Abstract

Do novel usages characteristic of conceptual engineering and amelioration problematically change the subject? The worry that they do points to broader questions in the philosophy of language, but is not itself compelling. Like semantic variation in the wild, novel usages of the sort favored by these projects are unlikely to generate epistemic defects over shorter, or longer, time horizons. However, rhetorical bids to implement these projects in less than cooperative environments may do so, and be ethically assessable on that basis.