Conceptual Engineering 

Conceptual engineering, most minimally construed, is the activity of introducing, eliminating or revising words and concepts (Isaac, Koch, and Nefdt 2022). The hope is that by intervening in linguistic discourse (Sterken, 2019; Löhr, 2022b), conceptual engineers can introduce useful new concepts, prevent harmful concepts from being transmitted to a new generation of speakers, or improve the meaning of words and concepts (Cappelen, 2018; Burgess and Plunkett 2013). The question of what exactly it is that is being targeted by these linguistic interventions – e.g., how to best construe the notion of a concept – is debated among philosophers of language and mind (Koch et al., 2023). The relevance of conceptual engineering extends to many fields of philosophy and is widely employed – either implicitly or explicitly – as a philosophical method.

In this special issue, we focus on the connection between conceptual engineering and the philosophy of technology. Philosophy of technology examines the nature and significance of technology. Its goal is to understand its relationship with society, culture, morality, and the individual. An influential early work in the philosophy of technology is Martin Heidegger’s essay “The Question Concerning Technology” (Heidegger, 1954). In this work, Heidegger argues against the purely instrumentalist notion of technology by demonstrating how technology actively shapes our understanding of the world (Nyholm, 2022).

In the late 20th century, scholars like Langdon Winner further advanced the philosophy of technology by looking at its political dimensions. In “Do Artifacts Have Politics” (1980), Winner argues that technological artifacts, like bridges, can, as he calls it, “have politics”. By looking at the intentions and consequences of certain designs, he shows that artifacts can possess certain political properties and can influence social norms.

In the 21st century, two approaches to the philosophy of technology emerged which build on the insights of Heidegger and Winner: the post-phenomenological approach and what we call the design approach. Expanding on these two approaches, there are different ways in which conceptual engineering and the philosophy of technology can be connected. We introduce both approaches in the next sections and elaborate on our call for a more systematic reflection on the relation between them and the method of conceptual engineering. Arguably, conceptual engineering has always been part of the philosophy of technology, but we believe that there is a need to develop this connection further or at least make it more explicit.

Technology and Conceptual Mediation

The post-phenomenological approach focuses on human-technology relationships. Philosophers such as Don Ihde (2012) and Peter-Paul Verbeek (2011) argue that technologies are not merely neutral tools. Instead, technological artifacts actively shape our world and are shaped by our world. They emphasize how technology mediates our experiences and thoughts. The recognition that technology changes how we understand the world is also encapsulated in the notion of socially disruptive technologies. Socially Disruptive Technologies (SDTs) are technologies that significantly alter social relations, institutions, epistemic paradigms, foundational concepts, values, and even human cognition and experience (Hopster, 2021; van de Poel et al. 2023).

One of the major challenges for philosophy of technology is how to understand and respond to the disruption of entrenched social and conceptual practices by SDTs. For example, the introduction of autonomous systems into society introduced entities that are able to act and make decisions independently of humans. This has challenged our way of attributing responsibility, as it is far from obvious that we should hold these systems accountable for the actions they perform. The challenge to our practices has also brought with it a challenge to our concepts. Autonomous artificial systems for example disrupt entrenched practices of distinguishing persons from tools, such that it is no longer obvious whether a very sophisticated robot or chatbot, for example, should be considered a person or a mere tool (Löhr, 2023). Similarly, progress in genetic engineering and synthetic biology is challenging the distinction between what is ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ (Hopster et al., 2023) and disrupting human-nature relationships (Bovenkerk and Boersma 2023).

As technology changes the world and our concepts, we need a methodological way to reflect on these changes. For instance, the advent of digital technologies has prompted the introduction of new concepts like “cyberspace” and “virtual reality” (Chalmers, 2022). These concepts were not widely recognized in their current form before these technologies emerged.Footnote 1 These new concepts not only help us describe and understand emerging technological landscapes but also shape our interactions and expectations. This highlights that technology mediates not only our practices but also our concepts, a process that has been described as conceptual mediation (Hopster and Löhr, 2023). As innovation continues, it is crucial to revisit existing concepts to ensure they accurately reflect our evolving technological realities and ethical considerations. Conceptual engineering provides the tools and frameworks necessary for this ongoing reflection.

