MORAL EXPLANATIONS, THICK AND THIN
BY BRENDAN CLINEJOURNAL OF ETHICS & SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY
VOL. 9, NO. 2 | SEPTEMBER 2015
URL: WWW .JESP.ORG
COPYRIGHT © BRENDAN CLINE 2015

JOURNAL OF ETHICS & SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY | VOL. 9, NO. 2
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Brendan Cline

Moral Explanations, Thick and Thin
Brendan ClineSOME HAVE DOUBTED that, when we appropriately sift through ourcatalog of what there is, moral properties will have what it takes to remain (e.g., Mackie 1977; Blackburn 1984; Gibbard 1990; Joyce 2001). In
one well-known iteration of this challenge, Gilbert Harman (1977)
questions the explanatory utility of moral properties. It seems, he suggested,that we may be able to slim down our ontological commitments without explanatory loss by doing away with moral properties.
This challenge has given rise to a compelling form of nonreductive moral naturalism – sometimes called Cornell realism. Cornell realists accept Harman’s challenge and respond by arguing that moral properties have earned aplace in our ontology in virtue of the indispensable role they play in the best
explanation of various phenomena (Sturgeon 1988, 2006; Brink 1989; SayreMcCord 1988).1
This inventive line of response has considerable appeal. However, its viability depends importantly on a particular thesis about the semantics of thickconcepts. Unfortunately for Cornell realists, Väyrynen’s (2013) Pragmatic
View of thick concepts enjoys considerable support and is hostile to thestrongest moral explanations currently on offer. If concepts like COURAGEOUS, KIND, LEWD, OPPRESSIVE and so on are not inherently evaluative,then the most plausible moral explanations Cornell realists have offered cannot do the work they are meant to. Thus, in the absence of strong reasons toreject the Pragmatic View, Cornell realism is significantly weakened. In particular, I will argue, if Väyrynen’s Pragmatic View of thick concepts is correct, then Cornell realists must either endorse reductive naturalism in orderto retain their most credible moral explanations, or they must restrict moral
explanations to their least plausible examples – namely those that employ
thin concepts such as GOOD and RIGHT. Neither choice bodes well for theirview.
1. Ontological Rights for Moral Properties?
In his original presentation of the explanatory challenge, Harman (1977) asks
us to contrast two cases. In the first, Jane sees Albert pouring gasoline on a
cat and then lighting it on fire for fun. This observation leads Jane to noninferentially form the belief that Albert has done something wrong.2 In the seRichard Boyd is often characterized as a Cornell realist. I avoid his work here since his arguments do not center on the sorts of moral explanations that I will be criticizing, but seee.g., Boyd 1988, 2003a, 2003b.
2 Jane and Albert actually do not enter the scene until Harman (1986), but I use them here
for ease of exposition.
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cond case, a physicist observes a vapor trail in a cloud chamber and from thisobservation noninferentially forms the belief that a proton has gone by. According to Harman, it appears that, while we need to appeal to protons inorder to explain the observation of the physicist, we need not appeal to thewrongness of igniting cats in order to explain Jane’s observation about Albert’s action. It seems that facts about Jane’s ethical sensibility and her beliefs
about what Albert was doing are all that is required to explain her observation. Indeed, given those facts, it looks like Jane would make the same judgment whether or not Albert’s act was wrong. So perhaps our moral judgments do not constitute evidence for moral facts.
Sturgeon (1988) objects that this argument relies on an illicit assumption.
Only one who already accepts moral skepticism will find Harman’s contrast
convincing, because the dissimilarity between the two cases can only be motivated by assuming that the physicist’s theory is roughly true and that Jane’s
moral views are roughly false. For, if the physicist’s theory of particles is mistaken, then we would not need to appeal to protons in order to account for her
observation (cf. Brink 1989: 185-86). Thus, in order to formulate a challengethat is convincing to the realist, Harman would need to show that moral facts
are explanatorily irrelevant even if commonsense moral beliefs are roughly
true. And, Sturgeon maintains, this simply is not plausible. If Jane’s moral
views are roughly true, then lighting cats on fire for fun is wrong. Since themoral supervenes on the natural, Albert would have needed to do something
different to the cat (e.g., pour water on it to clean its fur) in order for his act
not to be wrong. And if Jane observed that happening, then she would nothave judged that what Albert did was wrong. So it is not the case that she
would have judged his act wrong regardless of whether or not it was wrong.
And, in general, it seems that our moral judgments counterfactually dependon the moral facts in this way, which suggests that such facts are indeed relevant to the explanation of our judgments.3
Now, it is important to remember that Harman himself is not a moral
skeptic.4 He answers his explanatory challenge by motivating a version of reductive naturalism according to which moral properties reduce to certain
kinds of descriptive properties (e.g., Harman 1977, ch. 11). Thus he thinksthat moral properties in fact do figure in our best explanations, because they
are identical to certain explanatorily relevant properties that initially appear
less problematic. Sturgeon and the other Cornell realists, however, wish to
maintain a version of naturalism according to which moral properties are explanatorily relevant and constituted by nonmoral properties, but cannot be
reduced to or identified with nonmoral properties.
In support, Sturgeon (1988: 245) proposes the following counterfactual test: “[I]f a particular assumption is completely irrelevant to the explanation of a certain fact, then the fact
would have obtained, and we could have explained it just as well, even if the assumption had
been false.” It is known that this test has problems, but we need not sort them out here.
4 Although he is a moral relativist, he denies that this amounts to skepticism.
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A central point of contention between these positions revolves aroundthe distinction between descriptive and evaluative vocabulary. What is thedifference between these vocabularies? There is no straightforward answer
and I do not intend to propose an analysis of evaluative language here, but it
will be useful to have the following criterion from Väyrynen (2013: 55) in the
background:[A] thick term or a concept T is inherently evaluative in meaning if literal uses ofsentences of the form x is T in normal contexts entail, as a conceptual matter or in
virtue of a semantic rule, that x is good or bad (depending on T) in a certain way –where “a semantic rule” covers also such further semantic properties as conventional implicature and semantic presupposition.

