Advocates of conceptual engineering as a method of philosophy face a dilemma: either they are ignorant of how conceptual engineering can be implemented, or else it is trivial to implement but of very little value, representing no new or especially fruitful method of philosophizing. Two key distinctions frame this dilemma and explain its two horns. First, the distinction between speaker’s meaning and reference and semantic meaning and reference reveals a severe implementation problem for one construal of conceptual engineering. Second, the (...) distinction between stipulating meanings and conceptually analyzing allows us to see why, on another construal of what conceptual engineering involves, the practice is neither a new nor neglected philosophical methodology. The article also argues that semantic externalism is not the root of the implementation problem for conceptual engineering, and that the usual rationale for adopting the practice, one that ties its value to the amelioration of “conceptual defects”, is unsound. (shrink)

When we carry out a speech act of stipulation, it seems that we can shape our language however we see fit. This autonomy, however, also seems to make such acts arbitrary: it is unclear if there are any constraints on what counts as a "correct" or "incorrect" stipulation. In this paper, I offer a novel, detailed account of the pragmatics of stipulation and explain its crucial role in conceptual analysis and articulation. My account shows that stipulation (...) does indeed equip us with a key tool for changing our linguistic practices, but that such acts can nonetheless count as meaningfully, normatively constrained: they are always subject to felicitous criticism and the possibility of defeat by others. I then examine the metaphilosophical implications of this account. Philosophers often describe the project of conceptual analysis as having a crucial stipulative dimension, but they rarely explain what they take this act to consist in. On my view, speech acts of stipulation are best understood as acts that generate a shared inferential entitlement for speaker and audience, an entitlement justified on the basis of its utility. In developing this account, I distinguish stipulations from more familiar speech act kinds such as assertions and commands, synthesize and criticize alternative views of stipulation in the literature, and discuss the relationship between stipulation and seemingly kindred speech acts (such as assumptions, suppositions, and proposals). (shrink)

Russian translation of Williamson T. Imagination, Stipulation and Vagueness // Philosophical Issues, 8, 1997. Translated by Alisa Veruk, Nina Zubkova with kind permission of the author.

Russian translation of Williamson T. Imagination, Stipulation and Vagueness // Philosophical Issues, 8, 1997. Translated by Alisa Veruk, Nina Zubkova with kind permission of the author.

Recent attempts to answer ontological questions through conceptual analysis have been controversial. Still, it seems reasonable to assume that if the existence of certain things analytically follows from sentences we already accept, then there is no further ontological commitment involved in affirming the existence of those things. More generally, it is plausible that whenever a sentence analytically entails another, the conjunction of those sentences requires nothing more of the world for its truth than the former sentence alone. In his ‘Analyticity (...) and Ontology’, Louis deRosset tries to produce counterexamples to these principles by means of linguistic stipulations. I aim to show where his arguments go wrong. (shrink)

Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik offers a conception of cpLogic as the study of functions. Among functions are included those that are concepts, i.e. characteristic functions whose values are the logical objects that are the True/the False. What, in Frege's view, are the objects the True/the False? Frege's stroke functions are themselves concepts. His stipulation introducing his negation stroke mentions that it yields [...]. But curiously no accommodating axiom is given, and there is no such theorem. Why is it that (...) some of Frege's informal stipulations never made appearances as axioms? I offer an explanation that sheds new light on the Grundgesetze. No axioms should over-determination the True as a logical object. Perhaps the True = 0, as would be common in the mathematics of characteristic functions. But the logical objects that are cardinal numbers are value ranges correlated with second-level numerical concepts by a non-homogeneous second-level value-range function [...]. The existence of concepts would be ontologically circular if the True is itself a number. We find this circularity perfectly agreeable to Frege, and suggest that he had accepted that the existence of functions that are concepts in his cpLogic may well be ontologically inseparable from the existence of his value-range function. His cpLogic itself stands or falls with the viability of some value-range function. (shrink)

Page's proposal to stipulate representations in which individual units correspond to meaningful entities is too unconstrained to support effective theorizing. An approach combining general computational principles with domain-specific assumptions, in which learning is used to discover representations that are effective in solving tasks, provides more insight into why cognitive and neural systems are organized the way they are.

