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Herman Cappelen - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics - Conceptual Engineering: The Master Argument
Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, 2020Co-Authors: Herman CappelenAbstract:This chapter develops and defends the Master Argument for Conceptual Engineering: (1) If W is a word that has a meaning M, then there are many similar meanings, M1,M2,...,Mn, W could have. (2) We have no good reason to think that the meaning that W ended up with is the best meaning W could have: there will typically be indefinitely many alternative meanings that would be better meanings for W. (3) When we speak, think, and theorize it’s important to make sure our words have as good meanings as possible. (4) As a corollary: when doing philosophy, we should try to find good meanings for core philosophical terms and they will typically not be the meanings those words as a matter of fact have. (5) So no matter what topic a philosopher is concerned with, she should assess and ameliorate the meanings of central terms. I respond to seven objections to this argument.
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Oxford Scholarship Online - The Worldliness of Conceptual Engineering
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018Co-Authors: Herman CappelenAbstract:This chapter defends the initially radical sounding idea that Conceptual Engineering involves Engineering the world. According to the author’s view, Conceptual Engineering is not about the concept of marriage, or the word ‘marriage’, but about marriage itself. This means that Conceptual Engineering involves literally changing the world. It provides arguments in favor of the worldly construal of Conceptual Engineering, stemming from the account of samesaying given in Chapter 10. It then suggests that the worldly construal is not as radical as it sounds, and provides arguments against the idea that Conceptual Engineering involves Engineering concepts, changing the constitutive principles of concepts, or manipulating persisting entities. It closes by drawing out some metaphilosophical implications of the worldly construal of Conceptual Engineering.
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Oxford Scholarship Online - Varieties of Conceptual Engineering
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018Co-Authors: Herman CappelenAbstract:Chapter 2 gave an overview of the varieties of Conceptual Engineering. This chapter shows how the tools of the Austerity Framework enable us gain a greater understanding of the different kinds of Conceptual Engineering. Some engineers (such as Haslanger and Clark and Chalmers) are concerned with improving the way we speak about a topic. Others, most notably Scharp, are concerned with concepts that they call inconsistent. It is argued that we think of these concepts as lacking an adequate metasemantic base. Finally, there are engineers who seek to exploit lexical effects of certain words, and so are happy to change words’ meanings even if that means changing topic. The chapter goes on to consider the connections between these three kinds of Conceptual Engineering, and ends by considering some conservative and some radical features of the Austerity Framework.
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Oxford Scholarship Online - Conceptual Engineering without Bedrock and without Fixed Points
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018Co-Authors: Herman CappelenAbstract:This chapter considers whether there are any limits to Conceptual Engineering, developing the idea that there are no safe spaces from Conceptual change. First, it considers Chalmers’s argument for bedrock concepts. It argues that Chalmers’s claim that there is an asymmetric structure in the space of disputes is an (implausible) empirical claim. Second, it considers Eklund’s claim to the effect that our thinnest normative concepts are irreplaceable, and this is a limit to Conceptual Engineering, and shows that Eklund doesn’t establish this. It ends by revisiting some old worries, defending the choice of the term ‘Conceptual Engineering’, and responding to the claim that by making Conceptual Engineering inscrutable and out of control, it has been debunked rather than defended. However, Conceptual Engineering is very hard for us to do, but so is (almost) everything that is important to us.
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Oxford Scholarship Online - Externalist Conceptual Engineering
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018Co-Authors: Herman CappelenAbstract:This chapter continues to consider some foundational semantic issues important for the author’s theory, and for Conceptual Engineering in general. It argues that Conceptual Engineering is not—despite the nomenclature—concerned with concepts, but rather with the intensions and extensions of words. It introduces externalism about meaning, which is a key component of the Austerity Framework, and draws connections between meaning change and externalist discussions of reference shift. It responds to the objection that externalism makes changing meaning either impossible or extremely difficult by denying the first—it’s built into externalism that meaning change is possible—and frankly accepting the latter. It then argues that not only semantic values but also metasemantics can change over time, draws out some consequences, and discusses expressions that do not have intensions or extensions.
Max Deutsch - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Speaker’s reference, stipulation, and a dilemma for Conceptual engineers
Philosophical Studies, 2020Co-Authors: Max DeutschAbstract:Advocates of Conceptual Engineering as a method of philosophy face a dilemma: either they are ignorant of how Conceptual Engineering can be implemented, or else it is trivial to implement but of very little value, representing no new or especially fruitful method of philosophizing. Two key distinctions frame this dilemma and explain its two horns. First, the distinction between speaker’s meaning and reference and semantic meaning and reference reveals a severe implementation problem for one construal of Conceptual Engineering. Second, the distinction between stipulating meanings and Conceptually analyzing allows us to see why, on another construal of what Conceptual Engineering involves, the practice is neither a new nor neglected philosophical methodology. The article also argues that semantic externalism is not the root of the implementation problem for Conceptual Engineering, and that the usual rationale for adopting the practice, one that ties its value to the amelioration of “Conceptual defects”, is unsound.
