Conceptual Engineering and Trust in Our Concepts

Delia Belleri (University of Lisbon)

The ALEF research group (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) announces an online talk by Delia Belleri (University of Lisbon) entitled "Conceptual Engineering and Trust in Our Concepts". The talk is part of the group's regular seminar and takes place on Friday, JUNE 17, 18.00 EEST. Please write to [email protected] or check our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ALEF-100692348488914) if you want to participate. For more information about ALEF, as well as the schedule for the seminar in the 2021-2022 spring semester, please visit https://sites.google.com/view/alefgroupcluj.

Here is the abstract of the talk:

Some concepts, at some point in time, turn out as being defective in some given respect. In certain circumstances, revising them seems advisable. Moreover, this could potentially happen with any concept in our representational repertoire. Should we then maintain a sceptical attitude towards all concepts, to be on the safe side? This is what Herman Cappelen calls “representational skepticism” (Cappelen 2018: 5-6). Drawing inspiration from the epistemology literature on perceptual and testimonial justification, I argue that, in a conservative spirit (Chisholm 1989), we are generally warranted in trusting our concepts, provided the absence of certain defeaters, which might lead one to question the assumed epistemic or non-epistemic good quality of a specific concept or set thereof. As a result, one need not be a representational skeptic. In general, one can lead one’s cognitive and linguistic life without questioning the concepts one is using, unless one is presented with information that counts as a defeater.