Thick Ethical Concepts (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Evaluative terms and concepts are often divided into “thin” and “thick”. We don’t evaluate actions and persons merely as good or bad, or right or wrong, but also as kind, courageous, tactful, selfish, boorish, and cruel. The latter are examples of thick concepts, the general class of which includes virtue and vice concepts such as generous and selfish, practical concepts such as shrewd and imprudent, epistemic concepts such as open-minded and gullible, and aesthetic concepts such as banal and gracious. These concepts stand in an intuitive contrast to those we typically express when we use thin terms such as right, bad, permissible, and ought. (Concepts are often regarded as non-linguistic representational items that can serve as the meanings of linguistic expressions and as constituents of propositions; terms are linguistic items that can be used to express concepts. The precise relation between concepts and language may be complicated, however. In what follows, small capitals denote c

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