Thick Concepts
Updated 2026-07-31
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A class of terms introduced by Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy and developed in metaethics by Philippa Foot and Hilary Putnam. A thick concept carries both a descriptive component and an evaluative one that cannot be peeled apart. Calling an act cruel describes it and condemns it in the same word; there is no neutral use. Thin concepts such as good or right are purely evaluative, while thick ones are world-guided and action-guiding at once. The distinction matters because it undermines any clean separation of fact from value.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Framing detection: Notice which thick terms an opponent uses, since each one smuggles in an evaluation. - Neutral reduction: Restate the thick term as a thin one to strip the charge before arguing. - Self audit: Check your own loaded vocabulary for evaluations you have not defended.
Anchor fast decisions
Thick terms encode a community's accumulated evaluative experience, so the description and the verdict arrive together and resist separation by analysis. A listener cannot accept the description without absorbing the evaluation, which is why disputes conducted in thick vocabulary feel like disagreements about facts. Translating to a thin term restores the missing step: the description becomes checkable, and the evaluation then has to be argued for explicitly rather than imported.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thick_conceptverified
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