Improving concepts, reshaping values: pragmatism and ameliorative projects

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I argue that positions from the historical tradition of pragmatism can offer insights into the role that values play in ameliorative projects. By focusing on Sally Haslanger’s ameliorative project regarding gender, I will try to show how the Deweyan idea of the circuit provides a convincing understanding of the mutual interplay between values and conceptual revision within ameliorative approaches. I propose to understand this circuit as a process of articulation, through which our understanding of an initially vague value becomes more detailed and fine-grained. To this end, I will focus on a specific aspect of Haslanger's recent intellectual production, namely the idea that ameliorative projects are inspired and organized by partially indeterminate values. In the final part of the paper, I will discuss a potential moral and political pitfall associated with ameliorative projects – i.e. the proliferation of cultural bubbles which are mutually exclusive and unable to communicate among themselves. This discussion addresses a further challenge for implementation, which is connected to the field of values, and not merely to the domain of concepts.

KEYWORDS:

• Articulation
• conceptual engineering
• pragmatism
• Sally Haslanger
• values

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the guest editors (Yvonne Hütter-Almerigi and Céline Henne) and the anonymous reviewers for providing excellent insights and remarks. Early versions of this paper were presented and discussed at the international conference ‘Traditional Entanglements of Conceptual Engineering: American and Cambridge Pragmatism’ (Bologna-Cambridge), at the International Workshop ‘Struggle, Conflict, Critique: Reviewing Social Philosophy’ (Barcelona) and at the 5th European Conference on Social Networks (Napoli). This paper has benefited from the discussions hosted in these venues. Finally, I would like to thank Claudia Mazzuca for our longstanding and ongoing discussions on concepts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In recent times, various authors have discussed the relation between pragmatism and conceptual engineering. For a Rortyan perspective on the incompatibility between pragmatism and conceptual engineering, see Gascoigne (2016, 2021). For a more reconciliatory perspective on this point, directly inspired by C.I. Lewis and Frank Ramsey, see Misak (2022). In this paper, I will focus more specifically on Dewey’s perspective, which I believe can be particularly productive for the issues discussed in this context. Yet, the Deweyan approach adopted here shares at least three aspects highlighted by Misak’s pragmatist reconstruction, according to which a concept: (A) is evolving, social, and contested; (B) is captured by a set of practices played out and assessed in action; C) can be changed by our practices, so that it fits better with the world and our values (Misak 2022). For an interesting critical reading of Haslanger, see Gregoratto (2020).

2 In her 2000 paper, Haslanger defines this project as analytical (Haslanger 2000, 34). Since in her following works the label ‘analytic’ is replaced with the term ‘ameliorative’, I will use the latter term throughout this essay.

3 Among the most significant contributions to the discussion prompted by Haslanger (2000) one must necessarily mention Saul (2012); Díaz-León (2016; 2020); Mikkola (2008); Jenkins (2016); Bettcher (2013).

4 In this context, I will not engage in a thorough analysis of the difference between norms and values. On this topic, see Railton (2003).

5 There are important analogies between this pragmatist idea of the circuit and the processes of iteration studied by Hasok Chang (2004). See e.g., Elliott (2012). See further Kitcher (2001).

6 I would like to thank Reviewer 1 for having raised these important issues. I also take the interesting example of corruption and anti-corruption values from their remarks.

7 The topic of articulation has been gaining a growing importance in pragmatist scholarship. See Jung (2009), Frega (2009), Viola (2022), Serrano Zamora (2017), Serrano Zamora and Santarelli (2021). I am deeply sympathetic with Matthew Congdon’s brilliant and creative use of Taylor’s concept of articulation (Congdon 2022).

8 The term vagueness has been used in many ways in debates, in philosophy and in the social sciences. In the context of the present article, I use the term ‘vagueness’ as a synonym of partial indetermination. For recent discussions of the pragmatist understanding of vagueness, see Maddalena (2015); Viola (2019); Tiercelin (2019). It also seems to me that Haslanger in her work (see Haslanger 2021a) employs the two terms interchangeably. In doing so, I think she is not using the term ‘indetermination’ in the technical sense adopted in the debate on Quine’s translation and reference indeterminacy (Hylton and Kemp 2020).

9 Haslanger reports a comment by David Plunkett, according to which there are important similarities between these passages and Ronald Dworkin’s interpretivism (Dworkin 2011). Conversely, Haslanger maintains that there are important differences between her view and Dworkin’s (Haslanger 2020, 246). I think that the two approaches share the significant idea that values are often partially indeterminate.

10 I took this cutting expression from an extremely useful critical remark by Reviewer 1.

11 One might argue that dual character concepts sneak in through the back door of the facts-values dichotomy that the pragmatists threw out the front door. I do not think this is the case. Overcoming the fact-value dichotomy is compatible with the fact that in some cases and for specific purposes, we can focus more directly either on the concrete and descriptive features of a concept or on the abstract values that we expect the exemplars of this concept to embody.

12 I would like to thank Reviewer 2 for prompting me to focus on this point.

13 On how this is true not only for moral and political values but for conceptual practices at large including science and our efforts to ‘get things right’ see, e.g., Huetter on ‘practice immanent realism’ in Rorty (Huetter-Almerigi 2020; Huetter-Almerigi 2022).