Abstract
Concepts play a central role in our coping with the environment, in our social interactions, and in how we interpret social changes and their moral stakes. Scholars in the fields of moral philosophy, social philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science agree on the social and ethical relevance of concepts. Two aspects, however, are controversial both at the descriptive level and at the normative level: conceptual revision—that is, the ways through which concepts are contested, questioned, and reconstructed—and politicization—that is, the processes through which concepts become politically relevant. The DeCo project aims to address these issues through an interdisciplinary approach. By retrieving contributions from moral and social philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science, DeCo aims to illuminate some key aspects of the practices through which social actors contest, negotiate, and reconstruct concepts in specific situations. In doing so, DeCo will investigate decisive issues such as hybrid concepts (i.e., concepts at the interface of the abstract~concrete continuum, at the bridge between biology and culture, such as ecological and gender/sex concepts). Building on previous studies on the relationship between abstract concepts and social interaction, DeCo will address how hybrid concepts are represented and used through innovative interactive experiments. It will also investigate when and with which concepts people perceive the need to rely on others, deepening the mechanisms through which knowledge is deferred to others (knowledge outsourcing) and/or negotiated with them. In this way, DeCo will provide a new lens and new methodological instruments to address the variability of conceptual representations both on a theoretical and empirical level. The main goal of DeCo is thus to provide an integrated approach to the understanding of mechanisms underlying the politicization, negotiation, and democratization of specific concepts (e.g., ecological, gender/sex, and scientific-technological concepts). To pursue this end, DeCo will engage both in theoretical analysis and in empirical study, and in doing so it will benefit from the expertise of members from varying but complementary backgrounds. Finally, DeCo is expected to study the processes of revision and politicization of concepts and directly contribute to the democratization of scientific practices. Through the design of a data collection experiment involving laypersons, experts, and activists, DeCo will thus directly contribute to practices of citizen science. In doing so, DeCo will contribute to the strategic social goal of strengthening social and economic sustainability (Cluster 2, point 2.6), by studying and enforcing the interaction between experts, laypersons, and activists in the understanding of the social, ethical, political, and economic drivers of change and of their impact.
Results achieved
The project successfully achieved all its scientific objectives, delivering an original interdisciplinary investigation of the ways in which socially significant concepts emerge, are contested, and become objects of collective revision. By integrating moral and social philosophy, pragmatism, cognitive science, and experimental psychology, the project developed an innovative framework for understanding conceptual practices as dynamic social processes rather than merely semantic or cognitive phenomena. Throughout the project, particular attention was devoted to concepts situated at the intersection of biological, social, and political domains—including ecological, gender, and disability concepts—showing how conceptual change is shaped by both cognitive mechanisms and democratic forms of social interaction. The close collaboration between the University of Bologna and Sapienza University of Rome ensured a continuous dialogue between theoretical reflection and empirical research, allowing the project to generate original contributions across both philosophical and experimental domains. A major scientific achievement of the project consists in the development of a normative and methodological account of democratic conceptual engineering. Building upon recent debates in conceptual engineering, pragmatism, and social epistemology, the project argued that the revision of socially significant concepts should not be conceived as an activity reserved for experts, but rather as a form of public inquiry involving the individuals and communities whose lives are structured by those concepts. This theoretical framework represents one of the project's most original contributions, connecting conceptual engineering with democratic theory, linguistic agency, conceptual ethics, and political philosophy. The theoretical component substantially advanced research on conceptual engineering, conceptual contestation, conceptual ethics, conceptual vagueness, linguistic agency, and the political dimensions of conceptual practices. In parallel, the empirical research generated original evidence on the representation of abstract and hybrid concepts, the cognitive role of expertise, uncertainty in conceptual processing, inner speech, and the social dimensions of conceptual knowledge. The project produced a substantial body of scientific publications in internationally recognized top-tier journals and publishing venues. Theoretical outputs include forthcoming articles in Linguistics and Philosophy and Inquiry, an accepted paper in the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, publications devoted to conceptual engineering, conceptual contestation, politicization of concepts, and linguistic agency, together with a research monograph published by CLUEB. Empirical outputs include articles in Nature Reviews Psychology, Frontiers in Psychology, Physics of Life Reviews, the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Sex Medicine, and the Journal of Sexual Medicine, covering topics ranging from abstract concepts and expertise to conceptual representation, language, and social cognition. Several additional manuscripts remain under review or in preparation, including a joint publication bringing together the philosophical and experimental perspectives developed by the two research units. Collectively, these publications considerably strengthened the project's international visibility and established a solid basis for future interdisciplinary research. Dissemination represented a central component of the research strategy rather than a final stage of the project. Throughout its duration, the research team organised reading groups, internal seminars, an intermediate international conference, thematic workshops, keynote lectures, and a wide range of dissemination events involving both academic and non-academic audiences. The intermediate conference provided an important opportunity to discuss ongoing results with international scholars and refine the project's theoretical framework. The Final International Conference Democratizing Concepts, held at the University of Bologna in September 2025, represented the culminating scientific event of the project, bringing together leading international researchers working on conceptual engineering, social ontology, philosophy of language, pragmatism, and cognitive science. The conference consolidated the project's international visibility while creating new collaborations that will continue beyond the lifetime of the grant. Project members further disseminated the project’s results through keynote lectures and invited presentations at major international events. In particular, Matteo Santarelli and Céline Henne delivered the keynote lecture “Conceptual Engineering as Public Inquiry” at the international conference Contested Concepts: From Conceptual Change to Conceptual Ethics, hosted by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam, presenting one of the project's central theoretical achievements to an international audience of scholars working on conceptual change and conceptual ethics. Additional dissemination workshops—including Experimenting with Values: Pragmatism, Democracy and AIEmpowered Media (Henrik Rydenfelt and Kenneth Siren), Democratizing Ecological Concepts? (Marco Palma and Just Serrano Zamora), Melanie Klein, Critical Theory and the Politicization of Self-Doubt, and Francesco Fiorentino’s lecture Avere un linguaggio: Su Peter Handke—extended the project’s dialogue to neighbouring areas of philosophy, democratic theory, literary studies, environmental philosophy, social sciences, further strengthening its interdisciplinary profile and international research network. An equally important achievement concerns the project's engagement with non-academic stakeholders. Rather than treating dissemination as a one-way transfer of knowledge, the project adopted a participatory model of restitution consistent with its theoretical commitment to democratic conceptual engineering. Representatives of associations and civic organizations who had contributed to the empirical component of the research were actively involved in discussing the project's results through dedicated workshops and a series of smaller online dissemination meetings organized after the final conference. These distributed forms of restitution allowed for more focused discussions on specific aspects of the research, facilitated the participation of stakeholders, and generated valuable feedback that further enriched the project's theoretical reflection. In this respect, the project successfully transformed the democratization of concepts from a research topic into a concrete research practice. Throughout its implementation, the project fully complied with Open Science and FAIR principles, ethical requirements, gender equality, inclusion, and the DNSH framework. The research activities therefore combined scientific excellence with responsible research practices and sustained engagement with society.Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Matteo Santarelli
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Filosofia
Coordinator:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna(Italy)
Total Eu Contribution: Euro (EUR) 230.709,00
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 105.154,00
Project Duration in months: 27
Start Date:
30/11/2023
End Date:
28/02/2026
