Delia Belleri: Conceptual engineering, language use, and the neutral implementation challenge

Tuesday November 12 2024 @11:30 (CEST)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract
Conceptual engineering projects have been targeted by the so-called “implementation challenge”, which calls for an account of how it is possible to change meanings, given that we have no control over the complex ways in which meaning supervenes (for example) on patterns of use. In the first part of this paper, this supervenience-based formulation of the challenge is questioned, and a new formulation is proposed, which strives to be as metasemantically neutral as possible. The new challenge is called “the uptake problem”, and its theoretical advantages are defended over those of the supervenience-based version. In the second part of the paper, a response to the uptake problem is outlined. This will involve reflecting on the notion of control, and especially on aspects that pertain to its gradability and relativity to an agent’s goals. The aim is to put into proper perspective, and ultimately question, the threat posed by (this version of) the implementation challenge.

Bio
Delia Belleri is a Ramón y Cajal fellow at the Institute of Philosophy (IFS) at CSIC – Spanish National Research Council, in Madrid. Her research interests include philosophy of language, ontology, metaphysics, and metaphilosophy. In her latest projects, she addresses foundational questions about conceptual change, and particularly the idea of conceptual engineering. Her research has been published in Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Synthese, and Inquiry (among others), as well as in collections issued by Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.