PD Dr. Norbert Paulo

Personal information

At LMU, Norbert Paulo leads a DFG-funded research project on thought experiments in practical philosophy. Moreover, he is co-principal investigator of a research project on the ethics of self-driving cars at the Bundeswehr University Munich. Before that, he was Interim Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Free University of Berlin, and Research Associate in practical philosophy at the University of Graz, as well as Research Associate in social philosophy and philosophy of law at the University of Salzburg.

He received his doctorate from the University of Hamburg, where he had previously completed a double degree in Law and Philosophy. He habilitated at the University of Graz. He was a Fellow of the "Junges ZiF" program at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University, and undertook research at Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale.

He is a co-founder of the philosophy blog praefaktisch.

Research interests

Norbert Paulo is particularly interested in the methodology of practical philosophy, for example empirically informed ethics (e.g. the implications of experimental psychology for theories of ethical justification), but also in moral psychology and experimental philosophy in general. Moreover, he works in political philosophy, applied ethics, philosophy of law and the history of philosophy.

Selected publications

• Paulo, Norbert. 2016. The Confluence of Philosophy and Law in Applied Ethics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Paulo, Norbert. 2020. The Unreliable Intuitions Objection Against Reflective Equilibrium. The Journal of Ethics, 333–53.
• Paulo, Norbert. 2023. The Trolley Problem in the Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles. The Philosophical Quarterly 73 (4): 1046–66.
• Paulo, Norbert, und Jan Christoph Bublitz, eds. 2020. Empirische Ethik: Grundlagentexte aus Psychologie und Philosophie. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
• Smith, Adam. 2023. Philosophische Schriften. Ed. Norbert Paulo. Berlin: Suhrkamp.