Herman Cappelen
Biographic Data
| ID | 462191 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Herman Cappelen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Herman |
| FAMILY NAME | Cappelen |
| SIGNATURE | CAPPELEN H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
AI safety: A climb to Armageddon
This paper presents an argument that certain AI safety measures, rather than mitigating existential risk, may instead exacerbate it. Under certain key assumptions - the inevitability of AI failure, the expected correlation between an AI system's power at the point of failure and the severity of the resulting harm, and the tendency of safety measures to enable AI systems to become more powerful before failing - safety efforts have negative expecte…
Introspective Machines: Are LLMs Better at Self‐Reflection Than Humans
This article challenges conventional boundaries between human and artificial cognition by examining introspective capabilities in large language models (LLMs). Although humans have traditionally been considered unique in their ability to reflect on their own mental states, we argue that LLMs may not only possess genuine introspective abilities but potentially excel at them compared to humans. We discuss five objections to machine introspection: (…
Experimental philosophy without intuitions: An illustration of why it fails
Making AI Intelligible: Philosophical Foundations
Can humans and artificial intelligences share concepts and communicate? One aim of Making AI Intelligible is to show that philosophical work on the metaphysics of meaning can help answer these questions. Cappelen and Dever use the externalist tradition in philosophy of to create models of how AIs and humans can understand each other. In doing so, they also show ways in which that philosophical tradition can be improved: our linguistic encounters …
Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics
Conceptual engineering is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with assessing representational devices such as concepts and words. Conceptual engineers looks for the problems with such devices and attempt to come up with ways of improving flawed concepts: they attempt to say how those concepts should be. This is the first volume devoted entirely to the possibility, benefits, problems, and applications of conceptual engineering and conceptual …
Conceptual Engineering, Topics, Metasemantics, and Lack of Control: Responses to Sarah Sawyer, Laura Schroeter, François Schroeter, and Tim Sundell
Conceptual engineering is now a central topic in contemporary philosophy. Just 4-5 years ago it wasn’t. People were then engaged in the engineering of various philosophical concepts (in various sub-disciplines), but typically not self-consciously so. Qua philosophical method, conceptual engineering was under-explored, often ignored, and poorly understood. In my lifetime, I have never seen interest in a philosophical topic grow with such explosive…
Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics
On the Importance of a General Theory and an Overview of the Austerity Framework
In this chapter we take a step back and consider what we’ve seen so far and talk a bit about the methodology which will inform the remainder of the book. In particular, it argues that it’s a worthwhile enterprise to present a theory of conceptual engineering in general, one that is applicable to all the diverse instances of it we saw in Chapter 2. It does so by presenting five very general questions about conceptual engineering which are worth an…
Externalist Conceptual Engineering
This chapter continues to consider some foundational semantic issues important for the author’s theory, and for conceptual engineering in general. It argues that conceptual engineering is not—despite the nomenclature—concerned with concepts, but rather with the intensions and extensions of words. It introduces externalism about meaning, which is a key component of the Austerity Framework, and draws connections between meaning change and externali…
Chalmers’s Subscript Gambit, the Importance of Topics, and Lack of Control
This chapter discusses Chalmers’s view about how to deal with verbal disputes, and its relation to the Austerity Framework. According to Chalmers’s subscript gambit, when we suspect that a philosophical term is the subject of a verbal dispute, we ought to ban the use of the word, and replace it with two or more new words which express the different meanings, and investigate whether any substantial dispute remains. Although Chalmers’s method of el…
Corollaries of Externalism
This chapter, which continues the argument of the previous one, elaborates the Austerity Framework, considers how it relates to some alternative theories of conceptual engineering, and responds to some objections. First, it introduces the principle that underlies the author’s theory: Inscrutable—Lack of Control—Will Keep Trying. This principle says that the processes that underlie meaning change are inscrutable, and accordingly we typically lack …
Varieties of Conceptual Engineering
Chapter 2 gave an overview of the varieties of conceptual engineering. This chapter shows how the tools of the Austerity Framework enable us gain a greater understanding of the different kinds of conceptual engineering. Some engineers (such as Haslanger and Clark and Chalmers) are concerned with improving the way we speak about a topic. Others, most notably Scharp, are concerned with concepts that they call inconsistent. It is argued that we thin…
Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering
Fixing Language is a book about ways in which language (and other representational devices) can be defective and improved. In all parts of philosophy there are philosophers who criticize the concepts we have and propose ways to improve them. Once one notices this about philosophy, it’s easy to see that revisionist projects occur in a range of other intellectual disciplines and in ordinary life. That fact gives rise to a cluster of questions: How …
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
This book examines the nature of philosophical methodology, defined as the study of philosophical method: how to do philosophy well. It considers a number of hypotheses that explain the nature of philosophical methodology, including eliminativism, epistemologism, theory selectionism, necessary preconditionalism, and hierarchicalism. It also tackles a range of topics such as ‘ordinary language philosophy’, the role of logic in philosophical method…
Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
"This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology (including logical empiricism, phenomenology, and ordinary language philosophy). The entries in the second part address topics in philo…
Context and Communication
The Inessential Indexical: On the Philosophical Insignificance of Perspective and the First Person
When we represent the world in language, in thought, or in perception, we often represent it from a perspective. We say and think that the meeting is happening now, that it is hot here, that I am in danger and not you; that the tree looks larger from my perspective than from yours. This book is an exploration and defence of the view that perspectivality is a philosophically shallow aspect of the world. This book opposes one of the most entrenched…
Nonsense and Illusions of Thought
Philosophy without Intuitions
The standard view of philosophical methodology is that philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence. Herman Cappelen argues that this claim is false, and reveals how it has encouraged pseudo-problems, presented misguided ideas of what philosophy is, and misled exponents of metaphilosophy and experimental philosophy.