Kevin Scharp - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Conceptual Engineering for truth: aletheic properties and new aletheic concepts
Synthese, 2020Co-Authors: Kevin ScharpAbstract:What is the property of being true like? To answer this question, begin with a Canberra-plan analysis of the concept of truth. That is, assemble the platitudes for the concept of truth, and then investigate which property might satisfy them. This project is aided by Friedman and Sheard’s groundbreaking analysis of twelve logical platitudes for truth. It turns out that, because of the paradoxes like the liar, the platitudes for the concept of truth are inconsistent. Moreover, there are so many distinct paradoxes that only small subsets of platitudes for truth are consistent. The result is that there is no property of being true. The failure of the Canberra plan analysis of the concept of truth, points the way toward a new methodology: a Conceptual Engineering project for the concept of truth. Conceptual Engineering is assessing the quality of our concepts, and when they are found defective, offering new and better concepts to replace them for certain purposes. Still, there are many aletheic properties , which are properties satisfied by reasonably large subsets of platitudes for the concept of truth. We can treat these aletheic properties as a guide to the multitude of new aletheic concepts, which are concepts similar to, but distinct from, the concept of truth. Any new aletheic concept or team of concepts might be called on to replace the concept of truth. In particular, the concepts of ascending truth and descending truth are recommended, but the most important point is that we need a full-scale investigation into the space of aletheic properties and new aletheic concepts—that is, we need an Aletheic Principles Project (APP).
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Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics - Philosophy as the Study of Defective Concepts
Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, 2020Co-Authors: Kevin ScharpAbstract:From familiar concepts like tall and table to exotic ones like gravity and genocide, they guide our lives and are the basis for how we represent the world. However, there is good reason to think that many of our most cherished concepts, like truth, freedom, knowledge, and rationality, are defective in the sense that the rules for using them are inconsistent. This defect leads those who possess these concepts into paradoxes and absurdities. Indeed, I argue that many of the central problems of contemporary philosophy should be thought of as having their source in philosophical concepts that are defective in this way. If that is right, then we should take a more active role in crafting and sculpting our Conceptual repertoire. We need to explore various ways of replacing these defective concepts with ones that will still do the work we need them to do without leading us into contradictions.
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Replies to Bacon, Eklund, and Greenough on Replacing Truth
Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, 2018Co-Authors: Kevin ScharpAbstract:Andrew Bacon, Matti Eklund, and Patrick Greenough have individually proposed objections to the project in my book, Replacing Truth. Briefly, the book outlines a Conceptual Engineering project – our...
Mark Pinder - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Conceptual Engineering, Metasemantic Externalism and Speaker-Meaning
Mind, 2019Co-Authors: Mark PinderAbstract:What is the relationship between Conceptual Engineering and metasemantic externalism? Sally Haslanger has argued that metasemantic externalism justifies the seemingly counterintuitive consequences of her proposed Conceptual revisions. But according to Herman Cappelen, metasemantic externalism makes Conceptual Engineering effectively impossible in practice. After raising objections to Haslanger’s and Cappelen’s views, I argue for a very different picture, on which metasemantic externalism bears very little on Conceptual Engineering. I argue that, while metasemantic externalism principally operates at the level of semantic-meaning, we should understand Conceptual Engineering to largely operate at the level of speaker-meaning. This ‘Speaker-Meaning Picture’ has two key benefits. Firstly, it makes Conceptual Engineering often easy in practice. Secondly, it suggests a new, normative response to the well-known objection that Conceptual Engineering serves only to change the subject.
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Scharp on inconsistent concepts and their engineered replacements, or: Can we mend these broken things?
Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, 2019Co-Authors: Mark PinderAbstract:ABSTRACTKevin Scharp’s influential work on the alethic paradoxes combines an extensively developed inconsistency theory with a substantial Conceptual Engineering project. I argue that Scharp’s inco...
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The Austerity Framework and Semantic Normativity
Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, 2018Co-Authors: Mark PinderAbstract:ABSTRACTAccording to Herman Cappelen's Austerity Framework, Conceptual Engineering doesn't involve concepts, and barely involves Engineering. I begin by raising two objections to the Austerity Fram...
Matteo De Benedetto - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Explicating ‘Explication’ via Conceptual Spaces
Erkenntnis, 2020Co-Authors: Matteo De BenedettoAbstract:Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the method of explication as a procedure for Conceptual Engineering in philosophy and in science. In the philosophical literature, there has been a lively debate about the different desiderata that a good explicatum has to satisfy. In comparison, the goal of explicating the concept of explication itself has not been central to the philosophical debate. The main aim of this work is to suggest a way of filling this gap by explicating ‘explication’ by means of Conceptual spaces theory. Specifically, I show how different, strictly-Conceptual readings of explication desiderata can be made precise as geometrical or topological constraints over the Conceptual spaces related to the explicandum and the explicatum. Moreover, I show also how the richness of the geometrical representation of concepts in Conceptual spaces theory allows us to achieve more fine-grained readings of explication desiderata, thereby overcoming some alleged limitations of explication as a procedure of Conceptual Engineering.