ABSTRACT
This chapter considers several explanations of the nature of conceptual disputes and the reasons why they run so deep and are so difficult to resolve. It examines W. B. Gallie's essential contestability thesis, according to which parties to a conceptual debate favor conceptions that place importance on different aspects of a complex concept. In some sense, Gallie seems to be arguing, the different conceptions each stress a different, but valuable and important, aspect of the concept, and there is no way to adjudicate which is the superior. The chapter explores why the participants in these conceptual debates are so wedded to their positions. It argues that a person's favored conception of, say, liberty is not freestanding, but linked to her favored conceptions of equality and justice. The chapter concludes with a contrast between two ways of understanding political theories, namely: as ideologies and as justificatory.
