Can Concepts be Non-Ideal?

Dr Jane Gatley (Swansea University)

Wednesday 20th May 4pm-5.30pm UK time. 

"Can concepts be non-ideal?”

The sort of non-ideal theorising that is useful to educators aims ‘to guide a decision that will make institutions more just’ (Brighouse, 2026, p.84). This sort of theorising can be a valuable instrument to help practitioners and policy makers think through the complex ethical dilemmas they face in highly constrained circumstances. Ameliorative conceptual analysis is a methodology that considers the normative purposes of concepts, and engineers concepts that best meet those ends. Since ameliorative conceptual analysis is guided by normative ends, it makes sense to think that some of those normative ends derive from non-ideal theorising. This paper asks about the relationship between non-ideal theorising and ameliorative conceptual analysis. I argue that while non-ideal theorising can justify a broad range of decisions and actions in educational policy and practice, concepts are less malleable. This is because of the role that concepts play in our ability to think. I use the examples of gender and race to show that non-ideal theorising might permit a range of decisions about whether to address or omit these concepts from the curriculum, but it does not permit engineering non-ideal concepts, even if these help to evade the constraints faced by decision makers. Finally, I consider how far a concept can be engineered to evade constraints without going too far.

The seminar will be held online. Please email [email protected] for the link to join.

This seminar is part of the Foundations and Methods of Moral Analysis in Educationseminar series supported by a grant from the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.

All welcome.