Essentially contested concept
Encyclopedia
In a paper delivered to the Aristotelian Society
on 12 March 1956, Walter Bryce Gallie
(1912–1998) introduced the term essentially contested concept to facilitate an understanding of the different applications or interpretations of the sorts of abstract, qualitative
, and evaluative
notions — such as "art
" and "social justice
" — used in the domains of aesthetics
, political philosophy
, philosophy of history
, and philosophy of religion
.
Garver (1978) describes their use as follows:
Essentially contested concepts involve widespread agreement on a concept (e.g., "fairness"), but not on the best realization thereof.
They are "concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users", and these disputes "cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone ".
, it has a far more specific application. And, although the notion could be misleadingly and evasively used to justify "agreeing to disagree", the term offers something more valuable:
The disputes that attend an essentially contested concept are driven by substantive disagreements over a range of different, entirely reasonable (although, perhaps, mistaken) interpretations of a mutually-agreed-upon archetypical notion, such as the legal precept "treat like cases alike; and treat different cases differently", with "each party [continuing] to defend its case with what it claims to be convincing arguments, evidence and other forms of justification").
Gallie speaks of how "This picture is painted in oils
" can be successfully contested if the work is actually painted in tempera
; while "This picture is a work of art" may meet strong opposition due to disputes over what "work of art" denotes. He suggests three avenues whereby one might resolve such disputes:
Otherwise, the dispute probably centres on polysemy
.
Here, a number of critical questions must be asked:
This source might be "within the concept itself", or "[within] some underlying non-conceptual disagreement between the contestants".
Clarke then drew attention to the substantial differences between the expressions "essentially contested" and "essentially contestable", that were being extensively used within the literature as though they were interchangeable.
Clarke argued that to state that a concept is merely contested, "is to attribute significance to the contest rather than to the concept". Yet, to state that a concept is contestable is to "attribute some part of any contest to the concept". In other words, this is "to claim that some feature or property of the concept makes it polysemantic, and that the concept contains some internal conflict of ideas"; and it is this fact that provides the "essentially contested concept" with its inherent potential for "generating disputes".
Freeden remarks that "not all essentially contested concepts signify valued achievements; they may equally signify disapproved and denigrated phenomena", and Gerring asks us to imagine just how difficult it would be to "[try] to craft definitions of slavery, fascism, terrorism, or genocide without recourse to "pejorative" attributes".
These features distinguish Gallie's "essentially contested concepts" from others, "which can be shown, as a result of analysis or experiment, to be radically confused"; or, as Gray would have it, they are the features that relate to the task of distinguishing the "general words, which really denote an essentially contested concept" from those other "general words, whose uses conceal a diversity of distinguishable concepts":
Essentially contested concepts are evaluative, and they deliver value-judgements.
Essentially contested concepts denote comprehensively evaluated entities that have an internally complex character.
The evaluation must be attributed to the internally complex entity as a whole.
The different constituent elements of that internally complex entity are initially variously describable.
The different users of the concept will often allocate substantially different orders of relative importance, substantially different "weights", and/or substantially different interpretations to each of those constituent elements.
Psychological and sociological causes influence the extent to which any particular consideration is:
The disputed concepts are open-ended and vague, and are subject to considerable modification in the light of changing circumstances.
This further modification can neither be predicted nor prescribed in advance.
Whilst, by Gallie’s express stipulation, there is no best instantiation of an essentially contested concept -- or, at least, none knowable to be the best -- it is also obvious that some instantiations will be considerably better than others; and, furthermore, even if one particular instantiation seems best at the moment, there is always the possibility that a new, better instantiation will emerge in the future.
Each party knows and recognizes that its own peculiar usage/interpretation of the concept is disputed by others who, in their turn, hold different and quite incompatible views.
Each party must (at least to a certain extent) understand the criteria upon which the other participants’ (repudiated) views are based.
Disputes centred on essentially contested concepts:
Each party’s use of their own specific usage/interpretation is driven by a need to uphold their own particular (correct, proper and superior) usage/interpretation against that of all other (incorrect, improper and irrational) users.
Because the use of an essentially contested concept is always the application of one use against all other uses, any usage is intentionally aggressive and defensive.
