62. On Conceptual Engineering
(Epistemic status: just my opinion/frame, but I claim to know whereof I speak. With thanks to IL, JSW, and PR.) When people talk about conceptual engineering, what do they mean? And why is conceptual engineering so difficult and yet so important? To triangulate this practice properly, we must surely look at it from many angles - math, philosophy, intuition, and utility, for the best few I can think of. Before any of that, here's a first attempt to describe what conceptual engineering is: it's the cognitive technology or practice of carefully defining some concept. It has to be either a natural category of objects or of other abstractions, or else a property that objects or abstractions might have; it has to both live in the world and be useful for further efforts regarding the world. You can sometimes do conceptual engineering without really trying to; whoever invented currency engaged in conceptual engineering, as was whoever kicked off the Great Sandwich Debates. The importan...