Economics is Thick

Thick concepts, as understood in recent philosophy, are concepts that link fact and value in such a way that the factual part justifies the evaluation of the object described as good. Some philosophers argue that this complication in our understanding of valuative language calls on us to reconsider the maxim that "you can't get an ought from an is." Others argue that, since thick statements can be disentangled and treated as compounds of a descriptive and a valuative part, no such reconsideration is called for. Regardless how this disagreement is resolved, a person who uses a thick term with linguistic competence is expressing both a fact and a value (even if the value is not her own.) The terms commonly used in economics seem in this sense to be thick. Indeed, to the extent that they have to do with wants and their satisfaction, they must be thick, since a statement of want or satisfaction links fact and value in a way that is very much like the linkage that makes a term thick. Thus, as Little (1957) argued long ago, terms like "efficient" and "productive" are terms that unavoidably express facts as well as values -- they are thick. Orthodox economics clearly is a theory built of thick concepts, a thick theory. To that extent, economics per se is thick. For other schools of thought, some key concepts may also be thick, a possibility that would require inquiry largely beyond the scope of this study.