This book is a co-publication and appears in conjunction with an exhibition organized and presented by the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, on the occasion of the centennial celebration nationwide of Singer's birth in 2004.

Infrastructure can make or break a farm’s economic viability. Farmers’ ownership and ability to invest in infrastructure is often arranged through the family farm model, where farmers are typically married to their business partners. In this paper, we analyze the implications of organizing infrastructure access through the family farm model. Through interviews with 66 farmers and key informants in New England, U.S., we identify a treadmill of infrastructure accumulation for farmers with family capital and a treadmill of high labor and (...) low profitability for farmers without the family capital to acquire needed infrastructure. Infrastructure accumulation in the family farm model builds farms that are difficult to adapt to new systems and markets, challenging to retire from without selling to developers, and hard for beginning farmers to afford. The economic tendencies of organizing infrastructure through the family farm model can make it difficult for farmers of all social backgrounds to access farmland and infrastructure. Moreover, continued inequities in family wealth and wages, credit access, and social capital means that the family farm model systematically disadvantages farmers of color, LGBTQ + farmers, limited resource, and women farmers. We argue that infrastructure accumulation through the family farm model is a process that intensifies inequities in farm viability, exacerbates the challenges of transitioning farms to new farmers and ways of farming, and fuels land injustice. (shrink)

As a group, LGBTQ+ people experience food insecurity at a disproportionately high rate, yet food security scholars and practitioners are only beginning to uncover patterns in how food insecurity varies by subgroups of this diverse community. In this paper, we use data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey—which added measures of gender identity and sexuality for the first time in 2021—to analyze New Englanders’ food insufficiency rates by gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. We find that (1) in the (...) past seven days, 13.0 percent of LGB + (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other non-heterosexual) New Englanders experience food insufficiency—which is nearly twice the rate of heterosexual people—and 19.8 percent of transgender+ (transgender, genderqueer, gender non-binary, and other non-cisgender people) New Englanders experience food insufficiency—which is two to three times the rate of cisgender men and women. (2) Whereas cisgender New Englanders experience food insufficiency at a _lower_ rate than their counterparts in the rest of the nation (about two percentage points lower for both cisgender men and women), transgender+ New Englanders experience no such New England advantage compared to transgender+ people in the country as a whole. (3) LGBTQ+ New Englanders of color experience devastatingly high rates of food insufficiency, with, for example, one in three Black transgender+ New Englanders not having enough food to eat in the past seven days. These findings suggest that addressing food insecurity in New England demands approaching the problem with an intersectional queer lens, with attention to the ways in which racism, cissexism, and heterosexism are creating a systemic, ongoing food crisis for LGBTQ+ New Englanders, especially those who are transgender+ and/or people of color. (shrink)

The way farm viability is defined and conceptualized has become increasingly incongruent with the way that small-scale farmers make a living, as their livelihood strategies have evolved and changed in response to broad structural changes over the past several decades. Farm viability is typically defined as meeting the income needs of the farm family as well as supporting the farm’s operating costs. However, our study shows that New England farmers define farm viability as their ability to stay in business and (...) to keep the land in agriculture. In this paper, we bring together the agricultural economics and rural sociological research literature on farm viability and persistence as well as food justice scholarship to advance the development of a more relevant and integrated approach to evaluating the viability of small and mid-sized farms. We present farmers’ own conceptions of farm viability, drawn from 37 interviews with the operators of small farms in New England. While most of the farmers we interviewed conceptualize farm viability as their ability to stay in business, many of them shared broader views of farm viability that integrated the social and environmental sustainability of their enterprises in the face of financial pressures and increased weather extremes from climate change. These were described as their ability to continue farming year after year and keep their land in agriculture, and their ability to maintain their own health and wellbeing as integral to a viable farm enterprise. Farmers emphasized their (in)ability to continue farming from a social sustainability standpoint as directly impacting the viability of their farms. We argue for a shift away from narrow measures of farm viability that are solely based on farm owners’ household income to a broader, multidimensional approach to defining and measuring farm viability that could enable analyses that are relevant to critical sustainability concerns for US agriculture. (shrink)

Demoscene is a computer subculture that proliferated throughout the 1980s and 1990s. This article examines one aspect of the Demoscene culture, the production of the ‘Demo’, a computer animation generated and performed in real-time visualization through digital code. I analyse the Demo as a technological and aesthetic form, speculating on its possibilities for theorizing a unique mode of digital image experience.