Because it is essentially contested, rather than “radically confused”, the continued use of the essentially contested concept is justified by the fact that, despite all of their on-going disputation, all of the competitors acknowledge that the contested concept is derived from a single common exemplar.
The continued use of the essentially contested concept also helps to sustain and develop our understanding of the concept’s original exemplar/s.
, Rawls
, Dworkin
, and Lukes
have variously embellished Gallie’s proposal by arguing that certain of the difficulties encountered with Gallie’s proposition may be due a consequence of the unintended conflation of two separate domains associated with the term concept
:
In essence, Hart (1961), Rawls (1971), Dworkin (1972), and Lukes (1974) distinguished between the "unity" of a notion and the "multiplicity" of its possible instantiations.
From their work it is easy to understand the issue as one of determining whether there is a single notion that has a number of different instantiations, or whether there is more than one notion, each of which is reflected in a different usage.
In a section of his 1972 article in The New York Review of Books, Dworkin used the example of "fairness" to isolate and elborate the difference between a concept (suum cuique
) and its conception (various instantiations, for example utilitarian ethics).
He supposes that he has instructed his children not to treat others "unfairly" and asks us to recognize that, whilst he would have undoubtedly had particular "examples" (of the sorts of conduct he was intending to discourage) in mind at the time he spoke to his children, whatever it was that he meant when he issued such instructions was not confined to those "examples" alone, for two reasons:
Dworkin argues that this admission of error would not entail any "change" to his original instructions, because the true meaning of his instructions was that "[he] meant the family to be guided by the concept of fairness, not by any specific conception of fairness [that he] might have had in mind". Therefore, he argues, his instructions do, in fact, "cover" this new case.
Exploring what he considers to be the "crucial distinction" between the overall concept of "fairness" and some particular, and specific conception of "fairness", he asks us to imagine a group whose members share the view that certain acts are unfair.
The members of this group "agree on a great number of standard cases of unfairness and use these as benchmarks against which to test other, more controversial cases".
In these circumstances, says Dworkin, "the group has a concept of unfairness, and its members may appeal to that concept in moral instruction or argument."
However, the members may still disagree over many of these "controversial cases"; and differences of this sort indicate that members have, or act upon, entirely different theories of why and how each of the "standard cases" are, in fact, genuine acts of "unfairness".
And, because each considers that certain principles "[which] must be relied upon to show that a particular division or attribution is unfair" are far a more "fundamental" sort of principle than certain other principles, it can be said that members of the group have different conceptions of "fairness".
Consequently, those responsible for giving "instructions", and those responsible for setting "standards" of "fairness", in this community may be doing one of two things:
It is important to recognize that rather than it just being a case of delivering two different instructions; it is a case of delivering two different kinds of instruction:
As a consequence, according to Dworkin, whenever an appeal is made to "fairness", a moral issue is raised; and, whenever a conception of "fairness" is laid down, an attempt is being made to answer that moral issue.
Waldron's research has revealed that Gallie’s notion has “run wild” in the law review literature over the ensuing 60 years and is now being used to denote something like "very hotly contested, with no resolution in sight", due to an entirely mistaken view that the essential in Gallie’s term is an "intensifier
", when, in fact, "[Gallie’s] term "essential" refers to the location of the disagreement or indeterminacy; it is contestation at the core, not just at the borderlines or penumbra of a concept".
Yet is also clear that "if the notion of logical justification can be applied only to such theses and arguments as can be presumed capable of gaining in the long run universal agreement, the disputes to which the uses of any essentially contested concept give rise are not genuine or rational disputes at all" (Gallie, 1956a, p.188).
Thus, Gallie argued:
Aristotelian Society
The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy was founded at a meeting on 19 April 1880, at 17 Bloomsbury Square which resolved "to constitute a society of about twenty and to include ladies; the society to meet fortnightly, on Mondays at 8 o'clock, at the rooms of the Spelling...
on 12 March 1956, Walter Bryce Gallie
W. B. Gallie
Walter Bryce Gallie was a Scottish social theorist, political theorist, and philosopher.Bryce Gallie, the son of an engineer, was born in Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, near Glasgow on 5 October 1912....
