Conceptual Engineering

#concept・10 mentions

Conceptual Engineering can mean

building things with Concepts, for example Models or Frameworks;
assessment and amelioration of concepts to improve their usefulness.

While the first sense captures a lot of my work and especially how Facilitation helps meaning emerge in social groups, the second has greater potential impact and is more central to my overall Theory of Change.

Goals

Create more adequate models of the world
Enable effective action in complex systems
Challenge and subvert ideological oppression

Assumptions

The usefulness of concepts constrains the adaptiveness of thinking
The usefulness of concepts can be objectively evaluated
Concepts can be changed with conscious effort

Strategies

References

Cappelen & Plunkett (2018): “A Guided Tour of Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics”
Haraway (2016): Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
Haslanger (2018): “Going On, Not in the Same Way”
Suspended Reason (2020): “A revolution in philosophy: the rise of conceptual engineering”

Mentions

Concept Mapping

What Concept Mapping is a tool for collaborative Sensemaking.

Concepts Are Compressed Models

A Concept is an interface to expose and connect some Models’ salient features.

Critical Theory

Critical theory is situated theory with an emancipatory goal.

Explain Away Folk Ontology

When revising Concepts in Conceptual Engineering, use Deflationary Explanations to get rid of Folk Ontology and Magical Thinking in order to make our thinking more precise, accountable and empirically adequate.

Freedom Is Non Domination

Our intuitions about what constitutes liberty or political freedom are best captured by the so-called republican conception of freedom.

Missing System

A missing system is a hypothetical System described by a Model that doesn’t track real System Boundaries – a system that doesn’t exist (in the hypothesised boundaries).

Move up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction

Since we want to Move up and down in the system hierarchy, a useful Strategy is to build epistemic connections between very abstract and very concrete Models, that is an easy-to-climb ladder of abstraction.

Rationalism Is Not Rational

Rationalism à la Eliezer Yudkowsky has two connected fundamental flaws – an ontological and an epistemological one.

Revise Concepts to Critique Ideology

In Conceptual Engineering, propose improvements to Concepts that expose and critique Ideology, making Ideological Oppression visible and enabling its subversion.

Treat Concepts as Nodes in a Network

When doing Conceptual Engineering, treat individual Concepts as nodes in a Concept Network, the position in which determines the concept’s function and content.