Living ethically through our concepts: on the need for conceptual enhancement

Abstract

Iris Murdoch (1956) famously argued that our moral concepts are not neutral areas but something that determines our vision of the world. They not only shape our moral lives, but also guide and constrain them. Our moral actions depend on our concepts. As Queloz (2025) observes, we cannot act in the name of justice if we do not have the concept of justice. Our moral concepts, therefore, are a necessary determinant of our ethical life. Today, concepts like ‘genocide’, ‘sexism’, and ‘racism’ etc., have become central to how we act and think ethically. However, these concepts have not always been a part of our conceptual repertoire. For instance, the term ‘genocide’ was coined in 1942 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who fled the nazi occupation. ‘Sexism’ was introduced in 1965, and, more recently, the term ‘ecocide’ was coined to call out the destruction of the environment by human acts such as war and over-exploitation. For most of history, these concepts were not available to us. The development of these concepts and their apparent absence in history show that our present moral vocabulary may not always be the most appropriate for a good ethical life. This raises the question: how can we lead an ethical life in the face of the historical contingency of our moral concepts? And, more importantly. How can we enhance our moral vocabulary? These are the central questions of my paper. In section 1 of this paper, I will examine the contingency of our moral concepts and highlight the need and possibility of conceptual enhancement in the moral domain. Following that, in section 2 of this paper, I will build on these insights to answer the question Why should we care about our concepts at all when it comes to ethical life? And why should we care about their contingency? Drawing on Congdon (2024), I will explore how our recent moral concepts have enriched our ethical life while also revealing the need for further enhancement. Finally, in section 3 of this paper, I will examine a way of conceptual engagement called conceptual engineering. In particular, I will aim to explain how this methodology can identify and fix the potential conceptual gaps. For this, I will rely on a functional approach to conceptual engineering. Here, I will also explore the metaphilosophical implications of the same approach and examine the challenges a project like this could face. I aim to address these questions by drawing on recent work in contemporary metaphilosophy and meta-ethics.