descriptive evaluative

7/29/2019 descriptive evaluative

1/17

1

The Descriptive and the Evaluative

Matti Eklund

([email protected])

For talk in A arhus, D enmark , M ay 9 20 07

I. INTRODUCTION

It is a common (but not wholly uncontroversial) idea that there is some sort of distinction between

on the one hand descriptive predicates and on the other hand evaluative or normative predicates (a

D / V distinction as I will put it).1 I will here discuss a number of issues related to this purported

distinction. How should it be conceived? Can it be upheld? And what is the relation between this

issue and other issues in metaethics? I will begin by reviewing a particular debate betweenexpressivists and realists in metaethics, and make some remarks on this debate. However, the

expressivism/realism debate will not otherwise loom large in my discussion. (A note on terminology.

There are different labels in the literature for roughly the same theoretical outlook: expressivism,

non-cognitivism, non-factualism , emotivism, There are useful distinctions to be drawn here, and

some theorists try to enforce terminological distinctions. I will however use expressivism as an

umbrella label.)

II. THE ARGUMENTS FROM SENSE

Consider the following argument for expressivism over realism (the ex pressivist argument from sense):

We recognize that two different people the liberal and the Communist, or the Kantian and the

utilitarian might mean the same thing by good despite both radical disagreement about what it

applies to and radical disagreement about what descriptive features of something make good

apply to it. How is this possible? Suggested answer: these people all use good to commend in the

same way. But this makes the commending [contrast: predicative] function of the predicate

good central. But this can be so only on a suitable antirealist view (specifically, an expressivist

view). The realist, assimilating moral discourse to ordinary fact-stating discourse, cannot

accommodate it.

1 Or generally, between descriptive expressions and evaluative/normative expressions.


2/17

2

(Sturgeon critically discusses this argument in his (1991), and attributes it to expressivists like Hare

and Blackburn. Blackburn protests that Sturgeon mischaracterizes the expressivist. I will not be

concerned with whether Sturgeons attributions are correct, or whether anyone has defended exactly

this argument. It is an interesting argument in its own right.)

There are some fairly immediate problems with the argument. Here are two. (1) The point

threatens to overgenerate. Scientists can disagree radically about the nature of, say, some unobservable

entity, while still their disputes arent purely verbal. Or take an example from philosophy: We can

disagree radically about the nature of pain without the dispute being purely verbal. Why shouldnt the

antirealist say the same thing about these cases as about the moral case?.... A difficult question,

perhaps, but here is the outline of one answer that expressivists give. In these other cases, a causal

theory of reference can come to the rescue: the electron and pain disputants are causally related to

the same property; by contrast, the causal theory cannot come to the rescue in the moral case. (Some

moral philosophers, e.g. the Cornell realists, happily refer to the causal theory. Many others wouldinsist that moral properties are causally inert. They never help causally explain anything.) (2) Another

realist reply is to appeal to deference. It is a well-known fact that a speaker can use an expression with

its customary meaning while in error or ignorance about its meaning, through her deferring to other

members of her community. The realist can say that the same thing is going on in the cases to which

the expressivist appeals. (When I talk about deference, that is to be understood as the speaker taking

herself to be subject to the communitys norms of usage; there is no suggestion that there are special

morality experts.)

Moreover, to confuse matters, there is also a parallel argument for realism over expresivism

(T he realist argument from sense):

Two people Thrasymachus and Socrates, for example can disagree about the value of justice,

and of moral goodness, while still their dispute isnt verbal. This shows that what attitude a

speaker associates with good does not determine what she means by it. But then expressivism is

false.

Problem (1) for the expressivist argument from sense does not have an analogue here. However,

problem (2) does have an analogue. The expressivist can say that it is because Thrasymachus belongs

to the right community that Thrasymachus despite his non-standard attitude w.r.t. just can mean

what we mean by the expression. Sturgeon appears to take the expressivist to be somehow barred

from this response. In outline, Sturgeon seems to reason as follows: There are two possible accounts

of how Socrates and Thrasymachus despite their differences can talk about the same thing: sameness

of reference (which the realist can appeal to) and sameness of attitude (which the expressivist can


3/17

3

appeal to). But whereas a speaker can refer to something (justice) by a word (just) in virtue of

deference facts, a speaker cannot very well have a particular non-cognitive attitude by virtue of

deference facts; or that must be the thought. But this train of thought doesnt seem convincing. The

issue is not whether Thrasymachus can share our attitude by virtue of deference but whether his

utterances can serve to express the same attitude that our utterances express. (Compare perhaps the

use of pejoratives. Suppose I use Boche when I speak of Germans, unaware of its negative

connotations. The fact that others in my community use Boche as a pejorative of course does not

automatically make me have a negative attitude toward Germans through my use of this word that

would be absurd! but they can make it the case that my use of it serves to express a negative

attitude toward Germans.2)

Is there any way to mount an argument in favor of one of the arguments from sense over

the other? Here are two remarks, both in favor of the expressivist argument from sense.

