Who should you call a terrorist?
Matthew Yglesias discusses Brian Montopoli's article on words like "terrorist" and "terrorism" which lack meaningful definitions.Yglesias observes
Montopoli writes on the oldie but goodie subject of who you should call a "terrorist." My (brief) take is that you need to understand this as what philosophers call a "thick moral concept" -- mixing descriptive and normative. I believe the standard example is "brave." Many praiseworthy actions can't be called "brave" because brave improperly describes the sort of thing that was being done if it doesn't involve facing up to danger. At the same time, someone might do something dangerous that you don't want to call brave. You might prefer "foolish," "stupid," or "risky" because calling something "brave" is a kind of compliment and not all danger-involving actions are compliment-worthy.
posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 9:55 AM
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