Research

Main research areas:

• Questions of metaphysics, both in a contemporary and historical perspective
  • issues about the freedom of the will
  • ancient metaphysics and philosophy of nature
  • modality in early modern philosophy

• The philosophy of mind
  • perception
  • arguments against physicalism and externalism

• Political philosophy

• Cognitive Science

Research projects and networks:

• Perspectival Thoughts and Facts

The FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network PETAF is the first research and training network exclusively in philosophy ever to be financed by the European Commission. It aims to serve as a European research and training platform for joint philosophical research on perspectival thought, its linguistic expression and its consequences for our conception of objective, mind-independent reality. PETAF’s research programme, which runs for four years (2010-214), addresses both general issues in metaphysics and in logic and semantics and specific issues in more specialised areas in which perspective-bound cognition plays a pivotal role, i.e. the philosophy of space and time, the philosophy of alethic and epistemic modality, the philosophy of subjectivity and consciousness, and the philosophy of norms and value.

The members of the PETAF training network are:

• Universitat de Barcelona
• University of St. Andrews
• Université de Genève
• École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
• University of London
• Stockholms Universitet
• Central European University
• University of Aberdeen

In September 2011, CEU hosted a PETAF workshop on Subjectivity.

• PLM network

CEU is a founding member, and currently the coordinator of the Philosophy of Language and Mind Network. PLM is a network of philosophical centres, institutes, and departments in Europe.

The main purposes of PLM are to further philosophy of mind and language in Europe generally, and to provide a platform for cooperation between members, primarily in research, but possibly also in research training. This involves e.g. making use of PLM for joint applications to funding organisations.

The members of the PLM network are:

• Arché, St Andrews
• Department of Philosophy, CEU, Budapest
• CLLAM, Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University
• CSMN, Oslo
• ILCLI, University of the Basque County, San Sebastian
• ILLC, Amsterdam
• Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris
• Institute of Philosophy II, Ruhr University Bochum
• Institute of Philosophy, University of London
• LOGOS, University of Barcelona
• NIP, University of Aberdeen

In September 2013, CEU will host the second PLM conference.

• The Human Project

This project aims to undertake an in-depth study of the following two questions in philosophy and the history of philosophy.

• How do human beings differ from other natural beings?
• How do human beings differ from other natural beings? What are the functions, special traits and characteristics that distinguish human beings from objects and other living creatures?

This five-year project is funded by MAG Zrt.

Lectures by our faculty members:

Interview with Hanoch Ben-Yami on Descartes, taken after his talk at Kent University, February 2012. Link to the podcast.

Nenad Miscevic, on 13 December 2011 at Vilnius University, on Philosophy Between Science and the Humanities. Link to the video.

Katalin Farkas, on 10 October 2011 at the Forum for European Philosophy at the LSE - on the Extended Mind. Link to the podcast.

Dan Sperber's lecture "Culture and Minds" in Aboagora in Turku, Finland, on 17 August 2011. Video is here.

Janos Kis in March 2011 on constitutional change and the current crisis in Hungary. Link to the video.