(a) To get around possible appeals to deference: consider two different linguisticcommunities, L1 and L2. L1 speaks a language exactly like English, ex ceptfor the possible difference

resulting from the fact that they systematically take good and other evaluative terms to apply to

quite different things from what we take them to apply to (although they use these terms in the same

way as we do, evaluatively). The reason this is merely a possible difference between the languages is

that it is not immediately obvious that the differences in use translate into differences in meaning. L2

speaks a language exactly like English, except for the following possible difference: they use good

and other seemingly evaluative terms systematically differently from us, evaluatively.

No doubt the language communities may be somewhat underdescribed. But I will take as a

given that good of L1 isnt synonymous with good of L2. (Even though, absent further details, this

might plausibly be denied. Im supposing that the details can be filled in appropriately.) The

important question is: does our good mean what good of L1 does or what good of L2 does?

Arguably, it is our good and the good of L1 that mean the same thing. (Think perhaps about the

use of good in practical deliberations.)

(b) Consider a debate between us and someone who, like Thrasymachus, denies that what is

just or what is good, etc. is thereby worth promoting. How best to state the question of what is at

issue between us? Easy, it seems: it is about whether what is good is worth promoting (as I just said!) or

ought to be valued. But then, either a Thrasymachian amoralist stance is impossible with respect to these

predicates (in which case expressivism would appear to be the view to defend with respect to these

cases) or it is maintained that what is worth promoting isnt really worth promoting which sounds

2 The analogy isnt perfect. For example, deference doesnt seem to come into it in the Boche case. For if I useBoche in a typical conversational context, I convey a negative attitude toward Germans, whether or not Idefer.


4/17

4

self-defeating. In other words: whatever might be the case with respect to some specific seemingly

evaluative predicate (like the one the Thrasymachus example illustartes, just) it would appear that

the Thrasymachian skeptical stance is impossible with respect to some evaluative predicates (on pain

of the issue between the Thrasymachian and the rest of us being ineffable).

The last few remarks have supported the expressivist. I should immediately go on to stress a

limitation and weakness in the expressivist argument, as I have elaborated it. The argument, if it

works at all, works only against certain forms of realism. Consider e.g, the theory defended Ralph

Wedgwood (2001). Wedgwood considers the four-place predicate x is (all things considered) a

better thing for z to do at t than y [B(x,y,z,t)]. Its use is governed by the rule of practical reasoning

(R) Acceptance of B(x,y,me,t) commits me to having a preference for doing x over doing y at

time t.

The semantic value of the predicate B(x,y,z,t) will then be whatever makes (R) correct. As

Wedgwood recognizes, it must be explained what correct amounts to. Wedgwood attempts to give

such an explanation. It has to do with what practical reason delivers. There is nothing that rules out

that B(x,y,z,t) should be coextensive with a descriptive predicate. But the explanation of both its

meaning and how its reference is determined is given in non-descriptive terms. Wedgwoods theory is

realist. It is important to note that still, Wedgwood is on the expressivists side here. Not only does

the expressivist argument from sense not pose a threat for him: on the contrary, he is as threatened

by the so-called realists argument from sense. The most obvious target for the expressivists

argument from sense is the realist who is also an analytical descriptivist who holds that evaluative

expressions are synonymous with ordinary descriptive expressions. (It is not obvious that even

analytical descriptivism is even nearly refuted. But at any rate, that theory is the most plausible

target.)

There is, incidentally, an ambiguity in descriptive that I should remark on before going on.

In one sense, to say that evaluative language is descriptive is just to say that evaluative discourse too

is fact-stating, truth-apt, etc. In this sense, evaluative language is descriptive also on a view like that of

Wedgwood. In another, more demanding sense of descriptive, Wedgwood denies that a predicate

like his four-place B is descriptive: its conceptual role is, through the connection with preferences

and practical decision-making, sharply distinguished from that of ordinary descriptive predicates. In

my discussion here, I will throughout use descriptive in the more demanding sense.


5/17

5

III. THE DESCRIPTIVE AND THE EVALUATIVE

After these remarks, return now to the D/V distinction. I describe the distinction as one between (i)

descriptive predicates, and (ii) evaluative or normative predicates. The formulation of (ii) highlights a

difficulty. What is normative is what has to do with reasons and oughts. Not everything that can

plausibly be regarded as evaluative language is clearly like that (consider funny and beautiful). I will

return to issues in the vicinity later. I will keep talking about the distinction as a distinction between

the descriptive and the evaluative. This is largely a matter of convenience and does not reflect a firm

view on how the distinction is best conceived. Maybe the distinction is better conceived of as a

distinction between the descriptive and the normative.

