Foto del docente

Yvonne Huetter-Almerigi

Ricercatrice a tempo determinato tipo b) (senior)

Dipartimento di Filosofia

Settore scientifico disciplinare: GERM-01/B Letteratura tedesca

Temi di ricerca

Parole chiave: filosofia del linguaggio realismo soggettività Rorty Brandom Davidson conceptual engineering letteratura comparata

Il nesso tra verità e potere di azione, come il loro collegamento con i concetti di autenticità, identità e soggettività, è stato al centro della mia ricerca sin dall’inizio. Ho lavorato su questi temi sia in chiave letteraria che filosofica. Il mio sfondo teoretico comprende la filosofia poststrutturalistica e teoria letteraria insieme alla filosofia del linguaggio post-quineana e temi in conceptual engineering.

Ho pubblicato una monografia sul concetto di verità, identità politica e il richiamo all’autenticità nei romanzi di Andreas Maier, editato un volume sul filosofo Carlo Michelstaedter, e ho pubblicato ampiamente su vari aspetti del potenziale impatto politico di letteratura, coprendo argomenti nel Romanticismo, Modernismo e (Post-)Postmodernismo. Negli ultimi anni mi sono concentrata sulla filosofia del linguaggio, e in particolare ho lavorato sul realismo semantico, sulla filosofia di Rorty, Davidson e Quine e su argomenti di ingegneria concettuale, in particolare sul ruolo che il pragmatismo può svolgere per valutare e sviluppare questioni di plasticità semantica. I miei ulteriori lavori e progetti di ricerca si sono concentrati sull'intersezione tra determinismo e libertà, etica ed estetica e sul ruolo che i concetti giocano nelle indagini letterarie ed empiriche (p.e. "parodia" in F. Schlegel e "incertezza" in Heisenberg).

 

Progetto di ricerca attuale: PRIN 2022 MUR (2023-2025), Co-investigator, sub-unit: philosophy of language

DeCo - Democratizing Concepts

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 philosophy of language, 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 and renegotiated—and politicization—that is, the processes through which concepts become politically relevant.

The main goal of DeCo is 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. By retrieving contributions from philosophy of language, moral, social and political 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 others. 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.

https://filo.unibo.it/it/ricerca/progetti-di-ricerca/democratizing-concepts-deco


Progetto di ricerca recentemente concluso: Horizon2020-MSCA-IF-2018 RELEVANT REALISM

Relevant Realism - Truth, Power, and Action for 21st Century Societies

The aim of this project is to develop a fully functional new concept of realism which intrinsically combines theories of truth with theories of action. This new theory will be measured against other contemporary approaches and adapted to current political problems to validate it and to investigate its practical applications. The problems underpinning the urgent need of developing a new concept of realism are, namely, the rise of authoritarianism and the apparent ineffectiveness of current truth-concepts and communicative strategies in countering totalitarian, authoritarian, and simplistic-populist discourses. The innovative, nostalgia-free concept of realism titled “relevant realism” will provide new ways to frame current political problems and new tools for political communication while avoiding both the current realist backlash and the postmodern relativist trap. The project will engage in a detailed analytic assessment of concepts of realism and a comparative analysis and fusion of positions in Neopragmatism, Poststructuralism, and adjacent theories. Providing a realist approach without losing sight of postmodern and poststructuralist contributions to disentangle and unveil the power-mechanisms involved in every truth-claim is of utmost interest for a culturally diversified space like Europe where constant complexifications of cultures and ways of living have to be faced and are to be preserved as a value. The project will be carried out at the University of Bologna and at the University of Oslo during a secondment period.

Eventi connessi al progetto:

Workshop: Truth versus the Rhetoric of Truth: Authority, Realism, and Power (June 27-29, 2019, https://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/english/research/news-and-events/events/conferences/2019/truth-versus-the-rhetoric-of-truth-authority-reali.html)

Workshop: Conceptual Engineering and Pragmatism (July 8-9, 2021, https://conceptualengineeringpragmatism.yolasite.com/)

Roundtable: Dov'è finito il discorso sulle fake-news? (July 13, 2021, https://magazine.unibo.it/calendario/2021/07/04/dove-finito-il-discorso-sulle-fake-news?d=2021-07-04)

Outreach: MSCA-Event: Science is wonderful! Meet the scientist! (November 22-26, 2021, https://www.scienceiswonderful.eu/en)