I am Professor of Cognitive Anthropology in the Department of Philosophy at Leipzig University. In addition, I am PI at the Humboldt Science Center for Child Development, and an alumna of the Junge Akademie. I currently also serve on the editorial board of the journals Philosophical Psychology and Philosophisches Jahrbuch, and on the committee of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology. During the summer term 2023 I was 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, philosophy of cognitive science and social epistemology. 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. More recently, I have become interested in the role of the emotions for our abilities for self-understanding and our engagement with the world. 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
Kristina Musholt 