Faculty

Axel Mueller
Senior Lecturer
Email: muell@northwestern.edu

Ph.D. University of Frankfurt, specializes in philosophy of language and also has interests in the philosophy of science, American pragmatism and Kant. He is the author of the book Referenz und Fallibilismus (DeGruyter, 2001), a study of Hilary Putnam's thought, as well as of articles on the normative structure of inductive concepts and on the relations of scientific practice and realism. He is currently working on an analysis of underdetermination arguments in the philosophy of language and of science, and on the role of contextual elements in referring practices, as well as on a book called Understanding Pragmatism (Acumen, forthcoming 2008).

Writings and Recently Taught Courses

Books

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

• "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.

Current CV

• CURRENT CV