How to engineer a concept
- PDF / 238,868 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 27 Downloads / 247 Views
How to engineer a concept Vera Flocke1
Accepted: 2 September 2020 Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract One dimension of cognitive success concerns getting it right: having many true beliefs and no false ones. Another dimension of cognitive success concerns using the right concepts. For example, using a concept of a person that systematically excludes people of certain demographics from its extension is a sort of cognitive deficiency. This view, if correct, tasks inquirers with critically examining the concepts they are using and perhaps replacing those concepts with new and better ones. This task is often referred to as ‘‘conceptual engineering’’. However, so far it is unclear what exactly happens in cases of conceptual engineering. How does language change when we engineer a concept? This article offers an answer. I propose a view on which, when speakers assess the truth of propositions, they often rely on assumptions with regard to what is required for their truth. For example, when speakers assess whether unborn fetuses are people, they rely on assumptions with regard to what is required to be a person. Based on this idea, I develop a model of conceptual engineering according to which speakers ‘‘engineer concepts’’ when they change how they assess the truth of propositions. For example, speakers engineer the concept of a person when they change how they assess the truth of the proposition that unborn fetuses are people. Keywords Conceptual engineering Social reality Social construction Nonfactual disagreements
& Vera Flocke [email protected] 1
Bloomington, USA
123
V. Flocke
1 Introduction One dimension of cognitive success concerns getting it right: having many true beliefs, and no false ones. Another dimension of cognitive success concerns relevance. For example, knowing the number of hairs on my cat’s body presumably is not a case of cognitive success—you are wasting your cognitive capacities—but when a doctor knows the symptoms of many kinds of illness, that is cognitive success. And yet another dimension of cognitive success concerns using the right concepts. For example, using a concept of a person that systematically excludes people of certain demographics from its extension is a sort of cognitive deficiency. The idea that the concepts we use in our thought and inquiries can be better or worse has sparked several debates in recent years.1 Some philosophers argue that certain concepts that are currently in use should be improved or replaced by better ones. For example, Haslanger (2000) argues that the gender concepts that are currently in use should be improved. Other philosophers argue that certain debates are best understood as concerning which concepts we should use. For example, Thomasson (2017) argues that metaphysical debates about the nature of personhood are best understood as concerning which concept of a person we should use. More radically, Cappelen (2018) argues that a big proportion of philosophical debates overall are cases of conceptual engineering. Yet other philosophers debate th
Data Loading...