What does it mean to say that there is a D/V distinction? Trivially, one can divide the

expressions of a language into two classes and give the classes different labels. One can simply draw

up a list of what intuitively are evaluative terms, say that the terms on this list are evaluative, and call

the rest descriptive. In this trivial sense, surely there is a D/V distinction. But what the defender ofthe D/V distinction insists upon is not something this trivial. She wants to say not only that there is a

distinction but that in some sense or other it is a significantdistinction. (Where, naturally, it is a

delicate question how much it takes for the distinction to be significant.)

To say that there is a distinction between descriptive and evaluative/normativepredicates is

not merely to say that some expressions tend to be used evaluatively or for normative purposes,

while others arent. Even a predicate like is philosophy can be used evaluatively if I say of a fellow

philosophy professors work that it is not philosophy that is plausibly regarded as an insult but

the predicate isnt thereby an evaluative predicate. (In another context, saying of something that it is

philosophy can be regarded as an insult.) Once this distinction is drawn one might start to doubt

that there is a distinction between descriptive and evaluative/normative predicates. Maybe there is

only a distinction between what words tend to be used evaluatively and what words do not tend to be

so used.

Compare a word like good with a word like, say, athletic. Most theorists who would

defend a distinction like the one we are concerned with would say that good is, as a matter of its

meaning, evaluative. Athletic, by contrast, is undoubtedly often used evaluatively, but arguably it is

not, as a matter of meaning, evaluative, even if some words are evaluative. Here is a thought

experiment to justify these verdicts on good and athletic.

Recall communities L1 and L2 from the thought experiment above. Compare with these

communities two linguistic communities, L1* and L2*, exactly like us except for the following

possible differences. In L1*, they call different things athletic from what we call athletic, but they

commend these things the way we do what we call athletic. In L2*, although they call the same

things athletic as we call athletic, they dont commend these things they disvalue being athletic.


6/17

6

Which communitys athletic has the same meaning as ours? Intuitively the answer is clear: L2*. This

is different from in the case of good.

More can be said about the thought experiment. I am at the moment only concerned to

motivate, rather intuitively, that there is a D/V distinction.

Discussions of whether there is a significant distinction between descriptive and evaluative

language is sometimes run together with the question of whether there is a fact/value dichotomy.

This is plainly a mistake. One distinction is linguistic, the other is metaphysical. It could well be that

there is an important linguistic distinction to be drawn while there is no metaphysical distinction to

be drawn (or for that matter vice versa).

IV. INTERNALISM AND HUMES LAW

Those theorists who most famously insist on a D/V distinction are the expressivists. Traditional

expressivists maintain that evaluative sentences are not even truth-apt. But expressivism is a radicalminority view whatever in the end to say about its truth and odd though it may sound, I propose

to set it aside for the purposes of this discussion, and instead presuppose that also evaluative

sentences are truth-apt, that they are typically assertively uttered, etc., and ask what happens with the

D/V distinction given this set of assumptions. It is not hard to find non-expressivists who wish to

hold that there is a D/V distinction. Internalists of the kind who say that there is some sort of

constitutive link between moral judgments and motivation3 seem committed to a version of it.

(Whats special about moral expressions or moral concepts is that judgments involving them are

somehow intrinsically motivational.) Moreover, many theorists subscribe to Humes Law, the claim

that an evaluative sentence is not analytically entailed by any collection of descriptive sentences. A

realist theory like Wedgwoods is, generally, excellently suited to upholding a D/V distinction.

With respect to both internalism and Humes Law, there are some issues that must be

separated. (1) How plausible is internalism? How plausible is Humes Law? (2) Given that internalism

in some form is true, can appeal to it serve to vindicate the D/V distinction? Given that Humes Law

is true, can appeal to it serve to vindicate the D/V distinction? Although internalism and Humes

Law are distinct ideas, similar issues come up in both cases.

My focus will be on the questions under (2) rather than on the questions under (1).

Consider first internalism. A potential complication when using internalism to try to

vindicate the D/V distinction is that internalism is a good deal more plausible when it comes to some

3 Two formulations of the relevant kind of internalism: it is in virtue of the concept of morality that moralbelief or moral judgment provides the appraiser with motivation or reason for action (Brink); If an agent

judges that it is right for her to in circumstances C, then she is motivated to in C (Michael Smith). I wontbe overly concerned with the exact details of formulation.


7/17

7

evaluative judgments than when it comes to others. Internalism seems relatively plausible in the case

of judgments about what is right and about what ought to be done; it is somewhat lacking in initial

plausibility in the case of judgments about what is beautiful or what is funny.4 Appeal to internalism

tends also to go together with rhetoric about what language is action-guiding. But in what sense is

aesthetic or comic discourse action-guiding? Of course if I am interested in what is beautiful or in what

is funny then judging that something is beautiful or that something is funny will tend to guide my

actions. But similarly, if I am interested in what is prime then judging that something is prime will

tend to guide my actions. In the discussion of internalism in the literature, much attention has been

paid to things like David Brinks supposed amoralist who remains completely unmotivated by

moral judgments, and to the case of Thrasymachus, alluded to above. When we turn to the aesthetic

or the comic, the relevant question to ask is whether we can conceive of someone who remains

completely unmoved by judgments about what is beautiful or what is funny. At least initially, it might

seem that whatever should in the end be said about Brinks amoralist here the critic ofinternalism is on stronger ground.

