Our research in this area proceeds from different perspectives and includes the following themes:

  • The development of alternative (e.g. ‘non-theoretical' and ‘therapeutic') conceptions of philosophy in the wake of Wittgenstein;
  • Reflection on alternative media of philosophical reflection, including literature and film;
  • The explanation and assessment of philosophical intuitions and the ways in which non-intentional and automatic thought shapes them;
  • The development of methods and perspectives for ‘naturalised' philosophies of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysics.


We welcome applications from postgraduate students wishing to work on any of these topics. (Please feel free to email any of us to discuss supervisory and other arrangements.)

Members of the School of Philosophy working in this area

Dr Yuri Cath's research addresses foundational questions in epistemology about the nature and sources of different kinds of knowledge, and the import of these issues for debates in the philosophy of mind and metaphilosophy. A great deal of my research to date has been on the nature of knowledge-how and its relationship to knowledge-that, as well as the implications of different views of this relationship for debates in the philosophy of mind. (See Publications and Academia.edu page)

Prof John Collins has a keen interest in meta-philosophical issues, especially as they bear on his first-order interests in the philosophies of language and mind. Collins is especially concerned with the various doctrines (metaphysical and methodological) associated with the general label of 'naturalism' and how they inform notions of what would count as an adequate philosophical account. (See Publications and Academia.edu page)

Dr Eugen Fischer works on the explanation and assessment of philosophical intuitions. He has analysed how pictures and metaphors shape automatic thought in philosophical settings. With the help of concepts derived from cognitive linguistics and psychology, he has conducted case-studies on the genesis of intuitions and problems about the mind and perception. Some of the results vindicate and facilitate the project of ‘therapeutic philosophy'. His second chief interest is to explain where and why a kind of cognitive therapy is required in philosophy and to develop methods to put it into practice. (See Publications and Academia.edu page)

Dr Oskari Kuusela spells out in his recent work a way to make sense of the later Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy as devoid of theses, explaining Wittgenstein's conception as a response to the problem of dogmatism in philosophy and to other problems relating to conceptions of the status of philosophical statements. The claim is that this view leads to an increase in the flexibility of philosophical thought without loss in its rigour. He has also articulated on this basis a novel way to employ transcendental arguments that resolves certain problems relating to such arguments. (See Publications and Academia.edu page)

Prof Catherine Rowett has published on issues relating to the nature of philosophical discourse and enquiry, and particularly the role of the imagination and non-propositional understanding. She defends the idea that philosophical approaches that exclude the imagination and the erotic, and focus solely on cool reason, misconstrue problems not just in ethics but in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. (See Publications and Academia.edu page: published as Catherine Osborne until 2011)