Thick Ethical Concepts Research Articles

배럿의 ‘구성된 감정이론’의 도덕 상대주의 문제에 관한 연구: 초등 도덕교육적 시사점을 중심으로

L. F. Barrett criticizes the existing essential view of emotion and insists on ‘The theory of constructed emotion’. From the perspective of construction, emotions are not passive reactions, but rather a process of active meaning construction based on concepts accumulated in experience. L. F. Barrett’s theory, which provides a new perception about emotions, suggests a new direction when educating emotions in moral education. However, L. F. Barrett’s theory falls into the problem of relativism in terms of moral emotion. In other words, problems claiming different moral legitimacy for different emotions felt in the same problem situation arise. Therefore, this study focuses on emotional language to overcome the relativism problem of moral emotion. In particular, it is intended to provide a basis for solving the problem of moral relativism by distinguishing the language of thin ethical concepts and the language of thick ethical concepts of meta-ethics. As a specific educational method for this, the application of role play for the communication and expansion of concepts, and the learning of emotional concepts were presented.

What Good Are We Seeking? Child Soldiers and Thick Ethical Concepts

In this paper, I show how a virtue ethics approach to child soldiering is centered on thick ethical concepts that seek to capture in a descriptively and evaluatively rich way how child soldiering affects children’s moral character development and their relationships with others. Virtue ethics thus provides a new perspective that departs from the standard ethical approach, which focuses largely on thin questions of the rights and responsibilities of children in war. The virtue ethics tradition reorients us toward a deeper concern for children’s moral good and thus provides an important and underexplored approach for thinking about child soldiers from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Relational Normativity: Williams' Thick Ethical Concepts in Confucian Ethical Communities

Abstract: This essay begins a conversation between Bernard Williams and Confucius (of the Analects ) in response to the general question of whether individuals are internally motivated in adopting role-specific reasons for action. It is argued that certain social roles such as Father, Son, Husband, Wife, Minister or Ruler, and Citizen or Subject are thick ethical concepts operative in Confucian ethical communities, such that the application of these thick ethical concepts results in role-specific internal reasons for action. If so, the Confucian emphasis on li 禮 constitutes ethical knowledge regarding the applicability of these thick ethical concepts, the practice of which actively offers individuals reasons to apply their social roles. This expands Williams' ethical theorizing to account for the ethical significance of social roles and relationships within Confucian ethical communities, as the collective practice of li within a Confucian ethical community serves as a background to the sort of ethical theorizing favored by Williams.

Moral Evil as a “Thick” Ethical Concept

The paper aims to propose a framework for understanding of the concept of moral evil. It argues that “evil” should be considered one of the so-called “thick” ethical concepts, characterized by their ability to be simultaneously descriptive and normative. To that effect, it examines the relationship between the concepts of moral wrongness and the idea of evil, with a view to explaining why moral evil should be understood as a “thick” rather than a “thin” ethical concept. Finally, it offers some reasons for cultivating thick ethical concepts, and suggests the conditions which have to be met if a thick concept of evil is to be helpful rather than harmful.

Relational Normativity: Williams’s Thick Ethical Concepts in Confucian Ethical Communities

Relational Normativity: Williams’s Thick Ethical Concepts in Confucian Ethical Communities

The Linguistically Informed Virtue-Novice as Precocious: a Reply to Stichter’s The Skillfulness of Virtue

Stichter’s The Skillfulness of Virtue provides an original and contemporary discussion of virtue-acquisition from an interdisciplinary standpoint. By equating virtues to skills, he offers an empirically informed progression towards virtue expertise. With the focus on gaining proficiency, there is little room to analyse the status of the virtue-novice, who is equated to a novice in any other skill: an agent consciously following simple rules, gaining experience in order to respond to normatively-laden situations with more automaticity in the following stages of skill-acquisition. This paper argues for a disanalogy between the virtue novice and novices in other skills, resulting from the understanding that follows from learning virtue words such as ‘kindness’ and ‘honesty’. Our brains are structured to find and subsequently use patterns to skilfully move around in our environment. These patterns can be represented in what Stichter calls ‘schemas’ or mental models of categorisations. Virtue words refer to patterns that would be difficult to categorise without linguistic labels, as instances of these categories are highly divergent. Virtue words are thus learned through examples of virtuous behaviour. Moreover, as virtue words are thick ethical concepts, they contain a normative load. I argue that due to these characteristics, novices who use virtue vocabulary are in a more advanced position than novices in other skills. So, a kindness novice who understands the word ‘kind’ has a better idea of how to act kindly than the chess novice has an idea of how to play chess by understanding the word ‘chess’.