Reductive naturalists claim that the properties ascribed by evaluative
predicates – call them evaluative properties – are identical to some of the properties ascribed by descriptive predicates – call them descriptive properties.5 Cornell
realists are characterized by the denial of this claim: According to them, theproperties ascribed by our evaluative vocabulary are not reducible (analytically or synthetically) to the properties ascribed by some subset of our descriptive vocabulary.6 Thus, the present debate is appropriately conceived of as
centering on explanations that employ evaluative terms and concepts. The
key question is whether or not the properties ascribed by those kinds ofterms and concepts can be reduced to the properties ascribed by descriptive
terms and concepts.7
In the sense relevant here, reductions identify one kind of thing with another kind of thing. Such an identification is appropriate when it turns outthat one and the same thing (or property) is denoted by two different predicates, e.g., water and H2O. However sometimes it is inappropriate to pursue
reductive identifications, such as reducing types of psychological states totypes of neurophysiological states (Fodor 1974). For physicalists, instances of
e.g., pain are (typically) identical to some instance of a neurophysiologicalstate. However, the fact that the same psychological state can be realized in a
See e.g., Jackson and Pettit (1996: 83), Jackson (1998: 123), Railton (1986: 205), Miller(2013: 143-44).
6 For example, in resisting reductive naturalism, Sayre-McCord argues that certain moral
explanations “rely on moral concepts that identify characteristics common to people, actions
and institutions that are uncapturable with finer-grained or differently structured categories”(1988: 276). Along similar lines, Sturgeon contrasts his preferred version of naturalism withthe reductive naturalist’s view that “we either are or will be able to say, in entirely nonmoral
terms, exactly which natural properties moral terms refer to” in virtue of possessing naturalistic reductive definitions (1988: 243). Cf. Brink (1989: 9): “A nonreductive form of ethicalnaturalism claims that moral facts and properties are constituted by, and so supervene upon
… natural and social scientific facts and properties even if moral terms are not definable bynatural terms.” See also Brink (1989: 156-59) and Jackson (1998: 144).
7 I will follow Väyrynen (2013: 44-55) in taking the content of our terms to be related to thecontent of our concepts in such a way that findings about the semantics of our terms constrain the semantics of our concepts.
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variety of different ways makes it improper to reduce the type of psychological state ascribed by “pain” to some particular type of state ascribable using
terms available in the vocabulary of neurophysiology. Pain is a natural kind
about which interesting counterfactual-supporting generalizations can be
made. However, its various instances are not homogeneous at the level ofneurophysiology and thus cannot be identified with the natural kinds positedby neurophysiology, despite the fact that such states supervene on and are
constituted by neurophysiological states.
In what follows, I want to concede a lot of ground to the Cornell realists
for the sake of argument. So while it may sound question begging againste.g., compositional nihilists and psychological reductionists, I will accept theantireductionist attitude just outlined. Toward that end, I hope I will be permitted here to use the label reductive mistakes for cases in which a particular
view entails a reductive error, such as type-type reductionism about psychological and neurophysiological states. In contrast, I will use the label objectionable reductionism for views that imply that everything – from DNA to beliefs towater – reduces to (or can be eliminated in favor of) the fundamental constituents of the universe (e.g., particles, strings or whatever). With this inplace, we return to the exchange between Harman and the Cornell realists.
2. Cornell Realism and Moral Explanations
In reply to Harman’s challenge of explanatory impotence, Cornell realists
have tried to motivate nonreductive naturalism about moral properties byarguing that we are familiar with a range of robust, irreducibly moral explanations of various phenomena. Here are some putative examples:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

Honesty engenders trust.
Kindness encourages friendship.
Mother Teresa’s goodness won her a Nobel Prize.
People are starving unnecessarily because of the selfishness of others.
Racial oppression caused political instability and social protest in apartheid
South Africa.
(6) Hitler instigated and oversaw the deaths of millions of persons because he wasmorally depraved.
(7) Woodworth spent his time and energy arranging his own conveniences rather
than organizing an effective search for the missing people because he was nodamn good.8

