Xindi Ye-Martinsky

This paper addresses the problem of topic continuity in conceptual engineering, which concerns how we remain on topic as we revise lexical concepts or meanings. McPherson and Plunkett propose to resolve this problem with a context-sensitive semantics for ‘topic continuity’. On their account, the extension of ‘topic continuity’ picks out different underlying dimensions of continuity depending on the interests of conversational participants. This paper evaluates their proposal and argues that it doesn’t do what they want it to: it doesn't make the notion of topic continuity theoretically useful, and it doesn't vindicate conceptual engineers’ concerns about it. This paper then proposes an alternative account of topic continuity: a subject-sensitive account. As with McPherson and Plunkett’s proposal, the subject-sensitive account of topic continuity allows what counts as topic continuity to vary, but grounds this variability in normatively significant considerations, such as what genuinely matters to the rightful subjects of a concept.

In conceptual engineering, a hypocritical argument is an argument that uses a concept to argue against the use of that very concept (Burgess and Plunkett 2013; Burgess 2020). Call this sort of hypocrisy ‘conceptual hypocrisy’. Should we accept conceptual hypocrisy? My response has a negative and a positive part. In the negative part, I review attempts to problematise or vindicate conceptual hypocrisy by subsuming it under existing argumentative paradigms. I argue that these attempts fail. In the positive part, I outline an alternative view: some, but not all, instances of hypocrisy are unacceptable. Unacceptable instances of conceptual hypocrisy are not those where a speaker merely does something she says she ought not do; they are those where a speaker does something she says she ought not do, and her doing so indicates that something about her argument has gone wrong.