Engineering Salience

Some parts of the world capture our attention more than others. The attention-capturing things, people, or ideas somehow seem to stick out; they conquer our consciousness and become our priorities for a shorter or longer time. Sometimes this is by design. For example, advertisements and warning signs are carefully conceived and placed to draw attention. This project is about how language affects what we pay attention to, and how we can design language to make us pay attention to the right thingsthe important and relevant things. In philosophy, assessing and improving language is known as conceptual engineering. This field of inquiry has recently become very active. However, within and outside philosophy, many have doubts about the enterprise. One doubt is that there just is no good motivation for engineering concepts: that changing the definitions of terms does not improve how people think and see the world; or the effect is so small that it is not worth the trouble. Another worry is that if changing language indeed is effective for changing how people think, then this might jeopardize freedom of thought. This project aims to alleviate these doubts and show that by an open and responsible public discussion on concepts, we can change patterns of attention in society for the better. Furthermore, by participating in that public discussion, each of us can gain more control over the way we thinkmore specifically, over what spontaneously captures our attention. For example, how broadly or narrowly we construe sexual harassment affects what kinds of behaviour draw our critical attention. We use words to guide peoples attention to things all the time; but some terms, including sexual harassment, are especially apt for guiding attention. They alert us to the importance of the matter and call for its prioritization in thought and action. It is often not obvious how to best construe the meanings associated with the powerful words, to guide attention most optimally. A hypothesis of this project is that we should address these non-obvious matters through a public debate where different perspectives and concerns are taken seriously.