Suppose we step back from talking about evaluative judgments as motivating or action-

guiding and instead say simply that to make the evaluative judgment that x is F (where F is some

suitable positive evaluative term) is to value x . This promises to get around the worry just raised. It is

possible to say, e.g., that to judge that x is beautiful is thereby to value x. (I dont mean to say that this

claim is unobjectionable!) Insofar as one finds this suggestion attractive, one might attempt the

following diagnosis: the clear problems arise when we attempt to give a more reductive account of

valuing; when we attempt to cash out talk of valuing in terms of what is motivating or action-

guiding. But if we rely on an unanalyzed notion of valuing it is not clear what we accomplish; the

claim looks rather empty.

When evaluating the expressivists and the realists respective arguments from sense, I

sidestepped the possibility of appeal to deference by considering alternative linguistic communities.

How does this work with beautiful and funny? Let community L1** speak a language exactly like

English except for the possible difference resulting from the fact that they take beautiful (funny) to

apply to quite different things from what we take it to apply to. Community L2** takes beautiful

(funny) to apply to what we take it to apply to, but they do not attach the same evaluative

significance to it. Insofar as we think that community L2** do not use beautiful (funny) with the

same meaning we do, this predicate goes with good in the relevant respect.

I do think that this vindicates the form of internalism that is worth defending also in the

case of the aesthetic and the comic. It is not plausible when it comes to any evaluative expressions

4 I will be using beautiful and funny as examples. It may also be worth thinking about epistemic terms thatare often regarded as evaluative (justified, warranted,)


8/17

8

and the concepts they express that to judge that they apply is always motivating. What is plausible is

only that when such judgments fail to motivating they count as the right sort of judgments only

because they belong in a wider pattern of use, by the thinker and her community.

Consider next Humes Law.5 Our question here is: what is the relation between Humes Law

and the D/V distinction? A few remarks on this question. (i) Humes Law is just one member in a

whole class of barrier theses no sentences solely about the present and past can analytically entail a

sentence about the future, no sentences solely about what is observable can analytically entail a

sentence about what is observable, no sentences solely about appearances can analytically entail a

sentence about the material world. But not all these barrier theses are regarded as motivating

corresponding theses about, in any sense, kinds of meaning. Humes Law doesnt entail any sharper

or more principled distinction between descriptive sentences and evaluative sentences than a

corresponding law entails such a distinction between sentences about the past and the present on

the one hand and sentences about the future on the other. (This may not be aproblem. We may notactually be looking for more when we look for a distinction between descriptive sentences and

evaluative sentences. Still it may be worth emphasizing that this is all we get.) (ii) More importantly,

some formulations of Humes Law like the one employed here in fact presuppose a D/V

distinction. For theypresuppose a division of sentences into descriptive sentences and evaluative

sentences. But we can get around this. We can stipulativelydefine an evaluative sentence to be one

that entails an ought sentence and a descriptive sentence to be one that does not entail an ought

sentence. (Call this Revised Humes Law [RHL].) The claim that no descriptive sentence entails an

ought sentence is then trivial. But this does not mean that all philosophical issues in the vicinity are

trivialized. It is still a substantive claim that there is an intuitively significant distinction that is drawn this way.

For the appeal to RHL to work we must take care to circumscribe carefully what we mean by

an ought sentence. Consider the following passage from G. E. M. AnscombesIn tention (p. 64):

In thinking of the word for 'should', 'ought' etc. ... as it occurs in Aristotle, we should think of it

as it occurs in ordinary language (e.g. as it has just occurred in this sentence) and not just as it

occurs in the examples of 'moral discourse' given by moral philosophers. That athletes should

5 In the literature, much of the discussion of Humes Law concerns purported counterexamples, like

Everything that Alfie says is true.Alfie says that one ought to be sincere.So, one ought to be sincere.

All poisoners are sodomites.So, if all sodomites ought to be hanged, then all poisoners ought to be hanged.

But here I will not be concerned with these examples at all.


9/17

9

keep in training, pregnant women watch their weight, film stars their publicity, that one should

brush one's teeth, ... that meals ought to be punctual, that we should (not) see the methods of

'Linguistic Analysis' in Aristotle's philosophy; any fair selection of examples, if we care to

summon them up, should convince us that 'should' is a rather light word with unlimited contexts

of application ...

