The Essential Contestability of Some Social ConceptsAuthor(s): Alasdair MacIntyreReviewed work(s):Source: Ethics, Vol. 84, No. 1 (Oct., 1973), pp. 1-9Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2379885 .

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The Essential Contestability of Some Social Concepts *

Alasdair MacIntyre Boston University

I begin with a set of actually debated and debatable questions: Do the dominant social groups in Tudor England comprise an instance of a rising bourgeoisie? Are the sexual liaisons of the Nayars to be counted as in- stances of marriage? Are Ibsen's dramas tragedies? Were the loosely con- nected alliances of the eighteenth-century English parliament political par- ties? Are slavery in Attica in the fifth century B.C., in Ireland in the ninth century A.D., and in Virginia in the nineteenth century A.D. variants of the same institution? Is there such a thing as postindustrial society?

II

The importance of such questions is often presented as follows: upon how we answer these questions depends whether certain key generali- zations about social life are confirmed or prima facie refuted. To the extent that this is so these questions parallel certain questions that have arisen during the history of natural science, such as, Is the earth a planet? or Is a solution a compound? To this latter class of question have been given decisive and effective answers which are inseparable from the formulation of certain key generalizations. In the social sciences we lack both decisive answers and corresponding generalizations. Why?

III

One possible answer would combine the suggestion that we have simply been inadequately hardworking or very unlucky in our empirical inquiries in social science with an allusion to a notion which we owe to Friedrich Waismann: that of the open texture of concepts. We use certain criteria to identify this or that as gold or an amino acid or a

* This was the lead paper in a symposium of the same title at the annual meet- ing of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago, April 27, 1973.

1

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2 Ethics

Christmas pudding. If certain characteristics are present and others ab- sent, then this will suffice in all normal circumstances for the identifica- tion. But what if the standard criteria are satisfied and then it turns out that this apparently otherwise normal gold emits radiation (as in Wais- mann's example) or that this Christmas pudding talks (as in the Aus- tralian fairy story)? Are we to say that after all this is not gold or not a Christmas pudding, or are we to say that we were mistaken about the properties of gold or of Christmas puddings?

IV

I do not want to pursue Waismann's discussion further; what I want to note is that the force of his point depends upon a contrast between the application of criteria (i) in what have been up to now normal cir- cumstances, (ii) as a result of experience in standard conditions-and note that these are not the same-and their application in abnormal or radically new situations. This contrast is also embodied in Hilary Put- nam's arguments about 'aluminum' and 'dreaming' when Putnam shows that to convey the normal use of a word involves certain sets of what he calls "core facts."' I can put the matter like this: both Waismann and Putnam have shown that there is not a finite and determinate set of neces- sary and sufficient conditions which determine the application of a con- cept (Waismann) or a word (Putnam); but the examples which they cite also reveal that in normal circumstances and in standard conditions we can behave as if there were such a finite and determinate set and we do indeed so behave. Otherwise every question of fact would be indefinitely debatable, and while every assertion of fact is potentially open to question, every such assertion is not always actually open to question. Natural science settles certain debates at least temporarily and provisionally.

But in large areas of social inquiry there are not even temporary and provisional settlements. We do not know how to decide whether a given alleged instance of a phenomenon is to be treated as a counter- example to a proposed generalization or as not an example of the phe- nomenon at all, because debate remains open about which the central, standard, and paradigmatic instances of the phenomenon are. Given that this is empirically the case in social inquiry (and only seems not to be the case when there is a highly selective presentation of the situation as in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences), the suggestion that what the social sciences need is more industriousness and that dis- agreements over the questions I cited earlier are merely due to the open texture of concepts begins to appear implausible. Waismann spoke of an essential incompleteness of empirical description which arises from open texture. The lack of even provisional and temporary closure to

1. Hilary Putnam, "Is Semantics Possible?" Metaphilosophy 1 (1970): 187-201.

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3 Essential Contestability of Social Concepts

debatability in certain areas of social inquiry suggests that perhaps we have not only essential incompleteness, but also essential contestability in those areas. (Or to put the matter another way, we seem to have no grasp of what would count as normal circumstances or standard conditions in the corresponding areas of social life.) To inquire whether this is in- deed so we ought to focus attention on those aspects of the concepts used in such areas of social inquiry which are undeniably different from the concepts deployed in the natural sciences.

