Conceptual misinformation

Resumo

Misinformation is paradigmatically false. However, a great deal of contemporary political content misleads by invoking defective concepts, even when the content is true. This paper offers an account of conceptual misinformation , according to which the use of a concept constitutes misinformation when that concept both fails to adequately capture the world’s structure and receives uptake. Central to my account is the metaphysical notion of “joint-carving” concepts—those that capture the world’s structure and figure into good explanations. This notion can be extended to the social and normative domains, where socially and normatively joint-carving concepts (e.g., “farmer,” “legal free speech”) yield better social and normative explanations than gerrymandered concepts (e.g., “Pacific Islander,” “consequence-free speech”). The need to avoid conceptual misinformation carries practical consequences and imposes a constraint on ameliorative conceptual engineering projects.

Tipo

Artigo

Área

Comunicação

Ano

2025

Idioma

Inglês

Licença

CC BY

DOI

10.1007/s11229-025-05274-2

Como citar (ABNT)

MCINTYRE, James H.. Conceptual misinformation. Synthese, v. 206, n. 4, 2025. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-025-05274-2.