Conceptual Engineering

It is often assumed that concepts from the formal sciences, such as mathematics and logic, have to be treated differently from concepts from non-formal sciences. This is especially relevant in cases of concept defectiveness, as in the empirical sciences defectiveness is an essential component of lager disruptive or transformative processes such as concept change or concept fragmentation. However, it is still unclear what role defectiveness plays for concepts in the formal sciences. On the one hand, a common view sees formal (...) concepts to be protected against defects because of their precise and stable nature. On the other, studies going back as far as Lakatos (1963) showcase the changeability of such concepts. In this paper, I will investigate if and how defectiveness based on the occurrence of inconsistencies can appear with formal concepts. To make the case as strong as possible, I employ a strict notion of formal concept that assumes the concept to have a fixed and definite extension. I will show that there are indeed certain types of defectiveness that cannot occur with such concepts; but that there are other types of defectiveness that do occur. This means that while formal concepts have to be treated differently than non-formal concepts, questions about defectiveness---as raised in the conceptual engineering debate and philosophy of science---can still be applied to them. I will highlight this point by showing how formal sciences have special strategies available to them that allow them to resolve defectiveness of their concepts in a flexible and informative manner. (shrink)

This paper asks a structural question: what is the disciplinary relation between philosophy and metaphilosophy? Rather than treating “discipline” as a vague sociological label, it uses a conceptual-engineering methodology to design a precise framework for disciplinarity. It argues that existing accounts (Heckhausen 1972; Kuhn 1996; Turner 2000) each satisfy some but not all of five key desiderata: conceptual autonomy, external compatibility, descriptiveness, categorization ability, and explanatory power. It then proposes a set-theoretic model that distinguishes internal (fields, methods, results) and external (...) (institutions, users, communication devices) disciplinary structures and defines sub-disciplines via subset relations over internal structures. Applied to contemporary academic philosophy, this framework shows that metaphilosophy is a discipline whose fields and results are proper subsets of philosophy’s, while its classification as a sub-discipline or an independent discipline turns on how broadly we construe “philosophical” methods. (shrink)

This essay argues that digital design now performs, in practice, what philosophers call conceptual engineering. Rather than revising concepts through analysis, digital systems operationalise them through architecture. Interfaces, algorithms, affordances, and attention structures together determine what can be seen, valued, and remembered—effectively externalising stages of cognition. By treating these mechanisms as sites of epistemic mediation, the essay shows how design infrastructures continuously redefine categories such as relevance, credibility, and connection through optimisation rather than reflection. This shift extends conceptual engineering beyond (...) linguistic critique, positioning it as a method for analysing and re-engineering the architectures that shape knowledge itself. The project invites a broader dialogue between analytic philosophy and design theory, proposing that the future of conceptual engineering lies not only in language, but in the systems that structure visibility, belief, and understanding. (shrink)

This paper examines whether conceptual engineering can proceed without intuitions, exploring the methodological tensions between Herman Cappelen’s normative reconstruction and Edouard Machery’s empirical turn. It argues that both approaches struggle with authority and implementation: intuitions collapse inward, while empirical description cannot generate revision. The essay proposes that digital design, through algorithmic feedback, participatory metrics, and normative system constraints, already performs conceptual engineering in practice. This “design turn” reveals a living model where concepts are tested and enacted, suggesting that philosophy can (...) learn from the architectures it critiques. (shrink)

This paper introduces Transcendental Adjudication (TA), a diagnostic procedure that clarifies and operationalizes the Kantian transcendental method. A transcendental argument identifies the structural preconditions for something to be possible, but before such an argument can be run, its candidate preconditions must be verified as genuine rather than false necessities: assumptions both competing frameworks treat as necessary preconditions when they are not, generating a false dilemma that conceals the structural solution. TA performs this verification through an eight-step schema with explicit detection (...) criteria, converting the identification of false necessities from post-hoc interpretation into constrained diagnosis. The method is demonstrated across solved cases spanning philosophy, science, and mathematics—Kant’s resolution of the rationalism/empiricism deadlock, Darwin’s dissolution of design versus chance, Einstein’s resolution of the Newton/Maxwell contradiction, and the independence of the parallel postulate—and applied prospectively to the dark matter/MOND dispute, demonstrating that the method extends beyond philosophy to active scientific deadlocks, where it generates a falsifiable diagnostic prediction. (shrink)