Physicists and historians of science have always held that Isaac Newton should receive credit for the first proof that inverse-square orbits must be conics. This conviction derives from a brief argument, regarded as essentially correct, given by Newton in the Principia. Recently, however, it has been contended that this outline or sketch contains irreparable logical flaws. Here, the logical structure of this outline of Newton's, as well as the details that this outline omits, are carefully examined. We find that whilst (...) his argument does indeed contain a flaw, it is a minor omission rather than a serious logical error. Having rectified this omission, we show how Newton's outline expands into a convincing proof that inverse-square orbits must be conics. (shrink)

Essay review of William L. Harper, Isaac Newton’s scientific method. Turning data into evidence about gravity & cosmology. Oxford University Press, 2011; Steffen Ducheyne, The main business of natural philosophy. Isaac Newton’s natural-philosophical methodology. Springer, 2012. -/- The years 2011-12 will be regarded as memorable ones for the “Newtonian industry” since they have witnessed the publication of two beautiful and long awaited books devoted to Newton’s method and philosophy. They deserve great attention and praise, and I warmly recommend them to (...) any reader interested in 17th and 18th century science and philosophy. The favorable conjunction of 2011-12 should not come as a surprise for those who have been following the recent trends in Newtonian scholarship. Indeed, after the great generation of H.W. Turnbull, A. Koyré, I.B. Cohen, D.T. Whiteside, B.J.T. Dobbs, A.R. Hall, Mary Boas Hall, and R.S. Westfall, Isaac Newton has continued to be the object of intense historical research. In the 1990s, a new wave of historians of mathematics, who capitalized on the immense riches of Whiteside’s edition of the Mathematical Papers (1967–1981), produced a flood of essays devoted to rather technical aspects of Newton’s oeuvre. An incomplete list includes Michel Blay, Dana Densmore, Herman Erlichson, Bruce Brackenridge, François De Gandt, Bruce Pourciau, and Michael Nauenberg. Now the pendulum seems to be swinging towards philosophy, rather than mathematics, as is immediately apparent from the titles of the two books under review. The focus of Harper and Ducheyne’s books is Newton as the originator of a new method—an alternative and more effective method than the hypothetico-deductive one. In what follows I will not have the space to delve into all the details of the books under review: such a task would require one to exceed even the generous word limit granted by Perspectives on Science. What I will try to do is to provide the reader with an account of the main theses defended in these books by framing them within the context of their respective interpretative traditions. (shrink)

