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willow
me using thick concepts: haha fuck yea!!! yes!!! me seeing other people use thick concepts: well this fucking sucks. what the fuck.
willow
i am once again thinking too hard about people that are used as illustrative caricatures in undergrad classes. unfortunate they’re all around me
willow
context for chat iep.utm.edu/thick-co/
bernard williams, ethics and the limits of philosophy, 129 This may seem a rather paradoxical way of criticizing the linguistic enterprise. Those who have engaged in it have usually emphasised a fact-value distinction; the distinction between ought and is has been used to reveal it. So, it seems, either language does not disguise the fact-value distinction, or else the linguistic theorist has managed to penetrate the disguise. But neither of these options is correct. What has happened is that the theorists have brought the fact-value distinction to language rather than finding it revealed there. What they have found are a lot of those "thicker" or more specific ethical notions I have already referred to, such as treachery and promise and brutality and courage, 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.
willow
to be more specific i don’t think there’s much of a viable alternative, just degrees of applicability. they kinda demand more elaboration, and it’s mainly bothersome when they’re used in misshapen syllogisms. don’t give them a bad name, they’re necessary normative furniture bro!