Sum Blog 10

Thick and thin descriptions as an idea of Gilbert Ryle are the classifications of depth intended as a result of someone’s action to another person or nobody in particular. He uses an encompassing example of two boys winking their eyelids. To one boy the wink is voluntary but to the other, his wink is an involuntary twitch. The thin description is found easiest in the person’s perception who’s observing the two boys action by still frame. You cannot negotiate the motive of either action. This limited background gives us our thin description. As we know more about the situation we can start to thicken up our descriptions. Going further you can ask if they are “twitching, winking, parodying, rehearsing” (p.289) etc. Of society this example can be used to show “the piled up structures of inference and implication” (p.289) that we have created of our society.

Clifford Geertz states that to study a society you must look at “the first instance” (p.289). You have to understand the base that everything is built on before you can evaluate and start making assumptions for other actions. I think of this as a very large math problem. Say overall there are 20 steps between the start and finish, if you make a mistake on one number then not only will the final result be wrong but every step after will be skewed accordingly.

A favorite part of his explanation was a quote he included from Ward Goodenough that says a society’s culture “consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable by its members.” (p.290), this is where we get our understanding and motive for our winks. Whether they are voluntary to imply something to another person, to mock another person, to practice for when you see another person. It all contributes to the thicker description. When we can understand the definition of one action it helps us build the rest.

  A simple picture of figuring out what's behind it all.