Privacy: Essentially contested, a family resemblance concept, or a family of conceptions?
Privacy: Essentially contested, a family resemblance concept, or a family of conceptions?
The status of the concept of privacy is disputed. In this paper I consider arguments by Daniel Solove, that privacy is a family resemblance concept (in the sense of Wittgenstein, and by Deirdre Mulligan et al that it is an essentially contested concept (in the sense of Gallie). I argue that, although there are good reasons for taking it as a family resemblance concept, that this only explains agreement, not disagreement. Hence the theory will not serve Solove's purposes, and is rather consistent with agreement. Similar considerations suggest that privacy is not a normative concept, and hence that it is cannot be essentially contested. I argue instead that there are multiple conceptions of privacy, and furthermore disagreement about privacy are explained by the existence of parallel conversations about privacy that take place at 7 levels.
Privacy, Family resemblance theory, Essentially contested concepts, phenomenology, norms, Preferences, rights, privacy law, data protection
O'hara, Kieron
0a64a4b1-efb5-45d1-a4c2-77783f18f0c4
7 October 2018
O'hara, Kieron
0a64a4b1-efb5-45d1-a4c2-77783f18f0c4
O'hara, Kieron
(2018)
Privacy: Essentially contested, a family resemblance concept, or a family of conceptions?
2018 Amsterdam Privacy Conference, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
05 - 08 Oct 2018.
17 pp
.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
The status of the concept of privacy is disputed. In this paper I consider arguments by Daniel Solove, that privacy is a family resemblance concept (in the sense of Wittgenstein, and by Deirdre Mulligan et al that it is an essentially contested concept (in the sense of Gallie). I argue that, although there are good reasons for taking it as a family resemblance concept, that this only explains agreement, not disagreement. Hence the theory will not serve Solove's purposes, and is rather consistent with agreement. Similar considerations suggest that privacy is not a normative concept, and hence that it is cannot be essentially contested. I argue instead that there are multiple conceptions of privacy, and furthermore disagreement about privacy are explained by the existence of parallel conversations about privacy that take place at 7 levels.
Text
SSRN-id3262405
- Author's Original
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Published date: 7 October 2018
Venue - Dates:
2018 Amsterdam Privacy Conference, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2018-10-05 - 2018-10-08
Keywords:
Privacy, Family resemblance theory, Essentially contested concepts, phenomenology, norms, Preferences, rights, privacy law, data protection
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Local EPrints ID: 425031
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/425031
PURE UUID: 223ff49a-a63b-4c2a-9a8e-b70610a643c2
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Date deposited: 09 Oct 2018 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 03:20
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