Supervisor behavior and character: A simulation study of employee helpfulness

AbstractSupervisor character and behavior are key components of an organization's ethical fabric that should play a role in employee helping behavior. However, research has not fully distinguished how these factors are interrelated. The current study explores these relationships by developing a deeper understanding of ethical language in organizations via thick ethical concepts found in simulation software, supported by affect control theory. Software formulae in these simulations were developed via empirical research conducted over several decades. Simulations provided predictions of employee helpfulness in response to encounters with supervisors of varying ethical characters, enacting a variety of behaviors. The likely impact of supervisor character on employee helpfulness is more substantial than the impact of supervisor behavior. New insights emerged related to underlying complexities of ethical languages, such as the role of cultural meanings of language terms. These outcomes, as well as the associated implications, research limitations, and suggestions for future research, are discussed.

Thick and Thin Methodology in Applied Ethics

AbstractThis paper uses the distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts to illuminate the philosophical discourse referred to as “applied ethics.” It explores what thick ethical concepts have to offer in terms of a method for discussing issues in applied ethics. By focusing on thick ethical concepts, applied ethics can avoid the pitfall of creating a conceptual gap between empirical discourse and normative discourse. Applied ethics, the paper argues, is linked to philosophical and anthropological aspirations that have traditionally sought to uncover the thick normative vocabulary relevant to particular practices and cultures. By focusing on thick descriptions, applied ethics discloses the rich normative meaning of our social practices and social relations. The concepts used therein are often unintelligible apart from the particular social practices through which their meaning is manifested. Accordingly, thick ethical concepts are philosophically useful for adopting a nonrepresentational conception of language, which underlies the expression of meaning of particular social practices.

Values within Reason.

The paper questions the assumptions that facts and values are always radically different, that objectivity and values do not mix, and that values are subjective and a-rational and should be excluded from social science. It argues (1) that such assumptions are underpinned by unnoticed slippages between different meanings of objectivity and by misunderstandings of the nature of values and normativity; (2) that evaluative judgments-often in the form of "thick ethical concepts" in which description and evaluation are fused-are necessary for objective description in social science; and (3) that framing the values issue in terms of the relations between is and ought misrepresents the place of normativity in social science and in everyday life.

Moral Explanations, Thick and Thin

Cornell realists maintain that irreducible moral properties have earned a place in our ontology in virtue of the indispensable role they play in a variety of explanations. These explanations can be divided into two groups: those that employ thin ethical concepts and those that employ thick ethical concepts. Recent work on thick concepts suggests that they are not inherently evaluative in their meaning. If correct, this creates problems for the moral explanations of Cornell realists, since the most persuasive moral explanations are those that employ thick concepts. If thick concepts are not inherently evaluative, then the most plausible explanations on offer cannot support Cornell realism. Moral explanations employing thin concepts, however, are too flimsy to support the view. Unless proponents can develop a compelling story about thick concepts or thin explanations, Cornell realism is in trouble.

Human Rights: Sometimes One Thought Too Many?

It is commonly claimed, in the global justice literature, that global injustices are best characterised in terms of the violation or unfulfilment of human rights. I suggest that global justice theorists are overconfident on this point. For decolonising peoples, contemporary global injustice is likely to be characterised in terms drawn from local histories of injustice and the constellations of thick ethical concepts they contain. To make the point I describe how the Māori of New Zealand, who do not reject human rights, typically make no reference to human rights in political argument. I argue that the Māori are reasonable to consider human rights talk to be ‘one thought too many’, and the considerations that make this so typically apply in other postcolonial contexts of political activity.