An agent’s knowledge of her own intentional actions (agential knowledge) is non-observational. Yet, intentional actions typically consist of happenings external to the agents. A theory is needed to explain how agents are warranted to form such beliefs independent of observation. This paper first argues for three desirable features of an ideal theory about agential knowledge. After showing that no existing theories possess all three, a novel theory that does is presented. According to this theory, agential knowledge is the same kind (...) of knowledge as the Kripkean contingent a priori: they are knowledge justified a priori by stipulation. (shrink)

Objectives: This study was designed to explore the prevalence and types of stipulations required of investigators by the institutional review board of one institution over a five year period.Design: Stipulations to research proposals were documented from the minutes of the IRB meetings.Setting: Community hospital.Participants: IRB submissions.Main measurements: Number and type of IRB stipulations.Results: Nineteen research submissions were approved without any stipulations. For the remainder, the majority of stipulations related to consent forms .Conclusions: Consent forms appear to be at highest risk (...) for IRB stipulations. Being aware of high risk areas before submission of research proposals may reduce the frequency of stipulations required of investigators. (shrink)

A distinction between the epistemic practices in mathematics and in the empirical sciences is rehearsed to motivate the epistemic role puzzle. This is distinguished both from Benacerraf's 1973 epistemic puzzle and from sceptical arguments against our knowledge of an external world. The stipulationist position is described, a position which can address this puzzle. Methods of avoiding the stipulationist position by using pure logic to provide knowledge of mathematical abstracta are discussed and criticized.

Kripke's discussion in Naming and Necessity strongly suggests that semantic stipulation allows us to have new de re thoughts and make new de re claims. For example, it seems we could name the winning ticket in the next lottery 'Tickie' and thereby come to have singular thoughts about Tickie as opposed to merely general thoughts about the winning ticket (whichever one that is). This, in turn, seems to put us into a position to know that Tickie is the winning (...) ticket. If so, it seems we now know which ticket will win the lottery. So it seems semantic stipulation puts us in a position to have all sorts of knowledge that, intuitively, we don't have. We argue that semantic stipulation does put you in a position to have new singular thoughts, though those thoughts will usually be informationally isolated. We think you also typically know these singular propositions, but it is misleading for you to say that you do since you typically cannot act on your knowledge in the expected way. On the other hand, since you can't act on the information in the right way, perhaps your knowledge is thwarted. If so, you don't know Tickie will win since you can't act on that information in order to (e.g.) buy Tickie and no other ticket. We develop both views and argue that they are preferable to the alternatives. (shrink)

In "Analyticity and Ontology," I argued that there are counterexamples to the claim that the sentences analytically entailed by a claim $\phi$ require nothing more of the world for their truth than does $\phi$. The counterexamples involve sentences which, I argued, are analytically entailed by certain truths, but which nevertheless require more of the world for their truth. John Horden has offered two interesting criticisms of this argument. First, he contends that its conclusion is inconsistent. Second, he contends that the (...) argument faces a dilemma, depending on which of two hypotheses about the meanings of the sentences involved in the counterexamples turns out to be true. Here I reply to Horden's criticisms and briefly indicate what I take their lesson to be. (shrink)

Letting is a common practice in mathematics. For example, we let x be the sum of the first n integers and, after a short proof, conclude that x = n(n+1)/2; we let J be the point where the bisectors of two of the angles of a triangle intersect and prove that this coincides with H, the point at which another pair of bisectors of the angles of that triangle intersect. Karl Weierstrass's colleagues, in an attempt to solve optimization problems, stipulated (...) that the minimum area for a triangle with a given perimeter be a straight line segment conceived as a triangle with zero altitude. (Weierstrass complained that this obscured the insight that some problems have no solutions.) In mathematics applied to physics, we let x be the temperature in Fahrenheit corresponding to 30° Centigrade; we let v be the velocity of the Earth through the luminiferous ether. Before the error was spotted, the official rules for Little League Baseball made an inconsistent stipulation about the dimensions of home plate (Bradley 1996). (shrink)

