Top-Down Causation and Emergence

Jan Voosholz is a PhD candidate in philosophy and research associate at the Center for Science and Thought, Universität Bonn. His research focuses on questions of ontology, epistemology and philosophy of science. In his PhD project, he strives to understand the consequences of Quentin Meillassoux's speculative realism and Markus Gabriel's new realism for the philosophy of science in general and the debate concerning realism and antirealism in particular. For research stays, he has spent time at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, and received a M.A. in philosophy and a B.A. in history from the Freie Universität Berlin.
Markus Gabriel is professor for philosophy at the Univeristät Bonn, holding the chair for epistemology, modern and contemporary philosophy. In ontology, he has been one of the frontline proponents of new realism, with his fields of sense ontology widely regarded as a key innovation in theoretical philosophy, worked extensively in epistemology and pioneered neo-existentialism in philosophy of mind. Apart from this, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, German idealism (most prominently Schelling), ancient philosophy, as well as philosophy of the 20th century can be counted amongst his areas of expertise. He was professor at the New School for Social Research, New York, and visiting professor at various universities, for instance Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, University of California Berkeley, Universidade Federal do Ceará Fortaleza, and many others. He is head of the International Centre for Philosophy NRW and the Center for Science and Thought at the Universität Bonn.