Conceptual engineering is a field in

analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United ...

that focuses on how to best assess and improve our

concept Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...

ual schemes and repertoires. One of its key features is its

normative Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A norm in ...

agenda: conceptual engineers aim to prescribe which concepts we ''ought to'' have and use, instead of merely describing those we have and use. The most standard reference in the literature is to

Rudolf Carnap Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. ...

's notion of

explication Explication (german: Explikation) is the process of drawing out the meaning of something which is not clearly defined, so as to make explicit what is currently left implicit. The term ''explication'' is used in both analytic philosophy and literar ...

as a precursory method of conceptual engineering for theoretical purposes. Conceptual engineering can be understood in terms of its three components: design, which is about the normative improvement of our concepts; implementation, which is about the actual uptake of the prescribed concepts via advocacy strategies; and evaluation, which is about the quality assessment of our concepts along different dimensions (explanatory,

epistemic Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the Outline of philosophy, branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, an ...

, moral, etc.). Current work in conceptual engineering goes in two main directions. Case study research on the one hand, focuses on specific concepts and then advocates for specific ameliorations. Metaphilosophical research, on the other hand, explicitly theorizes conceptual engineering as a

philosophical method In its most common sense, philosophical methodology is the field of inquiry studying the methods used to do philosophy. But the term can also refer to the methods themselves. It may be understood in a wide sense as the general study of principles ...

and deals with its foundational issues. A common objection to conceptual engineering argues that instead of revising and improving existing concepts, conceptual engineering creates ''new'' concepts incongruent with the old ones, and is thus philosophically irrelevant or merely changing the subject. One response to this objection is to take a functionalist view of conceptual engineering, such that so long as the new concepts serve the same ''function'' as the old concepts, conceptual engineering preserves the relevant subject matter and no problematic discontinuity obtains. Another response, invoked by

Herman Cappelen Herman Wright Cappelen (born 1967) is a Norwegian philosopher. He is currently the Chair Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Biography Cappelen is the son of author and publisher Peder Wright Cappelen and actress Kari Sim ...

, argues that the relevant continuity to be preserved in conceptual engineering is that of ''topics''; as long as there is continuity in the topics our concepts address, Cappelen argues, there is continuity in our philosophical inquiry even as the intension and extension of concepts change.

References

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External links

Supplement to Rudolf Carnap: D. Methodology
at the

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. E ...

PhilPapers Entry on conceptual engineering

YouTube Channel "Conceptual Engineering"

ConceptLab – University of Oslo
Analytic philosophy