Research Area

I am a researcher working at the intersection of philosophy and natural language processing (NLP). My primary research area is the philosophical theory and computational implementation of argumentation and logical inference, broadly conceived as logical reasoning. In philosophy, I’m influenced by inferentialism and pragmatism. In NLP, most of my research involves large language models (LLMs). However, I hypothesize that LLMs, being world-class associators (very good system 1 thinkers, but poor system 2 thinkers to borrow from Kahnemann), might not be ideally suited for logical reasoning, calling for a hybrid, neuro-symbolic approach. My secondary research area concerns the philosophical reflection about the kind of things that current AI systems, in particular LLMs, are, e.g., on whether they understand or speak language in the full sense of these terms.

Academic Career

I studied (in chronological order) mathematics at ETHZ, linguistics, philosophy, and Multi-Lingual Text Analysis at UZH, where I graduated with an MA in Philosophy and Multi-Lingual Text Analysis. My PhD thesis (summa cum laude, also at UZH) focused on the Philosophy of W.V.O. Quine. After that, I spent several years working in university management and as a part-time postdoc in Data Science and NLP at the University of St.Gallen. Throughout my academic career, I have successfully acquired competitive third-party funding from various institutions, including the SNSF.
I have been teaching on a university level since 2013, predominantly in logics and theoretical philosophy as well as, together with Peter Hongler, in legal methodology, at UZH and the University of St.Gallen (HSG).

Projects

I am currently working on the following projects:

• M-Rational: Reconceiving and Improving Multi-Perspectivality and Rationality in Argumentative AI
• AI-R: Using AI to Navigate the Space of Reasons