competent with *but*. An implicature of an
utterance that needn't be carried by an utterance of a
truth-conditionally equivalent sentence is said to be
"detachable" from the utterance (Grice 1975: 39). In
 section 2.1
 we saw that according to R.M. Hare the evaluative content of thick
terms is detachable in this sense. But he doesn't say whether he
thinks that the evaluative contents of thick terms are conventional
implicatures. If the evaluations normally conveyed by T-utterances
were conventional implicatures (or semantic presuppositions, for that
matter), then thick terms would be inherently evaluative in meaning,
but not as a matter of truth-conditions. One problem for this view is
that conventional implicatures aren't defeasible in the ways
that the evaluations normally conveyed by T-utterances seem to be:
"Whether or not Shaq's agility is unexpected given his
tallness, Shaq is tall but agile" sounds very odd.



A third way for utterances to communicate further information is
conversational implicature. Imagine the following conversation at the
campus cafeteria:



(10)
*A*: Are you coming to Jack's party?
  

*B*: I have to work.
  

Conversational implicature: *B* can't come to the
party.


The implicature doesn't look like part of the truth-conditions
of *B*'s utterance. All that *B* says is that she has
to work. That doesn't become false if *B* attends the party
after all. The implicature is conversational because *A* has to
work it out from *B*'s utterance by relying on contextual
observations and rules of cooperative communication, such as that
*B* wouldn't utter a sentence that isn't directly
relevant to *A*'s question unless she was trying to convey
something that is relevant, namely that she won't be coming to
the party. (Grice 1975: 26-31.) Among writers on thick concepts,
Simon Blackburn occasionally suggests that the evaluations normally
conveyed by thick terms are conversational implicatures (Blackburn
1992; his 1998 is harder to read this way; see also Zangwill 1995:
322). But this view doesn't explain the projection data above:
conversational implicatures mostly don't survive embedding under
negation, questions, and so on, except by coincidence. (If *B*
had said "I don't have to work", she wouldn't
have implicated that she can't come to the party.) The
evaluations normally conveyed by T-utterances are also not as directly
deniable as conversational implicatures: "I have to work, but I
don't mean to imply that I won't be coming to the
party" sounds perfectly fine, unlike the similarly direct
denials in
 (1)
 and
 (2)
 above. Unlike most views on how thick terms convey evaluation, the
conversational implicature view has also been tested empirically. In a
study designed to test whether the evaluative aspects of thick
concepts are separable from their non-evaluative aspects, Willemsen
and Reuter (2020) found evidence that the two aren't separable
in the way that conversational implicatures are separable from the
contents whose utterances generate those implicatures. Further
empirical studies to test other semantic and pragmatic hypotheses
about the relationship between thick terms and evaluation would be a
welcome development in the debate. 



So the conversational implicature view about the relationship between
thick terms and evaluation cannot explain either set of the linguistic
data in
 section 4.1.
 The other two do better. Both presuppositions and conventional
implicatures project in ways suggested by
 (4a-d).
 These views also predict that
 (1)
 should sound odd: "I regret being a member of the communist
party and I never was a member" sounds close to contradictory,
and so does "Shaq is tall but agile and his being agile
isn't unexpected given his tallness". Pragmatic
presuppositions in particular also promise to be defeasible in the
ways the evaluations normally conveyed by T-utterances may be taken to
be on the back of examples like
 (5)-(7).
 But there might be suitably weak notions of semantic presupposition
that also can claim this advantage. 



The pragmatic view developed by Pekka Vayrynen identifies a type
of pragmatic content that projects and is defeasible but needn't
readily become mutually taken for granted by conversational
participants to explain the evaluations normally conveyed by
T-utterances. He proposes:




*Not-At-Issue View:* Global evaluations are implications of
T-utterances which are normally "not at issue" in their
literal uses in normal contexts, and which arise conversationally.
(Vayrynen 2013: 122)