Standard Analytic Epistemology typically relies on conceptual analysis of folk epistemic terms such as ‘knowledge’ or ‘justification’. A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic perspective on this method leads to the worry that there might not be universally shared epistemic concepts, and that different languages might use folk notions that have different extensions. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that our epistemic common-sense terms pick out what is epistemically most significant or valuable. In my paper, I take these issues as a starting (...) point for exploring the prospects of an alternative methodological approach that I call ‘alethic instrumentalism’. The core idea behind this approach is to start with a properly designed epistemic goal and then to develop a framework of instrumentally valuable methods oriented towards this goal. This results in a somewhat revisionary framework of newly constructed core epistemic terms. In the paper, I elucidate the foundations of this new framework and address a number of methodological and content-related objections to the approach. (shrink)

The use of lexical signs like ‘knowledge’ has consequences. Not only do they have direct psychological resonances, but people ascribe beliefs and act based on their semantics. This paper proposes that such consequences are up for negotiation, and introduces a formal framework from financial theory to suggest constraints on those negotiations and implications of those constraints. The upshot is that changing language will be easier sometimes than others, and philosophers’ projects of linguistic change should be aware of those conditions.

As conceptual engineering fractures into explication pursuing exactness and amelioration pursuing justice, the field risks losing its focus. I argue that unifying these projects requires retrieving a crucial insight from Rudolf Carnap: that attempts to improve concepts must start with the preliminary stage of practical clarification. However, Carnap’s account of clarification in terms of predictive proficiency remains normatively inert and biased towards exactness. I expand it into a normative diagnosis of the needs underpinning a concept’s inferential structure. This reveals whether (...) properties like vagueness are flaws that need fixing or features worth preserving. Ultimately, practical clarification can orient a division of conceptual labour, determining when concepts call for scientific exactness or social utility and accommodating both aspirations within one methodology. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson’s metaphysics treats ontological and modal disputes through rules of use, discourse roles, and conceptual revision. I accept this function-first turn and detach it from the systemic functional linguistics used to motivate it in Rethinking Metaphysics. The needed premise is role pluralism: categories do different jobs in different practices. Natural-kind cases show why role pluralism needs a projectibility constraint. The cases of fish, jade, and race don’t separate conceptual engineering from projectibility realism, since Thomasson can accommodate their empirical corrections. (...) The harder case arises when a cat- egory keeps coordinating a field after losing the projection that gave it kind-standing. A pro- jectibility realist account adds the missing demotion rule: once a field and projection are fixed, stable projection failure can defeat a useful category profile. (shrink)

Many philosophers have recently become interested in conceptual engineering, or the activity of producing better conceptual schemes in human populations. But few, if any, are asking the question: what would it mean for actual human agents to possess the social authority to modify a conceptual scheme in this way? This paper argues for a deontological approach to conceptual engineering, wherein we have to secure social authority qua engineers before attempting to modify social concepts. I show that the dominant, consequentialist conception (...) of engineering violates basic rights that concept-users have, particularly over their own identity-constituting concepts. Using examples from the philosophy of race and sexuality, I show that conceptual engineers cannot authoritatively modify social concepts if they employ consequentialist reasoning about those concepts. (shrink)

AI safety, risk, and governance are becoming global agenda items, but the intensification of governance activity does not automatically clarify the object of risk. When different fields say that they seek to protect “humanity,” they implicitly point to preferences, lives, social order, or species continuity—concepts that are not mutually compatible. As a result, risk identification continually slides across dimensions. This paper is an exercise in conceptual engineering concerning the risk-bearing subject of AI-related existential risk to humanity. It also has significance (...) for social epistemology, the philosophy of technology, and AI risk governance. -/- This paper preserves the baseline of existing frameworks that understand “humanity” as Homo sapiens, but proposes a paradigm extension: the risk-bearing subject is always humanity as an embodied species; what this paper extends is not the risk-bearing subject, but the ways in which one and the same subject may suffer existential harm. The paper distinguishes two basic layers of possible harm—the biological-survival layer and the civilizational-conditions layer—and, within the latter, identifies the philosophical kernel, namely the category-calibration mechanism of foundational categories such as truth, evidence, responsibility, subjecthood, value, and meaning. AI may, through deprivation by substitution or mediated reconfiguration, weaken humans’ substantive participation in the functional systems of civilization, or cause foundational categories to lose stable calibration. Risk to the realization of subjecthood at the civilizational-conditions layer enters the scope of existential risk only when it acts upon foundational civilizational conditions, has diffusion capacity across domains and civilizational interfaces, may cause irreversible or difficult-to-reverse structural damage, and causes these harms to converge into overall, intergenerational damage to humanity’s capacity as a future-oriented subject. -/- What this paper provides is not a complete taxonomy of risks or a governance scheme, but the ontological coordinate system needed for AI risk identification. The central point is not to add civilization, institutions, or the philosophical kernel as new risk-bearing subjects, but to show how the same human subject may suffer existential harm through damage to civilizational conditions. (shrink)