NO THREE CONCEPTS ARE MORE CENTRAL to legal theory than nature, custom, and stipulation; thus the familiar expressions "natural law," "customary law," and stipulated or "positive law." The problem is that conflicting claims are made for natural law, customary law, and positive law. I will argue that to make sense of these conflicting claims we must first make a distinction between law as a species of social order and jurisprudence as the explanation of law. For example, the debate between (...) the advocates of legal positivism and the advocates of natural law reflects a confusion between law and jurisprudence: law as social order is essentially stipulated, but the jurisprudential explanation of law requires the three categories of nature, custom, and stipulation. Thus legal positivists rightly insist that all law is stipulated, but advocates of natural law rightly insist that the explanation of law requires the use of a notion of nature. Conversely, the legal positivists wrongly insist that jurisprudence must be restricted to the consideration of stipulated "norms" or "rules," and the natural law theorists wrongly insist that "nature" can stipulate a code of law. Finally, the historical school's emphasis on "customary law" reflects the same confusion between law and jurisprudence: there is no such thing as "customary law," but custom is an essential category of jurisprudence. Only by clarifying the distinction between law and jurisprudence can we begin to reconcile these three schools of legal theory. (shrink)

According to Horwich’s use theory of meaning, the meaning of a word W is engendered by the underived acceptance of certain sentences containing W. Horwich applies this theory to provide an account of semantic stipulation: Semantic stipulation proceeds by deciding to accept sentences containing an as yet meaningless word W. Thereby one brings it about that W gets an underived acceptance property. Since a word’s meaning is constituted by its (basic) underived acceptance property, this decision endows the word (...) with a meaning. The use-theoretic account of semantic stipulation contrasts with the standard view that semantic stipulation proceeds by assigning the meaning (reference) to W that makes a certain set of sentences express true propositions. In this paper I will argue that the use-theoretic account does not work. I take Frege to have already made the crucial point: "a definition does not assert anything but lays down something ["etwas festsetzt"]” (Frege 1899, 36). A semantic stipulation for W cannot be the decision to accept a sentence containing W or be explained in terms of such an acceptance. Semantic stipulation constitutes a problem for Horwich's use theory of meaning, especially his basic notion of acceptance. (shrink)

Several recent formulations of Rule Consequentialism (RC) have broken with the consensus that RC should be formulated in terms of codeacceptance, claiming instead that RC should focus on the consequences of codes' beingtaught. I begin this article with an examination of the standard case for acceptance formulations. In addition to depending on the mistaken assumption thatcomplianceandacceptanceformulations are the only options, the standard case claims advantages for acceptance formulations that, upon closer examination, favor teaching formulations. In the remainder of the article, (...) I defend this new teaching-centered approach against some recent criticisms. I argue that preoccupation with the somewhat technical problem of identifying the best criterion for making choices under conditions of uncertainty has distracted rule consequentialists from paying more careful attention to the advantages and disadvantages that result from decisions concerning where they locate RC's stipulated assumptions within the theory. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to provide the exact diagnosis of the contingent a priori debate so far by untangling complicated issues surrounding it, such as singular thought, linguistic stipulation, and epistemic justification. I will first maintain that most philosophers' arguments for or against the contingent a priori are ultimately based on one of two conflicting intuitions about linguistic stipulation: sceptics of the contingent a priori have appealed to the intuition that extra-linguistic knowledge cannot be acquired (...) through the stroke of a pen, whereas proponents of it have appealed to the other intuition that one is in a position to understand a name that one introduces by oneself into one's own language. Then I will reconstruct the sceptics' and proponents' positions in their strongest form respectively and examine where they disagree, and finally I will argue that the contingent a priori debate cannot help but end in a stalemate without further scrutiny into singular thought. From this diagnosis, I conclude that in order to appropriately judge whether a contingent proposition is knowable a priori, we must first independently investigate what the conditions for singular thought are: the contingent a priori rides on the singular thought debate. (shrink)

