Prof. Dr. Lena Kästner
Curriculum Vitae
professional experience
since February 2022
full professor for Philosophy, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Bayreuth, Germany
January 2024 – March 2024
research fellow at Weizenbaum Institut Berlin, Germany
host: Herbert Zech
September 2023 – December 2023
visiting scholar at Cambridge University, UK
host: Marta Halina
January 2022 – February 2022
assistant professor (TT) in Philosophy of Science with a specialization in data and digital society at Tilburg Center for Logic, Ethics and Philosophy of Science, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
January 2019 – January 2022
junior professor in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Systems at Department of Philosophy, Saarland University, Germany
May – June 2019
visiting scholar at Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
host: Colin Klein
October 2017 – December 2018
assistant professor (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in Philosophy at Department of Philosophy II, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
April 2014 – September 2017
assistant professor (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in Philosophy at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany
June 2013
visiting scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA
host: Carl Craver
April – June 2013
visiting scholar at University of California San Diego, CA, USA
host: William Bechtel
June 2012
research scholar at DCAL, University College London, London, UK,
hosts: Velia Cardin & Bencie Woll
October 2010 – March 2014
research assistant at Department of Philosophy II, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
group leader: Albert Newen
September 2009 – December 2019
member of research project “Sights and Signs – Processing Visual Language and Non-Language”, Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL), London, UK
PIs: Bencie Woll & Mary Rudner (Linköping, Sweden)
August – December 2008
visiting scholar at Washington University in St. Louis;
Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program, host: José Bermúdez
education
September 2014
PhD in Philosophy (grade: summa cum laude), Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
dissertation title: Philosophy of Cognitive Neuroscience: Causal Explanations, Mechanisms & Empirical Manipulations
supervision: Albert Newen (Bochum), Carl Craver (St. Louis)
My dissertation is about scientific explanations. I focus on how cognitive neuroscientists explain phenomena such as memory and language processing. While I am generally sympathetic to the view that scientists search for the neural mechanisms underlying these phenomena, and that they do so by employing systematic interventions, I argue, that the mechanist-interventionist picture suffers from conceptual challenges. I suggest a way to meet these, but even so the picture remains incomplete. There is much more to experimental manipulations than interventions into some factor X with respect to another factor Y. Examining cases from experimental research practice I distinguish intervention-based from other experimental strategies. This work provides the starting point for a new era in philosophy of science taking experimental practice at face value.
November 2010
MSc. in Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, UK
dissertation title: The What and Where of Sign Language
supervision: Eleni Orfanidou (DCAL, London), Bencie Woll (DCAL, London)
September 2009
BSc. in Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Germany
dissertation title: What is Cognition?
supervision: Sven Walter (Osnabrück), Carl Craver (St. Louis)