One of its key features is its normative agenda: conceptual engineers aim to prescribe which concepts we ought to have and use, instead of merely describing those we have and use.
The most standard reference in the literature is to Rudolf Carnap's notion of explication as a precursory method of conceptual engineering for theoretical purposes.
[4][5] Metaphilosophical research, on the other hand, explicitly theorizes conceptual engineering as a philosophical method and deals with its foundational issues.
[6][7] A common objection to conceptual engineering argues that instead of revising and improving existing concepts, conceptual engineering creates new concepts incongruent with the old ones, and is thus philosophically irrelevant or merely changing the subject.
[8] One response to this objection is to take a functionalist view of conceptual engineering, such that so long as the new concepts serve the same function as the old concepts, conceptual engineering preserves the relevant subject matter and no problematic discontinuity obtains.