Conceptual needs
7 writings
Systematizers: Reason, Machines, and the Rise of Systematic Thought in Early Modern Philosophy, 1517–1790
Book manuscript.
Philosophers tend to treat the drive towards systematic thought as a timeless demand of rationality. But there is a counter-tradition warning that this “will to a system” can function as a substitute for moral character, an aesthetic fetish, or a dangerous universalization machine. In response to these critics of systematization, this book offers a genealogical reconstruction of the ideal of cognitive systematicity. It asks not just how thought became systematic, but why, charting the development of the ideal of systematicity from its post-Reformation roots to the threshold of German Idealism, or from Keckermann to Kant.
Moving beyond the standard historical explanation, which assumes that systems were built merely to mirror the metaphysical blueprint of a rationally designed universe, the book argues that early modern thinkers introduced the demand for cognitive systematization in an effort to emulate the virtues of well-designed machines. By modeling cognitive on mechanical virtues, these systematizers transferred the authority of knowledge from the internal, personal dispositions (the habitus) of individual thinkers into freestanding, externalized architectures. Through historical case studies ranging from Ramus and Keckermann through Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Cavendish through Leibniz, Newton, and Du Châtelet to Condillac, Diderot, D’Alembert, Rousseau, and Kant, the book uncovers three distinct practical rationales that drive this mechanization of thought: the pedagogical rationale, according to which systematization makes knowledge transmissible; the epistemological rationale, according to which systematization makes thought self-certifying and self-correcting; and the political rationale, according to which systematization makes public authority accountable and fair.
While these rationales vindicate the systematic impulse as a practical necessity rather than an arbitrary quirk, the genealogy also traces a counter-tradition, from Cavendish’s vitalism through Diderot’s polyphony to Hegelian reactions to Kant, that exposes the costs of emulating the virtues of machines. Pushed beyond its proper remit, cognitive systematization risks becoming dogmatic, betraying the rattle of machinery rather than the resonant harmony of reason. The book thus provides a delimiting framework for understanding both the indispensable value of systematizing thought and the importance of recognizing its limits.
The Invented Inventor: Adapting Intellectual Property to Generative AI
Under review
As AI increasingly drives discovery, the concept of inventor faces severe strain. Recent judicial decisions, such as the Swiss Federal Administrative Court’s 2025 DABUS ruling, expose a deepening tension: courts demand intellectual creation by a natural person even as human contributions to AI-assisted discovery become increasingly nominal. This paper approaches the resulting tension from the standpoint of political philosophy rather than jurisprudence: the strain AI places on the concept of inventorship is too fundamental to be resolved by interpretative methods taking existing conceptual architectures for granted. Inspired by Hume’s genealogy of property, the paper reconstructs the historical “need matrices” that forged the concept of inventorship, tracing its evolution from Venetian guild economics through Romantic genius ideology to corporate R&D. This reveals the concept to be an overburdened bundle serving four social functions: incentivising innovation, disseminating knowledge, legitimating monopolies, and resolving priority disputes. It also clarifies the mismatch between the concept and the emerging realities of AI-driven discovery. To resolve this mismatch, we must disaggregate the concept of inventorship and develop specialised conceptual resources for each of these functions. If we invented the notion of inventor to perform certain functions, we can reinvent it to perform them better.
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Explication or Amelioration? Carnapian Clarification as the Normative Basis for Conceptual Engineering
The Monist. Special issue on Explication and Conceptual Engineering.
As conceptual engineering fractures into explication pursuing exactness and amelioration pursuing justice, the field risks losing its focus. I argue that unifying these projects requires retrieving a crucial insight from Rudolf Carnap: that attempts to improve concepts must start with the preliminary stage of practical clarification. However, Carnap’s account of clarification in terms of predictive proficiency remains normatively inert and biased towards exactness. I expand it into a normative diagnosis of the needs underpinning a concept’s inferential structure. This reveals whether properties like vagueness are flaws that need fixing or features worth preserving.
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Needs of the Mind: How Aptic Normativity Can Guide Conceptual Adaptation
Philosophical Studies 183 (6): 1719–1746. 2026. doi:10.1007/s11098-026-02511-3
The article offers an account of “needs of the mind” in terms of a distinctively aptic normativity–a normativity of fittingness. After reconstructing the history of different conceptions of needs and their gradual subjectivization, the article focuses on conceptual needs and argues that they register a cognitive privation that goes beyond a shortage of words, marking a mismatch between our conceptual repertoire and our situation that reorients conceptual engineering from detached amelioration to situated adaptation. This makes a needs-first approach uniquely suited to guiding conceptual adaptation in times of technological disruption.
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The Ethics of Conceptualization: Tailoring Thought and Language to Need
Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2025. doi:10.1093/9780198926283.001.0001
Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering.
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Ideas that Work
Aeon: A World of Ideas, June 24, 2021.
Tracing Concepts to Needs
The Philosopher 109 (3): 34—39. 2021. https://philpapers.org/archive/QUETCT.pdf