When someone calls Rihanna's show lewd, or Donald Trump's
stump speech unhinged, a negative evaluation is a generalized
implication of the utterance in the sense that it is part of the
standard or default interpretation of such utterances, not a one-off
occurrence. Its generalized status is explained by social facts such
as that it isn't common in these parts to use *chaste*,
*cruel*, *generous*, and so on, neutrally. It is common
knowledge that those who use a given thick term for the most part
accept certain evaluations and their utterances for the most part
accurately reflect their acceptance of those evaluations. (Such social
facts may also help explain why thick terms seem more intimately
connected to evaluation than other non-evaluative terms that are often
used evaluatively, such as *chocolatey* and *athletic*.)
But the implication is "not at issue" in the sense that
the evaluation is not the main point of her utterance but rather is
part of the background that the speaker takes for granted (but
needn't assume his audience to accept) in making the utterance.
The main point is to assert that the thing in question falls under the
term, against the background evaluation that things falling under the
term tend to be bad in a certain sort of way. Insofar as the presence
of the evaluation can be explained conversationally, we can expect it
to be open to be denied or suspended by objectors in the ways
suggested by the defeasibility data above. And a general feature of
various kind of backgrounded contents is that they project in ways
illustrated by
 (4a-d).
 (For more on this version of the Pragmatic View, see Vayrynen
2013: chs. 5-6.)



If this kind of Pragmatic View is correct, thick concepts seem to lack
the broader significance that some have assigned to them. The
evaluations normally conveyed by T-utterances will be separable from
thick terms in whatever way pragmatic not-at-issue implications are in
general separable from the utterances that generate them. And if the
conclusion that thick terms aren't semantically evaluative shows
that there are no irreducibly evaluative thick concepts that we must
possess in order to think about their subject matter, thick concepts
cannot undermine the *is-ought* distinction, force us to
rethink reflection and objectivity in ethics, or be conceptually or
explanatorily prior to or interdependent with thin concepts
(Vayrynen 2013: ch. 10). However, the relationship between
language and concepts is vexed in this area, and may interfere with
the implications of Pragmatic Views for the significance of thick
concepts. (For discussion, see Vayrynen 2013: 44-51;
Zangwill 2013; Eklund forthcoming.) The overall plausibility of the
Pragmatic View depends on several further issues. One concerns its
implications regarding thin terms. For instance, if thin terms are
also open to being regarded as objectionable, then the behavior
exhibited by objectionable thick terms in
 section 4.1
 above either supports a pragmatic view of thin terms as well or
doesn't support the Pragmatic View of thick terms and concepts
(Eklund forthcoming). Insofar as we are convinced that thin terms are
semantically evaluative, this result might be bad news for the
Pragmatic View. (But see Sundell 2016, who argues that thin aesthetic
terms aren't inherently evaluative in meaning, but merely used
evaluatively.) This leads us to our last topic: how do thick and thin
concepts differ from one another?



For a summary of further comparisons between Semantic and Pragmatic
Views, see
 section 3
 of the supplementary document
 "Additional Debates about Thick Concepts and Their Significance".


## 5. The Delineation Question: How Do Thick and Thin Concepts Differ?



A crucial feature of the intuitive characterization of thick terms and
concepts with which we began is that they differ from the thin with
respect to the non-evaluative information each encode. Even if cruel
acts are bad, not all bad acts can be cruel; cruel acts must involve,
and are distinguished from other bad acts by, non-evaluative qualities
such as taking pleasure in causing others to suffer. The thickening
agent in thick terms is non-evaluative description. This contrast with
the thin may be understood in two kinds of ways: as a difference in
kind, or as a difference in degree. As we consider each option in
turn, we'll see that the question of how thick and thin terms
and concepts differ has no theory-neutral answer.


### 5.1 Thick and Thin Differ in Kind



One way for thick and thin to differ in kind would be for thin terms
express purely evaluative concepts and for thick terms to express
concepts that aren't purely evaluative but encode also
non-evaluative information. An early version of this proposal is due
to Bernard Williams: thin terms are wholly action-guiding whereas
thick terms are both action-guiding and world-guided (Williams 1985:
152). His particular version is problematic: the notion of
action-guidingness isn't as clear as one would like and many
philosophers take also thin terms to be world-guided in the sense that
their application depends on how the world is. (For a more recent
version, see Dancy 2013: 47-51.) In its general form, this
proposal presupposes the Semantic View but is available to both
Separabilists and Inseparabilists. Similarly, although Williams denies
Thin Centralism concerning the relations of conceptual and explanatory
priority between thick and thin concepts, the general proposal could
be combined with Thin Centralism or the No Priority view. A potential
problem for it is that it isn't clear whether all paradigmatic
thin concepts are wholly evaluative, given the intuitive idea that
thick terms are those that somehow involve both evaluation and
non-evaluative description. If *ought* implies *can* as
a conceptual or analytic matter, then its application will be
restricted by the non-evaluative condition that the agent is able to
perform the action (Vayrynen 2013: 7). In that case
*ought* wouldn't look descriptively much thinner than
some terms that are often classified as thick. The application of
*admirable*, for instance, is non-evaluatively constrained only
by the non-evaluative features of admiration. As noted in
 section 3.2,
 not all entailments of an expression are encoded in its meaning and
it isn't straightforward to determine which are. But competence
with at least certain concepts *ought* can be used to express
may well require that if we think you ought to do something, we would
accept that you can do it if the question came up.



