Philosophy of mind group (Wagner)
Head of group
Professor Dr. Verena Wagner (as of 1 October 2024)
Department of Philosophy and Berlin School of Mind and Brain, HU Berlin
Personal webpage
verena.wagner@hu-berlin.de
mb-phil-mind@hu-berlin.de
Please use the second address for topics related to teaching and supervision.
Contact and visiting address
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Berlin School of Mind and Brain
Luisenstraße 56, Haus 1, 10117 Berlin
North Wing, 2nd floor
Room 311
Tel. +49 30 2093-89771
Postal address
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Institut für Philosophie
Berlin School of Mind and Brain
Professor Dr. Verena Wagner
10099 Berlin
Germany
People
- Wagner, Verena, Professor Dr. (group leader)
- Kreppner, Natalie (Student research assistant)
- Herzig, Greta (Student research assistant)
- N.N. (Student research assistant)
- N.N. (Student research assistant)
Current position and affiliations
- Full professor (as of 1 October 2024) at the Department of Philosophy, HU Berlin
- Faculty member and Member of the Steering Committee, Berlin School of Mind and Brain (as of 1 October 2024)
- Member of the Akademie-Kolleg at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (HAdW)
- PI of WIN-Project (HAdW) “Neutral by Choice: Cognitive Neuroscience meets Philosophy of Mind”
Research areas
Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy of Language (AoC)
M&B topics
Doxastic attitudes, inquiry & deliberation, suspension of judgment, (willful) ignorance, (self-) deception, disinformation, bullshit, agency, free will, doxastic voluntarism
Research Philosophy of Mind
I am working at the intersection of philosophy of mind and epistemology. In particular, I am interested in the nature of mental states and attitudes in the vicinity of cognitive neutrality, e.g., agnosticism, ignorance, doxastic indecision, suspension of judgment and belief. In this context, I am also exploring how mental attitudes and activities relate to inquiry and deliberation (the “zetetic turn” in epistemology). I hold a pluralist view on cognitive neutrality, and I think that we should be clear about the nature of mental states and processes before we think of their respective normative profiles. For example, some forms of cognitive neutrality seem to be agential which has implications for their rationality.
Projects on neutrality
- Neutral by Choice: Cognitive Neuroscience meets Philosophy of Mind (WIN-Projekt, Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2024–2027)
- Thinking about Suspension (DFG-Network, 2021–2024)
- Suspending Doxastically (BW-Stiftung, 2020–2024)
- Abstaining Machine Learning (BW-Stiftung, 2023–2024)
I am also interested in the phenomena of deception (self or other) and disinformation. In particular, I study the notion of bullshitting which I analyse as giving fake answers to questions under discussion (QUDs). I try to make my philosophical work on fake answers accessible for broader audiences (see my outreach project on bullshit and fake answers).
In previous work, I was concerned with the debate on free will (or our lack thereof). In my PhD thesis, I suggested a theory of freedom of action that is compatible with determinism as well as indeterminism. After that, I worked on applications of the compatibilist free will debate to the doxastic realm (doxastic freedom and doxastic compatibilism).