This paper argues that the movement known as conceptual engineering cannot constitute a substantial methodological program for philosophy. The thought that conceptual engineering could be a revolutionary and/or revisionary method for philosophy rests on inaccurate understanding of the role that concepts play in philosophy. After showing how philosophy is ultimately interested in various phenomena, not the concepts capturing them, I argue that the practice most often touted by conceptual engineers—the revision of our entrenched concepts—is in fact impossible. What is possible—the (...) development of new concepts—is typically downplayed by conceptual engineers, and cannot serve as substantive methodology for philosophy. I then argue that while there is room for some activity deserving the name ‘conceptual engineering’, there is no intellectual project associated with ‘conceptual ethics’. I conclude by offering a new way of thinking about amelioration in philosophy in light of the limits of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Pluralism is relevant to conceptual engineering in many ways. First of all, we face the issue of pluralism when trying to characterise the very object(s) of conceptual engineering. Is it just concepts? Could concepts be pluralistically conceived for the purposes of conceptual engineering? Or rather, is it concepts and other representational devices as well? Second, one may wonder whether concepts have only one function in our mental life (representation) or, rather, a plurality of functions (including non-representational ones). Third, it is (...) a contended question whether conceptual engineering projects should pursue only one set of values and goals (epistemic ones) or, rather, a variety of values and goals, including non-epistemic ones. Finally, the engineering of a concept may result in a form of “local” conceptual pluralism, which gives rise to its own ontological and semantic challenges. Having explored the various ways in which pluralism becomes important for conceptual engineers, this contribution presents and summarizes the articles published in this special issue. (shrink)

It is generally recognized that there is no such thing as the correct explication of a given concept, but only one or more adequate explications. This paper addresses two questions: In what ways can there be more than one solution to a task of explication? And in what sense and under what conditions can diverse solutions give rise to conceptual pluralism? Based on an analysis of the general structure of explications, I first develop a systematic overview of the factors that (...) may be responsible for diverse outcomes in a task of explication. I then suggest conditions under which it is plausible to interpret diverse outcomes as giving rise to explication-based pluralism. The rest of the paper discusses various ways in which explications can actually lead to explication-based pluralism. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that recent efforts in the conceptual engineering of sexual orientation are practically misguided. More precisely, I argue that philosophers cannot implement a revision to the concept of sexual orientation because we lack conceptual authority over the concept. Furthermore, in virtue of how philosophy is currently structured, we are unlikely to acquire the relevant kind of conceptual authority. Along the way, I critically discuss an argument from Herman Cappelen for a more global pessimism about the implementation (...) problem. I also discuss some alternative strategies to achieving the political goals that motivate these recent efforts to engineer the concept of sexual orientation. Ultimately, I argue that philosophers should instigate a sort of conceptual abandonment by exploiting their social role as a conceptual gadfly. (shrink)

This paper argues that conceptual engineering comes in many guises, often depending on what type of concept is being engineered. Engineering a classical concept, one that stems from Plato and Frege, is very different from engineering, e.g., a prototype concept or an exemplar concept. The former are abstract and have necessary and sufficient satisfaction conditions. The latter, on the other hand, can and do differ from one person to the next and thus have the earmarks of conceptions. While it is (...) tempting to argue that classical concepts are of natural kinds while prototype and/or exemplar concepts are of socially constructed kinds, the paper argues that such classification is not tenable. Many of our concepts of natural kinds are prototype concepts, and many socially constructed kinds are specified with necessary and sufficient conditions and so are have the earmarks of classical concepts. While the discussion of conceptual engineering has mostly focused on classical concepts and how scholars can, do, and perhaps should ameliorate them, the paper emphasizes the importance of other types of concepts and how they can be engineered. (shrink)

The Implementation Problem for conceptual engineering is, roughly, the problem conceptual engineers face when attempting to bring about the conceptual change they support. An important aspect of this problem concerns the extent to which attempting to implement concepts can lead to unintended negative consequences. Not only can conceptual engineers fail to implement their proposals, but their interventions can produce outcomes directly counter to their goals. It is therefore important to think carefully about the prospect of attempted implementation leading to unintended (...) negative consequences: what sort of negative consequences can conceptual engineers expect? Are some forms of conceptual engineering more likely than others to lead to such consequences? And is conceptual engineering still viable even given the risk of such consequences? This paper addresses such questions. I begin by outlining different forms of conceptual engineering (Section 1), before examining how they can produce unintended negative consequences (Section 2). I then discuss some implications of the fact that attempted implementation can produce unintended negative consequences, suggesting that, among other things, some forms of conceptual engineering are less viable than others (Section 3). I conclude, though, by considering some of the ways in which conceptual engineering is nonetheless a worthwhile pursuit (Section 4). (shrink)

