Kitsik Eve
Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna, Austria.
Philos Stud. 2025;182(9):2657-2676. doi: 10.1007/s11098-025-02374-0. Epub 2025 Jul 14.
Some sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers, among others, have expressed worries about the inflation of concepts related to negative experiences, harm, or injustice (for example, the concepts of racism, sexual harassment, and human rights). Others welcome and contribute to the linguistic changes. What is at stake in these disagreements? In this paper, I first give an account of what conceptual inflation, in one important sense, is: change in linguistic practices that makes it easier to indicate a problem of a certain category. Then, I argue-building on work by Shen-yi Liao and Nat Hansen-that such conceptual inflation of problems neither significantly limits nor enhances our ability to communicate about the relevant sub-problems (such as workplace harassment and street harassment) and to recognize the similarities and differences between them. This is because our linguistic resources are flexible, and we are capable of creatively using and developing those resources. There is, however, another way of making sense of the disagreements. The issue at stake could be the allocation of collective attentional resources to (alleged) problems. There are plausible mechanisms whereby how we use the terms in question (such as "sexual harassment") influences that allocation.
一些社会学家、心理学家和哲学家等表达了对与负面经历、伤害或不公正相关概念（例如种族主义、性骚扰和人权概念）膨胀的担忧。其他人则欢迎并促成了语言上的变化。这些分歧的关键是什么？在本文中，我首先阐述在一个重要意义上概念膨胀是什么：语言实践中的变化，这种变化使得更容易指出某一特定类别的问题。然后，我基于廖申义（Shen-yi Liao）和纳特·汉森（Nat Hansen）的研究进行论证，即这类问题的概念膨胀既不会显著限制也不会增强我们就相关子问题（如职场骚扰和街头骚扰）进行沟通以及识别它们之间异同的能力。这是因为我们的语言资源具有灵活性，而且我们有能力创造性地运用和开发这些资源。然而，还有另一种理解这些分歧的方式。关键问题可能是集体注意力资源在（所谓的）问题上的分配。存在一些合理的机制，我们使用相关术语（如“性骚扰”）的方式会影响这种分配。
