Böcker av Inga Vermeulen

How much do words matter? Is it necessary to examine what the terms "knowledge"and "terrorism" really mean in a philosophical debate about knowledge or terrorism?In this inquiry, I discuss how this question arises in a number of contextssuch as the location problem for certain metaphysical and epistemological projects,the idea that changes in meaning change the subject under discussion, when evaluativeterms like "terrorism" are contested and hinder normative debates, and when adispute might be merely verbal.Views on the role of words in first-order debates fall roughly into two camps.Some philosophers acknowledge the need to examine the actual meaning of terms inorder to settle the subject matter of an inquiry, and they do so by either conductingconceptual analysis or using empirical methods. Meanwhile, others claim that it islargely unnecessary to analyse the meaning of terms when we are interested in thenature of things. I argue that for all of the cases considered, an updated version ofCarnap's method of explication is the most promising method for settling the subjectmatter of inquiry. On this approach, we revise pre-theoretic terms guided by our aims.For a clearer view on what the subject matter of a debate is, I draw on David Lewis'snotion of the subject matter of a statement.My methodological approach has considerable advantages over traditional aswell as more recent forms of conceptual analysis. Moreover, it promotes consideringimportant terminological matters that are underrated by opponents of conceptualanalysis. The upshot is that the ordinary meaning of words used in first-order inquirydoes not matter much. The more important question is how to adjust and refine themeaning of these words in the light of our aims. How we decide this question hasepistemic, ethical and pragmatic implications.