Concept
Category decomposition
The situation in which technology or new knowledge separates features that historically travelled together, after which a concept built on their correlation stops describing reality.
Many moral and social concepts describe not one property but a bundle of properties that, in ordinary conditions, almost always accompany one another. While the bundle holds, the concept works and appears fundamental.
When the bundle comes apart, it turns out the concept had no single referent. One then has to return to the question of which property actually mattered, and rebuild the norm around that.
This is the movement’s main working device and also its most dangerous point: the same device can be used in bad faith to dismantle a norm that is needed. We do not yet have a criterion for legitimate decomposition.