Biography
Thomas Metzinger (Frankfurt am Main, 1958) is a German philosopher specialising in philosophy of mind, cognitive science and applied ethics. He was Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, where he conducted research into consciousness, subjectivity and self-models. He has also participated in academic institutions devoted to the interdisciplinary study of consciousness.
In Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (2003), he developed a theory of subjective experience based on the construction of phenomenological self-models. In The Ego Tunnel (2009), he introduced a wider readership to the philosophical and scientific implications of understanding the conscious self as the outcome of representational processes. The Elephant and the Blind (2024) addresses states of pure consciousness and the possibilities for rigorous investigation of contemplative experience.
His recent work incorporates questions of neuroethics, artificial intelligence and artificial suffering. He served on the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence between 2018 and 2020 and was elected a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2022.
Profiles and references
Published books