Conceptual engineering and conceptual extension in science

Title
Conceptual engineering and conceptual extension in science
Publication Date
2024
Author(s)
Boucher, Sandy C
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0575-7497
Email: aboucher@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:aboucher
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Routledge
Place of publication
United Kingdom
DOI
10.1080/0020174X.2021.2020159
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/52156
Abstract

I argue that the Conceptual Ethics and Conceptual Engineering framework, in its pragmatist version as recently defended by Thomasson (2017, 2020), provides a means of articulating and defending the conventionalist interpretation of projects of conceptual extension (e.g. the extended mind, the extended phenotype) in biology and psychology. This promises to be illuminating in both directions: it helps to make sense of, and provides an explicit methodology for, pragmatic conceptual extension in science, while offering further evidence for the value and fruitfulness of the conceptual ethics/engineering framework itself, in particular with respect to conceptual change within science, which has thus-far received little attention in the literature on conceptual ethics/engineering.

Link
Citation
Inquiry, 67(9), p. 3110-3139
ISSN
1502-3923
0020-174X
Start page
3110
End page
3139

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