Coordination

Head Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Hans Bernhard Schmid

FoNTI Faculty

The FoNTI faculty gathers together the increasing strengths of the Department of Philosophy in normativity research. It currently consists of nine members (listed in alphabetical order), all functioning as intended supervisors for potential PhD projects:

Mark Coeckelbergh is Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the University of Vienna. He is a leading and globally known expert in philosophy of technology and President-Elect of the International Society for Philosophy and Technology. In his work he connects philosophy of technology with moral philosophy. He is the author of numerous articles and 8 books, including New Romantic Cyborgs (MIT Press, 2017), Money Machines (Ashgate, 2015), Environmental Skill (Routledge, 2015), Human Being @ Risk (Springer, 2013), and Growing Moral Relations (Palgrave, 2012).

Website: Prof. Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh

Herwig Grimm is Professor for Ethics and Human-Animal Studies at the Messerli Research Institute (MRI) at the Vetmeduni Vienna, the Medical University of Vienna and the University of Vienna. He heads the unit Ethics and Human-Animal Studies. His research focus is twofold: First, ethical inquiry into particular practical contexts of human-animal interactions and second their moral foundations. Projects like “Vethics E-Portfolio: Professional Ethics for veterinary officers” (Austrian federal ministry of health, 2016-2018, PI), Developing a catalogue of criteria to evaluate animal experiment proposals.” (Austrian federal ministry of science and research, 2012-2016, PI), “Vethics: Professional Ethics for Official Vets” (Austrian federal ministry of health, 2012-2015, PI) illustrate the applied research focus of Grimm. These projects contribute to societal outreach and bring moral philosophy into practical contexts. Further, basic research plays a major role in his work. Project like “The internal morality of the veterinary profession” (FWF P 29974-G24, 2017-2020; PI) or “The Lacanian Animal” (FWF P 27428-B29, 2016-2018; PI) where Grimm acts as PI as well, deal with foundational issues in animal ethics.

Website: Prof. Dr. Herwig Grimm

Angela Kallhoff is Professor of Ethics with special emphasis on Applied Ethics at the University of Vienna and head of the interdisciplinary research platform “Nano Norms Nature” at the University of Vienna. She also holds a grant from the Austrian Science Fund on “New Directions in Plant Ethics”. Her fields of expertise comprise ethics, the ethics of nature, political ethics, and ethics of war. Kallhoff has published four monographs: Prinzipien der Pflanzenethik (2002), Ethischer Naturalismus nach Aristoteles (2010), Why Democracy Needs Public Goods (2011) and Politische Philosophie des Bürgers (2013). She has edited volumes on political ethics and climate ethics, and she has published numerous articles.

Website: Prof. Dr. Angela Kallhoff

Max Kölbel is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna since September 2017, and has made a number of important contributions to the meta-normative debate. He was an early defender of expressivism against the orthodoxy that expressivism cannot overcome the Frege-Geach problem (Kölbel 1997). He has published an important objection to Edgington’s expressivism about conditionals (Kölbel 2001). He is one of the early champions of semantic relativism and has defended it both for certain evaluative forms of language (moral, aesthetic) and non-evaluative ones (probability, epistemic modals) (e.g. Kölbel 2002, 2003, 2015). His work on truth (Kölbel 2008) is also relevant to the metanormative debate.

Website: Prof. Dr. Max Kölbel

Herlinde Pauer-Studer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. She is the holder of the ERC-Advanced Research Grant on the topic “Distortions of Normativity” from 2010 to 2015. She successfully supervised the work and publications of the junior postdocs in that project who had just completed their PhDs. Her own research within that project lead to several publications in peerreviewed journals and a co-authored book publication co-authored with J. David Velleman, NYU. On March 2, 2017 she received a second ERC Advanced Research Grant on the topic “The Normative and Moral Foundations of Group Agency”.

Website: Prof. Dr. Herlinde Pauer-Studer

Esther Ramharter is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. She has a strong academic research record in Didactics of Mathematics as well as in her current areas of specialization, which include the Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic, Philosophy of Religion, and Wittgenstein. Her dissertation in philosophy was granted sub auspiciis praesidentis in 2004. In addition to her contributions to these research areas (9 books, among the papers several published in high-ranking international journals, such as Synthese), and her ample teaching experience, she is the organizer of a  colloquium on the Philosophy of Logic, open also for graduates and post-graduates, at the University of Vienna. From 2002 to 2004, she took part in the project "Neue Medien in der Mathematik- Ausbildung", funded by the Austrian federal ministry of education, science, and culture, from 2006 to 2010, she was a member of the international network PhiMSAMP (Philosophy of Mathematics: Sociological Aspects and Mathematical Practice), funded by DFG.

Website: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Esther Ramharter

Matthew Ratcliffe is Professor for Philosophy at the University of York. Most of his recent research addresses issues in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychiatry. He has made internationally renowned contributions to philosophical and interdisciplinary research on topics including emotions and feelings, intersubjectivity, empathy, delusions and hallucinations, depression, and perception. He is perhaps best known as the originator of the concept “existential feeling”, which continues to receive a great deal of attention in philosophy of mind, phenomenology, philosophy of psychiatry, and a range of other disciplines. His publications on existential feeling and psychiatric illness include the books Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality (Oxford University Press, 2008), Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology (Oxford University Press, 2015), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. His most recent book is Real Hallucinations: Psychiatric Illness, Intentionality, and the Interpersonal World (MIT Press, 2017; in press). This book unites his research on existential feeling, hallucination, delusion, and intersubjectivity, thus arriving at an original and detailed account of the structure of human experience. Professor Ratcliffe’s recent research has involved several major international projects, including ‘Emotional Experiences of Depression’, a three-year Anglo-German project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (2009- 2012).

Website: Prof. Dr. Matthew Ratcliffe

Georg Schiemer is Assistant Professor in Formal Philosophy at the University of Vienna. He is also an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) at LMU Munich. Schiemer’s current research focuses on the philosophy of mathematics and logic as well as on formal philosophy of science. He has published on various topics in these fields in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Synthese, Philosophia Mathematica, Review of Symbolic Logic, Erkenntnis, and Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. He is currently working on two co-edited book projects on the history of modern logic and mathematics, both of which are under contract with Oxford University Press. Georg Schiemer is the principal investigator of an interdisciplinary ERC project titled „The Roots of Mathematical Structuralism“ between 2017 and 2022.

Website: Asst. Prof. Dr. Georg Schiemer

Hans Bernhard Schmid is Professor of Political and Social Philosophy at the University of Vienna. His areas of specialization include phenomenology, action theory, philosophy & economics, and the philosophy of social science. He published and edited 10 books, including 4 monographs, and more than 40 papers in leading international outlets. He is the founder of the International Social Ontology Society (ISOS) and the editor-in-chief of the open access Journal of Social Ontology (JSO). From 2006-2012, he was the principal investigator of the SNF research project Collective Intentionality – Phenomenological Perspectives. From 2008-2012, he was one of the applicants of the successful SNF Pro:Doc graduate program Human Life at the University of Basel. He is currently the Doctoral Studies Program Director of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education at the University of Vienna, and the principal investigator of the joint Czech-Austrian FWF project Collective Intentionality and Inferentialism (2017-2020).

Website: Prof. Dr. Hans Bernhard Schmid