These uses of ought provide fodder for counterexamples to RHL, as it seems that where ought is

used in this way an ought sentence can well be analytically entailed by purely descriptive sentences.

Unless we focus on a restricted class of uses of ought, RHL threatens to yield the wrong verdicts. I

will not further discuss this here, but simply assume that somehow this can be done. One possibility

the most straightforward one is to focus firmly on ought-all-things-considered. This, however,

may seem to get us too far in the other direction. There are views on which what I morally ought to

do need not be what I all-things-considered ought to do, for there may be overriding considerations.On such a view, where M is a positive moral predicate, it is not necessarily true (let alone analytically

true) that if-ing is M, then one ought to all things considered. But surely, a proponent of such a

view need not take moral language to be non-evaluative. A solution immediately suggests itself: we

need only to include a pro tanto [to the extent of, so far, for so much], and speak of what what pro

tanto one ought to do all things considered. But this is not only a mouthful. It can also seem plainly

odd. Doesnt the pro tanto conflict with the all things considered? But the appearance of a conflict

here is due only to unfortunate terminology. What I (following the literature) call ought all things

considered is the unrestrictedor completely general ought not conceptually tied to certain aims or

considerations (like what one morally ought to do or what one prudentially ought to do) There is

no paradox in talking about what one pro tanto ought to do in the unrestricted sense of ought.6

V. THICK CONCEPTS

Turn now to thick concepts (discretion , caution, enterprise, industry, assiduity,frugality, economy, good sense,

prudence, discernment, treachery [all up to here are from Hume]promise, brutality, courage, coward, lie, gratitude,

lewd, perverted, rude, glorious, graceful, ex ploited). Roughly speaking I will shortly go on to discuss serious

6Two more speculative remarks. (i)Notice that if we construe ought as suggested, then it can be argued thatconsideration of the amoralist is relevant also to Humes law. The example of the amoralist can be taken toshow that moral sentences do not analytically entail sentences about what one pro tanto ought to do, in therelevant unrestricted sense of ought. (Though of course those who side with Brink can insist that not eventhose ought-judgments have the tie to motivation that the internalist claims there is.) (ii) It may also be worthremarking to relate back to the discussion of internalism and the D/V distinction what happens withsentences about the beautiful and the funny once we turn to RHL. It can relatively plausibly be denied thatsentences about what is beautiful or what is funny analytically entail the relevant kind of ought sentences. Is itreally a conceptual truth that what is beautiful or what is funny ought (unrestricted) to be promoted , even protanto?


10/17

10

problems thick concepts are value concepts with significant descriptive content. Thick concepts (or

thick predicates: predicates expressing thick concepts) are sometimes held to pose problems for the

D/V distinction. How might that be so?

Thick predicates are obviously problematic for any view on which an expression can have

evaluative meaning or descriptive meaning but not both. Some simple forms of expressivism may fall

in this category. But not even all forms of expressivism fall in this category. Some expressivists have

held that view that certain predicates possess both evaluative and descriptive meaning; and there is

no obvious incoherence in this view. One can accommodate predicates which are both descriptive

and evaluative while holding on to a D/V distinction: to fall on the V-side is to have some

evaluative meaning.

The literature on thick concepts also presents what are in effect a number ofborderline cases

between being and not being evaluative. I wont get into details here. It would of course be wrong to

treat the prevalence of borderline cases as necessarily being a problem for the distinction; some gooddistinctions admit of borderline cases.

It is sometimes claimed that the (supposed) evaluative and descriptive elements in a thick

concept cannot be disentangled. Call this the entanglement thesis. What does it mean? Proponents of the

thesis sometimes says that when it comes to a thick concept, you must adopt the evaluative

perspective associated with the concept in order to be able to tell what it does and does not apply to.

Sometimes it is emphasized (perhaps this can be regarded as a consequence of the first point) that we

cannot give informative analyses of thick concepts decomposing them into evaluative and descriptive

elements. I dont know how much truth there is to this. It is worth keeping in mind a general, well-

known point: for very few concepts can we in fact come up with informative analyses. This in turn

may or may not imply that only very few concepts have informative analyses. However it may be

with that, one might ask: is there anything to indicate that there is anything special about thick

concepts in this regard, or is what we have here only a further instance of the general phenomenon

that analyses are hard to come by? Second, how entangled are thick concepts? Setting aside analyses,

properly so called, can one come up with informative analyticities relating thick concepts to other

concepts? I will return to this.

What exactly is it for a concept to be thick? Here is Allan Gibbards informal

characterization:


11/17

11

(T1) A term stands for a thick concept if it praises or condemns an action as having a certain

property.7

This is unsatisfactory. One may perhaps be uneasy already about the talk of terms (as opposed to

users thereof) praising or condemning actions. But take such talk on board. There is still a problem.

