Essentially Contested Concept - Not "hotly Disputed" Concepts

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", when, in fact, " 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 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)