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What is the difference between judging someone to be good and judging them to be kind? Both judgements are typically positive, but the latter seems to offer more description of the person: we get a more specific sense of what they are like. Very general evaluative concepts (such as good, bad, right and wrong) are referred to as thin concepts, whilst more specific ones (including brave, rude, gracious, wicked, sympathetic, and mean) are termed thick concepts. In this volume, an international team of experts addresses the questions that this distinction opens up. How do the descriptive and evaluative functions or elements of thick concepts combine with each other? Are these functions or elements separable in the first place? Is there a sharp division between thin and thick concepts? Can we mark interesting further distinctions between how thick ethical concepts work and how other thick concepts work, such as those found in aesthetics and epistemology? How, if at all, are thick concepts related to reasons and action? These questions, and others, touch on some of the deepest philosophical issues about the evaluative and normative. They force us to think hard about the place of the evaluative in a (seemingly) nonevaluative world, and raise fascinating issues about how language works.
An international team of experts explores the distinction between 'thin' concepts (general, evaluative terms like 'good' and 'bad') and 'thick' concepts (more specific concepts, such as 'brave', or 'rude'). Their essays touch on key debates in metaethics about the evaluative and normative, and raise fascinating questions about how language works.
The concepts we use to value and prescribe (concepts like good, right, ought) are historically contingent, and we could have found ourselves with others. But what does it mean to say that some concepts are better than others for purposes of action-guiding and deliberation? What is it to choose between different normative conceptual frameworks?
This book explores, in rich and rigorous ways, the possibilities and limitations of “thick” (concepts of) autonomy in light of contemporary debates in philosophy, ethics, and bioethics. Many standard ethical theories and practices, particularly in domains such as biomedical ethics, incorporate minimal, formal, procedural concepts of personal autonomy and autonomous decisions and actions. Over the last three decades, concerns about the problems and limitations of these “thin” concepts have led to the formulation of “thick” concepts that highlight the mental, corporeal, biographical and social conditions of what it means to be a human person and that enrich concepts of autonomy, with direct implications for the ethical requirement to respect autonomy. The chapters in this book offer a wide range of perspectives on both the elements of and the relations (both positive and negative) between “thin” and “thick” concepts of autonomy as well as their relative roles and importance in ethics and bioethics. This book offers valuable and illuminating examinations of autonomy and respect for autonomy, relevant for audiences in philosophy, ethics, and bioethics.
The book offers a feminist examination of contemporary social injustices. It argues for a paradigm-shift away from feminist philosophy organized around the gender concept woman, and towards humanist feminism. The book further develops a notion of dehumanization that explicates social injustices, elucidates humanist feminism, and improves non-feminist analyses of injustice.
In addition to thin concepts like the good, the bad and the ugly, our evaluative thought and talk appeals to thick concepts like the lewd and the rude, the selfish and the cruel, the courageous and the kind -- concepts that somehow combine evaluation and non-evaluative description. Thick concepts are almost universally assumed to be inherently evaluative in content, and many philosophers claimed them to have deep and distinctive significance in ethics and metaethics. In this first book-length treatment of thick concepts, Pekka Väyrynen argues that all this is mistaken. Through detailed attention to the language of thick concepts, he defends a novel theory on which the relationship between thick words and evaluation is best explained by general conversational and pragmatic norms. Drawing on general principles in philosophy of language, he argues that many prominent features of thick words and concepts can be explained by general factors that have nothing in particular to do with being evaluative. If evaluation is not essential to the sort of thinking we do with thick concepts, claims for the deep and distinctive significance of the thick are undermined. The Lewd, the Rude and the Nasty is a fresh and innovative treatment of an important topic in moral philosophy and sets a new agenda for future work. It will be essential reading to anyone interested in the analysis and the broader philosophical significance of evaluative and normative language. "Väyrynen presents an extremely well researched, highly innovative, and yet very careful and highly polished treatment of an extremely hot area in philosophy. The book is tightly argued but engagingly written. I would hold it up as a model philosophy monograph. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that this book will be widely influential and admired. Indeed, it could easily become a classic." - Brad Hooker, University of Reading "For the past few decades thick concepts have received much attention in metaethical discussions, but Väyrynen's book is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject. Väyrynen skillfully uses tools from philosophy of language in order to sharpen and advance the discussion of thick concepts. The book will be essential reading not only to anyone interested in the specific topic of thick concepts but also to anyone who is concerned with the analysis of normative language generally. It is a very good paradigm of linguistically informed metaethics." - Matti Eklund, Cornell University
Theorists working on metaethics and the nature of normativity typically study goodness, rightness, what ought to be done, and so on. In their investigations they employ and consider our actual normative concepts. But the actual concepts of goodness, rightness, and what ought to be done are only some of the possible normative concepts there are. There are other possible concepts, ascribing different properties. Matti Eklund explores the consequences of this thought, for example for the debate over normative realism, and for the debate over what it is for concepts and properties to be normative. Conceptual engineering - the project of considering how our concepts can be replaced by better ones - has become a central topic in philosophy. Eklund applies this methodology to central normative concepts and discusses the special complications that arise in this case. For example, since talk of improvement is itself normative, how should we, in the context, understand talk of a concept being better?
Philosophical Perspectives, an annual, aims to publish original essays by foremost thinkers in their fields, with each volume confined to a main area of philosophical research. Contains original essays in the subject from foremost ethicists John Hawthorne is widely accepted as one of the leading Philosophers of today
Oxford Studies in Metaethics is the only publication devoted exclusively to original philosophical work in the foundations of ethics. It provides an annual selection of much of the best new scholarship being done in the field. Its broad purview includes work being done at the intersections of ethical theory with metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. The essays included in the series provide an excellent basis for understanding recent developments in the field; those who would like to acquaint themselves with the current state of play in metaethics would do well to start here.
In 2011 the world watched as Egyptians rose up against a dictator. Observers marveled at this sudden rupture, and honed in on the heroes of Tahrir Square. Revolutionary Egypt analyzes this tumultuous period from multiple perspectives, bringing together experts on the Middle East from disciplines as diverse as political economy, comparative politics and social anthropology. Drawing on primary research conducted in Egypt and across the world, this book analyzes the foundations and future of Egypt’s revolution. Considering the revolution as a process, it looks back over decades of popular resistance to state practices and predicts the waves still to come. It also confidently places Egypt’s revolutionary process in its regional and international contexts, considering popular contestation of foreign policy trends as well as the reactions of external actors. It draws connections between Egyptians’ struggles against domestic despotism and their reactions to regional and international processes such as economic liberalization, Euro-American interventionism and similar struggles further afield. Revolutionary Egypt is an essential resource for scholars and students of social movements and revolution, comparative politics, and Middle East politics, in particular Middle East foreign policy and international relations.