Conceptual Engineering and Design

The design approach to the philosophy of technology offers another avenue where conceptual engineering plays a crucial role. This approach concentrates on real-world issues related to the design, implementation, and regulation of technology. Motivated by the idea that design choices can bring about certain normative properties and can influence social norms, philosophers of technology strive to create frameworks and methodologies that align technology with human values and ethical principles (Floridi et al., 2020; van den Hoven, Vermaas, and van de Poel 2015; Friedman and Hendry 2019). This approach stresses the significant role of design in resolving ethical dilemmas and demonstrates how integrated ethical considerations within technological design can help resolve real-world challenges.One of the insights developed in this approach is that the process of creating and implementing technology is inherently conceptual (van de Poel, 2013). Designers and engineers rely on specific concepts to guide their work, such as “privacy,” “security,” and “user-friendliness” (Nissenbaum, 2009; Van den Hoven, 2017; Brey, 2012; Schneier, 2015; Norman, 2013). Conceptual engineering is crucial because different conceptualizations of these values lead to different design requirements. For example, designing a private social media platform based on privacy-as-secrecy requires different technical architectures than designing for privacy-as-control. Therefore, it’s essential to design for the appropriate conceptualization of our values (Veluwenkamp and van den Hoven 2023; van de Poel, 2013; Himmelreich and Köhler 2022).

The design-ethics approach suggests that conceptual engineering can be very impactful. As different conceptualizations of values lead to different design requirements, we can create a diverse range of technological solutions by implementing these requirements into different artifacts. For example, varying interpretations of privacy might result in one design emphasizing data encryption while another prioritizes user control over information sharing (Gürses et al., 2011). By comparing these artifacts, we can critically evaluate our conceptual choices, observing how they perform in real-world contexts and assessing their effectiveness in achieving desired ethical outcomes (Veluwenkamp, 2024).

Special issue

Philosophers of technology can benefit from the insights of the rapidly expanding literature on conceptual engineering. One concrete resource conceptual engineering provides is that it bears the potential for addressing and overcoming conceptual disruptions that arise in the context of socially and morally disruptive technologies, from AI to genetic engineering (Hopster, 2021; Löhr, 2022a; Veluwenkamp et al., 2022). At the same time, we think that conceptual engineers could benefit from insights developed in the literature on the philosophy of technology, for instance by analyzing how concepts, like technologies, can mediate moral practices. Despite its “engineering” metaphor, recent work on conceptual engineering has discussed technologies only at the margins.

The aim of this special issue in Ethics & Information Technology is to explore questions at the intersection of conceptual engineering and philosophy of technology. In particular, the aim of our special issue is to stimulate debate on how conceptual engineering could benefit from examples and insights from philosophers of technology, while philosophers of technology could use the help of conceptual engineers to overcome conceptual disruptions and design technology ethically.

We encouraged submissions from different philosophical backgrounds and intercultural traditions, as well as interdisciplinary approaches. Seven articles have been accepted for this special issue, which discuss a range of issues and concepts, from the concept of trust in blockchain applications to the concept of nature. Central for many of the papers is the idea that technologies cannot only change or disrupt social practices, but that they can also disrupt or challenge our concepts, and that conceptual engineering might be a way to adapt and respond to such challenges. Below we preview the contributions assembled in this special issue.

Samuela Marchiori and Kevin Scharp: “What is Conceptual Disruption”.

The contribution by Samuela Marchiori and Kevin Scharp follows this line of scholarship on conceptual disruption. Typically, humans are fluent concept-users, applying concepts effortlessly without needing explicit reflection. However, emerging technologies often create situations where applying existing concepts becomes non-obvious, necessitating the conceptualization of new entities and the reconsideration of entrenched descriptive and normative concepts. Löhr (2022a), 2023) defines conceptual disruption as instances of substantial uncertainty about a concept’s meaning. However, Marchiori and Scharp argue that this definition has shortcomings, as not all conceptual disruptions involve challenges to a concept’s meaning; some may involve broader challenges to the applicability of conceptual schemes. They also suggest that conceptual disruption doesn’t always revolve around uncertainty, advocating for a more nuanced account.

Hopster and Löhr (2023) identify three implications of conceptual disruption: conceptual gaps (where dominant conceptual schemes lack the tools to conceptualize a phenomenon), conceptual overlaps (where dominant schemes offer different, incompatible tools), and conceptual misalignments (where dominant schemes misalign with moral values). Marchiori and Scharp basic characterization of conceptual disruption aligns with this typology, but they suggest that conceptual overlaps are better termed conceptual conflicts to emphasize incompatibility.

