To reform or to eliminate an attractor?

Abstract

Machery, E. (2021). A new challenge to conceptual engineering. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2021.1967190.) argues to have identified a novel reason why deficient concepts of a certain kind are better eliminated than reformed. Namely, if the deficient concept is an attractor—a concept that we are psychologically drawn to think with—then eliminating this concept is a more feasible alternative than reforming it. Machery illustrates his argument with the example of the scientific concept of innateness, which he considers to be an attractor. I argue two things against Machery's thesis. First, there is little reason to believe that attempts to eliminate the scientific concept of innateness will be more feasible than attempts to reform it. Second, there is little reason to believe that attempts to eliminate a concept, whether it is an attractor or not, are more feasible than attempts to reform it. Moreover, a concept being an attractor even diminishes—instead of increasing—the chances that eliminating it is more feasible than reforming it.