This newly translated Fear and Trembling, a founding document of modern philosophy and existentialism, could not be more apt for these perilous times. First published in 1843 under the pseudonym "Johannes de silentio" (John of Silence), Søren Kierkegaard's richly resonant Fear and Trembling has for generations stood as a pivotal text in the history of moral philosophy, inspiring such artistic and philosophical luminaries as Edvard Munch, W. H. Auden, Walter Benjamin, and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Retelling the biblical story of the (...) binding of Isaac, Kierkegaard expounds on the ordeal of Abraham, who was commanded to sacrifice his son in an exceptional test of faith. Disgusted at the self-certainty of his own age, Kierkegaard investigates the paradox underlying Abraham's decision to allow his duty to God to take precedence over his duties to his family. Now, in a new era of immense uncertainty and dislocation, renowned Kierkegaard scholar Bruce H. Kirmmse, in his accessible translation and engaging introduction, eloquently brings this classic work to a new generation of readers, demonstrating Kierkegaard's enduring power to illuminate the terrible wonder of faith. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 The Cry of Rachel -- Maritain's 1942 Marquette Aquinas Lecture -- Maritain's The Person and the Common Good -- Camus's The Plague -- ch. 2 Joy -- Being as the Good and the Eruption of Willing -- Being and Philosophical Psychology -- An Ordinary Knowledge of God and Metaphysics -- Metaphysics as Implicit Knowledge -- Being and the Intellectual Emotions -- ch. 3 Quandoque Evils -- Aquinas's Rationale for the Corruptible Order -- The Corruptible (...) Order and Quandoque Evils -- Bracketing Quandoque Evils between Goods -- A Caveat in Understanding the Subject of the Consequent Good -- The Effect of Human Providence upon the Frequency of Quandoque Evils -- ch. 4 Natural Corruptions -- Death as a Natural Corruption -- Natural Corruption as Nondefinitive -- Ambiguity of "Praeter Intentionem" and "Per Accidens" -- God and the Evil of Punishment (Poena) -- Other Interpretations -- Abraham and Isaac -- Conclusion -- ch. 5 Preliminaries to Aquinas and the Contemporary Discussion -- C.G. III, 71: "If Evil Exists, God Exists" -- William Rowe on Cosmological Reasoning -- De Ver. X, 12, ad 10m: "If not God from Justice, then God from Some Other Effect" -- Summary of Aquinas on the Existence of Evil -- A Strategy -- ch. 6 The Thomist and the Contemporary Discussion: Personalist Theodicies -- Marilyn McCord Adams and "Horrendous Evils" -- William Hasker: Personal Satisfaction and World Approval -- John Hick: Creation as a Gymnasium for the Development of Our Virtues -- David Ray Griffin and the Denial of Genuine Evils -- The Brothers Karamazov -- Thomistic "Natural Desires" of the Human Person -- ch. 7 The Thomist and the Contemporary Discussion: Cosmological Theodicies -- Diogenes Allen and Suffering as an Experience of God -- David Hume and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, X and XI -- William Rowe and "Pointless Evils" -- J. L. Mackie and Further Objections to a Cosmological Theodicy -- Mackie's Fourth Criticism and Aquinas on the Causality of Human Choices -- Aquinas and Plantinga -- The Avoidance of Determinism -- The Avoidance of Divine Culpability -- A Thomistic Free Will Defense? -- Richard Swinburne: Nature as a Necessary Display Case for Our Knowledge of Good and Evil -- Bruce Reichenbach: Developing Plantinga and Swinburne -- ch. 8 Conclusion and Comparison to Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump -- Brian Davies's Apophatic Treatment of the Evil Problem -- Eleonore Stump and the Love of God -- The Consolation of Rachel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Model for the Many Senses of ScriptureFrom the Literal to the Spiritual in Genesis 22 with Thomas AquinasChristopher S. Morrissey (bio)Introduction: Many Senses Require Many TranslationsOn the mountain the Lord appeared (NETS, Gen. 22:14b)On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided (RSV)1In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen (KJV)On the mountain the LORD will see (NAB)ἐν τῷ ὄρει κύριος ὤφθη (LXX)in monte Dominus (...) videtur (Nova Vulgata)in monte Dominus videbit (St. Jerome’s Vulgate)In his book Abraham’s Curse, Bruce Chilton argues that in Gen. 22:14b, “the Septuagint’s Greek renders the Hebrew text” correctly (i.e., “with Yahweh as the subject of the verb”), whereas English translations like the King James Version (KJV) prefer to imply that the ram is the verbal subject. Chilton contends that “This is a case of translators caring more about doctrine than wording, and attempting to legislate what the Bible can say.”2Chilton’s textual exegesis does have some value. He notes that “Contextually [End Page 231] as well as grammatically, God is the subject: Yahweh ‘was seen’ on Moriah, liberating Isaac by means of divine intervention.”3 But with his polemics against the KJV, he fails to affirm the rich polysemy of the passage. He replaces one literal reading with another and then argues as if the two are at odds. But Scripture has many senses, a truth famously expressed in the medieval distich of Augustine of Dacia, best known in the version of Nicholas of Lyra: “The literal sense teaches what happened; what you believe, the allegorical; the moral, what you should do; where you are going, the anagogical.”4 Therefore Chilton is wrong to impute bad motives to anyone who would attempt to unfold the spiritual sense of a passage (“caring more about doctrine”), or even to anyone who would note that a passage has more than one literal meaning.Chilton’s own insistence on uncovering the univocal original meaning of a passage (through his preferred historical method of “generative exegesis”)5 is excessively literal, as if recourse to grammar would allow one “to legislate what the Bible can say.” When Chilton says “Yahweh ‘was seen’ on Moriah,” he is not contending that God was seen directly, literally, but rather interpreting the metaphorical or parabolical sense of the phrase “Yahweh was seen” (in Gen. 22:14b), because he glosses the meaning of the metaphor as “liberating Isaac by means of divine intervention”;6 that is, God is seen indirectly, cognitively, rather than literally with the eyes. Because literally seeing a ram is not opposed to cognitively understanding God’s action, the KJV, pace Chilton, can be defended contextually. To my mind, the Revised Standard Version (RSV), echoing the KJV, does the best job of rendering the Hebrew text literally, with “On the mount of the lord it shall be provided,” because this leaves open the many senses of the third person singular “it,” to be unfolded by exegesis. Thus more than one translation is required in order to appreciate all the significations being deployed in the treatment of “seeing” in Gen. 22:8 and 22:14. “It shall be provided”: More than one univocal sense of the “it” has to be uncovered by exegesis in this Scripture, in order to see what “it” is all about.To justify my opinion that the RSV most felicitously translates the Hebrew, I would like to prepare the way to a conclusion in which I compare the Septuagint’s translation (which follows Chilton’s preferred rendering of the context) with the Vulgate Latin translations. The path toward this conclusion will show that Chilton’s polemics, indicative of an exegetical attitude that is hostile to an appreciation of the many senses of Scripture, fail to see how the RSV translation is also defensible as keeping the reader’s mind open to the many senses of the Scriptural passage. But first things first. With the help of St. Thomas Aquinas, let me distinguish the various senses of Scripture and then point out how they are all exemplified here, all being signified by the text. [End Page 232] Click for larger view View... (shrink)

