Irreducibly Thick Evaluation is not Thinly Evaluative
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Irreducibly Thick Evaluation is not Thinly Evaluative N. D. Cannon 1 Accepted: 14 July 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
In this paper, I criticize the pairing of irreducible thickness (the view that thick concepts do not reduce to thin evaluations plus some descriptive component) with the traditional view of evaluation which says evaluation is a matter of encoding good or bad in some way. To do this, I first explicate the determination view, which holds that irreducibly thick concepts are to thin concepts as determinates are to determinables. I then show that, even if the determination view did establish irreducible thickness, it would not have proven that the evaluative is well understood as being an instance of the determination relation; in order to do that, the determination view needs to show how the evaluative fit a general analysis of the determination relation. However, when the determination view attempts to fill in the analysis, we get implausible results—so implausible, I claim, that we should see the results as a reductio to the view. To generalize the criticism to any view like the determination view, I show that the same results ensue when we model the evaluative on mereology. Finally, I diagnose the general failure by claiming that the evaluative domain, as conceived by the defender of irreducible thickness, just does not have the structure to secure the tight connection between thick and thin concepts while also carving up our conceptual economy in a plausible way. Keywords Metaethics . Thick Concepts . Evaluation . Determination Relation; . Determinate and Determinable . Ethics . Harcourt, Edward . Thomas, Alan . Antireductionism . Irreducability of the Thick . Irreducible Thickness
* N. D. Cannon [email protected]
1
Department of Philosophy, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK
N. D. Cannon
1 Introduction Evaluative concepts tend to be divided into two basic categories: Thin and thick. Thin concepts are those like GOOD and BAD, which seem to involve little more than evaluation; thick concepts, in contrast, are those like COURAGE and COWARDLY, and seem to involve both evaluative and nonevaluative content.1 This division of evaluative concepts raises a question—how do they relate to one another? For my purposes, responses to this question fall in roughly two different categories.2 The first view encompasses those interested in reducing thick evaluative concepts to some (possibly limited set) of thin concepts and is what I call evaluative reductionism. Evaluative reductionists suppose thick concepts can be broken up into a (thin) evaluative component and a nonevaluative part (which may involve an embedded thin evaluation). For example, evaluative reductionists maintain that COURAGE can be (roughly) analyzed into GOOD and RISKING HARM FOR A GOOD END, where it is in virtue of satisfying the latter part of the analysis that GOOD applies (Cf. Elstein and Hurka (2009): 526). This view is an important option and is notably defended by Simon Blackburn (1992, 2013) and Allan Gibbard (1992), but
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