De Benedetto, Matteo (2025) Conceptual Progress in Science: Cognitive Enhancement and Pragmatic Optimization. [Preprint]

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the nature of conceptual progress in science. Analyzing five historical episodes of conceptual progress in science, I will show that none of the existing philosophical theories of conceptual progress can make sense of all these cases. I will argue that this is because these theories try to capture conceptual progress as a single type of improvement. Instead, building upon recent cognitive science, I will propose a novel cognitive-pragmatic theory of conceptual progress that understands this phenomenon as involving two evaluative dimensions: cognitive enhancement
and pragmatic optimization. While the former dimension assesses concepts in terms of their general cognitive utility, the latter assesses their optimization to the specific goals of the relevant scientific community. We
will see that, thanks to these two dimensions, this theory is able to adequately characterize the diversity of conceptual progress exhibited by these historical episodes.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID De Benedetto, Matteo mtt.debenedetto@gmail.com 0000-0002-8155-6750
Additional Information:	Forthcoming in Ergo: An open access journal of philosophy
Keywords:	Scientific Progress; Scientific Concepts; Conceptual Progress; Conceptual Change; Scientific Goals; Goal-Derived Concepts;
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations General Issues > History of Science Case Studies General Issues > Natural Kinds General Issues > Theory Change
Depositing User:	Dr. Matteo De Bendedetto
Date Deposited:	17 Feb 2026 12:47
Last Modified:	17 Feb 2026 12:47
Item ID:	28217
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations General Issues > History of Science Case Studies General Issues > Natural Kinds General Issues > Theory Change
Date:	22 December 2025
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/28217

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