What is conceptual hypocrisy? Is it problematic?

AbstractIn conceptual engineering, a hypocritical argument is an argument that uses a concept to argue against the use of that very concept (Burgess and Plunkett 2013; Burgess 2020). Call this sort of hypocrisy ‘conceptual hypocrisy’. Should we accept conceptual hypocrisy? My response has a negative and a positive part. In the negative part, I review attempts to problematise or vindicate conceptual hypocrisy by subsuming it under existing argumentative paradigms. I argue that these attempts fail. In the positive part, I outline an alternative view: some, but not all, instances of hypocrisy are unacceptable. Unacceptable instances of conceptual hypocrisy are not those where a speaker merely does something she says she ought not do; they are those where a speaker does something she says she ought not do, and her doing so indicates that something about her argument has gone wrong.