I initially neglected to mention that earlier in the chapter, Rorty highlights with approval Freud's blurring of the line between moral and prudential judgments: "One can sum up this point by saying that Freud makes moral deliberation just as finely grained, just as detailed and as multiform as prudential calculation has always been. He thereby helps break down the distinction between moral guilt and practical inadvisability, thereby blurring the prudence-morality distinction."

In other words, the thicker the description of the issues in tension in a situation, the more fine-grained the moral analysis becomes. At some point, the analysis becomes so fine-grained as to become indistinguishable from a merely prudential analysis.