There is as much reason to think that (the paradigmatically thin) good satisfies this condition as that

a term like (the paradigmatically thick) courageous does. Good stands for the property of being

good. And doesnt this term praise actions as having this property, just as much as courageous

praises actions for being courageous? On an expressivist view, such as Gibbard himself defends,

maybe it can be denied that good stands for a property. But it is clear that Gibbard does not mean

his informal characterization only to be acceptable to an expressivist.

It may be suggested that Gibbard must mean something like descriptive property. We get:

(T1) A term stands for a thick concept if it praises or condemns an action as having a certain

descriptive property.

But what is a descriptive property? The following is a natural suggestion. Suppose, for arguments

sake, that the question that the present paper deals with is satisfacorily solved and we can rely on a

distinction between descriptive expressions and evaluative expressions (and since we are talking

about properties we can focus on predicates). Then a descriptive property can be said to be one that

can be ascribed by purely descriptive terms.8 But with descriptive property understood this way,

(T1) faces problems. For on many metaethical views, even thin moral terms stand for properties

like this. A general point may be that even when the distinction between descriptive and evaluative

terms is regarded as unproblematic, it is not quite clear how best to understand the corresponding

ontological distinction between descriptive and evaluative properties.9

The problems I have presented for Gibbards informal characterization arise also for other

characterizations of thick concepts, like the ones given by Jonathan Dancy and by Bernard Williams.

7 Gibbard (1992), p. 268f. This is the rough, informal characterization Gibbard starts out with. Later in his

paper he discusses more sophisticated proposals. I single out the informal characterization for criticism justbecause I think it fails for an interesting reason.8 Ascribed, not denoted. The terminology, and the reason for adopting it, comes from Jackson (1998), p.119n10. If we are currently discussing goodness then the property we are discussing denotes goodness, so ifwe talked about properties denoted in purely descriptive terms, goodness would count as a descriptiveproperty. Talk about properties being ascribed is meant to get around this.9 Sometimes it may be reasonable to use descriptive property as described. The thesis that evaluativeproperties are descriptive properties can still in principle rule out theories like Moorean platonism andstraightforward forms of expressivism. But in conjunction with (T1 ) the given characterization of descriptiveproperties is unhappy.


12/17

12

On Dancys (1996) view on thick concepts, a thick concept is, somehow, associated with

both a property and an attitude, but these are not in any way separable elements of the concepts,

since the property is best described as that of meriting the attitude, and the attitude is best

characterized as the appropriate one given the presence of the property.10 This will not do. First, as

already stressed, on many reasonable views even thin moral concepts are associated with properties.

Nor do the other constraints Dancy mentions avoid the problem. Consider the property associated

with the concept good: the property of being good. It is far from obvious that this property is not best

described as that of meriting the relevant attitude. Or take the attitude: it is far from obvious that this

attitude is not best described as the attitude it is appropriate to adopt toward good things. Both these

speculations can be doubted. A utilitarian, for instance, will typically think she has a better

characterization of the property. But all I need to raise the problem is that it is as plausible that

Dancys characterization is satisfied by the concept expressed by good as that it is satisfied by thick

concepts.Williams says of thick concepts that they are world-guided, meaning that their application

is determined by what the world is like.11 Thin concepts, by contrast, are supposed to have more of

a purely action-guiding role. This faces the same type of problem as the characterizations offered by

Gibbard and Dancy. Here is a straightforward objection: isnt the application also of the concept

good determined by what the world is like? What Williams must say to get around this objection is

that what is special about thick concepts is that their application is determined by what the world is

like in descriptive respects. But this faces problems we have already seen: specifically, doesnt this too go

also for the concept good?

A general lesson one might draw is that insofar as the thick in thick concepts has to do with

a relation to the descriptive, that relation is not best understood as one to descriptive properties but to

descriptive concepts. For on a reasonable understanding of descriptive property, paradigmatically thin

concepts relate to descriptive properties just as thick concepts do. (Sometimes in the literature, the

thin/thick distinction is not even understood as a distinction between different classes ofconcepts but

as a distinction between different classes ofproperties. See e.g. Dancy (1993) and McNaughton and

Rawling (2000). This seems unwise, for reasons that can be gleaned from the present discussion. The

property ascribed by a thick concept can in principle be ascribed also by other concepts. Should it

still count as a thick property?)

Now let us return to entanglement. We have seen that the thickness of a concept cannot

have to do with the concepts relations to descriptive properties. The immediate revision to this idea

is to say that the thickness of a concept instead has to do wth the concepts relations to descriptive

10 Dancy (1996), p. 268.11 Williams (1985), p. 129.


13/17

13

concepts. But it is hard to see what these relations can be other than relations of analytic entailment

(or, as it is sometimes put, conceptual entailment).

