This course will provide an introduction to the latest breakthroughs in the methods of contemporary analytic philosophy, with a focus on conceptual engineering.

Conceptual engineering is an exciting new movement in contemporary analytic philosophy that focuses on how best to assess and improve our concepts. Philosophers have been doing this for a long time, but the recent excitement is over thinking explicitly about it. The basic idea behind conceptual engineering is that some of our concepts are deficient, either on theoretical or on practical grounds, and therefore need to be revised, replaced, or eliminated in order to avoid their detrimental effects. For instance, one may consider that the concept of sex has been aptly replaced, in the social context, by that of gender in order to make sense of and fight against the many persistent inequalities of our social reality. A key feature of conceptual engineering is thus its normative agenda: conceptual engineers aim to prescribe the concepts we ought to have and use, rather than merely describing the concepts we do have and use. Drawing on various theoretical accounts about the nature of language, thought, or reality, research in conceptual engineering has now built strong connections to nearly every field across analytic philosophy. In less than a decade, it has become a major topic at the cutting edge of research in philosophy, whose attraction is still growing with an explosive intensity.