The venue: Krakowskie Przedmiescie 3 (Faculty of Philosophy), room 1
Saturday
9.45-10.00 Workshop Opening
10.00 – 11.30 Steffen Koch: An empirical argument for conceptual engineering (talk)
11.30 - 12.00 Coffee break
12.00 – 13.30 Max Deutsch: On the Prevalence of Metalinguistic Negotiation (talk)
13.30 - 15.30 Lunch break
15.30-17.30 Anand Vaidya: Cross-Cultural Conceptual Engineering (masterclass)
19.00 Official workshop dinner at Peaches Gastro Girls (here)
Sunday
10.30 – 12.00 Esa Díaz-León: Conceptual Evolution vs. Conceptual Revolution: A normative account of the distinction (talk)
12.00 – 12.30 Coffee break
12.30 – 14.30 Esa Díaz-León: Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Revision without Changing the Subject (masterclass)
14.30 – 16.30 Lunch break
16.30 – 18.00 Krzysztof Sękowski: Method of Cases and Conceptual Engineering (talk)
19.00 Informal dinner & drinks at Pardon, To Tu (here)
Abstracts:
Max Deutsch (University of Hong Kong):
TALK: On the Prevalence of Metalinguistic Negotiation
Some philosophers argue that there is a kind of dispute, metalinguistic negotiation (MLN), in which disputants appear to be disagreeing over a non-linguistic matter of fact, but are instead engaged in implicit normative disagreement over how to use a key term framing the dispute. In this talk, I will argue that MLN is not nearly as prevalent in philosophy or other areas of inquiry as some have suggested, and, hence, that MLN is considerably less metaphilosophically significant than it is sometimes taken to be. I will also discuss several ways in which the (non-)prevalence of MLN bears on broader theoretical issues such as (a) the nature of dispute and disagreement more generally, (b) the extent to which philosophy consists in trivial, "merely verbal" disputes, (c) the prevalence, in philosophy and other areas, of implicit "conceptual engineering", and (d) the continuing fallout for philosophical methodology of the failure to properly distinguish between semantic and speaker's meaning, and, relatedly, between meaning and use.
Esa Díaz-León (University of Barcelona):
TALK: Conceptual Evolution vs. Conceptual Revolution: A normative account of the distinction
Projects in conceptual ethics (or conceptual engineering, or amelioration—I will use these terms interchangeably)— aim to discover the terms and concepts that we should employ for different goals and purposes (such as achieving social justice), as opposed to descriptive projects, or projects in conceptual analysis, which traditionally aim to discover the concepts that we actually associate with our terms (or what our terms actually mean), that is, the ordinary concepts (or meanings).
In this talk, my main question focuses on how to draw the distinction between revising a concept vs. replacing a concept with another, and the distinction between changing a concept (either by revising or replacing it) and improving our understanding of the concept.
I will first explain and critically assess how two prominent philosophers (Joshua Glasgow 2020 and Sally Haslanger2020b) have understood these distinctions, and I will then provide an alternative account of the distinctions in terms of the pragmatic and normative considerations that are invoked in each process. Contra Glasgow, I will argue that the distinction between revising and replacing a concept is politically and philosophically significant. Contra Haslanger, who assumes a wholly externalist framework in order to develop her account, I will argue that an internalist (or more precisely a hybrid) framework can provide a useful account of the difference between the three phenomena (namely, better grasping a concept vs revising the concept vs replacing it with another concept), and can do some explanatory work that a purely externalist account cannot do.
MASTERCLASS: Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Revision without Changing the Subject
Conceptual engineering is the project of assessing and revising our representational tools. Sally Haslanger (2000), a prominent advocate of this project, introduced the notion of an analytical project in philosophy (or an ameliorative project, as Haslanger 2006 calls it), and distinguished it both from the conceptual project of revealing the contours of our ordinary concepts (i.e. the manifest concept, as Haslanger 2006 calls it), and the descriptive project of revealing the objective kinds we are actually tracking with our vocabulary (i.e. the operative concept, as Haslanger 2006 calls it). In contrast, the ameliorative project aims to reveal the target concept, that is, the concept that we ought to be using, given our (legitimate) aims and purposes.
One important foundational issue that has been prominent in the last two decades is the problem of the change of subject. This was already mentioned by Haslanger (2000) and has recently received a lot of attention. This objection goes back to Peter Strawson’s (1963) critique of Carnap’s notion of explication. In a nutshell, Strawson’s objection claims that attempts to improve ordinary concepts in order to make them more precise and more apt to be studied by the sciences are not relevant to philosophy, because if we revise those ordinary concepts by means of making them more precise, then we are no longer dealing with the original philosophical question that prompted us to investigate that ordinary concept to start with.