Assertion
Assertion is a fundamental feature of language. This volume will be the place to look for anyone interested in current work on the topic. Philosophers of language and epistemologists join forces to elucidate what kind of speech act assertion is particularly in light of relativist views of truth, and how assertion is governed by epistemic norms.
Relativism and Monadic Truth
"Relativism has dominated many intellectual circles, past and present, but the twentieth century saw it banished to the fringes of mainstream analytic philosophy. Of late, however, it is making something of a comeback within that loosely configured tradition, a comeback that attempts to capitalize on some important ideas in foundational semantics. Relativism and Monadic Truth aims not merely to combat analytic relativism but also to combat the fo…
Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism
The Creative Interpreter: Content Relativism and Assertion 1
Replies
We are in the curious position of disagreeing with Bach about what exactly we disagree about. As we see it, his characterization of our disagreement introduces largely irrelevant terminological issues; and these in turn cover up the fact that he simply hasn't replied to our central criticism. We start with two failed attempts to characterize the disagreement, and then move on to what is central
Précis of Insensitive Semantics
Insensitive Semantics (I) has three components: It defends a positive theory; it presents a methodology for how to distinguish semantic context sensitivity from other kinds of context sensitivity; and finally, it includes chapters critical of other contributors on these issues. In this Précis, we outline each component, but before doing so a few brief ‘big picture’ remarks about the positions defended in is are in order
Context Shifting Arguments
Nonsense and Illusions of Thought
The Creative Interpreter: Content Relativism and Assertion 1
Précis of Insensitive Semantics
Insensitive Semantics (I) has three components: It defends a positive theory; it presents a methodology for how to distinguish semantic context sensitivity from other kinds of context sensitivity; and finally, it includes chapters critical of other contributors on these issues. In this Précis, we outline each component, but before doing so a few brief ‘big picture’ remarks about the positions defended in is are in order
Replies
We are in the curious position of disagreeing with Bach about what exactly we disagree about. As we see it, his characterization of our disagreement introduces largely irrelevant terminological issues; and these in turn cover up the fact that he simply hasn't replied to our central criticism. We start with two failed attempts to characterize the disagreement, and then move on to what is central
Pluralistic Skepticism: Advertisement for Speech Act Pluralism
Believing in Words
Semantic Theory and Indirect Speech
Intuitions
Believing in Words
Context Shifting Arguments
Pluralistic Skepticism: Advertisement for Speech Act Pluralism
Replies
We are in the curious position of disagreeing with Bach about what exactly we disagree about. As we see it, his characterization of our disagreement introduces largely irrelevant terminological issues; and these in turn cover up the fact that he simply hasn't replied to our central criticism. We start with two failed attempts to characterize the disagreement, and then move on to what is central
Précis of Insensitive Semantics
Insensitive Semantics (I) has three components: It defends a positive theory; it presents a methodology for how to distinguish semantic context sensitivity from other kinds of context sensitivity; and finally, it includes chapters critical of other contributors on these issues. In this Précis, we outline each component, but before doing so a few brief ‘big picture’ remarks about the positions defended in is are in order
Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism
The Creative Interpreter: Content Relativism and Assertion 1
Relativism and Monadic Truth
"Relativism has dominated many intellectual circles, past and present, but the twentieth century saw it banished to the fringes of mainstream analytic philosophy. Of late, however, it is making something of a comeback within that loosely configured tradition, a comeback that attempts to capitalize on some important ideas in foundational semantics. Relativism and Monadic Truth aims not merely to combat analytic relativism but also to combat the fo…
Assertion
Assertion is a fundamental feature of language. This volume will be the place to look for anyone interested in current work on the topic. Philosophers of language and epistemologists join forces to elucidate what kind of speech act assertion is particularly in light of relativist views of truth, and how assertion is governed by epistemic norms.