Another way to think that thick and thin differ in kind is generated
by Pragmatic Views. These views entail that thick terms aren't
evaluative as a matter of truth-conditions, but are only used
evaluatively. Insofar as thin terms are evaluative as a matter of
truth-conditions, they will clearly differ in kind from the thick.
Here the difference in kind would be such as to support
Non-Centralism. However, as noted above, some arguments for Pragmatic
Views might imply that thin terms are equally not evaluative as a
matter of truth-conditions but only used evaluatively. There would
then be no difference in kind (in this respect, anyway) between thick
and thin. It would remain a separate question whether there are any
interesting relations of conceptual or explanatory priority between
thick and thin concepts.


### 5.2 Thick and Thin Differ in Degree



The second view about the relationship between thick and thin is that
they differ only in degree, not in kind. Samuel Scheffler suggests
this view in objecting to Bernard Williams's claim that thick
and thin differ in kind. He observes that there are many evaluative
terms that are hard to classify as either thick or thin, such as
*just*, *fair*, *impartial*, *rights*,
*autonomy*, *well-being*, and *consent*. They are
less rich in non-evaluative content than terms such as *cruel*
or *tactful*, although richer than *good* or
*right*. But if descriptive thickness is a matter of degree,
then perhaps a binary division of evaluative concepts into thick and
thin is an "oversimplification" (Scheffler 1987:
417-8). We might instead think of the distinction in terms of a
continuum of descriptive thickness or specificity, where
Scheffler's examples lie between paradigmatic thick and thin
terms. On the thin end we might either allow that some thin terms are
purely evaluative and treat them as a limiting case, or we might hold
that even the maximally thin concepts are a little bit thick. Those
holding the latter view have advocated either Thin Centralism (Smith
2013) or Thick Centralism (Chappell 2013), but the latter view, unlike
the former, seems compatible also with the No Priority View.



Whatever the merits of this view about how thick and thin differ only
in degree, it doesn't follow simply from conceding that
evaluative terms may be descriptively thick to varying degrees. This
concession allows a binary distinction between purely thin evaluative
concepts and thick evaluative concepts that are characterized by
having some or other degree of non-evaluative content (cf. Dancy 2013:
48-9). More definite conclusions about Scheffler's
proposal would require reflection on whether his examples could
plausibly belong to a separate third category of evaluative terms that
are neither thick nor thin, and on whether a principled distinction
can be drawn between different kinds of non-evaluative content. In the
latter case a paradigmatic thin term such as *ought* might be a
little bit thick if it implied *can*, and yet lack a kind of
non-evaluative content that is possessed only by thick terms proper.
Perhaps, for instance, the non-evaluative aspects of *tactful*
and *cruel* distinguish their meanings from other evaluative
terms in a way that *can* doesn't do with
*ought*.



If thin terms are evaluative as a matter of truth-conditions, then any
version of the difference-in-degree view requires that the Semantic
View is true of thick terms. It fits with Pragmatic Views only if
these take thick and thin terms both to be related to the evaluations
they convey in the same way (whether as a matter of presupposition,
implicature, or some kind of not-at-issue content). Either way it will
be a further question whether the view is best combined with Thin
Centralism, Thick Centralism, No Priority View or Non-Centralism.
Again the question whether thick and thin differ in degree or in kind
has no theory-neutral answer but depends on the correct substantive
theory of thick terms and concepts.



