Conceptual ethics and the ethics of implementation: case for divorce?

Abstract Recent years have seen increasing attention to conceptual engineering, the enterprise of evaluating and improving our repertoire of representational devices (e.g., words, concepts, classificatory procedures). This paper contributes to the systematic investigation of the normative questions that arise within and about conceptual engineering. It does two things. First, it argues for a clear distinction between two normative domains that are often conflated: conceptual ethics and ethics of implementation. Conceptual ethics concerns what concepts we ought to have, and the ethics of implementation addresses what means are permissible in promoting conceptual uptake. It is important to keep these domains separate, as we would otherwise risk conflating or obscuring what kinds of normative concerns are relevant at what stage and why. Second, the paper investigates how these two normative domains interact. Specifically, it asks whether what it is permissible to do to increase the uptake of a representational device matters to the question what representational devices people ought to have, or vice versa. The paper argues that conceptual ethics can directly influence the ethics of implementation, but that the ethics of implementation has much less relevance to conceptual ethics.