Conceptual Engineering promises to deliver a new (or unduly neglected) way of doing philosophy whereby progress is to be made by assessing and improving our representational devices (words, concepts, meanings). This methodology faces a famous objection. Namely, Strawson’s Objection: ‘To do [Conceptual Engineering] is not to solve the typical philosophical problem, but to change the subject’ (Strawson [1963]. “Carnap’s Views on Conceptual Systems versus Natural Languages in Analytic Philosophy.” In The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 503–518. (...) La Salle: Open Court). Despite being over sixty years old, this Objection has yet to receive a fully satisfactory treatment – or so it will be argued. In fact, there are really two worries at large here. There is Strawson’s original worry plus a strengthened, deeper problem: even if you are not changing the subject in doing Conceptual Engineering, you are still not solving the original problem. This deeper objection is The Old Problem Problem. The primary goal here is to offer a response to this Problem which, in turn, delivers a new solution to Strawson’s Objection. This then yields a response to a related worry (The New Problem Problem): Conceptual Engineers are just answering questions that weren’t being asked. The aim here is not to defend Conceptual Engineering as such but to gain a better (more pluralist) picture of what this new approach to philosophy does, and does not, involve. (shrink)

Communication strategies to shape public opinion can be applied to the philosophical program of conceptual engineering. I propose to look for answers to the implementation challenge for conceptual engineering on similar challenges that arise in other contexts, such as that of social movements. I claim that conceptual engineering is successfully practiced in other areas with direct consequences on the political landscape, and that we can apply to philosophy what we might learn from those successful practices. With that end in mind, (...) I explain the psychological approach to conceptual engineering. I present what has been called “the implementation challenge”, which is the problem that emerges from the possibility of control over the content of our concepts. The challenge consists in that if there is not such a control, conceptual engineering is not implementable. Then, I review some of the reactions that have been given to that challenge, and I defend the feasibility of conceptual engineering appealing to the collective action frames that social movements endorse as an instance of a successful kind of conceptual engineering and derive some strategies that might be of use for conceptual engineering in philosophy. Finally, I reply to some anticipated objections to my proposal. (shrink)

Philosophers’ debates about gender often look like metaphysical debates about what it really is to be a woman or a man, or what gender really is. I argue that these debates should rather proceed in the conceptual engineering mode. Instead of saying things like “A woman is X”, philosophers should say things like “The word ‘woman’ should be used to mean X (in context C)” and spell out their arguments accordingly. Reaching this conclusion does not require establishing that the debates (...) already are covertly about how we should use language. Even when some philosophers’ contributions to the debates currently are about reality and not (just) about how to use language, there can be good reasons for them to switch to the conceptual engineering mode. (shrink)

On a naive view of conceptual engineering, conceptual engineers simply aim at engineering concepts. This picture has recently come under attack. Sarah Sawyer (2018, 2020) and Derek Ball (2020) present two rather different, yet equally unorthodox, accounts of conceptual engineering, which they take to be superior to the naive picture. This paper casts doubts on the superiority of their respective accounts. By elaborating on the explanatory potential of “going meta”, the paper defends the naive view against Sawyer’s and Ball’s rival (...) proposals. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is a philosophical method that aims to design and spread conceptual and linguistic devices to cause meaningful changes in the world. So far, however, conceptual engineers have struggled to successfully spread the conceptual and linguistic entities they have designed to their target communities. This paper argues that conceptual engineering is far more likely to succeed if it incorporates empirical data and empirical methods. Because the causal factors influencing successful propagation of linguistic or conceptual devices are as complicated and (...) interwoven as they are, proper empirical research will greatly boost the likelihood that propagation is successful. In arguing for the superiority of empirical conceptual engineering over armchair-based conceptual engineering, this paper proposes a framework for understanding the causal forces at play in propagation. This is a three-part framework between the label of a lexical item, the psychological states associated with the lexical item, and the worldly things associated with the lexical item. By understanding the way causal forces affecting propagation play out at these three levels, conceptual engineers can better conceptualize, study, and harness the different causal forces affecting the success of their conceptual engineering projects. (shrink)