A final proposal we'll consider can be developed either as
saying that thick and thin terms differ in kind or that they differ in
degree. R.M. Hare denies that thin terms are purely evaluative; actual
usages of thin terms like *good* will always carry some
descriptive meaning. Instead, thick and thin terms both incorporate
evaluative and non-evaluative information. The difference is that thin
terms have their evaluative meaning "more firmly attached"
to them than their non-evaluative meaning, whereas thick terms have
their non-evaluative meaning "more firmly attached" to
them than their evaluative meaning (Hare 1963: 24-25; see also
the distinction between primarily and secondarily evaluative words in
Hare 1952: 121-2). The idea is that evaluative terms can be
distinguished in terms of which sort of meaning is less likely to
change when speakers alter their usage of a term. If
*laissez-faire* capitalists begin to use *selfish*
positively, we are much more likely to still understand them than if
they started using *selfish* to describe generous acts. We
would be less likely to be accused of misusing *kind* and
*generous* if we began to use them negatively to condemn
bleeding hearts than if we started using them to describe cruel and
selfish acts. Hare takes this to suggest that the non-evaluative
meanings of thick terms are more firmly attached to them than their
evaluative meanings. Thin terms display the opposite behavior. We will
understand those who use *good* to evaluate promise-breaking,
torture, and enslavement of their enemies positively, whereas we would
be liable to be misunderstood or accused of misusing the word if we
started using *good* to express negative evaluations of helping
and respecting others. Such descriptive ossification of thin terms,
while not impossible, would seem very much like an exception rather
than the rule. (Hare 1952: 123 notes that *a good effluent*
functions as a descriptive technical term in sewage disposal manuals.)
So the evaluative meanings of thin terms (in particular, their
action-guiding function) seem to be more firmly attached to them than
their non-evaluative meanings.



Hare's proposal seems quite ecumenical. If you worry that the
talk of evaluative and non-evaluative meanings suggests that
Hare's proposal is committed to Separability, note that it can
be reformulated as follows: thick and thin terms are typically used to
perform two kinds of speech acts, describing and evaluating, and they
differ with respect to how likely a speaker is to be misunderstood or
accused of misusing the term if one or the other of these speech acts
is changed. For instance, a speaker who uses *selfish* to
evaluate positively acts which we typically describe as selfish would
be more likely to be understood than a speaker who uses
*selfish* to describe generous acts and evaluate them
negatively, whereas the opposite pattern holds for thin terms. This
version of the proposal seems compatible with Inseparability. Nor does
the proposal entail the Semantic View. Instead of taking evaluative
and non-evaluative meanings both to be semantic meanings, the less
firmly attached meaning can be taken as a speaker meaning instead. One
way to interpret Hare's distinction between primarily and
secondarily evaluative words is that the latter carry evaluation only
as a speaker meaning whereas the former carry non-evaluative
description only as a speaker meaning (Hare 1952: 121-4). The
Pragmatic View is well suited to treating the evaluations normally
conveyed by T-utterances as speaker meanings, especially if they are
best explained by conversational mechanisms. Here we can finally ask
whether Hare's proposal makes thick and thin different in kind
or degree. You might think the latter: how firmly two things are
attached is a matter of degree. However, the distinction between
semantic and speaker meaning makes a difference-in-kind reading
available. If the non-evaluative meanings of thick terms are semantic
meanings and their evaluative meanings are speaker meanings but thin
terms work the other way around, then Hare's proposal regarding
what kind of meanings thick and thin terms are more firmly attached to
would be a difference in kind.



For a summary of how thick terms and concepts relate to a further sort
of evaluative terms, pejoratives, see
 section 4
 of the supplementary document
 "Additional Debates about Thick Concepts and Their Significance".


## 6. Thick Concepts Outside of Ethics



Thick concepts have been a stable topic of debate among moral
philosophers since the seminal discussion in Williams (1985) and have
enjoyed something of a resurgence in ethics since 2010 or so. Thick
concepts are also receiving increasing attention in such other areas
of philosophy as epistemology, aesthetics, legal philosophy, and more.
(Such attention is often motivated, as in ethics, by dissatisfaction
with the extant state of the field.)



For some while now, aestheticians and philosophers of art have paid
attention to thick aesthetic concepts such as garish,
delicate, and balanced, in addition to
thin(ner) concepts such as beautiful and ugly.
Some of these discussions go back to the
1950s, predating the post-Williams debate in ethics, but concern some
of the same issues even if they don't use the label
"thick" (Beardsley 1982 and Sibley 2001; see also Burton
1992 and Zangwill 1995). Also relevant is the recent attention to
"dual character concepts" (section 1) in art (Liao *et
al.* 2020). Discussions of thick aesthetic concepts often mirror
discussions in ethics about whether thick terms are evaluative as a
matter of truth-conditions or only pragmatically (recent examples
includes Bonzon 2009, Zangwill 2013, and Stojanovic 2016). Of
particular interest and potentially broader significance is the
emerging exploration of whether also thin aesthetic terms might be
plausibly treated as only pragmatically evaluative (Sundell 2016).



