Matthias Schachtler, M.A.

Personal information

Matthias Schachtler is a doctoral student at the Research Centre for Neurophilosophy and Ethics of Neuroscience. He studied philosophy and political science at the University of Zurich (UZH) and later continued his studies at the University of Munich (LMU) in philosophy and Chinese language and culture (BA), where he also completed a further purely philosophy focused graduate degree (MA).

Research interests

Philosophy of mind, action theory, neurophilosophy and artificial intelligence.

PhD project

The main question guiding the dissertation project of Matthias Schachtler is: are mental events predictable? Even if physical events may be predictable to a high degree, the intentions (mental events) that may lie behind some physical events might be far more difficult to predict, especially for algorithms incapable of human thought. The goal is to uncover why this might be the case and to argue why this problem might persist, even if significant further advancements in computational power are made.

Teaching

• Student seminar on Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness at the University of Munich (LMU)
• Introductory course on Consciousness in Philosophy of Mind (for first semester BA students)

Media

• Chief Editor for Philosophy of Mind and Host of the LMU Philosophy Podcast “Phipod”.