Steffen Koch (2021) argues that the change of subject objection that most contemporary philosophers are concerned with is different from Strawson’s original objection. Strawson’s objection was motivated by his specific conception of philosophy, according to which the aim of philosophy is to investigate our ordinary concepts, so that revising our ordinary concepts or replacing them with other, more precise concepts is of no use to philosophy. However, as Koch points out, most contemporary philosophers concerned with conceptual engineering would not share Strawson’s conception of philosophy. However, Koch argues, there is a related objection in the vicinity that is of concern to current advocates of conceptual engineering. Koch (2021) calls this the neo-Strawsonian challenge to conceptual engineering, and it goes like follows: when conceptual engineers revise a concept (or replace it with another), they could take the revision too far, to an extent where the resulting concept is of no relevance to the original philosophical problem involving this concept. In response to this challenge, many advocates of conceptual engineering have tried to provide an account of the limits of conceptual revision, that is, what kinds of revisions to a concept are relevant to the philosophical projects that prompted the revision to start with, and what kinds of revisions go too far so that they are no longer relevant to the original philosophical problem, and simply change the subject.
The neo-Strawsonian challenge seems to assume that if we revise a concept too much, then it will no longer be relevant to the original philosophical problem that prompted the revisions. I believe that the distinction between conceptual revisions that keep the subject and conceptual revisions that change the subject is a useful one, and therefore it would be useful to have a principled response to the neo-Strawsonian challenge.
My main aim in this talk is to develop and defend a novel solution to the neo-Strawsonian worry that is inspired by Haslanger’s solution to Strawson’s worry. I will argue that my proposal provides a coherent solution to the neo-Strawsonian objection posed by Koch (2021) that is worth exploring
Steffen Koch (Bielefeld University):
TALK: An empirical argument for conceptual engineering
Conceptual engineers who are concerned with language seek to modify linguistic practices, such as altering the meanings and usage of existing terms or introducing entirely new ones. Despite the current popularity of such linguistic interventions, it is uncertain whether they can genuinely bring about positive change. This talk employs psycholinguistic findings on the cognitive effects of verbal labels to construct a framework for anticipating the cognitive outcomes of conceptual engineering. In specific situations, conceptual engineers may argue that their linguistic interventions contribute to improving the precision of our categorization judgments, ultimately enhancing cognitive performance.
Krzysztof Sękowski (University of Warsaw):
TALK: Method of Cases and Conceptual Engineering
Method of cases is usually understood as a descriptive method, and thereby as a part of conceptual analysis. However recently some philosophers have been argued that this method might be interpreted as providing reasons to revise or regulate scrutinized concepts, which would make this method a part of conceptual engineering enterprise. In the masterclass I will show how such normative interpretations of the method of cases might look like with reference to recent literature. Moreover, I will discuss the relation between such interpretation and other methodological problems concerning the role of intuitions in philosophical argumentations and the reliability of the usage of method of cases.
Mieszko Tałasiewicz (University of Warsaw):
An important variety of conceptual engineering is linguistic engineering. While languages naturally evolve in the course of time, just as living organisms do, linguistic engineering can be compared to genetic engineering. Mona Simion and Christoph Kelp (2020) argue that philosophers - in the role of linguistic engineers – can and should actively devise and promote changes of meanings, just as biotechnologists devise and bring about certain changes in biological traits of organisms. As an example of successful (i.e. enduring and valuable) linguistic engineering, Simion and Kelp present the case of introduction of new job titles. According to these authors, the value of the new terms include that the bearers of these titles feel better about themselves and are more motivated at work. It is a very problematic claim, though. There can be measures of valuable progress other than just asking people about their feelings. The evaluation of the impact of introducing new job titles should include, for instance, a scrupulous examination of whether the salary on these jobs co-varies with the terminological changes, and if so, how. Perhaps the terminological changes helped the managers to keep the salaries low and squeeze more work from their employees without paying them more?
A vast field of experimental and organizational problems opens here. We might discuss some of them at the workshop and see how much of experimental work, including cooperation with the social sciences, before declaring any case of linguistic engineering “successful”.
Anand Vaidya (San Jose State University): Cross-Cultural Conceptual Engineering
In this master class Anand Vaidya will explain the methodology of ACE-philosophy that he has defended for a decade. It is a method that combines x-phi, a-phi, and c-phi in a way to generate non-factive philosophical understanding. He will then go on to distinguish between the understanding component of ACE and the constructing component of ACE. The constructing component is similar to the project of conceptual engineering for social justice, but it is based on cross-cultural conceptual construction (CCCC). He will then explain why and how one is to engage in (CCCC). He will consider three cases. He will begin with a discussion of the attempt to construct epistemic grounding from the analytic discussion of grounding in metaphysics but for the purposes of explaining how classical Indian epistemologies tried to distinguish between basic sources of knowledge in a way that cuts across epistemic issues and mental ontology. This example is based on his already published work on arthapatti, a potential source of inferential knowledge debated in Indian epistemology that is neither inductive, deductive, nor abductive. He will then move on to two new cases. The case of moral status where he is trying to construct for global philosophy a concept of moral status based on Anglo-Analytic and Jaina philosophy that casts a wide net for moral status that is open to conscious and non-conscious creatures both having moral status. He then will discuss the case of certification where he is trying to construct for Anglo-Analytic epistemology an internalist conception of justification that is not a component of knowledge but a property of knowledge that allows for the solution of epistemic skepticism in terms of traditional versions based on an evil demon and new versions based on deep fakes.