Forschungsprojekte
Hier finden Sie eine Übersicht über einige Forschungsprojekte, die an der Professur angesiedelt oder an denen Prof. Dr. Markus Schrenk und seine Mitarbeiter beteiligt sind.
Is Proprioceptive Art Possible?
Many works of art are predominantly visual or auditory in nature (e.g. drawing, painting, photography or music). Mixed forms are also common (e.g. opera, theatre, dance). The so-called chemical senses (smelling/tasting) are hardly ever addressed and only some works of art (happenings, fluxus, certain performances) involve the audience’s own physicality and might thereby also – together with vision and audition – intentionally provoke the recipients’ perception of their own body, i.e., their proprioception.
This project poses the radical question whether there could be artworks that are essentially proprioceptive in nature, i.e. that have the perception of one’s own body’s movement and position in space, balance, muscle tension, stretching, pain, temperature, energy and stress levels, etc., at their core (while paying less attention the other senses). In addition to theoretical considerations which show the plausibility of a positive answer, potential examples for this art form will be given.
The kickoff workshop was kindly funded by the German Research Council (DFG) and the Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP).
Ehemalige Forschungsprojekte
DFG Research Group FOR 2495: Inductive Metaphysics (2017-2025), Project A2.2: Creative Abductive Inference and Its Role for Inductive Metaphysics
PI: Markus Schrenk | Researcher: Siegfried Jaag
Across two funding phases (phase 1: 2017-2020; phase 2: 2020-2025), Project A2.2 investigated creative abductive inference (CAI) and inference to the best explanation (IBE) as core methods of inductive metaphysics (IM).
The first phase established the methodological foundations. It developed and critically examined the rationality of CAI and IBE in metaphysical contexts, evaluating four criteria proposed in the literature for distinguishing substantive abductions from empty post-hoc speculation: analogy, unification, common cause abduction, and independent testability. Applied to key metaphysical concepts — including external reality, natural necessity, causality, and causal power — the project assessed the extent to which abductive inferences in the existing metaphysical literature satisfy these criteria. It further examined how CAI and IBE are already employed in contemporary metaphysics, responded to major objections against IM, and compared abductive methods to other established approaches in metaphysics, exploring whether these alternatives can be integrated into the IM programme. The twin project A2.1 was conducted by Gerhard Schurz and Christian Feldbacher.
The second phase deepened and extended this inquiry. A2.2 extended the abductive toolkit by examining methods prominent in the sciences but not yet applied to metaphysics in the first phase: the role of model-building in metaphysical theorising, the use of abductive virtues such as simplicity to make theories more error robust, and — jointly with A2.1 — the question of how abductively inferred metaphysical theories explain. Special attention was given to laws of nature and causation and whether and how grounding explanations can be accommodated within the framework of IM.
DFG Research Group: Causation, Laws, Dispositions, Explanation Phase II (2014-2016)
PI, with Professor Oliver R. Scholz (Münster): We critically assess the value and validity of modern scientifically minded metaphysics and research its historical development starting from logical empiricism’s skepticism onwards to its incarnation as today’s thriving field of metaphysics of science.
Fellowship Award Durham Emergence Project (Templeton Foundation, 2014-2016)
With Dr. Juha Saatsi (PI, Leeds) and Dr. Alexander Reutlinger (Munich). We aim to understand how issues concerning strong emergence interact with prominent metaphysical conceptions of laws of nature. Our focused objective is to pin down the relationship between emergence and laws in a (broadly) Humean setting, esp. within the better best systems account (cf. Cohen&Callender 2009, Schrenk 2007, 2014).
Project funded by the HHU’s Strategic Research Fund:
Modality and the Resistance against Intentional Actions (Schrenk)
(12.2015 to 12.2016; with Professor Kann and Professor Schurz)