Words change meaning over time. Some meaning shift is accompanied by a corresponding change in subject matter; some meaning shift is not. In this paper I argue that an account of linguistic meaning can accommodate the first kind of case, but that a theory of concepts is required to accommodate the second. Where there is stability of subject matter through linguistic change, it is concepts that provide the stability. The stability provided by concepts allows for genuine disagreement and ameliorative change in the context of conceptual engineering. I Introduction. The meaning of a word can, and typically does, change over time. I take meaning shift as a datum. Here are some examples. The term 'meat' used to mean food in general, and used to have a correspondingly broader extension than it has today; 'a clue' used to mean a ball of yarn, and hence had an entirely different extension from the one it does today; and the term 'spinster' used to mean a woman who spun wool, and thus had an extension that is distinct from but, perhaps, partially overlapping with the one it has today. There are historical, etymological connections between the old and the new meanings in each of these cases. I leave at an intuitive

No abstract

Recent examples of conceptual engineering within the philosophical arena include the proposal by Clark and Chalmers (1998) to extend the traditional understanding of belief, the proposal by Haslanger (2000) to rethink our conceptions of race and gender, and the proposal by Scharp (2013) to reconceive the notion of truth. But there is a good sense in which all philosophical theorizing is at root a form of conceptual engineering, and philosophical attempts throughout the ages to capture the nature of knowledge, evidence, causation, explanation, justice, rights, emotion, consciousness, and so on, count equally as examples. Moreover, examples of conceptual engineering can also be found beyond the confines of philosophy. Indeed, much of scientific theorizing falls under the umbrella of conceptual engineering, as do recent proposals in the social arena to overturn the traditional conceptions of, for example, rape, marriage, and women, where such proposals are largely driven by the desire for social justice and equality. Conceptual engineering has a long history and concerns a wide-ranging and diverse array of topics. Of late, philosophical attention has turned to the nature of conceptual engineering itself. What exactly is conceptual engineering? What unites the diverse array of cases? It will help to distinguish at the outset a broad sense of conceptual engineering from a narrow sense. In the broad sense, conceptual engineering is a form of theorizing that involves a proposed change in linguistic practice. Sometimes this can take the form of a proposal to eliminate the use of a term on the grounds that it is defective in some way, for example by failing to play the explanatory role it was intended to play (e.g. 'phlogiston', 'élan vital'); sometimes it can take the form of a proposal to introduce a new term on the grounds that it is required for explanatory purposes that have not hitherto been recognized (e.g. 'antimatter', 'epistemic entitlement'); and sometimes it can take the form of a proposal to keep a term that is currently in use, but to revise the current use on the grounds that this would constitute some kind of improvement, whether theoretical, practical or normative. Theorizing that involves a proposed change in linguistic practice of any of these kinds-elimination, introduction or revision-is conceptual engineering in the broad sense. But the paradigms of conceptual engineering around which recent debate concerning the nature of conceptual engineering has centred are to be found in that subset of cases that involve the revised use of a term. Each of

In this Introduction, we aim to introduce the reader to the basic topic of this book. As part of this, we explain why we are using two different expressions (‘conceptual engineering’ and ‘conceptual ethics’) to describe the topics in the book. We then turn to some of the central foundational issues that arise for conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics, and finally we outline various views one might have about their role in philosophy and inquiry more generally.

This chapter provides an externalist account of talk and thought that clearly distinguishes the two. It is argued that linguistic meanings and concepts track different phenomena and have different explanatory roles. The distinction, understood along the lines proposed, brings theoretical gains in a cluster of related areas. It provides an account of meaning change which accommodates the phenomenon of contested meanings and the possibility of substantive disagreement across theoretical divides, and it explains the nature and value of conceptual engineering in a way that addresses recent prominent concerns.