Aristotelian Casuistry: Getting into the Thick of Global Media Ethics

I argue that much moral disagreement between cultures centers on what metaethicists call “thick concepts,” such as cruelty and courage. The main question I will address is “What are the advantages of combining virtue ethics with casuistry for addressing thick concepts central to media ethics disagreements between cultures?” A related secondary question is “How does this framework compare with ‘global media ethics’ approaches that prioritize thin concepts, such as ‘right’ and ‘ought?’” I will argue that the virtue/casuistry combination: (a) preserves the contexts that give thick ethical concepts their meaning; (b) conceives of moral agents as situated selves and confirms the value of moral expertise; and (c) presses for closure while resisting codification.

Thick Ethical Concepts in the Philosophy and Literature of Iris Murdoch

AbstractAlthough thick ethical concepts have been neglected in Murdochian scholarship, this article argues that they were central to the thought of Iris Murdoch. In the first section, the article provides a sustained account of thick ethical concepts in Murdoch's philosophy, demonstrating how these concepts align with and illuminate familiar aspects of her philosophical essays. The first section also explores the ways in which Murdoch's alternative account of moral concepts was at the heart of her overall attack on the noncognitivism of her day. In the second section, the article provides a reading of The Black Prince and considers the ways that thick ethical concepts offer new insight into Murdoch's literary activity. It concludes by suggesting that studying Murdoch's philosophy and literature in light of thick ethical concepts reveals a deep unity between her two intellectual projects.

Power, causality and normativity: a critical realist critique of Foucault

A critical realist account is developed of two aspects of the study of power which are normally left implicit: the theory of causation presupposed and the way in which the normative connotations of power are dealt with. These matters are discussed partly by reference to Foucault’s views on power, particularly as set out in Volume 1 of The History of Sexuality. Regarding the conception of power as ubiquitous, it is argued that this is not incompatible with concepts of causation or of power as deriving from the capacities of objects; indeed dispersed power presupposes causality and causal powers. Other concepts such as emergent powers, fields, structures and ecological dominance are also assessed from a critical realist standpoint. In the second part, it is argued that the normative implications of power should not be evaded, and indeed that evaluation of the implications of power for flourishing and suffering are necessary for adequate description and explanation in social science. Positivist and Foucauldian refusals of normativity are critiqued by reference to the untenability of the fact-value and is-ought distinctions and the necessity of thick ethical concepts in social science. It is concluded that students of power should embrace causality and normativity.

‘Boghossian’s Blind Reasoning’, Conditionalization, and Thick Concepts. A Functional Model

Boghossian’s (2003) proposal to conditionalize concepts as a way to secure their legitimacy in disputable cases applies well, not just to pejoratives – on whose account Boghossian first proposed it – but also to thick ethical concepts. It actually has important advantages when dealing with some worries raised by the application of thick ethical terms, and the truth and facticity of corresponding statements. In this paper, I will try to show, however, that thick ethical concepts present a specific case, whose analysis requires a somewhat different reconstruction from that which Boghossian offers. A proper account of thick ethical concepts should be able to explain how ‘evaluated’ and ‘evaluation’ are connected.

Towards an Ethic of Technology? Nanotechnology and the Convergence of Applied Ethics

The hypothesis I develop involves that we have been witnessing, during the last ten years or so, an interpenetration in the area of applied ethics of certain concepts originally belonging to different areas of ethics, namely bioethics, environmental ethics, and also business ethics. Certain concepts such as “future generations,” “consent,” “precautionary principle,” “intrinsic value,” “global governance,” “sustainable development,” or “scientific uncertainty” are becoming “thick ethical concepts,” in the terminology of metaethics; or in the terminology of American pragmatism: “living beliefs.” They are now charged with strong moral contents that unfolds a new horizon of meaning at the heart of Western Modernity, a horizon largely defined by science and technical actions. Nevertheless, is this conceptual convergence in the area of applied ethics the sign of the coming of a new ethic of technique? I will discuss this topic taking as an example the case of nanotechnology.

