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.