People with the kind of preferences that give rise to the St. Petersburg paradox are problematic---but not because there is anything wrong with infinite utilities. Rather, such people cannot assign the St. Petersburg gamble any value that any kind of outcome could possibly have. Their preferences also violate an infinitary generalization of Savage's Sure Thing Principle, which we call the *Countable Sure Thing Principle*, as well as an infinitary generalization of von Neumann and Morgenstern's Independence axiom, which we call *Countable (...) Independence*. In violating these principles, they display foibles like those of people who deviate from standard expected utility theory in more mundane cases: they choose dominated strategies, pay to avoid information, and reject expert advice. We precisely characterize the preference relations that satisfy Countable Independence in several equivalent ways: a structural constraint on preferences, a representation theorem, and the principle we began with, that every prospect has a value that some outcome could have. (shrink)

Presents Newton's unifying idea of gravitation and explains how he converted physics from a science of explanation into a general mathematical system.

On March, 24, 2020, 818 cases of COVID-19 had been reported in New South Wales, Australia, and new cases were increasing at an exponential rate. In anticipation of resource constraints arising in clinical settings as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a working party of ten ethicists was convened at the University of Sydney to draft an ethics framework to support resource allocation decisions. The framework guides decision-makers using a question-and-answer format, in language that avoids philosophical and medical technicality. The (...) working party met five times over the following week and then submitted a draft Framework for consideration by two groups of intensivists and one group of academic ethicists. It was also presented to a panel on a national current affairs programme. The Framework was then revised on the basis of feedback from these sources and made publicly available online on April 3, ten days after the initial meeting. The framework is published here in full to stimulate ongoing discussion about rapid development of user-friendly clinical ethics resources in ongoing and future pandemics. (shrink)

David Builes presents a paradox concerning how confident you should be that any given member of an infinite collection of fair coins landed heads, conditional on the information that they were all flipped and only finitely many of them landed heads. We argue that if you should have any conditional credence at all, it should be 1/2.

During the first two decades of the Cold War, a new kind of academic figure became prominent in American public life: the credentialed social scientist or expert in the sciences of administration who was also, to use the parlance of the time, a “man of affairs.” Some were academic high-fliers conscripted into government roles in which their intellectual and organizational talents could be exploited. McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow, and Robert McNamara are the archetypes of such persons. An overlapping group of (...) scholars became policymakers and political advisers on issues ranging from social welfare provision to nation-building in emerging postcolonial states. Many of these men—and almost without exception they were men—were also consummate operators within the patronage system that grew up around American universities after World War II. Postwar leaders of the social and administrative sciences such as Talcott Parsons and Herbert Simon were skilled scientific brokers of just this sort: good “committee men,” grant-getters, proponents of interdisciplinary inquiry, and institution-builders. This hard-nosed, suit-wearing, business-like persona was connected to new, technologically refined forms of social science. No longer sage-like social philosophers or hardscrabble, number-crunching empiricists, academic human scientists portrayed themselves as possessors of tools and programs designed for precision social engineering. Antediluvian “social science” was eschewed in favour of mathematical, behavioural, and systems-based approaches to “human relations” such as operations research, behavioral science, game theory, systems theory, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Johnson and colleagues (2015) report a retrospective review of the experience of an ethics consultation service at a single, highly specialized children's hospital over an 11-year period. Despite i...

