Rudolf-Carnap Lectures 2025

March 17-19, 2025 | Ruhr-Universität Bochum 


It’s an honor and a pleasure to announce this year’s Carnap Lecturer, Prof. Peter Carruthers, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland. His primary research interests for most of the last thirty years have been in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and cognitive science. Prior to that he trained as a Wittgensteinian, and published a couple of monographs on Wittgenstein's Tractatus. 

Before his appointment at Maryland, he was Director of the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies at the University of Sheffield (UK). He published numerous books on aspects of the mind, including its modular architecture, consciousness, self-knowledge, animal minds, folk psychology and social cognition, and most recently human motives.  

Check out his personal webpage for details.

Peter Carruthers will present four lectures. While they will take place in the context of a Graduate Workshop, as usual, the second one will be open to the public.
Lecture 1: The Interpretative Sensory-Access Theory of Self-Knowledge: The Case of Inner Speech
Lecture 2: Understanding Human Motives: Hedonism, Altruism, and Tribalism (Public Lecture)
Lecture 3: The Nature of Pleasure and Desire: Where Philosophers Go Wrong 

Lecture 4: Stop Caring About (Phenomenal) Consciousness

If you want to participate, please register by email to [email protected] by March 1st, 2025.