Impactful Conceptual Engineering: Designing Technological Artefacts Ethically

Abstract Conceptual engineering is the design, evaluation and implementation of concepts. Despite its popularity, some have argued that the methodology is not worthwhile, because the implementation of new concepts is both inscrutable and beyond our control. In the recent literature we see different responses to this worry. Some have argued that it is for political reasons just as well that implementation is such a difficult task, while others have challenged the metasemantic and social assumptions that underlie this skepticism about implementation. In this paper, I argue that even if implementation is as difficult as critics maintain, there is at least one context in which conceptual engineering is extremely impactful and demonstrably so: the design of new technology. Different conceptions of control, freedom, trust, etc. lead to different designs and implementations of systems that are built to embed those concepts. This means that if we want to design for control, freedom, trust, etc., we have to decide which conception we ought to use. When we determine what the appropriate conception of a concept is in a technological context and use this conception to operationalize a norm or value, we generate requirements which have real-world effects. This not only shows that conceptual engineering can be extremely impactful, the fact that it leads to different design requirements means that we have a way to evaluate our conceptual choices and that we can use this feedback loop to improve upon our conceptual work By illustrating the direct impacts of different conceptions on technology design, this paper underscores the practical applicability and value of conceptual engineering, demonstrating how it serves as a crucial bridge between abstract philosophical analysis and concrete technological innovation.