These moral explanations, it is claimed, appeal to irreducible moral properties
and thus motivate a nonreductive view about moral properties that is analogous to the case for nonreductionism about psychological states. The multiple realizability of moral properties like kindness, oppression and goodness(1)-(4) come from Sayre-McCord (1988: 275-76); (5) comes from Brink (1989: 187); (6) and(7) come from Sturgeon (1988: 234, 249). All three authors explicitly draw analogies with thecase for nonreductionism about psychological states.
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suggests that they cannot be reduced to descriptive properties. Thus, weshould think of them as having the same ontological status as psychologicalstates, DNA and other irreducible entities posited by the special sciences.
Critics of this view have tended to deny the truth of the explanations offered in (1)-(7) (but see Sinclair 2011). For example, Leiter (2001) denies thathonesty’s engendering trust is a better explanation than the perception of honesty’s engendering trust (cf. Quinn 1986). He also suggests (2001: 94) that (6)is nothing more than a restatement of what needs to be explained. Alongsimilar lines, Blackburn (1993: 204-05) and Sinhababu (unpublished manuscript) argue that psychological explanations appealing to our attitudes towardsocial arrangements and others’ behavior tend to be better than the competing moral explanations.
These sorts of replies can seem somewhat strained, bordering on reductive mistakes. For example, why did people think there was racial oppression
in apartheid South Africa? Plausibly, because there was racial oppression inapartheid South Africa (cf. Brink 1989: 187-89; Majors 2003).
Other attempts to deny the truth of these explanatory claims have led
authors close to endorsing objectionable reductionism. For example, Thomson (1996) argues that evaluative properties like rudeness are epiphenomenal:
All the causal-explanatory work being done in appeals to rudeness is accomplished by the subvening descriptive properties on which rudeness supervenes (cf. Blackburn 1993: 205-06). Along similar lines, Miller (2013, ch. 8)
claims that moral properties appear to figure in some of our best explanations only due to our epistemic limitations. If we did not suffer from such
limitations, then we could dispense with the higher-level properties andwould only require appeals to the microstructural facts about these cases.
As Sturgeon (1986, 1998, 2006) points out, the principles behind theseargumentative strategies would require that we also dispense with unobjectionable entities such as psychological states and DNA (see also Majors 2003,
2007; Nelson 2006; cf. Miller 2009). For example, one might analogously argue that all of the causal-explanatory work being done in appeals to psychological states is really being done by the subvening physical states on which
psychological states supervene. But it seems that at least Thomson does notdesire to jettison psychological states and the like from her ontology. Something must be going wrong.
In what follows, I present an objection to the moral explanations ofCornell realists that does not suffer from the problem of objectionable reductionism. I will even allow that kindness really does encourage friendship,
and oppression really does cause protest and political instability. Furthermore, I will grant Sturgeon the assumption that our considered moral judgments are roughly true: Ceteris paribus, torture is wrong, charity is laudable andkindness is good. Even with these concessions, we can spot a serious weakness in these arguments by paying careful attention to recent work on thickethical concepts – to which we now turn.

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3. The Pragmatic View of Thick Concepts
The distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts can be sketched asfollows. Thin concepts – which include GOOD, BAD, RIGHT, WRONG – semantically convey evaluations of actions, characters and states of affairs, but
do not contain any further descriptive information. As Elstein and Hurka
explain (2009: 516):
The mark of a thin concept like “right” is that it says nothing about what otherproperties an item falling under it has … [W]hile the claim “x is right” says or implies that x has some right-making properties, it says nothing about what in particular they are.9

In contrast, thick terms and concepts are often characterized as somehow
holding together description and evaluation (Williams 1985, chs. 7-8). Paradigmatic examples of thick concepts include COURAGIOUS, CRUEL, BRUTAL,CALLOUS, KIND, HONEST, LEWD and OPPRESSIVE. The characteristic feature of these concepts is that they seem to simultaneously describe and evaluate. For example, someone who is callous is not just bad, but bad in a certain way (perhaps bad in virtue of being indifferent to the well-being of others).
Accounts of thick concepts have tended to cluster into two categories,
which we can follow Väyrynen (2013: 11-15) in calling separabilism and inseparabilism. Separabilists claim that it is possible – at least in principle – to isolate
the descriptive from the evaluative components of these concepts (Elsteinand Hurka 2009; Miller 2013: 240-52). Inseparabilist accounts maintain thatthe evaluative and descriptive aspects of thick concepts cannot be disentangled from one another (Williams 1985; Kirchin 2010; Roberts 2011). Despite
their disagreements, both separabilists and inseparabilists tend to endorse thefollowing thesis:
Inherently Evaluative: The meanings of thick terms and concepts somehow orother contain evaluation.10

This would be true if the evaluations were part of the literal semantic content
of thick terms and concepts, or if the evaluations were something like semantic presuppositions or conventional implicatures (cf. Väyrynen’s characterization of evaluative predicates in § 1). The question for those who endorse Inherently Evaluative is how to best analyze the relationship between the evaluative and descriptive semantic content of these terms and concepts.
However, as Väyrynen (2013) observes, this thesis has received limited
critical scrutiny (but see Blackburn 1992; Kyle 2013). In fact, he argues, if we
Korsgaard (1996: 71) offers a nice characterization of thin concepts along similar lines:“Pure in their normativity, they are like those little gold stars you can stick on anything.”
10 Väyrynen (2013: 9).
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apply standard techniques from linguistics and the philosophy of language
for assessing the semantic content of our terms, it turns out that there arevery good reasons for rejecting Inherently Evaluative. Consequently,
Väyrynen advocates a Pragmatic View of thick terms and concepts according
to which the evaluative information conveyed by thick terms arises frompragmatic conversational mechanisms that rely on the shared evaluative
backgrounds of speakers within a linguistic community.
In what follows, I will be relying heavily on this account. The claim willbe that the Pragmatic View deflates the appeal of Cornell realism by disarming the most persuasive moral explanations that have been proposed. In order to avoid this, Cornell realists need to provide a plausible alternative to
Väyrynen’s Pragmatic View.11 Since there is not room for a full defense of
Väyrynen’s (admittedly controversial) account here, I will simply assume that
it is roughly true and explore its consequences. While the merits of the
Pragmatic View must be assessed on the merits of the arguments in
Väyrynen’s book, I will briefly motivate it before returning to the moral explanations offered by the Cornell realists (see also Väyrynen 2009, 2012;
Bedke 2014).
One of Väyrynen’s central arguments involves appealing to the methodof assessing the semantic content of an utterance by observing the way its
implications project. Here is the characterization of projection he uses: “An
implication projects if and only if it survives as an utterance implication whenthe expression that triggers the implication occurs under the syntactic scopeof an entailment-canceling operator” (Simons et al. 2010: 309; see Väyrynen
2013: 60). The idea is that, if certain implications of an utterance project,then they are not conceptual or semantic entailments of the utterance. To
illustrate, Väyrynen uses the following example (2013: 60):
(8) Anna regrets drinking instant coffee this morning.
a. Anna has negative feelings about drinking instant coffee this morning.
b. Anna drank instant coffee this morning.

