What Should Conceptual Engineering Be All About?

Abstract

Conceptual engineering is commonly characterized as the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. Little has been said, however, on how best to construe these representational devices—in other words, on what conceptual engineering should be all about. This paper tackles this problem with a basic strategy: First, by presenting a taxonomy of the different possible subject matters for conceptual engineering; then, by comparatively assessing them and selecting the most conducive one with a view to making conceptual engineering an actionable method, that is, a method that can be applied effectively and consistently to specific case studies. The outcome is that conceptual engineering should be all about concepts on pain of pragmatic inconsistencies otherwise.

Conceptual engineering: A road map to practice

“…Now that we have clarified the process, let us turn to target objects: what is it that conceptual engineers are engineering? This question has recently received a fair amount of attention (Haslanger, 2020a, 2020b; Isaac, 2021a, c; Koch, 2021a; Machery, 2017; Richard, 2020; Sawyer, 2018, 2020a, 2020b, 2021; Scharp, 2013), in part because the notion of a concept is itself a candidate for re‐engineering (Chalmers, 2020; Isaac, 2020; Scharp, 2020; Thomasson, 2020) and partly because a number of authors actively resist the idea that conceptual engineering has much to do with concepts at all (Cappelen, 2018; Flocke, 2020; Nado, 2020, 2021a; Pinder, 2021; Thomasson, 2021; see Nefdt, 2021 and Sawyer, 2020a for criticism). In what follows, we develop a pluralistic response to this issue 9 .…”

“…This type of conceptual content can, but need not, coincide with what we earlier described as a concept's application conditions (cf. Isaac, 2020, 2021a, b, c; Koch, 2021a; Machery, 2017, 2021). Thus, where the conceptual engineer's goal is to alter the unconscious and automatic inferences that people are likely to draw about what they encounter, psychologically construed conceptual content is a plausible target of their endeavors.…”

“…In addition, some have questioned whether any insightful generalization can be drawn from such an all-encompassing coinage (cf. Isaac, 2021a).…”

“…14 14 This being granted, philosophers may still disagree over which of these truly deserves the label of “conceptual engineering” (Isaac, 2021a, b). …”

Which Concept of Concept for Conceptual Engineering?

“…3 Firstly, concepts are usually treated as representational devices that serve cognitive functions for the execution of some cognitive tasks-that is, tasks whose execution requires the exercise of some cognitive competences. For instance, how the concept of sexual harassment enables its victims to make sense of the offensives they have experienced in a hostile work environment, or how the concepts of the GDP 2 See Isaac (2021b) on why conceptual engineering should be about concepts, instead of any other representational devices (linguistic meanings, intensions, speaker-meanings, etc. ), on pain of pragmatic inconsistencies otherwise.…”