Acceptability is the characteristic of a thing being subject to
acceptance
Acceptance in human psychology is a person's assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing a process or condition (often a negative or uncomfortable situation) without attempting to change it or protest it. The concept is close in meaning to ...
for some purpose. A thing is acceptable if it is sufficient to serve the purpose for which it is provided, even if it is far less usable for this purpose than the ideal example. A thing is unacceptable (or has the characteristic of unacceptability) if it deviates so far from the ideal that it is no longer sufficient to serve the desired purpose, or if it goes against that purpose.
Acceptability is an amorphous concept, being both highly subjective and circumstantial; a thing may be acceptable to one evaluator and unacceptable to another, or unacceptable for one purpose but acceptable for another. Furthermore, acceptability is not necessarily a logical or consistent exercise. A thing may be sufficient to serve a particular purpose but in the subjective view of the decision maker be unacceptable for that purpose.
Dov M. Gabbay
Dov M. Gabbay (; born October 23, 1945) is an Israeli logician. He is Augustus De Morgan Professor Emeritus of Logic at the Group of Logic, Language and Computation, Department of Computer Science, King's College London.
Work
Gabbay has authored ...
, Odinaldo T. Rodrigues, Alessandra Russo, ''Revision, Acceptability and Context: Theoretical and Algorithmic Aspects'' (Springer, 2010), . Philosopher
Alex Michalos writes that "
e concept of acceptability is as ambiguous and troublesome as probability, confirmation, belief, justice, etc.", and assigns two potential meanings to the term with respect to the possible acceptability of hypotheses. Acceptability is a fundamental concept in numerous fields, including economics, medicine, linguistics, and biometrics.
Acceptable risk and acceptable loss
Concepts of acceptability that have been widely studied include
acceptable risk in situations affecting human health, and
acceptable loss
An acceptable loss, also known as acceptable damage or acceptable casualties, is a military euphemism used to indicate casualties or destruction inflicted by the enemy that is considered minor or tolerable. In combat situations, leaders have to ...
in particularly dire situations. The idea of not increasing lifetime risk by more than one in a million has become commonplace in public health discourse and policy. It is a heuristic measure. It provides a numerical basis for establishing a negligible increase in risk. Comparable concepts include an
acceptable level of violence
British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling's reference to an "acceptable level" of violence in the Northern Ireland conflict was a political gaffe that helped shape public discussion about the conflict.
Maudling said in a December 1971 press c ...
, or an
acceptable daily intake
Acceptable daily intake or ADI is a measure of the amount of a specific substance (originally applied for a food additive, later also for a residue of a veterinary drug or pesticide) in food or drinking water that can be ingested (orally) daily ove ...
of hazardous substances.
Environmental decision making allows some discretion for deeming individual risks potentially "acceptable" if less than one in ten thousand chance of increased lifetime risk. Low risk criteria such as these provide some protection for a case where individuals may be exposed to multiple chemicals e.g. pollutants, food additives or other chemicals. In practice, a true zero-risk is possible only with the suppression of the risk-causing activity.
Stringent requirements of 1 in a million may not be technologically feasible or may be so prohibitively expensive as to render the risk-causing activity unsustainable, resulting in the optimal degree of intervention being a balance between risks vs. benefit. For example, emissions from hospital incinerators result in a certain number of deaths per year. However, this risk must be balanced against the alternatives. There are public health risks, as well as economic costs, associated with all options. The risk associated with no
incineration
Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of substances contained in waste materials. Industrial plants for waste incineration are commonly referred to as waste-to-energy facilities. Incineration and other high ...
is potential spread of infectious diseases, or even no hospitals. Further investigation identifies options such as separating noninfectious from infectious wastes, or air pollution controls on a medical incinerator.
Acceptable variance
Acceptable variance is the range of variance in any direction from the ideal value that remains acceptable. In
project management
Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. Th ...
, variance can be defined as "the difference between what is planned and what is actually achieved". Degrees of variance "can be classified into negative variance, zero variance, acceptable variance, and unacceptable variance".
[Srinivasan Desikan, ''Software Testing: Principles and Practice'' (2006), p. 431.] In
software testing
Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...
, for example, "
nerally 0-5% is considered as acceptable variance" from an ideal value.
Acceptance testing
In engineering and its various subdisciplines, acceptance testing is a test conducted to determine if the requirements of a specification or contract are met. It may involve chemical tests, physical tests, or performance tests.
In systems en ...
is a practice used in chemical and engineering fields, intended to check ahead of time whether or not a thing will be acceptable.