Everyone who has come up with a new idea or concept faces the same problem: they need to call it something. This choice is simultaneously arbitrary and important. The new idea could have any name, but some names for it are clearly better than others. This paper builds upon existing research on the perceived relationship between label and word meaning to better understand the way that label choice affects language design, particularly conceptual engineering. Across three experiments, the paper finds that (...) when learning novel concepts, the labels serving as vehicles for the novel concepts affect how people perceive the novel concepts’ content. In particular, the experiments find that labels influence people’s initial perception of novel concepts’ valence. Not all forms of information are readily extracted from labels, however, and subtle forms of information, particularly phonesthemes, do not appear to influence how people learn new concepts. Accordingly, conceptual engineers and other forms of language designers need to do careful research into how a given label will affect how their novel concept is interpreted by others. (shrink)

According to ordinary language philosophy (OLP), philosophical problems can be solved by investigating ordinary language, often because the problems stem from its misuse. According to ideal language philosophy (ILP), on the other hand, philosophical problems exist because ordinary language is flawed and has to be improved or replaced by constructed languages that do not exhibit these flaws. OLP and ILP together make up linguistic philosophy, the view that philosophical problems are problems of language. Linguistic philosophy is opposed to what may (...) be called, for lack of a better word, ‘traditional philosophy’ (TP), the view that philosophical problems can be solved by discovering non-linguistic facts. In the following, OLP, ILP, and TP are taken to be methodologies, that is, frameworks in which to interpret and evaluate different philosophical methods (i.e., argumentative strategies). The two linguistic methodologies are discussed separately with TP as a foil, and then used to interpret the status of different philosophical methods. While each of the methods discussed here finds a plausible interpretation in each methodology, there are other arguments for and against linguistic philosophy in general, and for and against ILP and OLP in particular. As none of these arguments is decisive, I conclude with a superficial moral about peaceful co-existence. (shrink)

One of the core insights from Eleanor Rosch’s work on categorization is that human categorization isn’t arbitrary. Instead, two psychological principles constrain possible systems of classification for all human cultures. According to these principles, the task of a category system is to provide maximum information with the least cognitive effort, and the perceived world provides us with structured rather than arbitrary features. In this paper, I show that Rosch’s insights contain important lessons for which kind of ameliorative proposals in endeavors (...) of conceptual engineering are feasible. I do this by highlighting one overlooked upshot of Rosch’s work, namely, that that naming practices play an extremely important role in the construction of perceived similarities within and dissimilarities between categories, and, correspondingly, the dissemination of social stereotypes that serve as markers between different categories that are otherwise similar. Thus, the existence of labeling practices make any ameliorative objective to ‘engineer away’ stereotypes from our conceptual practices potentially unobtainable. And while several intervention techniques might be proposed to overcome this limitation, all of them, I show, come with feasibility problems on their own. It might not be possible for us to engineer the undesirable stereotypes that shape our conceptual practices away. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is traditionally a conservative project. It analyses the virtues that humanity has been relying on since antiquity. This conservatism unduly limits the potential of virtue ethics to contribute to moral progress. Instead, we should pay more attention to constructionist virtue ethics with the help of conceptual engineering. I will argue that revising and ameliorating the virtue concepts which a community uses directly and indirectly leads to a change of the virtues that exist in this community. By revising and (...) innovating virtue concepts, we can re-make and improve the virtues that we have. (shrink)

We sometimes seek to change and improve our conceptual repertoire in some way. This is called ‘conceptual engineering’. In recent work, I have defended the ‘Speaker-Meaning Picture’ of conceptual engineering. Independently, while critiquing the conceptual engineering literature, Max Deutsch has argued against understanding conceptual engineering in terms of speaker-meaning. Deutsch’s critique targets what he calls the ‘standard account’ of conceptual engineering and its role in philosophy. In my contribution to this symposium, I also object to the ‘standard account’. I then (...) sketch a more moderate view, centred on the Speaker-Meaning Picture, arguing that it avoids Deutsch’s criticisms. I close by discussing a new objection to the Speaker-Meaning Picture, raised by Deutsch in this symposium: that it trivialises conceptual engineering methodology. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhere do the boundaries of the ‘should’ in conceptual engineering lie? Mona Simion suggests that the right kind of reason for a...

