PD Dr. Wanja Wiese – Philosophy of Consciousness and AI

Welcome!
I am a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer ("Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter") at the Chair for Philosophy of Mind at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.

Areas of specialization:
Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Philosophy of AI.
Main topics: Consciousness, Theories of Consciousness, Artificial Consciousness, Mental Representation, Predictive Processing, Free Energy Principle / Active Inference.

Areas of competence:
Philosophy of Science, Epistemology, Formal Logic.


Wanja Wiese © RUB, Marquard© RUB, Marquard

Contact:
wanja dot wiese at rub dot de

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Philosophy and the Mind Sciences (PhiMiSci)

I'm co-editor-in-chief and co-founder of the diamond-open-access journal Philosophy and the Mind Sciences (PhiMiSci).

I've also been PI of a DFG-funded project related to PhiMiSci.

Artificial Consciousness

My current research focuses on philosophical problems associated with artificial consciousness.

Among others, this involves:

  • A special issue in Philosophy and the Mind Sciences (call for papers here), with François Kammerer and Christian de Weerd.
  • A monograph on artificial consciousness (under contract with MIT Press).
  • I'm working on papers about artificial consciousness (one of them co-authored with Christian de Weerd).
  • I'll give talks on AI consciousness at KogWis and GAP.12.

Philosophy of Consciousness Science

I'm a member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) and the Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science (AMCS).
My current activities related to philosophy of consciousness science include the following:

  • I'm a co-organiser of the annual Models of Consciousness (MoC) conference series. MoC6-2025 will take place in Sapporo, Japan, 30 September - 4 October 2025.
  • With Azenet Lopez, I recently published a paper about theoretical progress in consciousness science in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.

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Education

2024 Habilitation in Philosophy (Venia Legendi), Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
2015 PhD in Philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.
2012 Diploma (“M.A.”) in Mathematics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.
2011 Magister Artium (“M.A.”) in Philosophy and Mathematics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.
09/2008-07/2009 ERASMUS exchange student at Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

Professional Appointments and Fellowships

Since 04/2021 Post-doctoral researcher and lecturer, Ruhr University Bochum, Institute of Philosophy II, Chair for Philosophy of Mind (Prof. Dr. Albert Newen).
10/2023-03/2024 Interim professor for Theoretical Philosophy and Philosophy of the Social Sciences (temporary substitute for Prof. Dr. Jens Harbecke), Faculty of Management, Economics and Society, University Witten/Herdecke.
04/2015-03/2021 Post-doctoral researcher and lecturer, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Department of Philosophy, Theoretical Philosophy Group (Prof. Dr. Thomas Metzinger).
07/2020-11/2020 Parental leave (50%).
12/2018-02/2019 Visiting scholar at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London (host: Prof. Dr. Karl Friston).
03/2018-07/2018 Parental leave (100%).
2009-2012 Student assistant, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Department of Philosophy, Theoretical Philosophy Group (Prof. Dr. Thomas Metzinger).
2011-2012 Student assistant, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Department of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science Group (Prof. Dr. Ralf Busse).
2009-2011 Student assistant, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Theory Group (Prof. Dr. Kurt Kremer).

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Monographs

Wiese, W. (under contract). Simulating and Being. Understanding Weak and Strong Artificial Consciousness. MIT Press.

Wiese, W. (2018). Experienced Wholeness. Integrating Insights from Gestalt Theory, Cognitive Neuroscience, and Predictive Processing. MIT Press.

Review: Downey, A. (2020). Experienced wholeness: Integrating insights from gestalt theory, cognitive neuroscience, and predictive processing. Philosophical Psychology. DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2020.1719398

Edited Volumes

Rutar, D., Kwisthout, J., & Wiese, W. (2025). Special Issue “Developing Models of the World”, Topics in Cognitive Science.

