•  682
    De Se Beliefs, Self-Ascription, and Primitiveness
    Disputatio 9 (46): 401-422. 2017.
    De se beliefs typically pose a problem for propositional theories of content. The Property Theory of content tries to overcome the problem of de se beliefs by taking properties to be the objects of our beliefs. I argue that the concept of self-ascription plays a crucial role in the Property Theory while being virtually unexplained. I then offer different possibilities of illuminating that concept and argue that the most common ones are either circular, question-begging, or epistemically problema…Read more
  •  651
    Are nonhuman non-linguistic animals self-conscious? And how is it possible to find out whether they are or not? This question raises two interrelated problems: the conceptual problem and the methodological problem. In order to approach an answer, it is first and foremost necessary to establish criteria for self-consciousness by considering the phenomenon and the abilities connected with it. Subsequently, one can survey the experimental paradigms. Do the experiments really show that the identifie…Read more
  •  306
    Review: Nick Cooney: Veganomics (review)
    Tierethik 8 90-94. 2014.
  •  279
    Review: Klaus Petrus: Tierrechtsbewegung (review)
    Tierethik 7 134-137. 2013.
  •  262
    Review: Mark Rowlands: Can Animals Be Moral? (review)
    Tierethik 6 184-189. 2013.
  •  249
    Handlungsgründe: ein Reiseführer
    Swiss Philosophical Preprints. 2012.
    Üblicherweise sind die Dinge kompliziert. Dies führt dazu, dass es eine Menge (unvereinbarer) Theorien gibt, die sich diesen Dingen widmen. Manche sind recht einfach gestrickt, andere sind komplexer. Die Existenz dieser unterschiedlichen Ideen sind ein Indiz dafür, dass die Dinge bisher letztlich unerklärt sind. Und sie sind eine Aufforderung, weiter zu denken. Manchmal sind sie aber auch eine Aufforderung, einmal aufzuräumen. Diese Aufgabe habe ich mir zu Herzen genommen und will deswegen in di…Read more
  •  247
    High emotional reactivity toward an experimenter affects participation, but not performance, in cognitive tests with common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)
    with Michèle N. Schubiger, André Wunder, and Judith M. Burkart
    Animal Cognition 18 (3): 701-712. 2015.
    When testing primates with cognitive tasks, it is usually not considered that subjects differ markedly in terms of emotional reactivity toward the experimenter, which potentially affects a subject’s cognitive performance. We addressed this issue in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), a monkey species in which males tend to show stronger emotional reactivity in testing situations, whereas females have been reported to outperform males in cognitive tasks. In a two-phase experiment, we first qua…Read more
  •  185
    Mindreading in Chimpanzees
    Swiss Philosophical Preprints. 2012.
    The animal mindreading debate is coined with theoretical and practical problems which have lead some to believe that it has reached a stalemate. Since Premack and Woodruff have asked whether the chimpanzee has a theory of mind over 30 years ago, the question is still on the table. Even though a lot of evidence has been brought forward by both sides, proponents and opponents of the view that animals can be mindreaders, nothing is definitive. The essential problems remain unresolved.
  •  46
    Self-Consciousness in Animals: Advantages and Problems of a Multipronged Approach
    Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 29 (1): 1-18. 2015.
    Self-consciousness in non-human animals is a complex phenomenon which raises both conceptual and methodological problems. First, what do we mean by the concept of ‘self-consciousness’? Secondly, what is the best experimental approach to self-consciousness? This paper gives a short overview of the concept of self-consciousness in section 1. We can understand the concept of self-consciousness as capturing the ability of subjects to consciously think about themselves as themselves. If this is accur…Read more
  •  28
    Being Origins: The way we think about ourselves
    Dissertation, Universität Freiburg. 2018.
    De se thinking has several characteristic features which aren’t present in all instances of thinking about yourself but are at least potentially realised. As such, any feasible account needs to explain the potential for these features. Neither the two-dimensional accounts—stemming from the idea that mental states can be characterised using the notion of a proposition—nor the property theory—claiming that we self-ascribe a property in thinking—do full justice to the phenomenon at hand. Instead, w…Read more