Logic and argumentation
From a logical perspective, a thing can be said to be acceptable if it has no characteristics that make it unacceptable. Various logic formulations of this principle have been developed, for example, that "a theory Δ is acceptable if for any
wff α, Δ does not prove both α and ¬α", and that "the acceptability of a proposition P in a system S depends on its coherence with the propositions in S".
[Frederick F. Schmitt, "Epistemology and Cognitive Science", in Ilkka Niiniluoto, Matti Sintonen, Jan Wolenski, ''Handbook of Epistemology'' (2004), p. 894.] Notably,
Dov Gabbay
Dov M. Gabbay (; born October 23, 1945) is an Israeli logician. He is Augustus De Morgan Professor Emeritus of Logic at the Group of Logic, Language and Computation, Department of Computer Science, King's College London.
Work
Gabbay has authore ...
, et al., have observed that something that is logically acceptable may not be subjectively acceptable to a given individual, and vice versa:
"The main approaches which have been developed for reasoning within an argumentation system rely on the idea of differentiating arguments with a notion of acceptability".
[Leila Amgoud and Claudette Cayrol, ]
On the Acceptability of Arguments in Preference-Based Argumentation
', arXiv:1301.7358 (2018). Two models of acceptability have been developed for this purpose, one in which "
acceptability level is assigned to a given argument depending on the existence of direct defeaters, or defeaters", and another in which "
ceptability with respect to a rational agent relies upon a notion of defense", with the complete set of arguments that a rational agent may accept being required to defend itself against any defeater.
Hungarian mathematician
Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos (, ; hu, Lakatos Imre ; 9 November 1922 – 2 February 1974) was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its "methodology of proofs and refutations" in its pr ...
developed a concept of acceptability "taken as ''a measure of the approximation to the truth''".
[W. Stegmüller, ''Collected Papers on Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and History of Philosophy, Volume 2'' (2012), p. 104.] This concept was criticized in its applicability to philosophy as requiring that better theories first be eliminated.
Despite such efforts to formulate parameters, acceptability "is a subjective construct that varies between users and in time". Philosopher James B. Freeman defines acceptability as a "ternary
relation
Relation or relations may refer to:
General uses
*International relations, the study of interconnection of politics, economics, and law on a global level
*Interpersonal relationship, association or acquaintance between two or more people
*Public ...
between a statement, a person, and a point in time", distinguishing this view of acceptability from one according to which it is a
property
Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...
of statements only. Philosopher David M. Godden, discussing when propositions may be acceptable to interlocutors in argument, characterizes the consensus among philosophers as follows: "
mmon knowledge">mmon knowledge generally provides good grounds for the acceptability of a claim, whereas
popular opinion does not."
Negotiation
Acceptability is a key premise of
negotiation
Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties to reach the desired outcome regarding one or more issues of conflict. It is an interaction between entities who aspire to agree on matters of mutual interest. The agreement c ...
, wherein opposing sides each begin from a point of seeking their ideal solution, and
compromise
To compromise is to make a deal between different parties where each party gives up part of their demand. In arguments, compromise is a concept of finding agreement through communication, through a mutual acceptance of terms—often involving var ...
until they reach a solution that both sides find acceptable:
Where an unacceptable proposal has been made, "a counterproposal is generated if there are any acceptable ones that have had already been explored".
Since the acceptability of proposition to a participant in a negotiation is only known to that participant, the participant may act as though a proposal that is actually acceptable to them is not, in order to obtain a more favorable proposal.
See also
*
Acceptable daily intake
Acceptable daily intake or ADI is a measure of the amount of a specific substance (originally applied for a food additive, later also for a residue of a veterinary drug or pesticide) in food or drinking water that can be ingested (orally) daily ove ...
*
Acceptable level of violence
British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling's reference to an "acceptable level" of violence in the Northern Ireland conflict was a political gaffe that helped shape public discussion about the conflict.
Maudling said in a December 1971 press c ...
*
Acceptable quality limit
The acceptable quality limit (AQL) is the worst tolerable process ''average'' (''mean'') in percentage or ratio that is still considered acceptable; that is, it is at an acceptable quality level.Dodge, Y. (2003) ''The Oxford Dictionary of Statisti ...
*
Acceptable use policy
An acceptable use policy (AUP), acceptable usage policy or fair use policy is a set of rules applied by the owner, creator or administrator of a computer network website, or service. That restricts the ways in which the network, website or system m ...
References
Sources
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Further reading
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{{wiktionary
Positive mental attitude
Conceptual modelling
Negotiation
English words