Here, both (8a) and (8b) are implications of (8).
Now watch what happens when the expression in (8) is embedded within the scope of various entailment-canceling operators (e.g., questions, negation, possibility modals, antecedents of conditionals):(9) a. Does Anna regret drinking instant coffee this morning?
b. Anna doesn’t regret drinking instant coffee this morning.
c. Anna might regret drinking instant coffee this morning.
d. If Anna regrets drinking instant coffee this morning, then my dislike of instant coffee is vindicated.

Ken Shockley has suggested to me that perhaps this sort of argument might be able to go
through even if the Pragmatic View is false but separabilism is true. I do not pursue thatapproach here, but see Quinn (1986: 534-35).
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As Väyrynen points out, the implication in (8b) is still present in (9a)–(9d), allof which have (8) embedded within the scope of entailment-canceling operators. However, notice that the implication in (8a) does not remain in any ofthese situations. The basic idea is that, whereas (8b) is not a conceptual or
semantic entailment of (8), (8a) is. If you cancel the entailments of (8) you
cancel (8a), but (8b) still sticks around. A plausible explanation is that (8b) isneither part of the literal meaning of (8) nor entailed by it, but rather a presupposition behind the utterance in (8).12
Now, what if we apply this test to thick terms and concepts? Consider
the term “lewd.” Väyrynen (2013: 62) asks us to imagine a conversation between two individuals who sometimes describe things as lewd and believethat those things are bad in a certain way in virtue of their lewdness. These
two know that they both share this attitude toward lewd acts, and that people
typically only use the word “lewd” when they associate negative evaluations
with acts that transgress conventional boundaries on sexual display. Supposethat they are discussing a show that will be in town next week and the firstutters (10), to which the second replies with (11):(10) Madonna’s stage show is lewd.
(11) Nah, Madonna’s show isn’t lewd.

In this context, Väyrynen points out, we naturally hear (11) as denying that
there is sufficient transgressive sexual display for the show to be labeled aslewd. If asked to elaborate, the second person might say:(12) Madonna’s show is sexually insinuating alright, but it’s not lewd because no
private parts are exposed.

However, notice that (11) does not seem to be denying either of the following:(13) Overt displays of sexuality that transgress conventional boundaries are bad in acertain way.
(14) If Madonna’s show involves overt display of sexuality that transgresses conventional boundaries, then it is bad in a certain way.

It seems natural to suppose that the utterer of (11) still endorses (13) and(14). The fact that these evaluations associated with “lewd” are not canceledwhen (10) gets embedded in entailment-canceling contexts (such as in (11))
suggests that they project. And this, Väyrynen argues, provides strong reasons for thinking that the evaluations in (13) and (14) are not part of the central point of using the word “lewd,” but rather are backgrounded features ofutterances that employ it.
While projection is often used to test for presupposition, there are other kinds of utterance
implications that project as well (see Simons et al. 2010). This will be important below.
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On this interpretation, the evaluations are not-at-issue with respect tothe question under discussion when speakers describe things using “lewd”
and other thick terms, since this is what projection seems to test for (Simons
et al. 2010). Furthermore, the fact that these evaluations are not semantic entailments of utterances containing “lewd” counts against the view that they
are part of the meaning of “lewd.” However, several possible accounts could
satisfy Inherently Evaluative, and not all of them treat the evaluative content
of thick concepts as semantic entailments. It is possible to defend Inherently
Evaluative by treating the evaluations as conventional implicatures or semantic presuppositions (§ 2). Thus the projection argument only partially supports Väyrynen’s Pragmatic View.
Another argumentative thread that animates Väyrynen’s approach is theobservation that it is not incoherent to challenge the evaluations that are usually associated with many thick terms and concepts. For example, it is possible to wonder whether selfishness is bad, and Gordon Gekko is plausibly
regarded as exhibiting a normative failing, rather than conceptual confusion,
when he asserts that greed is good. This is indicative of the fact that the evaluations commonly associated with thick terms appear to be defeasible in various contexts. For example, Väyrynen (2013: 70) suggests that someone who
objects to the evaluations in (13) and (14) associated with “lewd” might reply
to the speaker in (10) by saying:(15) Whether or not Madonna’s show is lewd, it’s not bad in any way distinctive of
explicit sexual display.