Although contentious, the concept of resilience is common in sustainability research. Critique of the concept have often focused on the content of the concept. In this paper we focus on another feature of concepts, namely how they are defined. We distinguish between concepts that are ostensively defined, that aim to point to some phenomena, and stipulatively defined concepts, where the content of the concept is given in the definition itself. We argue that although definitions themselves are similar across many different (...) disciplines where resilience is used?most notably psychology and ecology?they differ in how. This has interesting consequences for how different disciplines can be connected and integrated. Notably, integration on basis of ostensively defined concepts turn on sharing the extension of the concept, but not necessarily the intension, whereas integration on basis of stipulatively defined concepts work in the opposite way. (shrink)

DNA profiling and databasing have become commonplace in criminal investigation and prosecution. There is a body of both state and federal legislation enabling the establishment and operation of profile databases for law enforcement purposes. Most legislation is specific as to who may be profiled for inclusion in a database. The majority of state laws permit DNA profile databasing of offenders convicted of certain defined crimes, of missing persons and their relatives, and of DNA profiles from criminal-case evidence where the depositor (...) is unknown. More recently, a few states have acted to permit databasing profiles of suspects of certain types of crimes, and there appears to be a trend toward wider adoption of this practice. The legislation adopted or proposed thus far defines whose DNA profiles can be databased, and under what circumstances. Less attention has been given to the matter of specimen retention following profiling and databasing. (shrink)

DNA profiling and databasing are now commonplace. A body of state and federal legislation enables the establishment and operation of profile databases for law-enforcement purposes. Enabling legislation is usually specific about who, or what evidence, may be profiled for a database. It may be less specific or silent on the issue of specimen retention following profiling and databasing.

Stipulation gives us a degree of control over meaning. By stipulating how I will use a term I am able to determine the meaning it will receive on future occasions of use. My stipulation will affect the truth conditional content of my future utterances. But the mechanisms of stipulation are mysterious. As Cappelen (2018) argues, meaning is typically determined in an inscrutable way by a myriad of external factors beyond our control. How does stipulation override these (...) factors? And the powers of stipulation are limited. Firstly, the power of stipulation is typically short-lived. Sec-ondly, some stipulations simply don’t get off the ground. What explains the limits of stipulation? I consider two related approaches to stipulation and argue that they are unable to capture stipulation’s metasemantic effects. I then provide an explanation of the metasemantic effects of stipulation: Stipulation determines meaning by determining the word use it is fitting to hold the speaker to. This account is able to capture the mechanisms and limits of stipulation, whilst also explaining why we should care about stip-ulative success. I close by briefly drawing out some lessons for conceptual engineering. -/- . (shrink)

In the past century the received view of definition in mathematics has been the stipulative conception, according to which a definition merely stipulates the meaning of a term in other terms which are supposed to be already well known. The stipulative conception has been so absolutely dominant and accepted as unproblematic that the nature of definition has not been much discussed, yet it is inadequate. This paper examines its shortcomings and proposes an alternative, the heuristic conception.

In this paper, I present two tools that help shed light on deep disagreements and their epistemological consequences. First, I argue that we are best off construing deep disagreements as disagreements over conflicting understandings of certain concepts. More specifically, I suggest that deep disagreements are disagreements over how to understand concepts that play what Michael Friedman calls a “constitutive” role for speakers. Second, I argue that we need a better understanding of what speakers are doing when they engage in deep (...) disagreements—what speech acts they are carrying out. I show that we are best off not reducing the relevant speech acts to more familiar speech act kinds, such as assertions or imperatives. I argue that when a speaker articulates an understanding of a concept, they are in part carrying out an act of stipulation. I provide an account of the pragmatics of stipulation and apply the account to examples of deep disagreement. Focusing on the stipulative dimension of deep disagreement opens up, in turn, a novel approach to defusing the epistemological challenges such disagreement seems to pose. (shrink)