Fink, S. B., Wiese, W. & Windt, J. M. (eds.) (2018). Research Topic “Philosophical and Ethical Aspects of a Science of Consciousness and the Self”, Frontiers in Psychology. (https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/5881/philosophical-and-ethical-aspects-of-a-science-of-consciousness-and-the-self) (OPEN ACCESS)

Metzinger, T., & Wiese, W. (eds.) (2017). Philosophy and Predictive Processing. MIND Group. https://predictive-mind.net (OPEN ACCESS)

Publications in Peer-Reviewed Journals

  1. Lopez, A., & Wiese, W. (2025). Building blocks for theories of consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition, 134, 103919. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2025.103919

  2. Wiese, W. (2025). Conscious perception as augmented reality. Social Epistemology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2025.2496747

  3. Servajean, P., & Wiese, W. (2025). Processing fluency and predictive processing: How the predictive mind becomes aware of its cognitive limitations. Topics in Cognitive Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12776

  4. Wiese, W. (2024). Artificial consciousness: A perspective from the free energy principle. Philosophical Studies 181, 1947–1970. DOI: 10.1007/s11098-024-02182-y (OPEN ACCESS)

  5. Rutar, D., Wiese, W., & Kwisthout, J. (2022) From representations in predictive processing to representational gradation. Minds & Machines 32, 461-484. DOI: 10.1007/s11023-022-09599-6 (OPEN ACCESS)

  6. Wiese, W. (2022). Attentional structure and phenomenal unity. Open Philosophy 5, 254-264. DOI: 10.1515/opphil-2022-0197 (OPEN ACCESS)

  7. Wiese, W. (2022). Does the metaphysical dog wag its formal tail? The free energy principle and philosophical debates about life, mind, and matter. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45, e216. DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X22000292

  8. Wiese, W., & Friston, K. (2022). AI ethics in computational psychiatry: From the neuroscience of consciousness to the ethics of consciousness. Behavioural Brain Research 420, 113704. DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2021.113704 (OPEN ACCESS)

  9. Wiese, W., & Friston, K. (2021). The neural correlates of consciousness under the free energy principle: From computational correlates to computational explanation. Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 2, 9. DOI: 10.33735/phimisci.2021.81 (OPEN ACCESS)

  10. Wiese, W. (2021). Von der KI-Ethik zur Bewusstseinsethik: Ethische Aspekte der Computational Psychiatry. [From the ethics of AI to the ethics of consciousness: Ethical aspects of computational psychiatry.] Psychiatrische Praxis 48(Suppl. 1), S1–S5. DOI: 10.1055/a-1369-2824

  11. Wiese, W., & Friston, K.J. (2021). Examining the continuity between life and mind: Is there a continuity between autopoietic intentionality and representationality? Philosophies 6(1), 18. DOI: 10.3390/philosophies6010018 (OPEN ACCESS)

  12. Wiese, W. (2020). The science of consciousness does not need another theory, it needs a minimal unifying model. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2020(1), niaa013. DOI: 10.1093/nc/niaa013 (OPEN ACCESS)

  13. Friston, K.J., Wiese, W., & Hobson, J.A. (2020). Sentience and the origins of consciousness: From Cartesian duality to Markovian monism. Entropy 22(5), 516. DOI: 10.3390/e22050516 (OPEN ACCESS)

  14. Wiese, W. (2020). Breaking the self: Radical disruptions of self-consciousness and impossible conscious experiences. Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 1(I), 10. DOI: 10.33735/phimisci.2020.I.32 (OPEN ACCESS)

  15. Wiese, W. (2019). Explaining the enduring intuition of substantiality: The phenomenal self as an abstract salience object. Journal of Consciousness Studies 26(3-4), 64-87.

