Is volitional conceptual change feasible? Answering that question requires a theory of semantic change, which is sometimes thought elusive. Fortunately, much is known about semantic change as it occurs in the wild. While usage is chaotic and complex, changes in a word’s use can produce changes in its meaning. There are several under-appreciated empirical constraints on how meanings change that stem from the following observation: word use finely reflects equilibrium between various communicative pressures. Much of the relevant work in linguistics (...) has employed the methods of empirical pragmatics and diachronic semantics. In this way, the study of meaning change can be brought to bear on the conceptual engineer’s normative project. The picture that emerges tells against the sorts of engineering projects most likely to appeal to philosophers. Some may stand to succeed, but they have significantly different contours than the typical ones. (shrink)

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.