What is the relationship between conceptual engineering and metasemantic externalism? Sally Haslanger has argued that metasemantic externalism justifies the seemingly counterintuitive consequences of her proposed conceptual revisions. But according to Herman Cappelen, metasemantic externalism makes conceptual engineering effectively impossible in practice. After raising objections to Haslanger’s and Cappelen’s views, I argue for a very different picture, on which metasemantic externalism bears very little on conceptual engineering. I argue that, while metasemantic externalism principally operates at the level of semantic-meaning, we should understand conceptual engineering to largely operate at the level of speaker-meaning. This ‘Speaker-Meaning Picture’ has two key benefits. Firstly, it makes conceptual engineering often easy in practice. Secondly, it suggests a new, normative response to the well-known objection that conceptual engineering serves only to change the subject.

中文翻译：

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概念工程、元语义外在主义和说话人意义

概念工程和元语义外在主义是什么关系？萨莉·哈斯兰格 (Sally Haslanger) 认为，元语义外在主义证明了她提出的概念修订看似违反直觉的后果是合理的。但根据 Herman Cappelen 的说法，元语义外在主义使概念工程在实践中实际上不可能实现。在对 Haslanger 和 Cappelen 的观点提出反对之后，我主张一个非常不同的图景，在这种图景上，元语义外在主义对概念工程的影响很小。我认为，虽然元语义外在主义主要在语义意义层面运作，但我们应该理解概念工程主要在说话者意义层面运作。这张“演讲者意义图片”有两个主要好处。首先，它使概念工程在实践中通常很容易。