Thick Concepts and the Moral Brain

AbstractDrawing on Williams’ distinction between thin and thick ethical concepts, I argue that current moral neuroscience and psychology unwarrantedly restrict their researches to thin morality only. Experiments typically investigate subjects’ judgments about rightness, appropriateness, or permissibility, that is, thin concepts. The nature and workings of thick concepts –e.g., dignity, integrity, humanness, cruelty, pettiness, exploitation, or fanaticism – have not been empirically investigated; hence, they are absent from recent theories about morality. This may seem like a minor oversight, which some additional research can redress. I argue that the fix is not that simple: thick concepts challenge one of the theoretical backbones of much moral psychology and neuroscience; they challenge the conception of a hardwired and universal moral capacity in a way that thin concepts do not. In the conclusion I argue that the burgeoning science of morality should include both thin and thick, and that it should include the contributions of psychologists and neuroscientists as well as those of anthropologists, historians, and sociologists.

Thick Aesthetic Concepts

The term 'thick concept' was introduced into philosophical discourse by Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, in the context of a discussion of the fact-value distinction.1 He was interested in the extent to which this distinction is found in the linguistic data that drive a certain kind of moral theorist, rather than simply being imposed upon the data by his interpretation. What Williams had in mind were such concepts as courage, brutality, and gratitude, which seem to express a union of fact and value. The way these notions are applied is determined by what the world is like (for instance, by how someone has behaved), and yet, at the same time, their application usually involves a certain valuation of the situation, of persons or actions.2 To call a woman brave or courageous is to characterize herher character, actions, dispositions, or demeanorin a certain way and to regard her as admirable or praiseworthy on that basis. To say that she is kind is also to hold her up as worthy of praise or admiration, but for quite different reasons, while calling her foolhardy may be disparaging her behavior on grounds not wholly dissimilar to those that would excite admiration as bravery. The terms that express these concepts, according to Williams, certainly do not lay bare the fact-value distinction. Rather, the theorist who wants to defend the distinction has to interpret the workings of these terms, and he does so by treating them as a conjunction of a factual and an evaluative element, which can in principle be separated from one another.3 Williams refers in a general way to the work of R. M. Hare as paradigmatic of this kind of treatment. However, in his earlier writings (before Moral Thinking of 1981) Hare was chiefly concerned, not with uses of thick ethical terms (which he called secondarily evaluative terms),4 but wi h uses of more general, or thin, ethical terms like 'good,' 'right,' 'wrong,' and 'ought.' was in connection with these that he first argued that heir use in a given context has both a descriptive an an evaluative meaning, which nevertheless can in principle always be distinguished. In an essay on Descriptivism he considers the use of the erm 'good' in the locution 'good wine.' Somee who says that Colombey-les-deux-eglises vintag 1972 is a good wine is doing so because it has a certain taste, bouquet, body, and so forth. However, the fact that there is not a name for the precise complex of descriptive qualities that makes it a good wine is no reason to suppose that the descriptive meaning of the term 'good wine' cannot be isolated. We can invent a word and teach anybody to recognize the taste denoted by the word. Hare believes that we could do this whether or not he was himself disposed to think that these liquid tasted good, or that, if they were wines, they were good wines. He could, that is to say, learn the meaning of [the invented name] quite independently of his own estimation of the merit of wines having that taste.5 This strategy, Hare claims, works also when, as in most moral and aesthetic cases, there is no one word which has just the descriptive meaning that we want, but a multitud of possible ways of describing, in greater r lesser detail, the sort of thing we have in mind. It is, he continues, very hard to say what it is about a particular picture which makes us call it a good one; but nevertheless what makes us call it a good one is a series of describable characteristics combined in just this way.6 In later writings, Hare explicitly considers the s rategy in relation to the more specific, substantive, or thick ethical concepts like cruel and rude.

