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TL;DRI introduce some philosophical concepts (the is-ought problem and the notion of thick concepts) to illustrate why you cannot remove morals from political debate, why avoiding words like “racist” because they are “inherently alienating” is an unproductive exercise, and why explicitly appealing to values helps facilitate political discussion and communication. |
David Hume set forward the is-ought problem in his book, A Treatise of Human Nature. It posits that it is impossible to derive an “ought” (a normative or prescriptive statement) from any number of “is”‘s (descriptive statements).
For example, from the facts that global warming is happening, and that global warming creates changes in climate that are already beginning to have destructive effects on people, cities, and regions, you cannot actually argue that urgent action on climate change is needed.
In order to do so, you need to also insert a value — for example, that it is bad/wrong/immoral/impermissible to let people die when it could be prevented.
The insertion of this third kind of statement easily bridges the formerly-insurmountable gap between statements of fact and normative statements.
This seems basic, but the implication that is important to note here is that politics — which involves collectively deciding on what ought be done — never involves just an establishment of or debate over facts — over how the world is. It necessarily involves debate and alignment of values, moral evaluation, preferences, and so on.
Politics necessarily involves values, moral evaluation, preferences, and so on.
When there is universal agreement on values (for example, “killing people is bad” tends to be widely agreed upon), the value may not need to be spelled out explicitly in order for people to immediately leap from “is” to “ought” on their own. This comes with a downside: when values don’t need to be spelled out for people to understand the connection between factual statements and their policy implications, it is easy to mistakenly believe that values have no place or role in deciding policy. Under those circumstances, some people start to believe that they are able to arrive at political positions without inserting anything personal about themselves into the debate (in particular, inserting themselves as a moral actor holding values and making moral judgments); they instead view their decision-making process to only take into account objective facts about the world. This view is, unfortunately, plainly false. All political debate is built on morals and values and preferences, implicit or otherwise.
For example, I have encountered people arguing for one policy over another using the fact that said policy yields a higher growth in GDP. This sounds very distant and impersonal and objective. What is left unsaid, however, is why maximizing GDP is the goal we should have when choosing policy. If one were to dig down into this, it would eventually boil down to a moral or value preference. Nothing in politics depends only on establishing facts about how the world is; all politics rests on a moral base. I think some people prefer to keep politics in an amoral realm (possibly because being driven by morals creates emotions such as indignation or outrage, which people believe makes them less logical — an idea I dissect in this post). However, believing that one can be less moralistic by focusing on amoral aspects of politics is wishful thinking.
Thick concepts
Now that we have this is/ought distinction, we can talk about thick concepts. Thick concepts are words that simultaneously have a descriptive component to them and an evaluative, prescriptive, or moral component to them. For example, “liar”. A liar is someone who tells falsehoods. In this purely descriptive sense, there is nothing judgmental about attaching this label to a person — if the person has told falsehoods, then the label fits. However, there is also a judgmental component to the label: if you call someone a “liar” you’re also in some way accusing them of something — being intentionally misleading, perhaps, or untrustworthy, or for violating a prescriptive norm (in this case, the norm of honesty). So in addition to the purely factual element of the label, the label also means “bad”.
This also works for positive descriptions. The word “brave” can apply in a pure descriptive sense to people who put themselves in dangerous situations, often to help others at the cost of their own safety — that can be literally true or false of a person. But calling someone “brave”, is a term of praise and approval. When someone says, “You’re so brave!” that’s most likely meant to be a good thing and not an insult, because to be brave means to be selfless, which we view as an admirable trait.
When fighting for social justice, the place where thick concepts cause the most trouble is in what I call “*ist” labels — racist, sexist, misogynist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, and so on. These labels all contain an element of the factual. For example, someone who states their belief that some races are better than others or engages in racially discriminatory behavior is factually a racist (in the common sense of racist as being prejudiced; there are other ways to define racist, but this one is fairly broadly-understood). However, like “liar” and “brave”, these words also come with evaluative baggage: they imply the person being described is bigoted (which implies ignorant, small-minded, etc.) or perhaps hateful. It is hard to say these words without also meaning “bad”.
The fact that these words are all thick concepts creates misunderstandings. When people label things as bigoted (*ist), they often do so because they are trying to establish that certain statements, behavior, systems, beliefs, etc. are factually bigoted, discriminatory, or oppressive (and therefore we should fix/change them because we don’t like bigotry, discrimination, or oppression). Between the mouth that says this and the ear that hears it, though, a dramatic change happens. People who the critique is aimed toward ignore the element of the thick term that is a factual assertion about the state of the world and only hear an accusation, often a very harsh one. They assume that the speaker is judging them for being ignorant and hateful, and so the speaker must be trying to insult or tar them publicly. They hear insult and therefore bad intention, and so eliminate the possibility of the intent being non-judgmental assertion.
A recent example: when my partner responded to an article (that had nothing to do with trans people but at the end referred to trans women as men) by saying that the article was interesting but the transphobic jab at the end was unpleasant, the person sharing the article responded, “Are you saying the author has nothing but hate in their heart for trans people?” The aim of my partner’s comments was to say “the content that was bigoted against trans people was needlessly hurtful”, but this was heard as if my partner had made a statement of the writer’s heart and intent. These translations from a factual statement to one that judges people’s hearts and souls happen for thick concepts because the words carry both meanings simultaneously.
The judgy meaning of thick concepts always stems from the values of the person who hears it.
If this is the case, you might think that the solution is to create words or use phrases that contain strictly the factual content and none of the judgy meaning — make thick concepts thin. (Indeed, I have had frequently had people suggest I and others refrain from using the word “racist” because the word is inherently alienating.) However, I strongly do not think this would work. The reason why is that the judgy meaning was never part of the meaning of “*ist” words in the first place — the judgy meaning always stems from the values of the person who hears it. You could invent a new word that means “a person who tells falsehoods” to use when you want to point out falsehood-telling but not bring down any moral judgment. But as long as people value the consistent habit of telling the truth, the new word will eventually take on a moral valence of “bad”. It is the same with words like “racist”. As long as we value equality and treating people well, and view our failure to do so as resulting from ignorance or self-serving attitudes, any way of pointing out that we fall short of that, no matter how mild, will take on the meaning of “bad”. Like the problem of the illusion of amoral politics, it is commonly- and implicitly-held values that makes these concepts thick and causes trouble.
Making values explicit
In short, I do not think it is a productive suggestion to say that certain words should not be used because they are inherently alienating. (The alienation was inside you all along!) Instead, I believe a much more productive suggestion is to be less vague and to be as clear as possible in communication — in particular, making implicit values (which are the indispensable glue that holds any political argument together!) explicit. Making values explicit — both when you talk and when you hear and translate the words of others — facilitates dialogue and understanding.
This is part of the benefit of nonviolent communication.1 Nonviolent communication separates out factual statements (which I call actions and the author calls observations, but now can be thought of as “is” statements) from evaluation, and also makes the values at play explicit.
In this style of communication, thick concepts are avoided because their layer of evaluative meaning makes them inappropriate for the “is” part, and the values related to them are explicitly named in the “value” section. Explicitly naming the values (1) clarifies the logical flow of the argument being made, and (2) makes it clearer that those values (which are a part of us) are what create feelings of alienation, not the word or the person saying the word. Note that you never have to wait for someone to say something nonviolently in order to understand them, because being able to hear the implicit values and state them explicitly is within your power no matter what the other person is saying.
↑ 1 The other benefit of nonviolent communication is that it replaces “ought” statements with requests, which are gentler / less imperious.