Consensus about how best to analyse trust remains elusive. This paper presents a function-first strategy for understanding trust. By identifying a common functional core to trust, we can unify various forms of trust as forms of the same thing while respecting trust’s diversity. I explicate a function-first model of trust according to which the grounds of trust differentially dispose trustors to rely on trustees. After motivating and developing the model, I address three objections. I conclude by orienting a function-first account (...) of trust toward future trust research and considerations of well-placed trust. (shrink)

What reasons do we have to use certain concepts and conceptions rather than others? Approaching that question in a methodologically humanistic rather than Platonic spirit, one might seek “reasons for concept use” in how well concepts serve the contingent human concerns of those who live by them. But appealing to the instrumentality of concepts in meeting our concerns invites the worry that this yields the wrong kind of reasons, especially if the relevant concerns are nonmoral ones. Drawing on Susan Wolf’s (...) work on the moral/nonmoral distinction and the neglected role of reasons of love, I argue that this worry is misplaced, and in fact overlooks some of our most important reasons to prefer certain concepts over others. Yet a lingering worry remains, namely that the value of concepts does not just lie in what they are good for. Drawing on another strand in Wolf’s work, I explore the question whether concepts can be valuable good-for-nothings, and show how this ultimately also underscores the importance of reasons of love as reasons for concept use. (shrink)

Not only Carnap, but also Quine has an account of explication. Roughly speaking, explication is the task of improving our concepts. Quine's particular account has several noteworthy features which distinguish it from Carnap's account. Even though Quine's understanding of explication is rather narrow, it can be generalised in different ways that allow us to put it to a new use. Before doing so, I discuss Quine's original account, place it within his oeuvre, and consider whether there is a broader notion (...) already in Quine's writings. Moreover, I relate explication to conceptual engineering, and propose to understand explication as a theory of communication. Given the communication perspective, I revisit some of Quine's core topics, viz., paraphrase and meaning. (shrink)

Carnap introduced his notion of explication to arrive at concepts that are precise enough for scientific purposes. As Carnap wants to precisify concepts, his notion of explication targets less precise concepts so that explications within mature mathematics are not possible. We argue that explications of mature mathematical concepts are both possible and widespread. We focus on foundational work, especially as done in the context of interactive theorem proving. Taking foundational work seriously necessitates explicit decisions which are generally ignored in mathematical (...) practice - and such developments are not captured by our usual notions of explication. To see this, we introduce Carnapian and Quinean explication and argue that they are not capable of accounting for intra-mathematical conceptual changes. We argue that these changes are best understood as explications and so need a different notion of explication. We suggest one candidate, called tolerant explication, and sketch how it handles the intra-mathematical cases. (shrink)

Many authors worry that metasemantic externalism renders conceptual engineering impossible, as the facts determining meaning are beyond our control. I argue that this externalist worry is misplaced: There is no conflict between metasemantic externalism and conceptual engineering. I start by criticizing two extant strategies to reconcile conceptual engineering with metasemantic externalism on the grounds that they both lead to violations of crucial epistemic and conversational norms. I then propose a novel account, according to which conceptual engineers should be seen as (...) re-introducing terms. This approach not only aligns with metasemantic externalism but also overcomes the issues present in extant strategies and stands on its own as a more plausible theory. I conclude by exploring the consequences of my account for implementation, and by defending it against objections. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is often understood as the practice of assessing and improving our representational tools with specific aims in mind. In this paper, I contribute to the engineering of the concept of pain with a particular focus on clinical utility. My engineering efforts center on the International Association for the Study of Pain’s (IASP) “official” definition of pain, first introduced in 1979 and revised in 2020. I discuss the general process of conceptual engineering and the original IASP definition of pain (...) and identify three desiderata for a definition suitable for clinical practice: it should be accurate, cognitively tractable, and promote justice in patient care. Evaluating the revised IASP definition against these desiderata, I argue that it is vague and fails to fully address persistent misconceptions about pain, and that additional revisions are therefore needed. I then propose an alternative definition engineered to better meet the demands of effective and just clinical practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that an adequate meta-semantic framework capable of accommodating the range of projects currently identified as projects in conceptual engineering must be sensitive to the fact that concepts (and hence projects relating to them) fall into distinct kinds. Concepts can vary, I will argue, with respect to their direction of determination, their modal range, and their temporal range. Acknowledging such variations yields a preliminary taxonomy of concepts and generates a meta-semantic framework that allows us both to (...) accommodate the full range of cases and to identify a proper subset of concepts for special ameliorative consideration. Ignoring such variations, in contrast, leads to a restricted meta-semantic framework that accommodates only a subset of the particular projects while generating implausible accounts of others. (shrink)

According to a prevailing view, conceptual engineering introduces a revolutionary philosophical methodology, challenging traditional conceptual analysis. However, in our paper, we argue that closer scrutiny reveals not only the falsity but also the inherent ambiguity of this narrative. We explore four interpretations of the "Anti-Novelty Claim", the claim that conceptual engineering is not a new way of doing philosophy. Discussing the Anti-Novelty Claim from the perspective of a text’s producer, the text’s consumers, and the exegetical potential of the text, we (...) examine each perspective’s metaphilosophical implications and demonstrate that taking each perspective requires different methods. Adopting these different methods, we argue that the different interpretations of the Anti-Novelty Claim range from nearly trivially true to unlikely but untested. Importantly, we emphasize that each interpretation offers unique philosophical insights, yet addressing them requires diverse types of evidence, preventing a singular, straightforward answer to whether conceptual engineering is new. (shrink)