The Self in Moral Space: Life Narrative and the Good (review)

Reviewed by: The Self in Moral Space: Life Narrative and the Good Justine McGill (bio) David Parker. The Self in Moral Space: Life Narrative and the Good. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2007. 208 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8014-4561-3, $35.00. The Self in Moral Space is a response to recent work in the ethics of life writing. However,, it is not simply a contribution to this emergent field. Rather, it attempts a much more ambitious task: that of providing a theoretical justification and basis for studying life writing through the lens of the ethical. In pursuing this project, Parker draws heavily on the work of philosopher Charles Taylor, who claims that a human life is not well understood if it is analyzed from a purely external perspective—in terms of sociological explanation, for instance. For Taylor, the first-person perspective, which reveals what is of moral or spiritual significance in shaping a life, is essential for understanding what it is to be a “self.” This implies that philosophers who wish to understand the self would do well to draw upon life writing and the wealth of detail it offers in providing concrete examples of how ethical values shape self-development and self-understanding. Conversely, it also suggests that scholars of life writing have a vital role to play in contributing to the historical, cultural, and philosophical understanding of the Western self. However, they will fulfill this role only if they read their textual sources with an eye for what Bernard Williams calls the “thick ethical concepts” that make up “languages of the good”: the languages by which individuals orient themselves in “moral space.” The value Parker sees in this role for the life writing critic leads him into polemical combat with those who favor “thin” theoretical languages, which encourage the analysis of life writing in terms of discursive systems or power relations. Such readings are driven by what he dubs “post-Saussurian” or “neo-Nietzschean” theories in which the self is regarded as a fiction, or something to be overcome (19). Very few actual examples of such allegedly misguided readings are given in Parker’s book, however. Rather than engaging in any sustained or substantial attack on his rhetorical opponent, he chooses instead to fortify his own position with a series of engaging examples of the mode of philosophical literary criticism he advocates, including a few provocative forays into what might be considered enemy territory. [End Page 348] What then are the positive principles that define ethical criticism of life writing? For Parker, as for Iris Murdoch, ethics is essentially a matter of paying a certain kind of attention. He plausibly argues that life writing is peculiarly apt to focus our ethical attention, not so much on what it is right to do, as on what it is good to be. While works of moral philosophy and jurisprudence may reveal the principles underlying what is considered right (or wrong) at any particular period in history, Parker’s work suggests that it is to life writing that we should turn if we wish to trace historical shifts in attitudes toward the more nuanced, ambiguous question of what it is good to be. Such discoveries are of personal as well as historical import. When we read an autobiography, or a biography, or an auto/biography—the last category referring to a contemporary trend in life writing which involves telling the author’s story by focusing on that of a significant other, usually a parent—our interest is sustained not simply by the writer’s story, but by a sense that our own “interlocutive self” (a notion Parker borrows from Taylor) is ethically engaged. In writing or reading such texts, Parker suggests, we are inevitably involved in discerning and assessing the goods, or values, that orient a self (or selves) in moral space, a process that can bring about a transformative effect on our own ethical perspective. This is true whether the biographical story is explicitly organized by reference to a revered set of moral values, as in the case of the seventeenth-century Confucian Wang Shih-min’s “Self Account,” or whether it is self-consciously anti-moral or anti-humanist...

Metaethics Meets Virtue Epistemology: Salvaging Disagreement about the Epistemically Thick

Virtue ethics and virtue epistemology shift the focus of evaluation from thin concepts to thick ones. Simon Blackburn has argued that a shift to thick ethical concepts dooms us to talking past one another. I contend that virtue epistemologists can answer Blackburn's objection, thus salvaging genuine disagreement about the epistemically thick. Section I introduces the standard cognitivist and non-cognitivist analyses of thick concepts. Section II argues that thick epistemic concepts are subject to combinatorial vagueness. I contend that virtue epistemologists share vague concepts of intellectual virtue and open-mindedness. Section III addresses Allan Gibbard's worry that appealing to vagueness exacerbates the problem. I conclude that for genuine disagreement to occur, the parties must (1) share vague concepts; and (2) agree on the goals of their conceptual analyses.