What about thick concepts and Humes law? One central question here concerns whether

thick predicates occur in ought-sentences (evaluative sentences) that are analytically entailed by is-

sentences. By RHL, x is F is evaluative iff it analytically entails an ought sentence. The defender

of the D/V distinction will presumably want to count thick moral predicates as evaluative, so we can

assume that there is an analytic entailment of the kind described. The employment of RHL is

problematized if x is F, for F thick, in turn is analytically entailed by an uncontroversially

descriptive sentence. Analytic entailment is transitive; the uncontroversially descriptive sentence

would entail an ought sentence and thus count as evaluative.

In other words, if thick sentences present trouble for RHL, then there are analytic

entailments from descriptive sentences to thin sentences. Some might be happy to do a modus

ponens on this: they would regard it as a result that some thin sentences are analytically entailed bydescriptive sentences. To me, this rather points to a problem with the underlying claim about thick

sentences.

How can the issue be resolved? Here is an important consideration in favor of my view.

Some thick concepts are arguably somehowobjectionable: they embody values that shouldnt be

endorsed. In his (1992), Allan Gibbard uses the concept lewd understood as embodying the value

that, roughly, overt sexual displays are bad to illustrate the point. The idea is that lewd is

understood to apply to overt sexual displays, and at the same time it conveys that what it applies to is

bad. This is clearly a substantive assumption. Insofar as we do not agree on this assumption, we will

find lewd objectionable. (I am merely using the concept lewd as an illustration of a general

phenomenon, so critical points about the example are relevant only insofar as they promise to

generalize. See below for further remarks on the example.)

But what exactly does it mean for a thick concept to be objectionable? Let us focus on the

case of negative thick concepts. Roughly speaking, it is that the purely descriptive content D

associated with the thick concept is such that we ought to regard what satisfies D as being on this

account bad. But on the view we are criticizing, it is an analytic truth that if something is D then it is

bad! Let C be our thick concept. Since it is negative, the inference from a is C to a is bad is

analytic. And on the view we are criticizing, the inference from a is D to a is C is analytic. Hence

by the transitivity of analyticity, the inference from a is D to a is bad is analytic. This is a reductio

of the view. Some may want to insist that objectionable thick concepts are just empty, simply on

account of being objectionable. But first, that doesnt rescue the view Im criticizing. For on the view

Im criticizing, it is analytically sufficient for something to fall under a thick predicate that it satisfy

the associated description D. (I also think the emptiness view is anyway implausible. But I dont need


14/17

14

that claim for the argument.) Second, although, as stressed, appeal to the supposed emptiness of

objectionable thick concepts doesnt solve the problem my opponent faces, here are three arguments

against the claim that these concepts are empty.

(1) Appeal to examples. Consider behaviors that would be regarded as paradigmatically lewd.

(Modesty prevents me from providing really compelling examples.) Someone who says that

objectionable thick concepts are empty and that lewd expresses an objectionable thick concept

would be committed to saying that not even these practices are lewd. (2) In stressing that the

predicates are non-empty I am not disputing that if, say, we find that the concept of being lewd is

objectionable then we would not and should not actually apply lewd to anything so long as this

admonition is understood the right way. One must distinguish between two claims. One claim is that

speakers who find the concept expressed by lewd objectionable will not want to say of anything that

it is lewd. Another claim is that if the concept expressed by lewd is objectionable then it is not in

fact true of anything. To appreciate the difference, consider dirty words. Many people would refuseever to use them to describe things. This does not mean that there is nothing these words are true of.

(3) Relatedly, note the following. If lewd is an objectionable thick concept, assertive utterances like

His behavior was not lewd; it displayed a liberal attitude toward sexuality are felicitous, even when

the agents behavior was such that it would normally be regarded as paradigmatically lewd. But these

utterances can be felicitous even if the behavior in question falls under lewd: the speaker can be

seen as objecting to the wording. (Compare: Hes notfat, hes stock y.12)

I have relied on the existence of objectionable thick concepts. Are there really such

concepts? This can be doubted. The examples that have been given in the literature are not clearly

convincing. I have so far kept illustrating the idea using Gibbards example lewd. Simon Blackburn

has expressed some reasons for doubt concerning this example (and the doubts, if sound, seem

clearly to generalize). Blackburn emphasizes that lewd is not strictly negative in the way that the

claim that the concept is objectionable presupposes. He stresses that we can (non-ironically, etc.) say

things like Last years carnival wasnt lewd enough. The proper view is that thick concepts arent

associated with single attitudes in the way that the simple picture we have been operating with

presupposes. What should be said about this skepticism?

