KI-based machines and artificial agents are playing more and more a crucial role in our social and political life. Do they essentially differ from human intelligence and human actors or are they merely an (advanced) version of us? How should we judge on their role? For answering such questions one has to give an account of essential features of intelligence, reason, and agency.

Bioethics deals with the evaluation and regulation of technology based interventions into life. Should inquiry into drugs be allowed that partially delete memories and eliminate trauma? Is there really something that speaks better against brain doping than against coffee? Should human stem cells be allowed to be patented? We will approach such bioethical questions with philosophical means.

Climate change exerts a pressure on us to significantly change our individual and collective behaviour. Such a pressure raises questions like: Who has to give up what? What is a fair distributions of the burdens in the struggle against the cllimate change? What is the reasonable understanding of our relation to nature? How should we run our economies?

Ecological crises and growing social inequalities rise the urgent question: Is the global way we are doing economics reasonable? – Which kind of wealth is illegitimate? Is a policy of of de-growth needed for protecting our ecological niche? Will technological devices e.g. AI-driven market designs for public goods be the solution or is a change of attitudes necessary to cope with such problems?

We are praised for our achievements and blamed for our failures. It is presupposed that our doings are something that is up to us. "It is up to us" often expresses our attitude to treat us as free beings. But are we really free, hence responsible for our behavior? Or is our behaviour entrenched in conditions properly understood as deterministic ones?

Practical philosophy deals in a descriptive and evaluative way with the realm of the practical, that is, with action, practices, norms of action, and values held by people and societies. Ethics and political philosophy are branches of practical philosophy. This introductory course will treat some of the main questions and introduce students to the thinking of central figures in the field.

Is all relative? “Yes!” is often the answer in societies of the West, the East, and the South now. The sciences are but one belief system among others like religions. Human rights are inventions with vested interests of their Western inventors. Reality is standpoint-relative. For, the view from nowhere is impossible. Yesterday’s knowledge is today’s merely socially shared belief. Is this true?

Ph.D. students, post docs, members of staff, and senior colleagues from other philosophy departments will report on their work in progress. Furthermore, promissing new philosophical articles and parts of new philosophical books will be studied.

Ph.D. students, post docs, members of staff, and senior colleagues from other philosophy departments will report on their work in progress. Furthermore, promissing new philosophical articles and parts of new philosophical books will be studied.

Ph.D. students, post docs, members of staff, and senior colleagues from other philosophy departments will report on their work in progress. Furthermore, promissing new philosophical articles and parts of new philosophical books will be studied.

Ph.D. students, post docs, members of staff, and senior colleagues from other philosophy departments will report on their work in progress. Furthermore, promissing new philosophical articles and parts of new philosophical books will be studied.

Ph.D. students, post docs, members of staff, and senior colleagues from other philosophy departments will report on their work in progress. Furthermore, promissing new philosophical articles and parts of new philosophical books will be studied.

Ph.D. students, post docs, members of staff, and senior colleagues from other philosophy departments will report on their work in progress. Furthermore, promissing new philosophical articles and parts of new philosophical books will be studied.

Ph.D. students, post docs, members of staff, and senior colleagues from other philosophy departments will report on their work in progress. Furthermore, promissing new philosophical articles and parts of new philosophical books will be studied.

Ph.D. students, post docs, members of staff, and senior colleagues from other philosophy departments will report on their work in progress. Furthermore, promissing new philosophical articles and parts of new philosophical books will be studied.

Ph.D. students and members of staff report on their research.

Whose voice should count how much? On the authority of the sciences in democracy.

"Normativity" means "having benchmark status, according to which something is right or wrong, good or bad, allowed or forbidden, adequate or inadequate, etc." Where does this status come from? Is it due to social conventions, evolution, power, or to insight? Ultimately, to what extent can the standards of morals and law be justified?