Björn Lundgren: “Indisruptable or stable concepts: Can we design concepts that can avoid conceptual disruption, normative critique, and counterexamples?”

Björn Lundren’s paper “Indisruptable or stable concepts: Can we design concepts that can avoid conceptual disruption, normative critique, and counterexamples?” investigates conceptual disruption through technological innovations from a very different angle. Specifically, Lundgren explores the possible design space for conceptual engineering regarding concepts that are immune to or avoid conceptual disruptions. Examples are disruptions that occur through technological innovations. Lundgren defends a concrete proposal for designing such a “stable” concept. He argues that the concept “secure information” can avoid various kinds of counterexamples and conceptual disruptions if its content is determined by an “appropriate access” definition (Lundgren and Möller 2019). On such a definition, “information I is secure for stakeholder H if, and only if: for every agent A, and every part P of I, A has just the appropriate access to P relative to H.” (Lundgren and Möller, 2019, p. 428).

Lundgren’s paper also aims to generalize from this particular case to shed light on the question of what makes concepts more immune to conceptual disruption through technology, which will help conceptual engineers understand better how to deal with such disruptions. According to Lundgren, the appropriate access version of “secure information” is particularly stable because the contextual parameters allow the concept to survive and maintain good functionality in the face of various shifts in circumstances, norms, and values. On this account, the definition or content itself is “incomplete” and the determined content of the concepts is fixed by the application via the particular circumstances of each individual case. That this general lesson can be drawn is supported by also looking at another concept, namely “privacy.”

Jeroen Hopster: “Socially Disruptive Technologies and Epistemic Injustice”.

Jeroen Hopster’s contribution to this special issue builds on previous work on conceptual disruption, distinguishing between the aforementioned conceptual gaps, overlaps and misalignments. But he adds a new insight to conceptual disruption, by arguing that each of these three forms of disruption, caused by new technologies, can lead to epistemic injustice.

Firstly, Hopster explores conceptual gaps, which are situations where there is a need for new concepts to address moral and conceptual uncertainty. He connects this with Miranda Fricker’s idea of hermeneutical injustice, who has similarly used the concept of a ‘conceptual gap’ to show how a lack of adequate concepts can prevent individuals from understanding and articulating their experiences. Hopster also examines conceptual misalignments, where existing concepts fail to align with new experiences introduced by technology. Finally, he discusses conceptual overlaps. This is a situation where multiple concepts could, in principle, apply to new technological phenomena, which can result in moral and interpretative uncertainty. Hopster uses the example of humanoid sex robots to show that, depending on the concept applied, we get different perspectives on their proper use. Hopster concludes by arguing for a further integration of scholarship on epistemic injustice with conceptual disruption.

Behrensen: “Technology and Pronouns: Disrupting the ‘Natural Attitude about Gender”.

Meren Behrensen takes an applied perspective on technology and conceptual disruption. In ”Technology and Pronouns: Disrupting the ‘Natural Attitude about Gender’”, they focus on the practice of pronoun sharing - the practice of making explicit by what pronouns one is to be referred to - and how technological innovations - specifically video conferencing platforms - can help make this practice disruptive in a fruitful manner.

Their paper argues, first, that pronoun sharing - both in gendered, but also in non-gender forms - itself can be a conceptually disruptive practice. They argue that gendered pronoun sharing can be used to disrupt the “natural attitude about gender” (Dembroff, 2021), as it makes explicit to the audience that gender and gendered norms are not natural facts that can simply be read off of someone’s appearance. Instead, they are social facts that could, potentially, be altered (non-gendered pronoun sharing can do the same thing, e.g., in the context of hierarchical norms surrounding pronouns, as in the case of the German “Du” vs. “Sie”). More specifically, though, pronoun sharing also disrupts how we ordinarily classify people along the lines of gender. In this way, pronoun sharing is taken to be an example of conceptual disruption, at least in Löhr’s (2023: 2–3) sense of “an action, event, or artifact [that] challenges […] entrenched conceptual or classificatory norms and practices.”

