Future Talks

  • 2026-08-24

    Proper Functions as an Etiological Kind: Core and Modules

    With Marc Artiga at the ECAP12 from 24 to 28 August 2026 in Madrid Proper functions are used to explain why some hearts malfunction, why some neural states misrepresent, and why certain psychological and physiological conditions are considered disorders. We treat the question „What is it for something to have a specific proper function?“ as…

    Read more

Past Talks

  • 2026-05-29

    In Defense of Realism about Self–Illness Ambiguity

    2026 Annual Meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP), online Self-illness ambiguity (SIA) refers to the difficulty of distinguishing „who I am“ from „what my disorder does,“ as expressed in statements such as „It wasn’t me; it was the illness.“ Early descriptions of this phenomenon in illness narratives (Karp 1994)…

    Read more

  • 2026-05-26

    Etiological Service Functions for Teleosemantics

    Representation and Affect in Cognitive Science, Universitat de Barcelona Teleosemantic theories aim to naturalise representational status and content by grounding them in the proper functions of components of cognitive systems. Yet teleosemantics inherits a substantive open question: which notion of proper function can do this grounding work across biological and artificial cases, while accommodating malfunction,…

    Read more

  • 2025-09-12

    The Mind’s Blueprint – Mental Health, Design, and Rational Ability

    2025-09 GAP.12 Pathways to Truth in Düsseldorf

    Read more

  • 2025-05-29

    The Mind’s Blueprint – Mental Health, Rational Ability, and Design

    2025-05-29 26th INPP Conference in Leibzig

    Read more

  • 2024-09-11

    Mental Representation and Proper Function for Artificial Neural Networks

    with James Turner Congress of the German Society for Philosophy, Münster

    Read more

  • 2024-02-15

    Revisiting dysfunction in disorders: Degrees, diversity, and distality

    Templeton-Sowerby Joint Workshop: Function and Dysfunction in Medicine and Psychiatry, King’s College London

    Read more

  • 2023-12-05

    Mind and Function: On the Role of Selected Dispositions in the Philosophy of Mind and Psychiatry

    1st Recife’s Virtual Conference on Philosophy of Mind, online

    Read more

  • 2023-10-05

    Biological Functions as Selected Dispositions

    Millikanfest, University of Connecticut

    Read more

  • 2023-08-29

    Causal Bases in the Life Sciences

    Inductive Metaphysics: Insights, Challenges and Prospects, Universität Düsseldorf

    Read more

  • 2023-06-01

    Mental Disorders – On psychological dispositions, individuation and the disorder role

    Mental Disorders and Modal Properties, Berlin

    Read more