First, note that Blackburns point about lewd generalizes. If he is right about that, there are

hardly anythick concepts as these have been conceived. Forget objectionable. Blackburn presents an

argument against the thickness of the concept lewd, which Gibbard uses as an example of an

objectionable thick concept, but the point is not specific to the concept lewd or other supposedly

objectionable thick concepts. Blackburn hence does not provide the materials of resuscitating the

12 [example from Blackburn (1992)]


15/17

15

case against RHL. The case against RHL depended on taking thick sentences to analytically entail

ought-sentences; but if Blackburn is right and the attitude is a complex matter there is no such

entailment. So for some purposes it is not necessary to assess what Blackburn says. I can present a

dilemma for the case against RHL. Either Blackburn is right and so-called thick concepts are purely

descriptive, or there are objectionable thick concepts, Either way, the case against RHL doesnt go

through. Second, this said, I do want to suggest that Blackburn is right. The reason is that the

considerations he adduces in the case of thick concepts seem to have exact analogs in the case of thin

concepts: but it is scarcely plausible that thin concepts are purely descriptive.

Objectionable thick concepts also present a problem for Christine Tappolets recent account

of thick concepts as determinates of thin concepts.13 On Tappolets view, positive thick concepts are

determinates of the determinable good (or, more specifically, good pro tanto) ; negative thick concepts

are determinates of the determinable bad(or bad pro tanto).

The determinable/determinate relation is in the first instance a relation betweenproperties.One may worry that we can explicate thickness in this way only if misguidedly we think of the

thin/thick distinction as a distinction between properties. We cannot get around the problem simply

by saying that a concept C is a determinate of another concept C just in case the property denoted by

C is a determinate of the property denoted by C. Suppose the property goodness is identical with a

property likepromotes hum an flourishing. Then consider a paradigmatically descriptive concept denoting

a determinate of the propertypromotes human flourishing. This concept would appear to be as much a

thick concept as a paradigmatic thick concept, by the suggestion we are now considering. This is an

unacceptable consequence. For the concept is not a thick concept at all, but a descriptive concept.

There is however a quick fix. We can say that a concept C counts as a determinate of another

concept C only if it is analytic that if something falls under C it falls under C. This seems also to be

what Tappolet intends.14

According to the view under consideration, if C is a negative thick concept, then, necessarily

(or even analytically) if something is C then it is (pro tanto) bad. But this runs into trouble with

objectionable thick concepts. Stick with lewdas our example of an objectionable thick concept. Some

things that would be regarded as paradigmatically lewd are indeed lewd. But not all of these need be

bad, even pro tanto. So we have a counterexample.

Tappolet notes that someone can be described as too tidy or too industrious, and in

light of this she qualifies her position by saying that she is talking only about default uses. This, it

appears, must be a view on which thick predicates do not express the same thing in all contexts. Two

13 Tappolet (2004).14 I am not saying that the condition given is sufficient for a concept to a determinate of another, only that it isnecessary.


16/17

16

problems are worth noting. First, it certainly does not appear as if tidy expresses something

different in too tidy than what it expresses elsewhere; so appeal to context-dependence threatens

to sound ad hoc. Second, there is no immediate counterpart to too in the case of negative thick

predicates like lewd, so it is hard to see how Tappolets story could carry over. Third, most

importantly, even if Tappolet is right about the cases she focuses on, and even if the previous qualm

is set aside, that does not touch the objection I pressed. Here is a way to make my point. Suppose we

are studying, from the outside as it were, a community of lewd-users. The lewd-users always use

lewd in the most straightforward manner possible. I want to say that their lewd can be non-empty

and that some of the things it applies to can fail even to be pro tanto bad.

VI. THEORIES OF MORAL SEMANTICS

Whenever we are dealing with a theory of what the terms normally regarded as evaluative mean, it

may be useful to ask questions like these:

(I) How well do these theories account for the sense that there is a D/V distinction?

(II) How well do these theories account for the relation between thin and thick expressions?

As should be clear from the preceding discussion, it cannot be treated as uncontroversial either that

there is a D/V distinction, or what it should amount to. Hence, a theorys failing to accommodate

the distinction neednt be a real failing at all. Second, to elucidate (II): One can insist the following. It

does seem clear that there is a distinction between thin and thick expressions, and between thin and

thick concepts. Somehow we want an account of this. It neednt be that the account is to be given by

a semantic theory, but at least an adequate semantic theory shouldnt preclude it being possible to

draw such a distinction. In fact, one might think that the seeming fact that there is a thin/thick

distinction provides significant support for the view that there is a D/V distinction. For, one may

think, the difference in thickness between different evaluative predicates is a matter of, so to speak,

how descriptive they are. But there can be differences in descriptiveness between evaluative predicates

only if we can make sense of the idea that some predicates but not others are descriptive

VII. THICK CONCEPTS: THE PUZZLE

In the course of my discussion, I have made a number of points about thick concepts which together

yield a puzzle. I have sought to emphasize that thick concepts are genuinely evaluative. But I have

also sought to argue that some thick concepts are objectionable and yet non-empty. This is a puzzle.

For what is it for a thick concept C to be negative (or positive)? A straightforward suggestion is: it is

analytic that if x is C then x is pro tanto bad (good). But it is precisely this claim that is problematized


17/17

descriptive evaluative

Documents