I prefer Minsky's term "suitcase word", which applies to most of the examples I can think of (consciousness, emotions, morality, justice, fairness, etc).
Example: the word "morality" can create difficultly because there are so many tangled layers of meaning that vary from person to person. Alternate, more easily discussed words might be "ethics" (less baggage) or "conduct" (perhaps no baggage).
Suitcase word seems to be a nicer name for polysemy - the ability of word to be packed with meanings - which is often surprisingly unproblematic in ordinary speech and writing. Essentially contested concept, on the other hand, takes this polysemy as a starting point but adds another quality - that all those employing a particular usage of the word seem to think that it has a single, correct meaning/usage. Namely theirs. This parallax effect makes the contestation constitutive (essential) to the concept.
How about this: "suitcase word" means one word, different concepts to different people. Which seems aligned with your definition. "Essentially contested concept", on the other hand, I can't think of an example of two people contesting the same concept. I'm sure examples exist, I'm just drawing a blank.
My own experience is that all the words I listed are surprisingly problematic in conversations / debates. An example of difficulty. Take the question, "can a machine be conscious"? You would expect that the tedious arguing could be shut down with the statement "maybe that's like asking whether a submarine can swim." But there is endless debate on the subject. Consciousness is a suitcase word. And it seems, an "essentially contested concept", or is it? The utility of the term is still unclear to me. Id love to hear examples, I'm probably not seeing the full picture.
I've always called those words 'soft categories'; they don't refer to the state of reality, but to the models we use to explore it. (And there are as many models as there are brains to hold them.)
They are prone to making people agree with each other without requiring that they understand each other or how reality actually behaves. They're sort of like low order approximations: if we all say "p is about 3," nobody disagrees. (Or if someone does, they may risk rejection for it.) Either way, it doesn't help you solve complex problems.
The solution I usually propose is to not use the term at all: to avoid it in its entirety.
I've noticed this situation often. To me, the issue usually appears to stem from the fact that someone (possibly myself) typically has a deep emotional bias that they're unwilling/unable to recognize or acknowledge. Something profoundly scares or disturbs them in such a fundamental way that it's easier to imagine a reality where that problem doesn't exist than to accept an extremely uncomfortable truth.
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