Can conceptual engineering actually promote social justice?
This paper explores the question: What would conceptual engineering have to be in order to promote social justice? Specifically, it argues that to promote social justice, conceptual engineering must deliver the following: (i) it needs to be possible to deliberately implement a conceptual engineering...
| Published in: | Synthese Vol. 200; no. 2; pp. 1 - 23 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Springer Nature
Apr2022
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| Summary: | This paper explores the question: What would conceptual engineering have to be in order to promote social justice? Specifically, it argues that to promote social justice, conceptual engineering must deliver the following: (i) it needs to be possible to deliberately implement a conceptual engineering proposal in large communities; (ii) it needs to be possible for a conceptual engineering proposal to bring about change to extant social categories; (iii) it needs to be possible to bring a population to adopt a conceptual engineering proposal for the right reasons; and (iv) it needs to be possible to do (i)–(iii) without producing harmful consequences. I show that, of the three dominant approaches to conceptual engineering in the literature, only one of them seems amenable to the idea that it is possible and legitimate to promote social justice in accordance with (i)–(iv). |
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