Martine Nida-Rümelin - University of Fribourg

Martine Nida-Rümelin

martine.nida-ruemelin@unifr.ch
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-9343-8535

Professor emeritus
Department of Philosophy

Research and publications

Research projects

Start	01.12.2023
End	31.07.2025
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet
This project explores the relations between two central themes in contemporary philosophy of language and mind, mental indexicality and phenomenal consciousness, in connection with the mind/body problem. The thesis that there is indexicality at the mental level is the thesis that some thoughts, typically expressible with indexicals like ‘I’ or ‘now’, present the world from a particular perspective in the world. Phenomenal consciousness refers to the subjective quality of our conscious experiences: there is, for instance, ‘something it is like’ to see red. Indexical knowledge (of who and where I am in the world) and phenomenal knowledge (of what it is like to see red) share an important feature: they seem irreducible to objective, third-personal knowledge. But how do the two notions of ‘first-person perspective’ relate exactly? This semantic/epistemic question has metaphysical import in current debates on the mind-body problem, since the apparent gap between the phenomenal and the physical knowledge we have of our conscious experiences is exploited in anti-physicalist arguments. One way to resist the anti-physicalist conclusion is to claim that this epistemic gap has its source not in the nature of consciousness (metaphysical gap), but only in the features of our thoughts about our conscious experiences (epistemic gap). According to a thesis we will call indexicalism, the special features of thoughts about our conscious experiences are indexical features: that is, the epistemic gap is explained via mental indexicality. Given indexicalism, phenomenal knowledge will be reduced to indexical knowledge, which is not usually taken to threaten physicalism. However, indexicalism as it has been developed so far, faces important objections that have led many authors to abandon that theoretical pathway. The project brings together philosophers with complementary expertise on mental indexicality (on the French side) and on phenomenal consciousness (on the Swiss side) to systematically assess two rival hypotheses about so-called phenomenal concepts (concepts we use to think about the phenomenal character of experience). According to the first hypothesis (the Index-hypothesis), an improved understanding of mental indexicality in general will make it possible to elaborate a version of indexicalism about phenomenal concepts which is not vulnerable to the relevant objections. If successful, it protects physicalism about phenomenal consciousness. According to the second hypothesis, phenomenal concepts are no indexical concepts but genuine property concepts which individuate the properties they serve to attribute by the thinker's understanding of what it is to have the relevant property. This claim (the GPC-hypothesis) leads in a natural manner to an anti-physicalist view of phenomenal consciousness. We expect a vivid and fruitful discussion within the project, since the French and the Swiss sides start out with incompatible stances on the two working hypotheses. While important work on both sides in recent years has prepared the ground for elaborating the two working hypotheses, there has been very little direct confrontation of their emerging competing views on the matter. This project is intended to provide the opportunity to do so. Such a confrontation is bound to provide substantial insights into issues that run deep into the origin of the mind-body problem. These insights should contribute crucially to our understanding of ourselves as human beings who are aware of themselves as experiencing subjects with the capacity to reflect on their own conscious states.

Start	01.12.2019
End	29.02.2024
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet
This project will focus on the metaphysics of the subject of experiences, that is, on the nature of entities which can have experiences (including conscious animals as well as humans). There has been increasing attention paid to different issues relevant to this topic in recent years, but as of yet there has been no systematic study showing how these issues are interrelated and how they can be integrated into a substantive account of the nature of the subject. To fill this gap, we shall propose the following hypothesis: each subject is a substance, distinct from its body but necessarily embodied, and it is essentially a subject. We shall provide new arguments in defence of this conception, and also show how it can provide novel accounts of what it is for a subject to be embodied, to have a perspective on the word, and for its experiences to be unified. This conception, therefore, promises to provide a comprehensive and unified metaphysical account of the subject, which will have important ramifications for other issues in the philosophy of mind. In the course of our work we shall address the following Research Questions: RQ1. To which ontological category does the subject of experience belong, e.g., is it a substance, a bundle of experiences, a collection of mental capacities, etc? RQ2. Are the entities which are subjects essentially subjects? RQ3. What is the metaphysical nature of embodiment, i.e., what is it, metaphysically speaking, for a subject to be embodied? RQ4. What is the nature of the subject’s first-person perspective? RQ5. What is the metaphysical relation between the subject of experiences and the unity of experiences? Investigating each of these questions is crucial providing an overall metaphysical account of the nature of the subject. The view we propose can only hold together if all five are discussed in detail. The hypotheses we wish to defend regarding the research questions are as follows: the subject is a substance (RQ1) and each subject is essentially a subject (RQ2). A subject can be embodied to different degrees, and this can be accounted for on a view which takes each subject to be an emergent individual (RQ3). We shall distinguish several different senses in which a subject has a perspective and investigate their interrelation; for instance, we shall suggest that the sense of being located at a specific point in space and time requires having a unique perspective on one’s own experiences in a way which does not allow for reduction in, e.g., functional terms (RQ4). A subject’s experiences are unified in a significant way simply by belonging to that subject, and this unity cannot be reductively explained (RQ5).