These observations are not what one would expect if the evaluations associated with thick terms and concepts were part of their meaning. And indeed,this defeasibility of the evaluative implications associated with thick terms
tells against interpreting them as some other semantic property, such as conventional implicatures or semantic presuppositions (Väyrynen 2013: 103-05,
109-16). For example, contrast (15) with the following:(16) #Whether or not Anna drank instant coffee this morning, we can truthfully
say that Anna regrets drinking instant coffee this morning.13

Because the implication in (8b) is plausibly regarded as a semantic presupposition of (8), it cannot be felicitously suspended in the way that (15) suspends
the evaluative implications of (10).
Väyrynen argues that by reviewing considerations such as these, we cansee that the most plausible account of thick terms and concepts is that theevaluations they are used to convey are not part of their semantic meaning,but instead arise pragmatically from the evaluative backgrounds shared byspeakers in a linguistic community. The idea is that those who are interested
in classifying people using “chaste” or “unchaste,” for example, are typically13

Väyrynen 2013: 115.
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embedded within a culture in which chastity is held to be evaluatively significant. When they engage in such categorization, they typically do so in thecontext of communicating with others who share a similar evaluative background. Mutual awareness of this explains why the evaluations associatedwith thick terms and concepts are typically not-at-issue in utterances containing thick terms (Väyrynen 2013: 128ff).14
To illustrate, consider an example that does not contain a thick evaluative term:(17) Did you hear about Jim? He feeds his kids GMOs every day.

The assertion in the second sentence of (17) is true just in case Jim feeds his
kids GMOs every day. However, if this is said by someone who is known tobe suspicious of GMOs, and is said to someone whom the speaker knows to
be suspicious of GMOs, the speaker is able to convey a negative appraisal of
Jim’s behavior through the utterance. This appraisal is not part of the truthconditions of the utterance or the meaning of “GMOs,” but rather arises
from mutual knowledge of these shared evaluative attitudes toward GMOs.
According to the Pragmatic View, the evaluations conveyed by thick terms
arise pragmatically in a similar manner.
I wish to highlight two features of this account. First, the Pragmatic
View is meant to apply to most paradigmatic terms and concepts that can beclassified as thick. Väyrynen (2013: 150-55) acknowledges that it is unclear
how to treat pejoratives, but it is also unclear that they will have much significance in the present context. He also grants that locutions such as “a goodx” may be thick and inherently evaluative in some way. This class may be
more significant, but for simplicity I will temporarily assume that the Pragmatic View applies to all thick terms and concepts, returning to “a good x”
later. The second thing to note is this: The fact that the evaluations conveyed
by thick terms are not part of their semantic meaning leads to the view thatthese terms may not have an empty extension even if the evaluations they are
typically used to convey are not true. For example, if Gibbard (1992) is correct that things are not bad in any way in virtue of involving sexual displaysthat transgress conventional boundaries, such acts may still be lewd nevertheless. Since the evaluations that speakers typically associate with thick terms
are not part of their meaning or truth-conditions, incorrect evaluations do
not render thick terms empty.
With the Pragmatic View in place, we now return to moral explanations.
This account also explains why, even if the evaluations are not part of the literal meaningof thick terms, it can still be misleading for a speaker to employ certain words in certain contexts, since this can be taken as a signal that the speaker endorses the relevant evaluative
outlook. For example, imagine someone who is evaluatively indifferent toward observing
Judaic dietary law asking their waiter whether their meal is kosher. Typically, non-Jews do
not worry about categorizing their meals using “kosher,” even though they can accurately
describe things with that word.
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4. Thick Explanations
This approach to thick terms and concepts opens up room for a novel andserious objection to Cornell realism. Recall the putative moral explanations
we entertained above:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

Honesty engenders trust.
Kindness encourages friendship.
Mother Teresa’s goodness won her a Nobel Prize.
People are starving unnecessarily because of the selfishness of others.
Racial oppression caused political instability and social protest in apartheid
South Africa.
(6) Hitler instigated and oversaw the deaths of millions of persons because he wasmorally depraved.
(7) Woodworth spent his time and energy arranging his own conveniences rather
than organizing an effective search for the missing people because he was nodamn good.

As you can see, some of these explanations – (1), (2), (4) and (5) – employ
thick concepts, while the others – (3), (6) and (7) – employ thin concepts.15
Remember that reductionists claim that the properties ascribed by evaluative vocabulary can be reduced to the properties ascribed by descriptive vocabulary. On the Pragmatic View, thick terms are part of our descriptive vocabulary. Thus, we can see that the descriptive property ascribed by the descriptive thick term “honesty” is what is appealed to in (1). But then it seems
that (1) is no moral explanation. For one may accept that (1) is true (as we will
here for the sake of argument) and accept that honesty is good (as we will
here for the sake of argument), and yet fail to be committed to the existenceof irreducible moral properties, since the goodness of honesty is not built
into the meaning of “honesty.”
It may be true that honesty is not reducible to lower-level properties.
But reductive naturalists (e.g., Jackson, Railton, Harman) do not claim that
moral properties reduce to the fundamental constituents of physics. That is,none of them endorse objectionable reductionism. For example, a hedonist
who thinks that the good reduces to pleasure is not thereby endorsing objectionable reductionism – for pleasure is an irreducible psychological state.
Thus, the fact that honesty is irreducible does not by itself entail that it is anirreducible moral property.
On the Pragmatic View, a relevant analog to (1) would be the claim thatan explanation employing “neocortical column” can secure ontological status
for psychological states. Although neocortical columns realize psychologicalstates and are not reducible to entities describable using the vocabulary ofphysics, “neocortical column” is part of our neurophysiological vocabulary.
At least on first glance. I do not know what moral depravity is other than a condition of
being very bad morally, but I will avoid this particular example in what follows.
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Thus, such explanations are not even candidates for supporting irreducible
psychological states.
To see how this works, consider another, analogous case. At a concert in
Miami in 1969, Jim Morrison was arrested and accused of exposing himself
and simulating oral sex with the guitarist of The Doors while on stage (Hopkins 1995). Although some have disputed his guilt, assume the story is true.
This suggests the following explanation:(18) Jim Morrison’s lewd behavior led to his arrest.

