Nadine Meertens, M.A.

Personal Information

I completed my M.A. in philosophy at the University of Bern, after which I joined the cognition, value and behaviour lab at LMU Munich as a PhD candidate. My research lies at the intersection of philosophy of mind, biology and artificial intelligence. I focus primarily on the application of theory and concepts from the philosophy of animal minds to artificial systems. A specific focus lies on comparative cognition and the beginnings of cognition, consciousness and awareness.

Research interests

Awareness, animal minds, comparative cognition, artificial intelligence, evolution

Current projects

Title: A conceptual framework for collaborative awareness

The main goal of this project is to develop a new concept of "awareness". I present a novel conceptual framework for measuring and comparing awareness in individual agents and in groups or distributed systems. Using the "conceptual engineering" method, a revision of existing concepts of awareness is offered that is distinct from the ongoing debates about awareness. In this way, a manner of structuring bottom-up research on the capabilities of a variety of animals is offered. Beyond non-human animals, this new concept and framework will be applied to (minimal) artificial systems and extended for application to heterogeneous and homogeneous groups. This research is part of a project focussing on emergent awareness in minimal collectives EMERGE and is funded by the European Union.

Selected publications

• Meertens, N. (2024). Hedonic valence at the core of consciousness: A review of “A philosophy for the science of animal consciousness” by Walter Veit. Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 5.