Changing concepts comes with a risk of creating merely verbal disputes. Accounts of topic continuity (such as Herman Cappelen’s) are supposed to solve this problem. As this paper shows, however, no existing solution avoids the danger of mere verbalness. On the contrary, accounts of topic continuity in fact increase the danger of overlooking merely verbal disputes between pre- and post-ameliorators. Ultimately, this paper suggests accepting the danger of mere verbalness resulting from a change in topic as a downside of conceptual (...) engineering. Changing the topic under discussion may be worth the risk, however, in many cases. In fact, this paper proposes that the main goal of conceptual engineering should be seen as changing topics for the better. (shrink)

On a naive view of conceptual engineering, conceptual engineers simply aim at engineering concepts. This picture has recently come under attack. Sarah Sawyer (2018, 2020) and Derek Ball (2020) present two rather different, yet equally unorthodox, accounts of conceptual engineering, which they take to be superior to the naive picture. This paper casts doubts on the superiority of their respective accounts. By elaborating on the explanatory potential of “going meta”, the paper defends the naive view against Sawyer’s and Ball’s rival (...) proposals. (shrink)

Verbal disputes are often seen as closely related to a lack of substantivity. However, a systematic and comprehensive investigation of how verbalness relates to substantivity is still missing. The present paper attempts to close this gap. In addition to offering different conceptions of verbalness, the paper further develops Sider’s (Writing the Book of the World, OUP, Oxford, 2011) notion of substantivity. Ultimately, I argue for a more careful choice of terminology when it comes to assessing a dispute as “(merely) verbal” (...) or “nonsubstantive”. While the paper shows that there is no strict logical relation between mere verbalness and nonsubstantivity construed along the lines set out by Sider, it also demonstrates that further notable notions of (mere) verbalness and substantivity are in fact closely intertwined. (shrink)

Many disputes about gender are normatively charged. To account for this, some suggest building normativity into the semantics of gender terms. I propose an alternative, pragmatic account. When speakers utter gender-attributing sentences of the form ‘Person A is of gender G’, they often pragmatically convey normative content about whether A should be categorized as G. After critically discussing the semantic approach, I motivate and discuss in detail this novel pragmatic view and elaborate on its compatibility with a number of semantic (...) options. (shrink)

Philosophische Diskurse können auf verschiedene Arten und aus verschiedenen Gründen missglücken. Sind Streitende in einen bloßen Streit um Worte verstrickt, so liegt ihrem Streit keine Uneinigkeit zugrunde. Aufgrund eines sprachlichen Missverständnisses reden sie bloß aneinander vorbei. Das vorliegende Buch entwirft in seinem ersten Teil erstmalig eine detaillierte Theorie bloßer Streite um Worte. Was zeichnet solch missglückte Streite aus? Und welche Indizien können den Verdacht eines bloßen Streits um Worte in der Philosophie stützen? Im zweiten Teil des Buches wendet die Autorin (...) die erarbeiteten Resultate dann in einer Fallstudie auf die Debatte um personale Identität an. Reden die beiden großen Streitlager der Debatte womöglich nur aneinander vorbei, weil sie Wörtchen wie „ich“, „wir“ oder „Person“ bloß unterschiedlich verwenden? Und besteht zwischen den Streitlagern also vielleicht gar keine Uneinigkeit darüber, welchen Persistenzbedingungen ‚wir‘ unterliegen? Die vorliegende Studie etabliert diese Interpretation der Debatte als einen zumindest ernstzunehmenden Vorschlag. Sie möchte jedoch auch verdeutlichen, wie schwer sich der Verdacht eines bloßen Streits um Worte in der Philosophie wirklich redlich belegen lässt. (shrink)