People

Axel Mueller

Senior Lecturer
Office: Kresge 3-230
E-mail: muell@northwestern.edu
Phone: 847-491-2558

Ph.D. University of Frankfurt, specializes in philosophy of language, American pragmatism and general philosophy of natural science. He also has interests in Kant and the history of analytic philosophy. He is the author of the book Referenz und Fallibilismus (DeGruyter, 2001), a study of Hilary Putnam's thought. He has published articles on the normative structure of inductive concepts and on the relations of scientific practice and realism. He is currently working on a series of articles that aim at an extended analysis of the semantic basis of mental content externalism in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, as well as on the manuscript for a book on Pragmatism (Acumen Press). A longer standing project (within which he has forthcoming work on Quine's and Putnam's views of analyticity) is an investigation of the degree to which contextual elements in referring and scientific practice can disarm underdetermination arguments in the philosophy of science and of language. More recently, he also has been publishing on Jane Addams' pragmatist arguments regarding the foundations of the political obligation to seek cosmopolitan peace. He also enjoys being a resource for students in his function as a University Fulbright Faculty Advisor and Fellowship and Honors Coordinator in the department, as which he welcomes all students with questions in this area.

Curriculum Vitae

Work

Books

Referenz und Fallibilismus, De Gruyter: Berlin/New York, 2001.

Articles

"Does Kantian mental content externalism help metaphysical realists?", Synthese (forthcoming 2010).
"Goodman, Nelson", in Koertge, N. (ed.), The New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, New York : Charles Scribner's Sons/MacMillan, 2007.
"Realism, Beyond Miracles", co-authored with Arthur Fine, in Ben-Menahim, Y. (ed.): Contemporary Philosophy in Focus: Hilary Putnam, Cambridge MA : Cambridge University Press 2005, 83-124.
"Pragmatismo y Naturalismo: dos programas filosóficos, un presente en duda", in Galán, F./Xolocotzi, A./De la Garza, M.T. (eds.), El Futuro de la Filosofía , Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana 2005, 81-96.
"Some remarks on Semantic Externalism and Conceptual Pluralism ", Teorema XXII/3 (2003), 59-83.
"Putnams pragmatischer Kognitivismus", in Willaschek, M./Rater, M.L. (eds.) Hilary Putnam und die Tradition des Pragmatismus, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002, 65-87.
"Self-Critical Theory. On the development of theory in Siegfried Kracauer's work", Teoría/Crítica 4 (1998), 281-314.
"Natural Kinds and Projectible Predicates", Sorites 1 (1995), 1-36.

Work in Process

"Kant's Semantic Externalism". This is a chunk on Kant and Semantic Externalism, which has far outgrown all its ancestors and will, eventually and hopefully, result in a couple of smaller pieces. Comments welcome; please ask me before citing or quoting.
"On Defending Revisability and Rejecting Analyticity: Pragmatic Methodology vs. Quinean Naturalism", to appear in Baghramian, Maria (Ed.): Permutations: Essays on Hilary Putnam, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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