15/10 4pm-5:45pm: Departmental Colloquium - Adrian Alsmith (KCL)

Gemma Basterfield — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 07:38:21 GMT

When: 4pm - 5:45pm, Wed, 15 Oct '25

Where: S0.18

26/11 4pm-5:45pm: Departmental Colloquium - Jennifer Marušić (Edinburgh)

Gemma Basterfield — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 07:39:41 GMT

When: 4pm - 5:45pm, Wed, 26 Nov '25

Where: S0.18

21/01 4pm-5:45pm: Departmental Colloquium Daisy Dixon (Cardiff)

Gemma Basterfield — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 07:39:57 GMT

When: 4pm - 5:45pm, Wed, 21 Jan '26

Where: S0.18

04/03 4pm-5:45pm: Departmental Colloquium - Lidal Dror (Princeton)

Gemma Basterfield — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 08:58:15 GMT

When: 4pm - 5:45pm, Wed, 04 Mar '26

Where: S0.18

What’s Wrong with ‘Conceptual Amelioration’?

Conceptual amelioration aims to make the world a more just place by ameliorating our concepts. I offer three arguments against this enterprise as currently practiced, to show how social philosophy aimed at producing social change can be better practiced. First, ameliorators often fail to provide plausible stories to vindicate their claims about how conceptual amelioration will unfold in our non-ideal world. Second, ameliorators’ focus on postulating meanings of ‘concepts’ risks distracting from important normative theorizing about justice. Third, ameliorators tend to overstate the importance of conceptual change for social change. The upshot is that, since such projects tend to be done poorly on their own terms and to evince excessively idealistic views of social change, we should reconsider how to engage in such projects. Drawing on these criticisms, I argue that conceptual amelioration should be conducted in service of ideology critique.

Philosophy » Departmental Colloquium, 2024/2025

15/10 4pm-5:45pm: Departmental Colloquium - Adrian Alsmith (KCL)

26/11 4pm-5:45pm: Departmental Colloquium - Jennifer Marušić (Edinburgh)

21/01 4pm-5:45pm: Departmental Colloquium Daisy Dixon (Cardiff)

04/03 4pm-5:45pm: Departmental Colloquium - Lidal Dror (Princeton)