Philosophy without Intuitions
The standard view of philosophical methodology is that philosophers rely on intuitions as evidence. Herman Cappelen argues that this claim is false, and reveals how it has encouraged pseudo-problems, presented misguided ideas of what philosophy is, and misled exponents of metaphilosophy and experimental philosophy.
The Inessential Indexical: On the Philosophical Insignificance of Perspective and the First Person
When we represent the world in language, in thought, or in perception, we often represent it from a perspective. We say and think that the meeting is happening now, that it is hot here, that I am in danger and not you; that the tree looks larger from my perspective than from yours. This book is an exploration and defence of the view that perspectivality is a philosophically shallow aspect of the world. This book opposes one of the most entrenched…
Nonsense and Illusions of Thought
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
This book examines the nature of philosophical methodology, defined as the study of philosophical method: how to do philosophy well. It considers a number of hypotheses that explain the nature of philosophical methodology, including eliminativism, epistemologism, theory selectionism, necessary preconditionalism, and hierarchicalism. It also tackles a range of topics such as ‘ordinary language philosophy’, the role of logic in philosophical method…
Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology
"This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology (including logical empiricism, phenomenology, and ordinary language philosophy). The entries in the second part address topics in philo…
Context and Communication
On the Importance of a General Theory and an Overview of the Austerity Framework
In this chapter we take a step back and consider what we’ve seen so far and talk a bit about the methodology which will inform the remainder of the book. In particular, it argues that it’s a worthwhile enterprise to present a theory of conceptual engineering in general, one that is applicable to all the diverse instances of it we saw in Chapter 2. It does so by presenting five very general questions about conceptual engineering which are worth an…
Externalist Conceptual Engineering
This chapter continues to consider some foundational semantic issues important for the author’s theory, and for conceptual engineering in general. It argues that conceptual engineering is not—despite the nomenclature—concerned with concepts, but rather with the intensions and extensions of words. It introduces externalism about meaning, which is a key component of the Austerity Framework, and draws connections between meaning change and externali…
Chalmers’s Subscript Gambit, the Importance of Topics, and Lack of Control
This chapter discusses Chalmers’s view about how to deal with verbal disputes, and its relation to the Austerity Framework. According to Chalmers’s subscript gambit, when we suspect that a philosophical term is the subject of a verbal dispute, we ought to ban the use of the word, and replace it with two or more new words which express the different meanings, and investigate whether any substantial dispute remains. Although Chalmers’s method of el…
Corollaries of Externalism
This chapter, which continues the argument of the previous one, elaborates the Austerity Framework, considers how it relates to some alternative theories of conceptual engineering, and responds to some objections. First, it introduces the principle that underlies the author’s theory: Inscrutable—Lack of Control—Will Keep Trying. This principle says that the processes that underlie meaning change are inscrutable, and accordingly we typically lack …
Varieties of Conceptual Engineering
Chapter 2 gave an overview of the varieties of conceptual engineering. This chapter shows how the tools of the Austerity Framework enable us gain a greater understanding of the different kinds of conceptual engineering. Some engineers (such as Haslanger and Clark and Chalmers) are concerned with improving the way we speak about a topic. Others, most notably Scharp, are concerned with concepts that they call inconsistent. It is argued that we thin…
Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering
Fixing Language is a book about ways in which language (and other representational devices) can be defective and improved. In all parts of philosophy there are philosophers who criticize the concepts we have and propose ways to improve them. Once one notices this about philosophy, it’s easy to see that revisionist projects occur in a range of other intellectual disciplines and in ordinary life. That fact gives rise to a cluster of questions: How …
Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics
Conceptual engineering is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with assessing representational devices such as concepts and words. Conceptual engineers looks for the problems with such devices and attempt to come up with ways of improving flawed concepts: they attempt to say how those concepts should be. This is the first volume devoted entirely to the possibility, benefits, problems, and applications of conceptual engineering and conceptual …
Conceptual Engineering, Topics, Metasemantics, and Lack of Control: Responses to Sarah Sawyer, Laura Schroeter, François Schroeter, and Tim Sundell
Conceptual engineering is now a central topic in contemporary philosophy. Just 4-5 years ago it wasn’t. People were then engaged in the engineering of various philosophical concepts (in various sub-disciplines), but typically not self-consciously so. Qua philosophical method, conceptual engineering was under-explored, often ignored, and poorly understood. In my lifetime, I have never seen interest in a philosophical topic grow with such explosive…
Philosophy (26 works) · Computer Science (20 works) · Epistemology (20 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (11 works) · Metaphysics (10 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Philosophy of language (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Engineering (7 works)