Conceptual engineering is commonly characterized as the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. Little has been said, however, on how best to construe these representational devices—in other words, on what conceptual engineering should be all about. This paper tackles this problem with a basic strategy: First, by presenting a taxonomy of the different possible subject matters for conceptual engineering; then, by comparatively assessing them and selecting the most conducive one with a view to making conceptual engineering an actionable method, that is, a method that can be applied effectively and consistently to specific case studies. The outcome is that conceptual engineering should be all about concepts on pain of pragmatic inconsistencies otherwise.

概念工程通常被描述为评估和改进我们的代表性设备的方法。然而，关于如何最好地解释这些表征装置——换言之，概念工程应该是什么，却鲜为人知。本文通过一个基本策略来解决这个问题：首先，通过对概念工程的不同可能主题进行分类；然后，通过对它们进行比较评估并选择最有利的方法，以期使概念工程成为一种可操作的方法，即一种可以有效且一致地应用于特定案例研究的方法。结果是，概念工程应该全是关于实用性不一致的痛苦的概念，否则。