HKUST Philosophy of Science Lecture Series - What is conceptual impact? Strategic ambiguity and ontic risk in science and politics

Which words we choose to conceptualize phenomena can have tremendous impact on science and society. Introducing, extending or revising a term can aid the scientific investigation of phenomena, and can help societal actors (activists, policymakers) to tackle social problems. For example: the introduction of “default mode network” helped neuroscientists explore how the brain is organized, while choice between “climate change” and “climate crisis” helps policymakers to signal the urgency of climate action (Haueis 2023, 2024). But how should we analyze the discursive impact of choosing words from a philosophical perspective? Current theories of conceptual change or conceptual engineering provide no clear answer to this question because they do not define what conceptual impact is, and sometimes separate how we should change concepts from questions of lexical effects and word choice (Cappellen 2018, Chalmers 2020).

In this talk I define conceptual impact as the effect of a discursive intervention on a segment of material-discursive reality, and discuss its normative relevance using the examples of strategic ambiguity and ontic risk. Strategic ambiguity occurs when speakers use a word with multiple meanings to achieve a self-interested goal. I use the examples of choosing “default mode network” in neuroscience and “climate change” at the science-policy interface to show how strategic ambiguity affects the pursuit of epistemic or sociopolitical goals, thus making it relevant to goal-based theories of conceptual change and conceptual engineering. Ontic risk can occur when word choice marks the choice of ontological criteria, which leads to assumptions about the identity and existence of entities in the concept’s application domain (Ludwig 2016, Buskell 2022). These assumptions can put the entities at risk, such that revising a term (discursive intervention) can have positive or negative effects on the existence of these entities. I illustrate the conceptual impact of managing ontic risk with downstream effects of taxonomic decisions in conservation biology. Together, the examples of strategic ambiguity and ontic risk show that conceptual impact can be both epistemic or ontic in nature, and that the level of words and discourse cannot by ignored by theories of conceptual change and conceptual engineering.