This paper examines the resilience of farmers markets in Michigan to the system shock of the global COVID-19 pandemic, questioning how the response fits into market goals of food sovereignty. Adapting to shifting public health recommendations and uncertainty, managers implemented new policies to create a safe shopping experience and expand food access. As consumers directed their shopping to farmers markets looking for safer outdoor shopping, local products, and foods in short supply at grocery stores, market sales skyrocketed with vendors reporting (...) selling more than ever before, but the longevity of this change remains unclear. Our data collected via semi-structured interviews with market managers and vendors, and survey data from customers from 2020 to 21, suggest that despite the widespread impact of COVID-19, there is not sufficient evidence consumers will continue to shop at farmers markets at the rates they did in 2020-21. Furthermore, reasons consumers flocked to farmers markets do not align with market priorities for increased food sovereignty, as increased sales alone are not a sufficient driver for this goal. We question how markets can contribute to broader sustainability goals or serve as alternatives to capitalist and industrial modes of agricultural production, problematizing the role of markets in the food sovereignty movement. (shrink)

This major work challenges some widely held positions in epistemology - those of Peirce and Popper on the one hand and those of Quine and Kuhn on the other.

This paper discusses the logical space of alternative conceptual engineering projects, with a specific focus on (1) the processes, (2) the targets and goals, and (3) the methods of such projects. We present an overview of how these three aspects interact in the contemporary literature and discuss those alternative projects that have yet to be explored based on our suggested typology. We show how choices about each element in a conceptual engineering project constrain the possibilities for the others, thereby giving (...) rise to distinct groupings of possible projects under the banner of conceptual engineering. We conclude with a critical reflection on the potential ethical issues that arise as a result of effectively putting conceptual engineering into practice. (shrink)

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) left a voluminous legacy of writings. Despite his influence on the early modern period, his correspondence, manuscripts, and publications in natural philosophy remain scattered throughout many disparate editions. In this volume, Newton's principal philosophical writings are for the first time collected in a single place. They include excerpts from the Principia and the Opticks, his famous correspondence with Boyle and with Bentley, and his equally significant correspondence with Leibniz, which is often ignored in favor of Leibniz's (...) later debate with Samuel Clarke. Newton's exchanges with Leibniz place their different understandings of natural philosophy in sharp relief. The volume also includes 'De Gravitatione', offered here in a corrected translation, which is crucial for understanding Newton's relation to his great predecessor Descartes. In a historical and philosophical introduction, Andrew Janiak examines Newton's philosophical positions and his relations to canonical figures in early modern philosophy. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. Some have recently claimed that the implementation of such method in the form of ameliorative projects is truth-driven and should thus be epistemically constrained, ultimately at least (Simion 2018; cf. Podosky 2018). This paper challenges that claim on the assumption of a social constructionist analysis of ideologies, and provides an alternative, pragmatic and cognitive framework for determining the legitimacy of ameliorative conceptual projects overall. The upshot is that one should (...) not ameliorate for the sake of truth or knowledge, in the case of ideologies—at least, not primarily. (shrink)

Reproduces the text of Newton's dissertation on the nature and properties of light.

