About

I am Professor of Cognitive Anthropology in the Department of Philosophy at Leipzig University. In addition, I am a co-director and PI at the Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development, a faculty member of the International Max Planck Research School on Neuroscience of Communication, and an alumna of the Junge Akademie. I currently also serve on the editorial board of the journal Philosophical Psychology. During the summer term 2023 I will be a Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities “Human Abilities” in Berlin.

Before coming to Leipzig, I was Junior Professor of Neurophilosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Magdeburg. Prior to that, I was a Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Deputy Director of the Forum for European Philosophy. I obtained my PhD from the Humboldt-University in Berlin.

Broadly speaking, my research interests are in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. In particular, I am interested in self-consciousness, social cognition, the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of representation, the relation between personal and subpersonal level explanations, and the nature and origins of normativity. Part of my research consists in exploring what a developmental perspective on these and related topics can reveal. Moreover, I am curious about the relation between humans and non-human animals (both with respect to the cognitive abilities of non-human animals and with respect to animal ethics). My research is guided by the belief that there can be mutually beneficial relations between philosophy and empirical research.

Contact: kristina.musholt at uni-leipzig.de