Start	01.12.2016
End	31.07.2022
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet
This project aims at integrating various fields of research within philosophy of mind, in particular issues about phenomenal consciousness and self-awareness. These systematically related issues are usually discussed in almost complete isolation from each other. Our research should thus contribute to a change of perspective in this respect, which we believe is necessary to develop a more unified and coherent understanding of the mind. Our research will be framed within a terminology different from the one standardly used in the present debates. This choice will be justified by arguing that the proposed framework allows for a more natural and adequate account of consciousness, self-awareness and the relation between the two. Within that framework, an argument will be developed for the view that the notion of an experiencing subject is fundamental for our understanding of consciousness. This amounts to proposing a shift in the way one approaches the various interrelated problems within the philosophy of mind in general, since the experiencing subject is usually left out of the picture in the relevant contemporary debates. Our work will explicitly address the following questions: What is the nature of our epistemic situation with respect to our own conscious states? What is the relation between phenomenal consciousness and self-awareness? Does the former necessarily involve the latter? Is there a sense in which we are aware of ourselves as experiencing subjects? If so, what is the nature of that awareness? What is the relation between the concepts we have of phenomenal kinds of experiences and the concept we have of ourselves as experiencing subjects? What is the basis of our understanding of what it is to be a conscious individual?

Start	01.01.2014
End	31.12.2015
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet
Is there a distinctive phenomenology of normative judgment? In the case of colour judgment, e.g. when you judge pomegranates are red, there is a distinctive visual phenomenology associated with your understanding of ‘red’. Is there a similar phenomenological aspect in the case of your understanding of ‘ought’, e.g. when you judge that you ought not eat meat, or you ought to renew your driver’s licence? If so, what role does this phenomenology play in an account of normative judgment?This project will focus on one particular phenomenological feature - the appearance of bindingness - that has recently attracted attention in the metaethical literature on normative judgment. The main goals of this project are: (i) to assess whether this phenomenology can help demarcate normative from non-normative judgment; and (ii) to tackle a central objection to the idea that phenomenal experiences play an essential role in an account of normative judgment: not all normative judgments are accompanied by the relevant phenomenology.The project will make an important contribution to debates about the nature of normative judgment. It helps address a long-standing neglect of phenomenal aspects of normative thinking. The project brings theoretical tools developed in thinking about the role of phenomenology in perception to bear on a new domain, opening up new avenues for research and potential collaboration between two very active areas of contemporary philosophical research, perceptual belief and practical reasoning.

Start	01.10.2010
End	31.01.2014
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet

Start	01.06.2008
End	31.05.2011
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet
The main aim of the project is the develop of a new account of phenomenal concepts. Phenomenal concepts are concepts of kinds of experiences and they are formed on the basis of having experiences of the relevant kind oneself (they presuppose first person access to the kinds at issue). Phenomenal concepts are used in thoughts about our own experiences and those of others. Contrary to what may be found in the relevant literature, the account to be developed in the project will be based on a careful analysis of the conceptual framework used in so-called phenomenological reflection. We will address a challenge that has not found sufficient interest in the discussion of phenomenal concepts: the challenge provided by the intuition of transparency, - the intuition that phenomenal kinds of experiences are characterized by the properties that things appear to have in these experiences. We will try to develop an account of phenomenal concepts that does duty to the transparency intuition and at the same time preserves the idea that experiences have intrinsic subjective character that cannot be reduced to the properties represented in the experience. The account of phenomenal concepts will be used for a critical analyses of alternative accounts of phenomenal concepts, - accounts that are developed in order to show that anti-materialist intutions are cognitive illusions that can be expained in a way compatible with materialism by our specific cognitive architecture.

Start	01.10.2007
End	30.11.2010
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet
For the first time in Switzerland and especially in 'Suisse Romande' there is an important critical mass of senior and junior researchers sharing their basic philosophical methodology (in spite of their disagreements on specific philosophical issues). As a consequence, fruitful philosophical debate can take place and serious exchange and collaboration can be achieved on a regular and scientific basis. Indeed, all participants to the Doctoral Program (see 2.6 below) share a common methodology which we may label 'the analytic approach' that distinguishes itself by its commitment to clarity, and rigor of argumentation. A common methodology guarantees the shareability of progress report (useful and serious feedback from researchers to each other at all levels about the progress of their work) and research results, as well as important and regular interconnections between the different research areas of the research modules : in different areas, the same or similar patterns of argumentation can be found. One first central topic in the school concerns the mind. On way of prospective research in the philosophy of mind concerns the nature of the self, its boundaries, its determination within the structure of the world and its relation to the body (see the Research Module Boundaries of the self); another perspective on the mind is given by the study of the first-person perspective on phenomenal concepts and how those concepts depend in their application and in their nature on the fact that they are essentially applied in the first person; a further perspective on the mind concerns the way the mind is integrated into the natural world and more specifically into its causal structure; and a final perspective concerns the normative dimensions of mental activities such as judging and acting (see the RM Norms of Mind and Knowledge). Clarification of these different issues requires conceptual means which belong to the typical domain of metaphysics, as for instance the question needs to be clarified as to what normative and phenomenal properties are.

Start	01.01.2007
End	31.12.2007
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet

Start	01.04.2006
End	31.01.2009
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet

Start	01.11.2005
End	31.01.2006
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet

Start	01.11.2003
End	31.01.2004
Funding	SNSF Open project sheet