Armchair Philosophers

I did my BA in Rome, Università La Sapienza, where I graduated with a thesis about the contemporary debate on personal identity. I am now doing my Research Master’s in Philosophy of Mind at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. I am specifically researching how digital environments (and especially social networking sites) influence our understanding of the world and of others. I like Wittgenstein and theories of extended cognition, which argue that items external to the brain can constitute cognitive processes. I am fascinated by the idea of the cyborg and how the digital revolution is changing our understanding of the world.

I am an Associate Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York. I did a BA in Philosophy and Divinity at the University of Aberdeen. During my MA, also at Aberdeen, I studied the history and foundation of quantum mechanics, and metaphysics and science in the 17^th century. I completed my PhD at the University of York in 2018, with a focus on the epistemology, theology, and political philosophy of John Locke. I am also interested in ethics, the history and development of natural law theory, and Neo-Platonism in the 17th century. More recently, in the spirit of Neo-Platonism, I have started working on Damaris Masham and Anne Conway. This has led to a growing interest in other women in the history of philosophy that have often been ignored…

I completed a BA Philosophy (Lancaster) and MA Philosophy (Birmingham). I am due to speak on Plantinga and extended mind cognition, at the Tyndale Conference 2021. I have accepted a place on a Ph.D course starting in 2021, in the philosophy of science. My favourite philosophical idea is necessity de re (the necessity ‘about the thing’), which looks at whether things have essences (essentialism). It is surprising that in the 20^th century, modal logic, which is the logic of necessity/possibility, has intellectually motivated two areas: God’s existence (with new modal ontological arguments) and human nature. Perhaps the two are connected!

I am a PhD student at the University of Southampton, having previously done an MRes Philosophy at the University of Reading and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science at Otto-Friedrich-University in Bamberg. I specialize in moral and political philosophy. Thinking about the future fascinates me, and I enjoy teasing apart concepts like rights, risk, harm, and benefit, and thinking about what they can tell us about challenges like climate change.

I am a researcher at the University of Cologne. Many topics in analytic philosophy intrigue me, but my main interest is in the philosophy of causation. I am especially excited about the idea that causation is just a pattern of correlation that is insensitive to different kinds of disturbances. My PhD dissertation argued that such a view on causation helps to resolve an age-old puzzle: if mental phenomena are not physical, how can they affect our behaviour? Currently, I investigate other puzzles about causation, such as ‘can absences cause?’ and ‘why does causation never go backwards in time?’

I did a BA in Philosophy and Politics at the University of Exeter, and I am now pursuing an MA in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York. I have read a lot of Nietzsche and I have studied Philosophical Anthropology for a while, but I am now focusing on Gender Studies. I am also interested in Ancient Greek philosophy, and I study Ancient Greek. My favourite philosophical idea is Nietzsche’s concept of life-affirmation and his critique of Christianity. I also like provocative texts like Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto.

I did a BA and MA in Philosophy at the University of Warsaw, where I focused on philosophy of technology, hermeneutics and social philosophy with a Marxist slant (which I was suprisingly able to combine in my MA thesis on Gianni Vattimo). I am currently working on a PhD at Dublin City University, where I research self-tracking technologies and practices from the perspective of virtue ethics. My favourite philosophical idea is that our understanding and beliefs change across history and cultures together with material circumstances and the interpretative context – they are ultimately the result of our choices and critiques.

I received a BA in philosophy from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2008. After that, I spent roughly a decade traveling Europe and North America as a touring musician. Now I am working on a master’s in philosophy and philology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden with the goal of teaching at the university level. Some specific areas of interest include medieval grammar and free will. Michel Foucault’s approach to the history of philosophy has been a huge influence on me, and his work on notions of the self and power structures bring history to the present.