Let us assume that lewd behavior is not bad in any way because of its lewdness and that lewdness is an irreducible property of actions that can figure in
our best explanations. On the Pragmatic View, (18) would then be true. Now
let us switch one of our assumptions: All lewd acts are in fact very bad in virtue of transgressing social boundaries on sexual display. On the PragmaticView, (18) would still be true. Since badness is not part of the meaning or
truth-conditions of “lewd,” simply endorsing (18) on either evaluative assumption cannot by itself commit one to nonreductive naturalism, and thesame goes for other explanations employing thick terms.
One might think that the evaluative information conveyed throughpragmatic mechanisms is still present in explanatory contexts such as (18)and might be important to the quality of the explanations.16 The problem isthat the explanation needs to be explicit about this in order for it to have thekind of ontological significance necessary for Cornell realism. For example,
due to shared background knowledge, if a neurosurgeon says to a fellow neurosurgeon “Joe has suffered a lesion to his fusiform gyrus,” this will typicallycommunicate that Joe’s ability to recognize faces has been impaired. But talkabout the fusiform gyrus all you want, you will not vindicate the ontologicalstatus of facial recognition, unless something like “facial recognition = activity in the fusiform gyrus” is true. But it is not. Machines can recognize faces
with no gyri at all, and some argue that the fusiform gyrus does other things
as well. To get ontological status for psychological phenomena, we need explanations that explicitly appeal to psychological phenomena (e.g., facialrecognition) that cannot be adequately given without explicit appeal to suchphenomena (e.g., through talk of gyri). (Indeed, if the explanation could be
adequately given using purely neurological terms, then this would countagainst nonreductionism.) So in the same way, using descriptive vocabulary totalk about character traits cannot secure ontological status for evaluative
properties, unless the properties ascribed by the descriptive vocabulary are
identical to some of the properties ascribed by the evaluative vocabulary (i.e.,
unless reductionism is true). It does not matter that speakers associate positive or negative evaluations with the descriptive properties in question, just16

I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to me.
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like it does not matter that neurosurgeons associate psychological phenomena with certain brain regions.
To reinforce this point, consider another example. Imagine that the
speaker from (17), later in the same conversation, utters the following:(19) SeedCo’s stock price is falling because fewer farmers are planting GMOs.

In the context, the hearer will know that the speaker takes this to be a goodthing. However, this kind of explanation cannot support Cornell realism, forthere is no evaluative language explicitly employed in the explanation. A reductionist can thus happily agree to the explanation and the evaluation. Indeed, the explanatory importance of morally significant phenomena can be accommodated by essentially any metaethical view, and even an error theorist
could agree with (19). And notice that, in some contexts, a SeedCo executive
could truthfully utter (19) in such a way that it conveyed a negative evaluationof the trend. As this example shows, because the evaluations are not part ofthe meaning of “GMO,” the quality of the explanation is not dependent on
the associated evaluation. And again, since “GMO,” like “lewd,” is not partof our evaluative vocabulary, explanations using “GMO” (or “lewd”) cannot
support Cornell realism.
The whole idea of reductive naturalism is that certain properties are Janus-faced. Sometimes they get cloaked in evaluative language and other times
they get cloaked in descriptive language, but they remain one and the same
property. Nonreductive naturalism must disagree. It requires explanations
that a) employ evaluative language that ascribes evaluative properties that b)
cannot be reduced to the descriptive properties ascribed by descriptive language. If the explanatory language is not inherently evaluative, then it cannot
serve the role required of it. Thus, if thick terms are not inherently evaluative,
explanations employing them cannot support nonreductive naturalism.
This highlights the way in which my argument is different from one thatmight be pursued by a separabilist who endorses Inherently Evaluative. If
someone who endorsed that view were to argue that only the descriptive
component of these evaluative terms is relevant to the putative moral explanations, then there would be significant work left to do to explain why theevaluative component is not relevant. This would be like showing that explanations that employ psychological predicates (e.g., “facial recognition”) could
not grant status for irreducible psychological phenomena. On the PragmaticView, in contrast, explanations with thick terms and concepts are not evencandidate moral explanations, since the thicks are not part of our evaluative
vocabulary. They are part of our descriptive vocabulary, just as “GMO” is.
Thus, my argument is analogous to discovering that “facial recognition” is aneurophysiological predicate. In that case, explanations employing “facialrecognition” could not count against someone who thought that psychological facts reduce to neurophysiological facts.