There has been increasing attention in epistemology to thick epistemic
concepts such as gullible, quick to jump to
conclusions, and open-minded. This is
particularly common in virtue epistemology, which seeks to explain
epistemic properties such as knowledge and justified belief in terms
of the cognizer's intellectual virtues and vices. Whether
focusing on thick epistemic concepts can lead to a preferable
epistemology is the topic of several papers in a special issue of the
journal *Philosophical Papers* (Kotzee and Wanderer 2008; see
also Battaly 2001). A foundational question here is whether there is a
distinction between thick and thin epistemic concepts and whether it
be understood in the same way as the distinction between thick and
thin ethical concepts (Vayrynen 2008; Roberts 2018a). For
instance, are thick epistemic concepts supposed to be thick in the
sense that they involve evaluation and non-evaluative description, or
in the sense that they involve epistemic and non-epistemic content?
(These are different distinctions even if epistemic content is often
evaluative and non-epistemic content often non-evaluative.) These
discussions almost invariably assume that knowledge
is a thin concept. But Brent Kyle argues
that knowledge is better understood as a thick
concept and uses its thickness to cast light on why the so-called
Gettier problem for definitions of knowledge arises (Kyle 2013b).



Beyond ethics, aesthetics, and epistemology, attention to thick
concepts has been more scattered. In legal philosophy, David Enoch and
Kevin Toh suggest not only that legal statements often express
concepts that seem thick, such as crime and
inheritance, but also that legal
is itself a thick concept. Specifically, it
involves both a representation of certain social facts and a kind of
evaluative endorsement. Treating legal as a
thick concept allows debates about the nature of law to draw on the
broader philosophical context of debates about thick concepts in
ethics, and in this way has potential to introduce new input into and
options for thinking about the nature of law. (Enoch and Toh 2013.) In
metaphysics, Gideon Yaffe argues that if we treat free will as a thick
concept that involves positive evaluation of items that fall under it,
we are better able to explain certain facts about freedom of will than
if we proceed with the more standard assumption that freedom of will
is a non-evaluative concept (Yaffe 2000). Finally, the idea of a thick
concept has also been invoked to do significant work in various areas
of applied philosophy. Empirical research on moral judgment in
psychology and neuroscience may be criticized for having restricted
its studies to judgments involving thin concepts and ignoring thick
concepts, especially if thick concepts are irreducibly thick (Abend
2011; see also FitzGerald and Goldie 2012). In environmental ethics,
classifying concepts such as ecological
integrity as thick might be thought to buttress their normative
significance (Shockley 2012). In risk theory, arguing that concepts of
risk and safety are
thick might help to show how these concepts can be evaluative without
being socially constructed (Moller 2012). Outside of philosophy,
it has been suggested that sociological research into specific
groups' or societies' repertoires of thick concepts can
deliver insights into how thick concepts work which cannot be obtained
from the armchair and provide access to important aspects of social
life which aren't accessible via thin concepts (Abend 2019).
Time will tell whether thick concepts will come to make a greater
impact in these and other areas.



Attention to thick concepts in various areas of philosophy is often
inspired by dissatisfaction with dominant lines of research and the
hope that thick concepts will redirect the work in these areas. We
have seen that cashing out this hope often requires substantial
assumptions regarding issues such as the anti-disentangling argument,
shapelessness, the inseparability of evaluation and description, and
the location of evaluation in the semantics and pragmatics of thick
terms. A plausible theory of thick concepts may then not give thick
concepts the significance their fans take them to have, and either way
these assumptions attract substantial resistance in their own right.
On the other hand, those who find thick concepts to have little
distinctive significance nonetheless must ensure that evaluative and
normative domains can be accounted for in terms of thin concepts in a
way that addresses the concerns that inspire interest in thick
concepts. Any complete theory of normativity and value must therefore
reckon somehow or other with the fundamental issues concerning thick
concepts.