Essentially Contested Concept - Concepts and Conceptions

Concepts and Conceptions

Scholars such as Hart, 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:

(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) 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 " meant the family to be guided by the concept of fairness, not by any specific conception of fairness 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 " 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 ethics of Jeremy Bentham".

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.