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Notice that one of the strengths of this line of criticism comes from its
ability to avoid glaring reductive mistakes as well as objectionable reductionism about properties in general. If the Pragmatic View is correct, then we canagree that honesty, oppression and lewdness are all irreducible properties thatfigure into the best explanations of various phenomena just like psychological states, DNA and so on. Unlike other objections to the explanations proffered by Cornell realists, this line of criticism allows us to agree that, e.g., (1),(2), (4) and (5) are all true. We can even grant Sturgeon et al. the truth oftheir considered moral beliefs and still maintain that these fail to be moral explanations, since only thick concepts (which are not inherently evaluative)
have been employed.
Of course, given these concessions, it would be possible to turn (1), (2),(4) and (5) into moral explanations. We would simply need to adopt a reductive account according to which goodness, for example, is identified withsome subset of the descriptive properties such that it is actually present in
explanations like (1), (2), (4) and (5). If, for example, one endorsed a reductive account similar to Railton’s (1986) or Harman’s (1977), or the moral
functionalism of Jackson and Pettit (1995; see also Jackson 1998), then eventhough the terms employed in (1), (2), (4) and (5) are not inherently evaluative, the properties those terms ascribe can be reductively identified withevaluative properties, and thus (1), (2), (4) and (5) turn out to be moral explanations after all. Of course, if this strategy were to be pursued, Cornell
realism would cease to be a nonreductive variety of ethical naturalism, andthus would no longer be a unique position.
If this reductive strategy (or something like it) is not pursued by Cornell
realists, then it seems they must concede that examples such as (1), (2), (4)and (5) really are not moral explanations at all. This would be a perilous
move to make, however, since the explanations that employ thick concepts
are the most plausible explanations that have been offered by advocates ofCornell realism. It is precisely this plausibility that makes it difficult to denysuch explanations without making reductive mistakes or endorsing an objectionably reductionist position that forces one to also deny the existence ofthings like psychological states and DNA. This tension is very serious, andthe upshot is this: If Väyrynen’s Pragmatic View is correct, then Cornell realists cannot retain the most reasonable moral explanations they have offeredwithout abandoning their position in favor of reductive naturalism.
Before moving on, another issue needs to be addressed. Admittedly, locutions of the form “a good x” – such as “a good teacher” or “a good parent” – appear to be inherently evaluative in meaning and plausibly fall within
the class of thick terms (in virtue of their descriptive content). One might,
accordingly, think that explanations employing such phrases might beenough to do the trick, even if explanations employing paradigmatic thick

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concepts are given up on. For example, perhaps we can explain why Joan iswell adjusted by appealing to the fact that she had good parents.17
This is a forceful argument. Nevertheless, I do not think that it isenough to support a view like Cornell realism. Among other things, it isworth noting that these kinds of descriptions can be applied to things thatare not actually good. For example, one might rightly describe a person as agood assassin.18 They are stealthy, do not ask questions, have a high successrate, etc. Even if this is the case, assassins are generally not good.
This suggests that it might be promising to pursue an account of “agood x” according to which the goodness in question has something to dowith efficacy or relevant standards, rather than goodness in an unrestrictedsense. Rawls (1971: 350-51), for example, offers such an account: “A is agood X if and only if A has the properties (to a higher degree than the average or standard X) which it is rational to want in an X, given what X’s areused for, or expected to do, and the like …” If something along these lines isthe best way to treat locutions of the form “a good x,” then ideal-observer
theories such as Railton’s or Harman’s are in a good position to handle explanations of this kind.
5. Thin Explanations
What about explanations employing thin concepts like GOOD and WRONG?
If examples like (3), (6) and (7) are instances of best explanations, and there
are reasons for thinking that goodness is an irreducible natural property, thenthe present challenge cannot be fatal to Cornell realism, since words like“good” and “wrong” are inherently evaluative, if any are. However, I think
this approach is unpromising. In general, GOOD explanations are really no
explanation at all, unless they are reductive.
The core problem is that it is simply not clear that explanations using
thin evaluative terms can ground interesting counterfactual-supporting generalizations better than explanations with descriptively rich thick terms. Contrast the following two claims:(3) Mother Teresa’s goodness won her a Nobel Prize.
(3') Mother Teresa’s selfless charity won her a Nobel Prize.

It seems to me that (3') is an eminently better explanation than (3). There aremany ways of being good, and it is for her extraordinary exemplification of
the ways conveyed by (3') that Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel. Her
goodness as such, on the other hand, does not tell us very much at all. On topof these thick terms, what explanatory good does calling her “good” do for
us? Perhaps Jim is a good person, too! Knowing this offers no help in pre17
18This example is inspired by a suggestion from an anonymous reviewer.
Väyrynen suggests this example (2013: 30. See also 155-56).
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dicting whether Jim will win the Nobel Prize. Even knowing that a person isvery good is of no help. The Nobel committee looks for specific kinds ofgoodness when it makes its decisions, and it is from this knowledge that one
can get some explanatory leverage.19
We can do even better. Consider (7).20 Suppose that someone who did
not know a lot about Woodworth’s character was told that he was no damn
good. From this, what could be inferred? That he was a bank robber? That
he was aggressive and frequently committed violent assaults? That he wasrude in public? That he used his wealth to nefariously influence politics? That
he was prone to instigate genocidal policies? Apparently none of these things
follow in Sturgeon’s example, for in fact Woodworth was just somewhat
cowardly and selfish. And here is the point: Cowardice and selfishness arereal properties that can explain the behavior in question much more informatively. They are ascribed by thick terms that are not inherently evaluative (cf.
Sturgeon 2006: 250-51). Adding that Woodworth was no damn good does
not make our explanation any better. In fact, it strips (7) of the explanatory
power it would have had if Woodworth were instead described as cowardly
and selfish. You can similarly watch yourself lose your explanatory grip if you
try substituting in (irreducible) thin terms for the thick ones in (1), (2), (4)and (5), even though each thick term is plausibly construed as ascribing e.g., a
good-making or wrong-making property. Notice that this situation is the reverse of the one with psychological explanations and neurological explanations – the increased explanatory power of psychological explanations overneurophysiological explanations is precisely what earned ontological rights
for psychological states.
My arguments so far have neglected an important feature of explanation.
As Brink (1989: 183-84) points out, even scientific hypotheses do not generate predictions in isolation. Perhaps when conjoined with some auxiliary
premises GOOD explanations will fare better. To illustrate this very point,
Brink (1989: 137-38) uses the following example. One might think that goodpeople tend to keep their promises even at great personal cost. While this ispredictively inert in isolation, one might join it with the hypothesis that Zenobia is a good person to predict that Zenobia will keep her promises atgreat personal cost.
I do not think this helps. Is it not also the case that trustworthy people
tend to keep their promises? If that is true, why do we need to posit an extra
irreducible property of goodness? Once again the attribution of irreducible
One might worry that, if there are many ways of being good, then we are right back at themultiple realizability considerations that favored nonreductionism in psychology. However,it may well be that the multiple realizability of goodness here is parasitic on the multiple realizability of its reduction base. After all, reductionists propose to reduce evaluative properties
to irreducible, multiply realizable properties.
20 I take it that the “damn” in “no damn good” is not doing much more than emphasizing
Woodworth’s badness – akin to “no good at all.” Although expressives like “damn” do appear to be inherently evaluative (Potts 2003), this does not affect the case.
19

