About
48
Publications
14,405
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
330
Citations
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (48)
According to a long-standing belief, introspection provides privileged access to the mind, while objective methods, which we denote as “extrospection”, suffer from basic epistemic deficits. Here we will argue that neither an introspective privilege exists nor does extrospection suffer from such deficits.
We will focus on two entailments of an intro...
One of the reasons why the Neural Correlates of Consciousness Program could appear attractive in the 1990s was that it seemed to disentangle theoretical and empirical problems. Theoretical disagreements could thus be sidestepped in order to focus on empirical research regarding the neural substrate of consciousness. One of the further consequences...
Dissociation thought experiments like Zombie and Inverted Spectrum cases play an essential role in the qualia debate. Critics have long since argued that these cases raise serious epistemic issues, undermining first person access to phenomenal states also in normal subjects. Proponents have denied this because, due to their phenomenal experience, n...
Entgegen der historischen Darstellung, nach der es sich bei Aufmerksamkeit um einen einzelnen Prozess handelt (James 1890), scheint ›Aufmerksamkeit‹ in den letzten Dekaden immer mehr zu einem Sammelbegriff für eine Vielzahl verschiedener Prozesse geworden zu sein, die die Informationsverarbeitung sowohl in natürlichen intelligenten Systemen (z. B....
Childerich, dem letzten Nachfahren Chlodwigs auf dem Thron der Merowinger, war ein wenig beneidenswertes Schicksal beschieden. Nachdem er die Herrschaft jahrelang nur pro forma ausgeübt hatte, wurde er schließlich durch Pippin, seinen Hausmeier, zur Abdankung gezwungen. Dieser, de facto längst im Besitz der Macht, hatte sich zuvor der Unterstützung...
Successful human social interaction depends on our capacity to understand other people's mental states and to anticipate how they will react to our actions. Despite its importance to the human condition, the exact mechanisms underlying our ability to understand another's actions, feelings, and thoughts are still a matter of conjecture. Here, we con...
The rise of social neuroscience has brought the second-person perspective back into the focus of philosophy. Although this is not a new topic, it is certainly less well understood than the first-person and third-person perspectives, and it is even unclear whether it can be reduced to one of these perspectives. The present paper argues that no such...
The German cognitive science conference is an interdisciplinary event where researchers from different disciplines -- mainly from artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and anthropology -- and application areas -- such as eduction, clinical psychology, and human-machine interaction -- bring tog...
According to many philosophers, an 'explanatory gap' exists between third-person scientific theories and qualitative firstperson experience of mental states like pain feelings or colour experiences such that the former can't explain the latter. Here it is argued that the thought experiments that are invoked by this position are inconsistent, that t...
Die Bezeichnung ›Politische Ethik‹ lässt in Analogie zu Technikethik oder Medizinethik zunächst an eine spezifische Bereichsethik denken (vgl. Nida-Rümelin 2005). Entsprechend wäre die Aufgabe dieser Bereichsethik eine moralische Reflexion des politischen Systems, seiner institutionellen Strukturen sowie des politischen Handelns. Doch so eindeutig...
Benjamin Libet has demonstrated that the readiness potential precedes the time at which participants consciously decide to perform an intentional motor act, and suggested that free will is an illusion. We performed an experiment where participants observed a stimulus on a computer monitor and were instructed to press one of two buttons, depending o...
Die Klärung des Verhältnisses von Gehirn und Bewusstsein wirft eine Vielzahl von philosophischen und empirischen Fragen auf. Aus philosophischer Sicht sind dabei drei Bereiche zu unterscheiden:
Grundsatzfragen: Abgesehen von begrifflichen Klärungen, wie sie insbesondere der Begriff des Bewusstseins erfordert, geht es dabei erstens um eine möglichst...
DefinitionIntegrins are a family of alpha-beta-heterodimers, comprising of different beta chains that associate with different alpha chains. Integrins primarily mediate cell adhesion and recognize a variety of ligands including extracellular matrix proteins, cell surface proteins and plasma proteins.
According to a widespread view, neuroscientific basic research tells us more about the essence of the mind than psychology and may, in the long run, even replace those higher level approaches. Contrary to this view, it is demonstrated that many features can only be observed and explained on a certain level of complexity. This is particularly obviou...
An analysis of our commonsense concept of freedom yields two "minimal criteria": (1) Autonomy distinguishes freedom from compulsion; (2) Authorship distinguishes freedom from chance. Translating freedom into "self-determination " can account for both criteria. Self-determination is understood as determination by "personal-preferences" which are con...
Recent research has shown that rational, decisions may require the participation of emotions. It would follow that an adequate model of real-world decision-making has to account for emotions in some way or other. Due to their multi-modal character and because they preserve the structure of the objects or states of affairs they represent, mental mod...
According to qualia-epiphenomenalism, phenomenal properties are causally inefficacious, they are metaphysically distinct from, and nomologically connected with certain physical properties. The present paper argues that the claim of causal inefficacy undermines any effort to establish the alleged nomological connection. Epiphenomenalists concede tha...
1. Epiphenomenalism Many philosophers take it for granted that epiphenomenalism is obvi- ously a dead end for an understanding of the human mind and its rela- tion to the physical world and nothing but a counterintuitive theory of last resort. Others, by contrast, think that epiphenomenalism might be the wayoutof some of the severestproblems discus...
Die Vertreter der in den letzten Jahrzehnten dominierenden funktionalistischen Strömungen in der Philosophie des Geistes nehmen eine recht eindeutige Position zu Fragen der mentalen Repräsentation ein. Aus ihrer Sicht ist das Gehirn ein besserer digitaler Computer, die mentalen Repräsentationen sind vordefinierte Symbole, und das Denken besteht in...
It is commonly believed that there is a fundamental incompatibility between multiple realization and type identity in the philosophy of mind. This claim can be challenged, however, since a single neural type may be realized by different microphysical types. In this case, the identity statement would connect the psychological and the neural type, wh...
Three problems concerning the mutual relation of reality and representation are discussed. Although there is no direct access
to reality, a structural similarity between reality and representation can be assumed. A holistic account of qualia can help
to explain how this structural similarity emerges. On this account, qualia have a relational, not a...
Palmer's principled, distinction between first-person experience and scientific access is called into question. First, complete color transformations of experience and memory may be undetectable even from the first-person perspective. Second, transformations of (say) pain experiences seem to be intrinsically connected to certain effects, thus givin...
Die Vertreter der in den letzten Jahrzehnten dominierenden funktionalistischen Strömungen in der Philosophie des Geistes nehmen eine recht eindeutige Position zu Fragen der mentalen Repräsentation ein. Aus ihrer Sicht ist das Gehirn ein besserer digitaler Computer, die mentalen Repräsentationen sind vordefinierte Symbole, und das Denken besteht in...