(1912–1998) introduced the term essentially contested concept to facilitate an understanding of the different applications or interpretations of the sorts of abstract, qualitative
Qualitative properties
Qualitative properties are properties that are observed and can generally not be measured with a numerical result. They are contrasted to quantitative properties which have numerical characteristics....
, and evaluative
Evaluation
Evaluation is systematic determination of merit, worth, and significance of something or someone using criteria against a set of standards.Evaluation often is used to characterize and appraise subjects of interest in a wide range of human enterprises, including the arts, criminal justice,...
notions — such as "art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
" and "social justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
" — used in the domains of aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, political philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
, philosophy of history
Philosophy of history
The term philosophy of history refers to the theoretical aspect of history, in two senses. It is customary to distinguish critical philosophy of history from speculative philosophy of history...
, and philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions regarding religion, including the nature and existence of God, the examination of religious experience, analysis of religious language and texts, and the relationship of religion and science...
.
Garver (1978) describes their use as follows:
- The term essentially contested concepts gives a name to a problematic situation that many people recognize: that in certain kinds of talk there is a variety of meanings employed for key terms in an argument, and there is a feeling that dogmatism (“My answer is right and all others are wrong”), scepticism (“All answers are equally true (or false); everyone has a right to his own truth”), and eclecticismEclecticismEclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
(“Each meaning gives a partial view so the more meanings the better”) are none of them the appropriate attitude towards that variety of meanings.
Essentially contested concepts involve widespread agreement on a concept (e.g., "fairness"), but not on the best realization thereof.
They are "concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users", and these disputes "cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone ".
Identifying the presence of a dispute
Although Gallie’s term is widely used to denote imprecise use of technical terminologyTechnical terminology
Technical terminology is the specialized vocabulary of any field, not just technical fields. The same is true of the synonyms technical terms, terms of art, shop talk and words of art, which do not necessarily refer to technology or art...
, it has a far more specific application. And, although the notion could be misleadingly and evasively used to justify "agreeing to disagree", the term offers something more valuable:
- Since its introduction by W.B. Gallie in 1956, the expression "essentially contested concept" has been treated both as a challenge and as an excuse by social theorists. It has been treated as a challenge in that theorists consider their uses of terms and concepts to be in competition with the uses advocated by other theorists, each theorist trying to be deemed the champion. It has been treated as an excuse that, rather than acknowledge that the failure to reach agreement is due to such factors as imprecision, ignorance, or belligerence, instead theorists point to the terms and concepts under dispute and insist that they are always open to contest — that they are terms and concepts about which we can never expect to reach agreement.
The disputes that attend an essentially contested concept are driven by substantive disagreements over a range of different, entirely reasonable (although, perhaps, mistaken) interpretations of a mutually-agreed-upon archetypical notion, such as the legal precept "treat like cases alike; and treat different cases differently", with "each party [continuing] to defend its case with what it claims to be convincing arguments, evidence and other forms of justification").
Gallie speaks of how "This picture is painted in oils
Oil paint
Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the...
" can be successfully contested if the work is actually painted in tempera
Tempera
Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...
; while "This picture is a work of art" may meet strong opposition due to disputes over what "work of art" denotes. He suggests three avenues whereby one might resolve such disputes:
- 1. Discovering a new meaning of "work of art" to which all disputants could thenceforward agree.
- 2. Convincing all the disputants to conform to one meaning.
- 3. Declaring "work of art" to be a number of different concepts employing the same name.
Otherwise, the dispute probably centres on polysemy
Polysemy
Polysemy is the capacity for a sign or signs to have multiple meanings , i.e., a large semantic field.Charles Fillmore and Beryl Atkins’ definition stipulates three elements: the various senses of a polysemous word have a central origin, the links between these senses form a network, and ...
.
Here, a number of critical questions must be asked:
- Has the term been incorrectly used, as in the case of mistakenly using decimatedDecimation (Roman Army)Decimation |ten]]") was a form of military discipline used by officers in the Roman Army to punish mutinous or cowardly soldiers. The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning "removal of a tenth".-Procedure:...
for devastated (catachresisCatachresisCatachresis is "misapplication of a word, especially in a mixed metaphor" according to the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory...
)? - Do two or more different concepts share the same word, as in the case of ear, bank, sound, corn, scale, etc. (homonymy)?