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goodness actually impoverishes our explanation here, since it is plausible that
not all good people are equally trustworthy. Unless we subscribe to an implausibly strong Socratic thesis about the unity of the virtues, attributing
goodness to people – even particular degrees of goodness – does not help usvery much for explanatory purposes.21
These examples illustrate that explanations that appeal to thin concepts
are extremely flimsy – they can often be improved by jettisoning the thinconcepts and substituting in more informative thick ones. In general, the thin
explanations are comparatively imprecise and less relevant to the phenomena
being explained when compared to thick explanations. In fact, it is reasonable to think that (nonreductive) GOOD explanations are really no explanation
at all. But, if the Pragmatic View is correct, then thin moral explanations are
the only ones that can support Cornell realism. This amounts to a substantial
challenge to the view. Without a compelling story about thin moral explanations, the appeal of Cornell realism is significantly deflated.
One might worry that my arguments have been too dismissive of thevalue of the generality that GOOD explanations might offer. Perhaps goodness could be explanatorily relevant because it programs for the presence ofother causally relevant properties, and thereby conveys modal informationthat would be lost without such explanations (Jackson and Pettit 1990). For
example, maybe Woodworth would have exerted a malignant political influence if he were wealthy.
Even if there were GOOD explanations that were good for these reasons,
it is less clear that these must favor nonreductive naturalism over reductive
naturalism. Consider that, when reduction is appropriate, one can substituteco-referential terms (outside of intensional contexts) and maintain explanatory adequacy. For example, “She died because she stopped drinking water”
and “She died because she stopped drinking H2O” appear to be explanatorilyon par for those in possession of the relevant identity.22 While it might bedifficult for reductive naturalists to offer the precision of explanations that
employ thick terms without using those terms, it is not clear that they are unable to make headway with explanations that employ thin terms and concepts. For example, one might think that moral goodness leads to a flourishing life, but that appealing to specific kinds of moral goodness would fail toadequately capture this general fact.23 Although it would not be equivalent inAlex King has suggested to me that perhaps if a being were all-good, then this point may
not hold. I am inclined to agree, but it seems that this fails to tell against the reductionist infavor of nonreductionism (see below).
22 Or consider Jackson and Pettit’s (1990) classic example of a program explanation in which
they account for the breaking of a glass container by appealing to the increased temperatureof the water inside, rather than tracking the movements of individual molecules. Notice thatthe explanation would be just as good (for those aware of the relevant theory) if we switchedout “temperature of the water” for “average kinetic energy of the water molecules,” sincethese traits are identical.
23 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point and offering thisexample.
21

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meaning, it is not clear that someone like Harman or Railton could not offer
the same explanation in terms of the consequences of doing what one’s ideally reasoning self would prescribe. Plausibly, following such prescriptions
would lead to a flourishing life.
As I suggested, this kind of approach might not be effective for all of
the explanations employing thick terms, such as greed and kindness. But if
my earlier arguments are on track, then reductive naturalists need only worry
about explanations that employ a handful of concepts – namely the thin ones
(which are often analyzed in terms of one another).24 So even if there aregood GOOD explanations, there is still more work to do to show that Cornell
realism is preferable to reductive naturalism. Thus, even if my arguments
against thin explanations are not definitive, the loss of thick explanations is aserious blow to the plausibility of Cornell realism.
6. Conclusion
Väyrynen’s Pragmatic View of thick concepts essentially changes the debate
between reductive and nonreductive moral naturalists by slimming down theclass of evaluative language. I have argued that this tips the scales in favor of
reductionism and against nonreductionism because it disqualifies the mostplausible moral explanations from the debate, leaving available to Cornell
realists only their least plausible examples.
I conclude that the viability of Cornell realism significantly depends upon the correct account of the semantics of thick concepts. In order for theview to be plausible, proponents need to offer a well-motivated account of
thick concepts that can compete with Väyrynen’s Pragmatic View, or showthat thin moral explanations are sufficient to earn ontological rights for irreducible moral properties. It remains to be seen whether either can be done.25
Brendan Cline
University at Buffalo, SUNY
Department of Philosophy
bcline@buffalo.edu

E.g., Scanlon (1998). This strategy informs the approach to reductionism that Schroeder(2007) pursues, although he operates with a somewhat different understanding of reductionism than has been standard in metaethical debates. See also Schroeder (2005).
25 I am grateful to Ken Shockley and three anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on
earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful for helpful discussion with Ariane Nomikos
and an audience at the University at Buffalo.
24

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