V

The behavior that is captured by the concept of a political party or a family or an army or a social class is itself behavior informed by the concept in question. For a necessary condition of such behavior is that the majority of those who engage in it shall have certain beliefs about what makes this particular party a case of a party, this army an army, and so on. To give two obvious examples: what makes a monetary sys- tem a use of money is not merely that certain tokens of paper or metal are authorized by some duly constituted body; it is also necessary that such tokens are believed both to be so authorized and to have some particular exchange value by the currency-using population. When this belief is no longer present, as in Germany and Austria in 1923, there is no longer a monetary system. Similarly, what makes an officer an officer is not only that he holds a commission from some duly constituted authority; he must also be recognized as an officer by his subordinates, by his su- periors, and by civilians. When, as in Russia in 1917, this condition ceases to hold, there cease to be officers. Beliefs are partially constitutive of at least some central social institutions and practices, and such beliefs always involve some version of a concept of the institution or practice in question. There is no parallel to this in the established natural sciences.

VI

I now want to notice two characteristics of the beliefs and concepts which are partially constitutive of at least some social institutions and practices, which affect their relationships to those institutions and prac- tices, and which consequently affect the character of such institutions and practices. The first is that the beliefs and concepts which inform a particular institution or practice may form a relatively homogeneous and consistent set or may form a relatively diverse and conflicting set. Ranged along this dimension we have at one end of the scale the kind of con- sistency, homogeneity, and agreement which is the prerequisite for an effective complex modern monetary system, and, at the other, the con- flicts and inconsistencies which are often characteristic of the beliefs constitutive of political parties. It is to phenomena at the latter end of the scale that I wish to draw attention. A particular political party's

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4 Ethics

history may indeed in large part be the history of certain conflicts as to not only the character of that party, but as to the character of party government as such and of party political systems. Rival beliefs about party and rival concepts of party are at the core of such conflicts. Con- sider for example the continuous debate in the modern English Con- servative party between the ideals of Disraeli and those of the Cham- berlain family. Also, both within and between political parties such disagreements may even be disagreement over what it is about which the contenders disagree in the relevant concepts and beliefs. Such dis- agreements are of course expressed quite as much in behavior as in utter- ance. Their embodiment in practice is not secondary to, nor expressed independently from, their articulation at the level of utterance, even at the level of theory.

ViI

The second characteristic of the beliefs and concepts which are embodied in certain social practices and institutions which I want to underline is this: In applying the concept we acknowledge a kind of inability in respect to its application in future instances which we do not acknowledge as natural scientists in applying concepts to natural particulars. In the case of natural particulars, I first learn to apply the relevant concept in a routine way-planet, compound, amino acid, ,- meson, or whatever it is-to certain introductory examples. To have learned this enables me-provided that the requirements specifying nor- mal circumstances and standard conditions are satisfied-to approach future instances with confidence. If the relevant criteria are satisfied, then this or that is an instance of a planet, a compound, an amino acid, or a Ik-meson. The stability upon which we rely in making these con- fident identifications is the stability of law-governedness. The identity of natural particulars-atoms, planets, amino acids-is secondary to the continuous applicability of certain types of law. When Kepler estab- lished the laws of planetary motion he established the identity of one particular planetary system as a natural particular. When the gas laws were established a necessary step was taken in enabling us to identify the continuity of particular samples of particular gases. For without the laws of planetary motion we could not distinguish what belongs to the behavior of the planetary system itself from what is the effect of the intervention of some alien force, and without the gas laws we could not distinguish what belongs to the behavior of this particular sample of this particular gas from what is the effect of the intervention of some alien force.

But with at least some social particulars, such as a particular political party or a particular family, it is quite otherwise. To speak of their identity or their continuity involves no reference, explicit or implicit,

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5 Essential Contestability of Social Concepts

to law-governedess. The historic continuity of a political party is com- patible with large-scale changes in regularities of behavior; what is cru- cial is a certain kind of continuity in belief and in practice informed by belief. The continuity and identity of a planet or an atom is quite different from the continuity and identity of physics or of the Royal Society, of politics or of the Conservative party. Part of the continuity and identity both of such a form of social practice and of such a form of social organization is the continuity of institutionalized argument, de- bate, and conflict.

The subject matter of such argument, debate, and conflict normally concerns both the character of the organization in question and the character of the practices in which its members engage and which give to it its raison d'etre, and these two types of argument necessarily inter- connect. The debate about the character of party politics necessarily impinges on that about the character of the Conservative party; the arguments not only within, but about science necessarily impinge on those about the character of scientific organizations. From this, two con- sequences follow concerning the identity of such social particulars as organizations and practices, as contrasted with such natural particulars as atoms, lumps of quartz, or planets.

