Conceptual engineering projects are sometimes criticized for ‘changing the subject’. In this paper, I first discuss three strategies that have been proposed to address the change of subject objection. I notice that these strategies fail in similar ways: they all deploy a ‘loose’ notion of subject matter, while the objector can always reply deploying a ‘strict’ notion. Based on this, I then argue that at least current formulations of the change of subject objection (together with the response strategies just mentioned), create an overall defective dialectic, whereby no progress can be made on either side. After considering how such defective dialectic could be (at least partly) fixed, it is concluded that current formulations of the change of subject objection may be dismissed on dialectical grounds, even though some practical lessons may still be retained from the objection.

中文翻译：

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“你在转移话题”：对概念工程的不公平反对？

概念工程项目有时会因“改变主题”而受到批评。在本文中，我首先讨论了为解决主题异议变更而提出的三种策略。我注意到这些策略以类似的方式失败：它们都采用了“宽松”的主题概念，而反对者总是可以回复部署“严格”的概念。基于此，我认为，至少目前关于改变主题反对意见的表述（连同刚才提到的应对策略），创造了一种总体上有缺陷的辩证法，双方都无法取得进展。在考虑如何（至少部分）修复这种有缺陷的辩证法之后，得出的结论是，当前关于改变主题反对意见的表述可能会因辩证理由而被驳回，尽管仍然可以从反对意见中保留一些实践教训。