critiquing concepts

I'm trying to figure out how we critique concepts; as near as I can tell, there isn't a unitary answer (maybe: they are untrue to reality?)

One case is I think exemplified by the article "The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility." Clearly, what's up with the argument presented is that this concept of "ultimate moral responsibility" has some funkiness in it. What's going on - what is the cause of what, who did what, etc - whatever we say about "ultimate moral responsibility," these things won't get touched. What we need to do, then, is set that concept aside, and ask ourselves: knowing the facts, and knowing our purposes, what concept of moral responsibility do we need? This is a kind of move I like to make a lot - step back from the argument, then ask what concept we need, given our aims, rather than just asking whether the concept applies or not. (this paragraph could use some conceptual sharpening).

Another, different case is that of racism (and similar matters). In this case, a person (or indeed anything - the point goes beyond interpersonal interaction) is identified as having one trait (e.g. A), and our concepts lead us to infer that this person is also X, Y, and Z (stupid, lazy. and immune to pain). But if we were to pay closer attention to the individual instance - if we were to see what's in front of our faces - we'd realize that this person, while A, is not X or Y. The bias study cited at the end of this post demonstrates this point pretty interestingly.

(I am less confident about what follows)

The troublesome cases seem to come in when having and using (or whatever) the concept shapes the experience / reality. (It strikes me that I want to finish Haslanger's paper "But Mom, Crop-Tops Are Cute!"). This can happen in a lot of different ways. For example (this is not meant to be an exhaustive list), having a concept can more or less cause me to see things differently. If I am expert at big cats, and a puma bounds through the room, I might see a puma, while you just see a large cat.

The trouble seems to set in when we have different concepts that can't really be integrated (in contrast, it doesn't impugn the concept "large cat" to know what a puma is). I don't know of good cases like this.

It also strikes me that when it is a case of having a concept cause you to have different sorts of experiences, we can ask "what sort of life would we like to lead," whereas this is more difficult when the concepts "alter reality" in... ? way.

CITATIONS

"The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility"
by Galen Strawson
in Ethical Theory: An Anthology
ed. Russ Shafer-Landau
2007
Blackwell Publishing


"Researchers Try to Cure Racism"
by Brandon Keim
January 20, 2009
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/racetraining.html