Creación del “Job Map”

Linking now to my previous discussion of strong and weak connectivity, paradigms are those objects which satisfy a large number of conditions, or satisfy a sufficient number of conditions of greater weight, or satisfy few conditions, but those with the most weight, etc. They are strongly connected to other members of the category. The conditions and their respective weights are both important in settling on paradigms. In general, paradigms and weighted features will be determined by competent language use: for example, we will look at all the activities that competent language users call ‘games’, note the features which are common to many or most games (the weighted features), and see that some games are strongly connected to others (paradigmatic games, if these exist). This is a descriptive process. We will regard as borderline those activities that are weakly connected to games, or possess features of contrasting categories, at least to some degree (excessive violence, for example, which is itself a vague concept).

However, the situation with DEMOCRACY is somewhat different. There is, in general, no

consensus among competent users of the English language as to the meaning of the term ‘democracy’. Some stress representation in government, others direct participation in government. There is also disagreement over which countries are democracies. Some

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I will content myself with providing the following characterisation of degree vagueness: “Degree- vagueness consists of those cases in which the vagueness stems from the lack of precise boundaries between application and non-application– or at least their apparent lack – along some dimension.” (Hyde 2010, 16)

claim the United States is a democracy because government is elected, there is a system of judicial review, etc. But others claim that American disparities in wealth limit the access of many to positions of political leadership, and may dispute that the United States is a ‘democracy’, or may dispute that it is a paradigmatic ‘democracy’ (Waldron 2002, 149–151).12

Different parties in a dispute over DEMOCRACY will assign different weights to the

features of the family-resemblance concept. They are, in effect, making the concept somewhat more precise and establishing rival stipulative conceptions. This is not a descriptive process, but an evaluative one: the parties are claiming that it is the particular features they select that ought to be the ones democracies exhibit in order to be called ‘democracies’. The resemblance of some objects to these stipulative conceptions will still be susceptible to interactions between the two kinds of vagueness discussed, combinatory and degree vagueness. If an object possesses some of the conditions satisfied by the stipulative conception, it resembles it. If one of these conditions is regarded as particularly important for category membership, then its possession even to a relatively small degree may still count as a salient resemblance. And, of course, there will be borderline cases where we are unsure.13 Moreover, if an object possesses features of a contrast category, this will count as a dissemblance. For example, if a country’s

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The fact that the concept of DEMOCRACY has no clear paradigm cases is a consequence of its being ‘essentially contestable’, a notion I discuss in the concluding chapter to this thesis.

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Note that the family-resemblance structure of a concept like DEMOCRACY can lead not only to vagueness of application, but also to other forms of indeterminacy of application (involving ambiguity or underspecificity, for example). This means that the criteria may require interpretation in order to be applied, and it may not be clear what the appropriate interpretation is (Connolly 1993, 14). These other forms of indeterminacy are of little interest in the present article, in which I focus on vagueness.

constitution possesses elements of authoritarian decision making, a feature of the contrast category DICTATORSHIP, this dissemblance will negatively affect whether that country

falls under a stipulative conception of DEMOCRACY.

Let me summarize this second section. Family-resemblance concepts are collections of satisfaction conditions for membership in a category. One can supplement the family- resemblance accounts by considering contrast categories. Membership of a category is then decided by considering not only resemblances but also dissemblances (resemblances to the contrast category). Objects which possess all or many of the family-resemblance features, or satisfy those criteria that are commonly found among members of the category (positively weighted for membership), and do not possess features of a contrast category (negatively weighted for membership), are strongly connected to the category and are paradigms of the category. However, conceptions can also be stipulative, where stipulation is a more precise determination of the features required for membership, as well as of those which disqualify for membership. Objects that possess fewer features in common with fewer members of the category, or possess features of the contrast category, are more weakly connected to the category. Some of the latter may be borderline cases arising from the combinatory and degree vagueness exhibited by resemblance and dissemblance relations; we may not be sure which features are necessary and sufficient for category membership, nor to what degree they should be satisfied.

We now have the tools we need to discuss family-resemblance accounts of WOMAN; the

notions of the interplay between resemblance and dis-semblance, of strong and weak connectivity, of conceptions (paradigmatic and stipulative) and the vagueness they give rise to, all play a role in the following sections. In particular, in the next section I present two family-resemblance accounts of WOMAN, and present a critique of them based on the

claim that they take insufficient consideration of relations of dis-semblance (connection to the contrast category MAN). I propose an improved version which takes both resemblance and dissemblance into account. In sections four and five, I analyse the vagueness of membership of the category WOMAN, and explain how it grounds the

contestability of membership.