The first is that not only is it often the case that we cannot say at any given moment what the outcome of stich arguments and conflicts will be, but that even retrospectively we cannot find anything in the state of the arguments and conflicts which would have enabled us to predict the outcome. From the state of the British Conservative party in 1871 we could not predict its character in 1951; from that of Sinn Fein in 1910 that of Sinn Fein in 1918 or in 1973. It is not difficult to understand why this has to be so. Neither political nor scientific argu- ments have predictable outcomes; for the genuinely innovative moves which lead to creative outcomes in such arguments always transcend what has occurred in the argument previously, often by some species of fundamental conceptual innovation. Ex hypothesi such innovation marks a break with the past that neither prediction nor retrodiction can span: such conceptions as those which mark off Greek tragic drama from Dionysiac religious festival, Lutheran justification fide sola from classical Augustinianism, Kant's epistemology from empiricism, rela- tivistic physics from the physics of Kelvin and Maxwell, and Disraeli's conservatism from Peel's are embodied in radical discontinuities in the continuous lives of organizations and practices. Of course it is not only conceptual innovation that underlines the unpredictable and unretro- dictable character of organizations and practices.

Those innovations help to define new sets of alternatives which create new occasions for decision and for conflict over decisions. But as game theory has shown us, there are many types of such conflict

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where outcomes are radically unpredictable, in part because of the type of imperfection of information available to the participants and in part because of the fact that each agent, in order to find grounds for his own decision, has to predict not just what his opponents will do but what they will predict that he will do and therefore what they will predict that he will predict that they will predict that he will do (and so on).

This is far from the whole story; but it is enough to make it clear that the difference in the characterization of the identity of natural par- ticulars and of some social particulars is not simply a difference that arises from ignorance. To speak of the same party is to invoke criteria very different from those involved when we speak of the same planet, however little or however much we know about parties or planets. But if this is so, then the criteria and the procedures which we have to use to segregate members of the class of parties or of the class of planets in order to formulate or to test hypotheses about them must be very different also.

Consider such questions as: Was Sinn Fein in 1910 a political party? Were the Tories of 1680 such a party? Answering such questions is in- separable from answering questions about the continuity or lack of it of Sinn Fein of 1910 with Sinn Fein of 1918 or of the Tories of 1680 with those of 1880. But such questions are involved in the very debates which inform the political scenes in question. There is no neutral way of set- tling them prior to the political debate. What decision we make about continuity involves not only correlative decisions about what is to count as a central case of a party and what is to count as a marginal case of a party, but also about what cases must be accounted for on any reason- able hypothesis and which perhaps are susceptible to explanation by means of auxiliary hypotheses and yet are identified with some positions in the political debate itself and are antagonistic to others. For the participants in the political debate which partially constitutes the Conservative party or Sinn Fein, it is in part a debate about what counts as a central and what as a marginal case of party and other such related questions, since all such questions are involved in the questions of continuity and identity. But why is this so?

VIII

Consider such categories of social practice as politics, education, or science. Debate within such a practice is inseparable from debate about the practice, and both form parts of each practice. What is to count as an observation is a question on the answer to which the question of whether Jupiter has moons and if so how many can turn; what is the correct perspective in which to view party government is a question on the answer to which the question of whether party government in any genuine sense has ever existed in Ghana can turn, and consequently the

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7 Essential Contestability of Social Concepts

question of whether hypotheses about party government must be vin- dicated equally in Ghana as in Great Britain. The debates about the character of science or of politics or of education are of course norma- tive. Consider for example the continuing argument between Kuhn, Lakatos, Polanyi, and Feyerabend, an argument in which what is at stake includes both our ability to draw a line between authentic sciences and degenerate or imitative sciences, such as astrology and phrenology, and our ability to explain why "German physics" and Lysenko biology are not to be included in science. A crucial feature of these arguments is the way in which dispute over the norms which govern scientific prac- tice interlocks with debates over how the history of science is to be written. What identity and continuity are recognized will of course depend on what side is taken in these latter debates; but since these de- bates are so intimately related to the arguments about the norms govern- ing practice, it turns out that the dispute over norms and the dispute over continuity and identity cannot be separated. As with natural science, so also with politics and with education.

