Prof. Dr. Thomas Buchheim

Research focus: Neurophilosophy

Key words: metaphysical realism, freedom, libertarian compatibilism, Schelling, Greek Philosophy

Brief research description: The main foci of my philosophical work are metaphysical realism, the theory of freedom, and the philosophy of the Greeks (especially of the Presocratics, Aristotle and the Sophists) and Schelling. In my theory of freedom, I defend a version of "libertarian compatibilism" according to which freedom, determinism, and the possibility to do otherwise do not exclude each other. Thereby, my position is also directed against philosophers who try to refute human freedom on the basis of neuroscientific experiments and models. This account of freedom is rooted in a robust anti-physicalist conception of living beings and their operations both of which are not reducible to purely physical objects or processes – a view I call "horizontal dualism" in contrast both to classical Cartesian and to contemporary versions of substance or property dualism. On my view, the operations of living substances, especially intentional actions, are generated by the living subject as a whole and cannot be traced to specific activities localised in the subject's brain alone. This conception of living beings is complemented by a version of animalism with regard to the nature of personhood.

Selected publications:

„Remarks on the Ontology of Living Beings and the Causality of Their Behavior“, in: Biology and Subjectivity - Philosophical Contributions to Non-reductive Neuroscience, ed. by Miguel García-Valdecasas, José Ignacio Murillo,
Nathaniel Barrett, Springer International Publishing 2016, 62-75.

„Neuronenfeuer und seelische Tat. Ein neo-aristotelischer Vorschlag zum Verständnis mentaler Kausalität“ sowie: „Ein neo-aristotelischer Vorschlag zum Verständnis mentaler Kausalität. Eine Replik“, zusammen in: Wilhelm Vossenkuhl (Hg.): Mentale Kausalität (Jahrbuch-Kontroversen 1), Alber: Freiburg i. Br. 2014, 11-25 und 101-122.

„Freiheit trotz Neuronen? Warum die Gehirnforschung uns den freien Willen nicht unfrei machen muss“, in: A. Seemüller u.a., Freiheit. Interdisziplinäre Betrachtungen, Stuttgart 2010, S. 34-45.

Unser Verlangen nach Freiheit. Kein Traum, sondern Drama mit Zukunft, Hamburg 2006. 

„Die Grundlagen der Freiheit. Eine Einführung in das ‚Leib-Seele-Problem", in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 111 (2004), 1-16.

„Libertarischer Kompatibilismus. Drei alternative Thesen auf dem Weg zu einem qualitativen Verständnis der Freiheit“, in: Der freie und der unfreie Wille. Philosophische und theologische Perspektiven, hrsg. von F. Hermanni und P. Koslowski, München 2004, 33-78.