The paper argues, second, that technology like Zoom can not only bring such disruptive practices to the foreground but that it can and should actually be designed to make such disruptions more effective. For example, a platform like Zoom can be designed such as to make pronoun sharing very effective, by minimizing counterproductive disruptive effects (e.g., having to take time off of meetings to first clarify each person’s pronouns) while preserving desirable disruptive effects to problematic classificatory norms or practices and also enhancing people’s agency. In these ways the paper illustrates that technology can not just be conceptually disruptive, but provides a concrete example how technology can be used to make conceptual disruption more productive and for it to proceed in more ethical ways, by e.g., enhancing people’s autonomous agency. Given that conceptual disruption can be an instrument for conceptual engineering, the paper, hence, sheds light on the question how technological innovations can actually be a productive means for conceptual engineering, via fruitful conceptual disruption.

Montefiore and Podosky: “The conceptual exportation question: conceptual engineering and the normativity of virtual worlds”.

In “The conceptual exportation question: conceptual engineering and the normativity of virtual worlds,” Thomas Montefiore and Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky take a novel approach to conceptual questions in the context of technology. Rather than focusing on how technology requires new or revised concepts, they reverse the usual investigation by exploring which of our existing concepts can be exported into the virtual world.

One concept that is debated in the ethics of virtual actions is that of “murder.” Should that concept be applied to actions which occur in a video game? Traditionally, philosophers of technology have approached the ethics of virtual actions in two main ways. One method uses applied ethics to determine whether actions in virtual spaces are right or wrong. The other takes a metaphysical approach, questioning what kind of actions they really are. Both approaches often leave questions unanswered.

Montefiore and Pdosky turn to the literature of conceptual engineering to propose a different approach. Instead of asking if a virtual action is right or wrong, or what kind of action it is, they suggest we should consider whether concepts from the real world should be “exported” into the virtual world. This idea, which they label the conceptual exportation question (CEQ), prompts us to think about the function of our real-world concepts. When we see that concepts primarily perform certain functions in the real-world, we can ask whether these functions can perform the same function in virtual spaces. This approach coincides with the functional turn in conceptual engineering, and helps us tackle the ethical challenges that come with new technologies.

Reyes Benavides: “Mediated encounters with ‘nature’”.

The paper “Mediated Encounters with ‘Nature’” examines the relationship between concepts of nature and environmental practices, emphasizing how this relationship is mediated by technology, particularly through social media. Benavides argues that the way individuals conceptualize the notion of nature significantly influences their environmental behaviors. This correlation is dynamic, where concepts and practices co-constitute each other through what the author describes as multi-sensuous encounters with the environment.

Drawing on theories like Sally Haslanger’s conceptual amelioration, the paper suggests that concepts of nature are not static but are continuously shaped and reshaped through practices, especially in response to ecological content encountered online. Social media, by exposing users to images and narratives of ecological collapse, plays a crucial role in this process by mediating the experiences that inform users’ conceptualizations of nature. The paper concludes that technologies, such as social media, are not just passive channels but active participants in the conceptual negotiation between how nature is understood and how environmental practices are formed. By focusing on these mediated encounters, the paper underscores the political and sociotechnical dimensions of how concepts of nature are constructed and their implications for addressing ecological and climate crises.

Eva Pöll: “How to trust a blockchain? Proposing a Concept of Trust in the Context of Blockchain”.

In “How to Trust a Blockchain? Proposing a Concept of Trust in the Context of Blockchain Applications” Eva Pöll, explores the notion of trust in blockchain technology through the lens of conceptual engineering. Pöll argues that while blockchain is often touted as a “trustless” technology, this claim is based on a narrow and potentially misleading interpretation of trust. By employing conceptual engineering, the paper clarifies and refines the concept of trust in the context of blockchain applications.

Pöll suggests that trust in blockchain should be understood similarly to institutional trust, which involves normative expectations and the attribution of trustworthiness. The paper critiques existing interpretations of trust in the blockchain literature, particularly the idea that trust can be technically induced. Instead, Pöll emphasizes the active role of the trustor, who must attribute trustworthiness to the technology rather than having trust imposed upon them by the system. The paper highlights the importance of a meaningful and ethically sound concept of trust in the rapidly evolving field of blockchain technology. By bridging the gap between technical and philosophical perspectives, Pöll establishes a more robust understanding of trust that can guide the development and adoption of blockchain systems.