How we write the history of universities and what generalizations we feel able to frame about universities depend on which institutions we take to be instances of universities. Do we want to put in the same class the Paris of Abelard, the Oxford of Jowett, the land-grant colleges of the 1860s, and the English polytechnics of the 1960s? How we cate- gorize educational institutions and what norms define education for us cannot be separated. Equally, how we write the history of any particular educational institution will depend upon our judgments as to its con- tinuity and identity; and these in turn will involve judgments as to generalizations about and norms governing educational practice. Nor- mative debate is ineliminable from the question of how the concept of education is to be applied. The concept, like those of political parties or science-or for that matter of bourgeoisie or of tragic drama-turns out to be essentially contestable, an expression I borrow from Professor W. B. Gallie.

IX

Let me try to bring out the point of these arguments by considering the consequences of procedures which ignore them. Almond and Verba try to show that there is a significant relationship between freedom of expression and the amount of education available in a society.2 Suppose that someone interpreted their statistical analysis as affording support for a causal generalization to the effect that to increase the amount of education available in a given society tends to promote greater free-

2. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 122.

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dom of expression and discussion in that society. What counted as a prima facie counterexample to this thesis and what counted as a con- clusive (relatively conclusive, if you like) counterexample would depend entirely on the criteria for defining freedom of expression and education. Do we include Catholic seminaries? Or Hedge schools? Is Socrates' teach- ing included alongside that of Arnold of Rugby and that of Froebel and Montessori? Rival decisions to include or to exclude will depend upon rival understandings of education. Moreover such rival understandings will entail not merely decisions to include or to exclude but decisions as to what are to count as central cases and what as marginal, and our treatment of prima facie counterexamples is necessarily affected by this allocation. If this is ignored, as Almond and Verba ignore it, then we shall introduce covertly a normatively ordered understanding of edu- cation under the guise of neutral inquiry; and if this is so in the case of the concept of education, it is even more obviously so in the case of the concept of freedom of expression.

x

Suppose someone proposed to operationalize such concepts as those of education or freedom by definitional legislation. Would this not en- able us to propound a theory which would stand or fall on the predic- tions entailed by it, thus guaranteeing its objectivity? Two important features of this project are at once clear. The first is that the concepts thus operationalized would differ radically from those which we have hitherto possessed. They would not merely provide an alternative means of grouping the same subject matter which our present concepts define and capture; they would specify to some degree a different subject mat- ter, and in so doing a different and rival categorization. Any claim about its validity would be in conflict with other categorizations and since these, as we have already seen, involve normative claims, so would the aspiring scientific theory. To operationalize would be to participate in the debate, not to escape it.

Second, to redefine in this way appears usually in political and social science only to trivialize. By restricting what is to count as a political party or as voting behavior almost any generalization can be safeguarded from falsification. But this is only warranted if the restriction is not ad hoc, and any restriction introduced simply for the sake of operation- alizing would in fact be ad hoc in this trivializing way. That is to say, the expected consequence of the attempt to render certain areas of social and political inquiry amenable to scientific procedure ought to be the utterance of trivial generalizations about a subject matter other than that in which we were originally interested. The test of this hypothesis is in the pages of the political and social science journals.

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XI

Finally I have been careful not to make my contentions overgeneral. It is far from the case that all social concepts have the character of essential contestability. Indeed some social concepts are only able to function as they do and to have the range of application that they have because they lack essential contestability. A legal-cum-economic system, for example, normally cannot function unless there is a kind of agree- ment in definitions which precludes essential contestability. What counts as a contract, what counts as a bill of exchange or a check, what deter- mines the rate of exchange between currencies must be fixed in a way that such concepts as those of political party or tragic drama or educa- tion are not. It follows that the generalizations embodied in demand curves or in theories of monetary flow do achieve a noncontestable char- acter. Hence one crucial difference between economics on the one hand and sociology and political science on the other. Such concepts are not restricted to the economic sphere, and it would be going beyond the scope of this paper to investigate the relationship of essentially con- testable social concepts to noncontestable social concepts. But one last point needs to be made.

From the fact that some social concepts are noncontestable it does not follow that any area of social life is rescued from contestability. For a given economic system, with its corresponding bodies of theory, al- ways involves a delimitation of "the economic" as contrasted with, say, the political or the moral. But the concept of what belongs to the eco- nomic is indeed essentially contestable. This is why the argument be- tween bourgeois economies and Marxist economies is only secondarily about the content of economic theory, although both parties often con- tend as though it was primarily about such content. It is primarily an argument about what economics ought to be. This example suggests that even noncontestable social concepts are applied in a way that presup- poses a certain application and understanding of essentially contested concepts. But to establish this thesis would be to go further than I know how to at present.

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