- Is there a genuine dispute about the term's correct application that, in fact, can be resolved?
- Or, is it really the case that the term is an essentially contested concept?
Contested versus contestable?
Clarke has made a valuable contribution to the overall debate by suggesting that, in order to determine whether a particular dispute was a consequence of true polysemy or inadvertent homonymy, one should seek to "locate the source of the dispute".This source might be "within the concept itself", or "[within] some underlying non-conceptual disagreement between the contestants".
Clarke then drew attention to the substantial differences between the expressions "essentially contested" and "essentially contestable", that were being extensively used within the literature as though they were interchangeable.
Clarke argued that to state that a concept is merely contested, "is to attribute significance to the contest rather than to the concept". Yet, to state that a concept is contestable is to "attribute some part of any contest to the concept". In other words, this is "to claim that some feature or property of the concept makes it polysemantic, and that the concept contains some internal conflict of ideas"; and it is this fact that provides the "essentially contested concept" with its inherent potential for "generating disputes".
Features
In 1956, Gallie proposed a set of seven conditions for the existence of an essentially contested concept. Gallie was very specific about the limits of his enterprise: it dealt exclusively with abstract, qualitative notions, such as art, religion, science, democracy, and social justice (and, if Gallie’s choices are contrasted with negatively regarded concepts such as evil, disease, superstition, etc., it is clear that the concepts he chose were exclusively positively regarded).Freeden remarks that "not all essentially contested concepts signify valued achievements; they may equally signify disapproved and denigrated phenomena", and Gerring asks us to imagine just how difficult it would be to "[try] to craft definitions of slavery, fascism, terrorism, or genocide without recourse to "pejorative" attributes".
These features distinguish Gallie's "essentially contested concepts" from others, "which can be shown, as a result of analysis or experiment, to be radically confused"; or, as Gray would have it, they are the features that relate to the task of distinguishing the "general words, which really denote an essentially contested concept" from those other "general words, whose uses conceal a diversity of distinguishable concepts":
Essentially contested concepts are evaluative, and they deliver value-judgements.
Essentially contested concepts denote comprehensively evaluated entities that have an internally complex character.
The evaluation must be attributed to the internally complex entity as a whole.
The different constituent elements of that internally complex entity are initially variously describable.
The different users of the concept will often allocate substantially different orders of relative importance, substantially different "weights", and/or substantially different interpretations to each of those constituent elements.
Psychological and sociological causes influence the extent to which any particular consideration is:
-
- (a) salient for a given individual,
- (b) regarded as a stronger reason by that individual than by another, and
- (c) regarded as a reason by one individual and not by another.
The disputed concepts are open-ended and vague, and are subject to considerable modification in the light of changing circumstances.
This further modification can neither be predicted nor prescribed in advance.
Whilst, by Gallie’s express stipulation, there is no best instantiation of an essentially contested concept -- or, at least, none knowable to be the best -- it is also obvious that some instantiations will be considerably better than others; and, furthermore, even if one particular instantiation seems best at the moment, there is always the possibility that a new, better instantiation will emerge in the future.
Each party knows and recognizes that its own peculiar usage/interpretation of the concept is disputed by others who, in their turn, hold different and quite incompatible views.
Each party must (at least to a certain extent) understand the criteria upon which the other participants’ (repudiated) views are based.
Disputes centred on essentially contested concepts:
-
- (a) are "perfectly genuine",
- (b) "not resolvable by argument", and
- (c) "nevertheless sustained by perfectly respectable arguments and evidence".
Each party’s use of their own specific usage/interpretation is driven by a need to uphold their own particular (correct, proper and superior) usage/interpretation against that of all other (incorrect, improper and irrational) users.
Because the use of an essentially contested concept is always the application of one use against all other uses, any usage is intentionally aggressive and defensive.
Because it is essentially contested, rather than “radically confused”, the continued use of the essentially contested concept is justified by the fact that, despite all of their on-going disputation, all of the competitors acknowledge that the contested concept is derived from a single common exemplar.
The continued use of the essentially contested concept also helps to sustain and develop our understanding of the concept’s original exemplar/s.