Work is often said to be hard to define. A precise working definition may nevertheless be valuable for analytical purposes, such as discussing justice in the distribution of work or the future of work. This paper takes a conceptual engineering approach to the concept of ‘work’. It examines the most common features of definitions of work in the contemporary philosophy of work: pay, negation of leisure, effort, social contribution, necessity/instrumentality and production of a benefit/external good. Of these, it argues that (...) the latter two can be refined into two equally suitable, co-extensive working definitions: Work is activity that is instrumental and intermediary to satisfy needs and wants, and Work is activity that produces a benefit (or intermediary product to a benefit) external to the worker(s) doing the activity. These are useful working definitions by virtue of coming close to a core of ordinary language ‘work’, being easily adaptable for various purposes, and for tracking a central feature of the human condition of particular importance for the philosophy of work. (shrink)

The words we use to represent the world shape how we interpret and respond to it; language frames what it represents. In some cases, these frames can have prejudicial effects; for example, ‘workplace flirting’ versus ‘sexual harassment’. This paper examines how specific words and phrases (i.e., lexical frames) may anchor oppressive social practices. That is, by enabling a coordinated ‘way of looking’ at the world, these lexical frames may stabilise cognitive and affective habits which perpetuate wider forms of social coordination, (...) including oppressive practices. I examine how representational resources may become imbued with, and thereby replicate, ideological distortions. I subsequently show that this has important consequences for attempts to address hermeneutical injustice. When one attempts to fill a hermeneutical lacunae by baptising some previously obscured target, one may thereby frame the target in a distorting way. Specifically, one may replicate the distorting frame which anchors the oppressive practice one seeks to resist. Moreover, distorting frames may be especially appealing precisely because of their compatibility with the dominant ideology which offers a mistaken sense of understanding. I argue it is thus crucial to attend to the role of lexical frames in ameliorative projects. (shrink)

Appealing to the functions of concepts in conceptual engineering projects has been hailed as a promising avenue to explain defects of concepts, the possibility of amelioration, and the continuity of topic post engineering. Some of the most prominent theories of concept functions build on what I call the Usefulness Thesis, i.e. what makes something the function of a concept is what makes it useful. In this paper, I argue that this approach does not meet some of the most fundamental adequacy (...) criteria for a theory of function, that is, (1) they do not draw a stable function/accident distinction and (2) they cannot account for the normativity of functions. I show that theories of concept function that build on the Usefulness Thesis are all essentially forward-looking theories of functions and show that these theories face a problem of overreach and a vacuous normativity proviso. I further argue that they do not lend themselves to conceptual critique, so they are not fit for conceptual engineering purposes. (shrink)

Reclamation of a slur involves the creation of a new, positively-valenced meaning that gradually replaces the old pejorative meaning. This means that at a critical stage, the slur is ambiguous. It has been claimed that this ambiguity is polysemy. However, it is far from clear whether the view can explain why the introduction of the new meaning forces the old one out of existence. I argue that this datapoint can be explained by invoking the mechanism of homonymic conflict, and, therefore, (...) that the ambiguity involved in reclamation is homonymy. One generalization that follows from my account is that conventionalized verbal irony, unlike conventionalized metonymy and metaphor, begets homonymy. Along the way, I criticize the standard ways of drawing the distinction between polysemy and homonymy in terms of semantic and etymological relatedness. If the notions of polysemy and homonymy are to be invoked in explanations, they should be understood in terms of how meanings are stored in the mental lexicon. My account also provides an elegant way of conceptualizing the difference between two types of conceptual engineering, namely reclamation and amelioration. (shrink)

The topic of conceptual change is a natural target for integrated history and philosophy of science. Scholars working in this tradition have investigated concepts from many different sciences, often supplementing familiar historical and philosophical methods with tools from ethnography, cognitive science, and the digital humanities. After reviewing the literature, we single out two themes that seem especially promising targets for future work. First, as we point out, many &HPS analyses of conceptual change lean on metaphors likening concepts to biological species (...) or artifacts. Drawing on previous studies of metaphors in science, we encourage more attention to the substantive impact of metaphor choice. Second, &HPS scholarship has often moved beyond describing and explaining conceptual change to address normative questions. This agenda is echoed by the recent trend of conceptual engineering in analytic philosophy. Though the two bodies of research have hardly interacted so far, we point out several opportunities for fruitful mutual contribution. (shrink)