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. However, little has been written about how best to conceive of concepts for the purposes of conceptual engineering. In this paper, I aim to fill this foundational gap, proceeding in three main steps: First, I propose a methodological framework for evaluating the conduciveness of a given concept of concept for conceptual engineering. Then, I develop a typology that contrasts two competing concepts of concept that can be used in conceptual (...) engineering — namely, the philosophical and psychological ones. Finally, I evaluate these two concepts of concept using the proposed methodological framework and I show that, when it comes to making conceptual engineering an actionable method, the psychological concept of concept outclasses its philosophical counterpart on all counts. This provides a baseline from which the concept of concept can be further improved for the purposes of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Isaac Levi is one of the preeminent philosophers in the areas of pragmatic rationality and epistemology. This collection of essays constitutes an important presentation of his original and influential ideas about rational choice and belief. A wide range of topics is covered, including consequentialism and sequential choice, consensus, voluntarism of belief, and the tolerance of the opinions of others. The essays elaborate on the idea that principles of rationality are norms that regulate the coherence of our beliefs and values with (...) our rational choices. The norms impose minimal constraints on deliberation and inquiry, but they also impose demands well beyond the capacities of deliberating agents. This major collection will be eagerly sought out by a wide range of philosophers in epistemology, logic, and philosophy of science, as well as economists, decision theorists, and statisticians. (shrink)

85 Jahre nach Erscheinen des religionsphilosophischen Romans Der Neue Kusari als Gesamtwerk (1934) wird das opus magnum des Frankfurter jüdischen Philosophen Isaac Breuer (1883 - 1946) hier erneut vorgelegt - in einer kritischen Ausgabe (mit dem Nachweis der Varianten der Erstveröffentlichung des ersten Teils in den Jahren 1930 - 1933), bereinigt von Druckfehlern, mit dem Nachweis von Anspielungen und Zitaten aus der jüdischen und außerjüdischen Literatur und weiteren Sachinformationen sowie mit einem Nachwort zum Verhältnis von Isaac Breuer und Gershom Scholem. (...) Besonderes Augenmerk liegt dabei auf den mystischen Traditionen des Judentums (Kabbala), die Breuer als einer der ersten Autoren der deutsch-jüdischen Orthodoxie verarbeitet. (shrink)

Es bastante notorio que el capitalismo de consumo tiene connotaciones religiosas. Las marcas, y la publicidad que las visualiza, generan un relato multiabarcante, son el proveedor más importante de historias en la actualidad. Es por ello que nos representan la realidad, generan las necesidades existenciales y cultivan la identidad personal del conjunto de la población, aparentemente secularizada. A la vez, las religiones tradicionales y, en concreto, el cristianismo, evolucionan hacia una versión más emocional de las mismas, como se observa en (...) el mundo neopentecostal y en las megaiglesias, el paradigma de la tendencia mercantilista del cristianismo. Al denostarse las racionalidades explicativas de significado, las diferentes confesiones religiosas abren su mentalidad a la lógica proveniente de la publicidad y el espectáculo de masas. Como resultado, la religión pasa a ser uno más de los productos de consumo que hay a su alrededor, adaptándose a las modas y a la cosmovisión imperante. (shrink)

This special issue of IJFAB starts from the premise that fitness is a feminist issue, and, more specifically, it is an issue that ought to be of concern to feminists interested in bioethics. While a neglected concept in feminist bio-ethics, fitness is of key importance to women’s health and well-being. Not only that, it is also an area of women’s lives that invites unwelcome policing and advice from friends, family members, medical practitioners, and even strangers. People have a difficult time (...) prying apart the idea of fitness from that of weight loss. Most women who embark on a fitness routine have weight loss among their primary goals.Since late 2011, we and a host of guest authors have been exploring the... (shrink)

Is the fact that our universe contains fine-tuned life evidence that we live in a multiverse? Ian Hacking and Roger White influentially argue that it is not. We approach this question through a systematic framework for self-locating epistemology. As it turns out, leading approaches to self-locating evidence agree that the fact that our own universe contains fine-tuned life indeed confirms the existence of a multiverse. This convergence is no accident: we present two theorems showing that, in this setting, any updating (...) rule that satisfies a few reasonable conditions will have the same feature. The conclusion that fine-tuned life provides evidence for a multiverse is hard to escape. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering means to provide a method to assess and improve our concepts working as cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering still lacks an account of what concepts are (as cognitive devices) and of what engineering is (in the case of cognition). And without such prior understanding of its subject matter, or so it is claimed here, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless, merely operating as a piecemeal approach, with no overall grip on its target domain. The purpose of this (...) programmatic paper is to overcome this knowledge gap by providing some guidelines for developing the theories of concepts and of cognition that will ground the systematic unified framework needed to effectively implement conceptual engineering as a widely applicable method for the cognitive optimization of our conceptual devices. (shrink)