Concepts and conceptions
Scholars such as HartH. L. A. Hart
Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart was an influential legal philosopher of the 20th century. He was Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University and the Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. He authored The Concept of Law....
, Rawls
John Rawls
John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University....
, Dworkin
Ronald Dworkin
Ronald Myles Dworkin, QC, FBA is an American philosopher and scholar of constitutional law. He is Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London, and has taught previously at Yale Law School and the...
, and Lukes
Steven Lukes
Steven Michael Lukes is a political and social theorist. Currently he is a professor of politics and sociology at New York University...
have variously embellished Gallie’s proposal by arguing that certain of the difficulties encountered with Gallie’s proposition may be due a consequence of the unintended conflation of two separate domains associated with the term concept
Concept
The word concept is used in ordinary language as well as in almost all academic disciplines. Particularly in philosophy, psychology and cognitive sciences the term is much used and much discussed. WordNet defines concept: "conception, construct ". However, the meaning of the term concept is much...
:
- (a) the concepts (the abstract, ideal notions themselves), and
- (b) the conceptions (the particular instantiations, or realizations of those ideal and abstract notions).
In essence, Hart (1961), Rawls (1971), Dworkin (1972), and Lukes (1974) distinguished between the "unity" of a notion and the "multiplicity" of its possible instantiations.
From their work it is easy to understand the issue as one of determining whether there is a single notion that has a number of different instantiations, or whether there is more than one notion, each of which is reflected in a different usage.
In a section of his 1972 article in The New York Review of Books, Dworkin used the example of "fairness" to isolate and elborate the difference between a concept (suum cuique
Jedem das Seine
"'" is a German translation of "'", the Latin phrase meaning "to each his own" or "to each what he deserves."- Antiquity :The Latin phrase goes back to an old Greek principle of justice which translates literally into English as "to each his own"...
) and its conception (various instantiations, for example utilitarian ethics).
He supposes that he has instructed his children not to treat others "unfairly" and asks us to recognize that, whilst he would have undoubtedly had particular "examples" (of the sorts of conduct he was intending to discourage) in mind at the time he spoke to his children, whatever it was that he meant when he issued such instructions was not confined to those "examples" alone, for two reasons:
- 1. "I would expect my children to apply my instructions to situations I had not and could not have thought about."
- 2. "I stand ready to admit that some particular act I had thought was fair when I spoke was in fact unfair, or vice versa, if one of my children is able to convince me of that later."
Dworkin argues that this admission of error would not entail any "change" to his original instructions, because the true meaning of his instructions was that "[he] meant the family to be guided by the concept of fairness, not by any specific conception of fairness [that he] might have had in mind". Therefore, he argues, his instructions do, in fact, "cover" this new case.
Exploring what he considers to be the "crucial distinction" between the overall concept of "fairness" and some particular, and specific conception of "fairness", he asks us to imagine a group whose members share the view that certain acts are unfair.
The members of this group "agree on a great number of standard cases of unfairness and use these as benchmarks against which to test other, more controversial cases".
In these circumstances, says Dworkin, "the group has a concept of unfairness, and its members may appeal to that concept in moral instruction or argument."
However, the members may still disagree over many of these "controversial cases"; and differences of this sort indicate that members have, or act upon, entirely different theories of why and how each of the "standard cases" are, in fact, genuine acts of "unfairness".
And, because each considers that certain principles "[which] must be relied upon to show that a particular division or attribution is unfair" are far a more "fundamental" sort of principle than certain other principles, it can be said that members of the group have different conceptions of "fairness".
Consequently, those responsible for giving "instructions", and those responsible for setting "standards" of "fairness", in this community may be doing one of two things:
- 1. Appealing to the concept of "fairness", by demanding that others act "fairly".
- In this case, those instructed to act "fairly" are responsible for "developing and applying their own conception of fairness as controversial cases arise".
- Each of those issuing the instructions (or setting the standards) may have quite different explanations underlying their actions; and, also, they may well change their explanations from time to time, without ever changing the standards they set.
- 2. Laying down a particular conception of "fairness"; by, for example, specifying that all hard cases were to be decided "by applying the utilitarian ethicsUtilitarianismUtilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
of Jeremy BenthamJeremy BenthamJeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...
".
