Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

The classic programme of conceptual engineering in Cappelen, Eklund, or Burgess/Cappelen/Plunkett envisages a two-stage ameliorating process. First, we assess ‘F’ and determine what the term should express. Second, we bring it about that ‘F’ expresses what it should express. The second stage gives rise to a practical challenge: the implementation challenge. Engineering advocates need to explain by what means they can implement specific conceptual changes in the natural language shared by a community– a feat Herman Cappelen argues to be beyond our understanding and control both on an externalist and on an internalist meta-semantics.

Adding to recent proposals by Koch, Jorem, and Pinder, I devise a new and rather different answer to the implementation challenge. Enlisting the influential theory of norms by Cristina Bicchieri, I argue that engineering social norms in Bicchieri’s technical sense amounts to an effective, specific, and feasible means to implement specific conceptual change. I also argue that striving to implement conceptual changes via social norms is superior both to striving to do so via conventions, and to trying to do so via moral norms.