We describe a method, based on Jennifer Nado’s proposal for classification procedures as targets of conceptual engineering, that implements such procedures by prompting a large language model. We apply this method, using data from the Wikidata knowledge graph, to evaluate stipulative definitions related to two paradigmatic conceptual engineering projects: the International Astronomical Union’s redefinition of PLANET and Haslanger’s ameliorative analysis of WOMAN. Our results show that classification procedures built using our approach can exhibit good classification performance and, through the generation (...) of rationales for their classifications, can contribute to the identification of issues in either the definitions or the data against which they are being evaluated. We consider objections to this method, and discuss implications of this work for three aspects of theory and practice of conceptual engineering: the definition of its targets, empirical methods for their investigation, and their practical roles. The data and code used for our experiments, together with the experimental results, are available in a Github repository.. (shrink)

Conceptual amelioration aims to make the world a more just place by ameliorating our concepts. I offer three arguments against this enterprise as currently practiced to show how social philosophy aimed at producing social change can be better practiced. First, ameliorators often fail to provide plausible stories to vindicate their claims about how conceptual amelioration will unfold in our nonideal world. Second, ameliorators’ focus on postulating meanings of “concepts” risks distracting from important normative theorizing about justice. Third, ameliorators tend to (...) overstate the importance of conceptual change for social change. The upshot is that, since such projects tend to be done poorly on their own terms and to evince excessively idealistic views of social change, we should reconsider how to engage in such projects. Drawing on these criticisms, I argue that if conceptual amelioration should be practiced, it should be in service of ideology critique. (shrink)

Responsibility gaps arise when harm is caused by autonomous systems and we are unable to appropriately assign moral responsibility for that harm. This occurs because (i) no human being can be held accountable given the autonomous nature of the system that created the harm; and (ii) the system itself lacks the relevant features to be considered a responsible agent. Neither the humans who developed and deployed the system nor the machines themselves are responsible. Hence, the gap arises: there is no (...) one to be held responsible for the harm, yet (unlike cases of natural disasters) we have the intuition that someone should be responsible. In this paper, we tap into the literature on conceptual engineering to explore two strategies regarding this issue. On the one hand, we can identify the risks of gaps and attempt to ameliorate the concept of moral responsibility in the hope of removing them. On the other hand, we can highlight the risks of conceptual revision and aim to preserve our current concept as it is. In this paper we explore the underutilized strategy of preservation with respect to RESPONSIBILITY and highlight the upsides of such an approach. (shrink)

In his 2023 book The Concept of Democracy: An Essay on Conceptual Amelioration and Abandonment, Herman Cappelen argues that we should stop using ‘democracy’ and ‘democratic’ (D-words). In this paper, I critically engage with Cappelen’s argument, focusing primarily on his contention that D-words likely fail us semantically, either by being meaningless or by having massively mismatched extensions. Against Cappelen, I argue for three claims. First, even if D-words aren’t fully semantically settled, they are likely at least partially settled. Second, even (...) if D-words are only partially semantically settled, they can be useful enough to retain in our conceptual repertoire. Third, even if the extension of D-words is massively mismatched, this would be a serious consideration for their abandonment only under specific conditions that don’t seem to obtain in the case of the mismatches that Cappelen considers. I also address the objection that my defence of D-words is overly optimistic, as it underestimates the extent of their normative exploitation. (shrink)

Much of the existing literature on conceptual engineering in the philosophy of technology has concentrated on identifying when and how concepts are disrupted under pressure, and how such disruptions can be addressed through conceptual engineering interventions. By and large, this literature has predominantly resorted to conceptual engineering as an approach to diagnose and remedy disruption. Recent work by Lundgren (2024) suggests that a shift from restorative to preventative conceptual engineering is warranted: rather than analysing disruptions post hoc, concepts can be (...) deliberately designed to resist disruption from the outset. This paper introduces and develops the notion of conceptual resilience as the capacity of concepts to maintain continuous functional adequacy despite tensions, pressures, or other disturbances. Unlike Lundgren’s (2024) account, which frames this phenomenon in terms of conceptual stability, we argue that resilience better accommodates a broader range of modes of resistance to disruption, including those that involve adaptive transformation rather than static continuity. We further argue that conceptual resilience is not a binary property, but a capacity exhibited in degrees. Drawing from interdisciplinary literatures, we introduce two heuristic framings—Conceptual Resilience as Immutability (CRI) and Conceptual Resilience as Adaptability (CRA)—which capture contrasting yet complementary ways in which concepts preserve their functional adequacy under pressure. (shrink)