Conceptual Engineering and Normative Functions
Köhler and Veluwenkamp (2024) appear to do something I have been trying, largely unsuccessfully, to do. They suggest that we should engineer concepts via normative functions.
Normative Function: A concept X has the normative function to produce effect E if and only if (1) in a relevant range of circumstances C, applications of X produce E and (2) users of X have normative reason to deploy X in thought and language because X produces E in C. (407)
I think the goal is the right one, but I would rather add normativity at a different point. Instead of building normative reasons into the function, and say that we ought to engineer normative functions, I would rather say that we ought to engineer concepts with morally good functions.
Here’s the abstract for people who want to know what the paper is actually about, in general.
Conceptual engineering is the enterprise of evaluating and improving our representational devices. But how should we conduct this enterprise? One increasingly popular answer to this question proposes that conceptual engineering should proceed in terms of the functions of our representational devices. In this paper, we argue that the best way of understanding this suggestion is in terms of normative functions, where normative functions of concepts are, roughly, things that they allow us to do that matter normatively (for example, things in virtue of which we have normative reasons to have these concepts). Not only does this introduce a novel view about functions to the literature. This proposal also fits more naturally than the alternatives with conceptual engineering as a normative enterprise, and it allows functions to play all of the explanatory roles assigned to them in the conceptual engineering literature. Our discussion of the explanatory advantages of normative functions also advances the understanding of the ways in which concepts can be authoritative, what this means for conceptual engineering, and highlights the importance of political philosophy for thinking about conceptual engineering in practice. Furthermore, the paper explicates what kind of role considerations about function can and should actually play in conceptual engineering.