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The Role of Concepts in Fixing Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2020

Sarah Sawyer Open the ORCID record for Sarah Sawyer [Opens in a new window]
Sarah Sawyer*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This is a contribution to the symposium on Herman Cappelen’s book Fixing Language. Cappelen proposes a metasemantic framework—the “Austerity Framework”—within which to understand the general phenomenon of conceptual engineering. The proposed framework is austere in the sense that it makes no reference to concepts. Conceptual engineering is then given a “worldly” construal according to which conceptual engineering is a process that operates on the world. I argue, contra Cappelen, that an adequate theory of conceptual engineering must make reference to concepts. This is because concepts are required to account for topic continuity, a phenomenon which lies at the heart of projects in conceptual engineering. I argue that Cappelen’s own account of topic continuity is inadequate as a result of the austerity of his metasemantic framework, and that his worldly construal of conceptual engineering is untenable.

Keywords

Cappelenconceptual engineeringmetasemanticsexternalismconceptsthoughtlanguage
Type
Author meets critics
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 5 , July 2020 , pp. 555 - 565
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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