Herman De Regt

I am a tenured philosopher in the Departement of Philosophy at Tilburg University. I studied Management Sciences at Eindhoven University and Philosophy at Nijmegen University where I received my Ph.D in 1995. In 2001 I was Visiting Scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University (UK). I am the author of Representing the World by Scientific Theories: The Case for Scientific Realism (Tilburg University Press, 1995), co-author of Exploring Humans (Boom Uitgeverij, Amsterdam, 2007)) and several articles on scientific realism, the rationality of belief, evolutionary epistemology, and American pragmatism. In 2007/8 I was Visiting Fellow at the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University (USA). One of my side projects concerns science and the public on which I published papers and co-authored two books (in Dutch) for a wider audience. My work is inspired by the American pragmatists with whom I reject three important presuppositions that (to my mind) stall discussions on scientific realism and the science of consciousness, to wit (1) that there is a distinction between the scientific picture and the common sense picture of the world, (2) that there is a distinction between meaningful thought and action, and (3) that, when push comes to shove, philosophy is a priori. From this I try to develop (a form of) scientism and to argue for the completeness of a science of consciousness. For more information, visit my webpage http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/webwijs/show/?uid=herman.deregt