It is important to recognize that rather than it just being a case of delivering two different instructions; it is a case of delivering two different kinds of instruction:
- 1. In the case of the appeal to the concept of "fairness", one invokes the ideal (and, implicitly, the universally agreed upon) notion of 'fairness"; and whatever one might believe is the best instantiation of that notion is, by and large, irrelevant.
- 2. In the case of laying down a conception of "fairness", one specifies what one believes to be the best instantiation of the notion "fairness"; and, by this action, one specifies what one means by "fairness"; and whatever one might believe is the ideal notion of "fairness" is, by and large, irrelevant.
As a consequence, according to Dworkin, whenever an appeal is made to "fairness", a moral issue is raised; and, whenever a conception of "fairness" is laid down, an attempt is being made to answer that moral issue.
Not "hotly disputed" concepts
Whilst Gallie's expression "essentially contested concepts" precisely denotes those "essentially questionable and corrigible concepts," which "...are permanently and essentially subject to revision and question,” close examination of the wide and varied and imprecise applications of Gallie's term subsequent to 1956, by those who have ascribed their own literal meaning to Gallie's term without ever consulting Gallie's work, have led many philosophers to conclude that "essentially disputed concepts" would have been far better choice for Gallie's meaning, for at least three reasons:- 1. Gallie’s term has led many to the mistaken belief that he spoke of hotly disputed, rather than essentially disputed concepts.
- 2 Expressly stipulating that a specific issue can never be resolved, and then calling it a "contest" seems both absurd and misleading.
- 3. Any assertion that "essentially contested" concepts are incommensurable made at the same time as an assertion that "they have any common subject-matter" is incoherent; and, also, it reveals an "inconsistency in the idea of essential contestability".
Waldron's research has revealed that Gallie’s notion has “run wild” in the law review literature over the ensuing 60 years and is now being used to denote something like "very hotly contested, with no resolution in sight", due to an entirely mistaken view that the essential in Gallie’s term is an "intensifier
Intensifier
Intensifier is a linguistic term for a modifier that amplifies the meaning of the word it modifies. Examples are "very," "quite," "extremely," "highly," and "greatly." An intensifier is the opposite of a qualifier, a modifier that weakens the word modified: "fairly," "somewhat," "rather," "a...
", when, in fact, "[Gallie’s] term "essential" refers to the location of the disagreement or indeterminacy; it is contestation at the core, not just at the borderlines or penumbra of a concept".
Yet is also clear that "if the notion of logical justification can be applied only to such theses and arguments as can be presumed capable of gaining in the long run universal agreement, the disputes to which the uses of any essentially contested concept give rise are not genuine or rational disputes at all" (Gallie, 1956a, p.188).
Thus, Gallie argued:
- So long as contestant users of any essentially contested concept believe, however deludedly, that their own use of it is the only one that can command honest and informed approval, they are likely to persist in the hope that they will ultimately persuade and convert all their opponents by logical means. But once [we] let the truth out of the bag — i.e., the essential contestedness of the concept in question — then this harmless if deluded hope may well be replaced by a ruthless decision to cut the cackle, to damn the heretics and to exterminate the unwanted. (Gallie, 1956a, pp.193-194)
See also
- AmbiguityAmbiguityAmbiguity of words or phrases is the ability to express more than one interpretation. It is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information.Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity...
- Argumentation theoryArgumentation theoryArgumentation theory, or argumentation, is the interdisciplinary study of how humans should, can, and do reach conclusions through logical reasoning, that is, claims based, soundly or not, on premises. It includes the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and persuasion...
- Critical thinkingCritical thinkingCritical thinking is the process or method of thinking that questions assumptions. It is a way of deciding whether a claim is true, false, or sometimes true and sometimes false, or partly true and partly false. The origins of critical thinking can be traced in Western thought to the Socratic...
- Logical argument
- VaguenessVaguenessThe term vagueness denotes a property of concepts . A concept is vague:* if the concept's extension is unclear;* if there are objects which one cannot say with certainty whether belong to a group of objects which are identified with this concept or which exhibit characteristics that have this...
- What Is Art?What Is Art?"What Is Art?" is an essay by Leo Tolstoy in which he argues against numerous aesthetic theories which define art in terms of the good, truth, and especially beauty...