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We use concepts all the time to make sense of reality. Our conceptual repertoires thereby determine not only what we can say, think or know, but also what we can do and how we can live. Examples for this are all around us every day, from the more mundane household task to the most advanced scientific research. The purpose of conceptual engineering is to provide a method to criticize and improve our concepts working as such cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering is still a young research field and little has been said so far to settle how concepts and cognition are to be understood/modeled for the purposes of conceptual engineering — in particular, no attempt has been made yet to capitalize on and make sense of the vast literature on cognition and concepts in philosophy and cognitive sciences. And without such prior understanding of its subject matter, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless. This project aims to overcome this knowledge gap by setting up the epistemological background that will support the systematic unified framework needed to effectively implement conceptual engineering. To this end, it will draw form a combination of philosophy of cognitive sciences and analytic philosophies of mind and language in order to: (i) design the concept of ‘cognitive engineering' as an enculturated cognitive practice, (ii) re-engineer the concept of ‘concept' as functional, multiply realizable bodies of information, (iii) construct the method of conceptual engineering as a template set of step-by-step instructions. And in doing so, the expected outcome is to develop conceptual engineering as a widely applicable method for the cognitive optimization of any conceptual device.