  16. Wiese, W. (2018). Toward a mature science of consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology 9, 693. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00693 (OPEN ACCESS)

  17. Wiese, W. (2017). Action is enabled by systematic misrepresentations. Erkenntnis 82(6), 1233-1252. DOI: 10.1007/s10670-016-9867-x

  18. Wiese, W. (2017). How to solve the problem of phenomenal unity: finding alternatives to the single state conception. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16(5). DOI: 10.1007/s11097-016-9478-7 (OPEN ACCESS)

  19. Wiese, W. (2017). What are the contents of representations in predictive processing? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16(4), 715-736. DOI: 10.1007/s11097-016-9472-0

Book Chapters

  1. Wiese, W. (forthcoming). What distinguishes machine consciousness from a machine simulation of consciousness? In K. Wendland, N. Lahn, & P. Vetter (eds.), Artificial Intelligence with Consciousness? Statements 2021.

  2. Ramstead, M., Wiese, W., Miller, M., & Friston, K. (2024). Deep neurophenomenology: An active inference account of some features of conscious experience and of their disturbance in major depressive disorder. In T. Cheng, R. Sato, & J. Hohwy (eds.), Expected Experiences: The Predictive Mind in an Uncertain World. Routledge.

  3. Wiese, W., & Metzinger, T. (2023). Key concepts of predictive processing. In M. Curado & S. S. Gouveia (eds.), Predictive processing: New models of the brain and information (pp. 1-28). Vernon Press.

  4. Wiese, W. & Metzinger, T. K. (2019). Androids dream of virtual sheep. In T. Shanahan & P. Smart (eds.), Blade Runner 2049 (pp. 149-164). Routledge.

  5. Wiese, W. (2018). Ethics of beliefs: On some conceptual and empirical obstacles to teaching the ability for positive learning. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (eds.), Positive Learning in the Age of Information (PLATO) - A blessing or a curse? Springer, pp. 295-314.

  6. Wiese, W. (2017). Predictive processing and the phenomenology of time consciousness. A hierarchical extension of Rick Grush’s trajectory estimation model. In T. Metzinger & W. Wiese (eds.), Philosophy and Predictive Processing: 26. MIND Group. DOI: 10.15502/9783958573277 (OPEN ACCESS)

  7. Wiese, W. & Metzinger T. (2017). Vanilla PP for philosophers: A primer on predictive processing. In T. Metzinger & W. Wiese (eds.), Philosophy and Predictive Processing: 1. MIND Group. DOI: 10.15502/9783958573024 (OPEN ACCESS)

Spanish translation: Wiese, W., & Metzinger, T. (2021). PP vainilla para filósofos: Un manual sobre Procesamiento Predictivo. Cuadernos Filosóficos / Segunda Época 17. DOI: 10.35305/cf2.vi17.118 (OPEN ACCESS)

  1. Wiese, W. (2015). Perceptual presence in the Kuhnian-Popperian Bayesian brain - A Commentary on Anil K. Seth. In T. Metzinger & J.M. Windt (eds.) Open MIND: 35(C). MIND Group. DOI: 10.15502/9783958570207 (OPEN ACCESS)

Also in: Metzinger, T., & Windt, J.M. (eds.) (2016). Open MIND, Vol. 2. MIT Press, pp. 1475-1493.

  1. Wiese, W., & Metzinger, T. (2012). Desiderata for a mereotopological theory of consciousness: First steps towards a formal model for the unity of consciousness. In S. Edelman, T. Fekete, and N. Zach (eds.), Being in Time. Dynamical models of phenomenal experience. John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 185-209.

Book Reviews

Wiese, W. (2014). Jakob Hohwy: The Predictive Mind. Minds and Machines 24(2), 233-237. DOI: 10.1007/s11023-014-9338-6

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Teaching Experience

In English

Winter semester 2024/25 Explainable AI (graduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Summer semester 2024 Andy Clark: The experience machine (graduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Winter semester 2023/2024 Ethics and political philosophy (graduate seminar, University Witten/Herdecke)
Winter semester 2023/2024 Philosophy of science (graduate seminar, University Witten/Herdecke)
2023 Mathematical consciousness science, Tutorial (with Johannes Kleiner, Lenore Blum, and Ryota Kanai) at ASSC26, New York, June 2023.
Summer semester 2023 Artificial consciousness (graduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Winter semester 2022/2023 Minimal models of consciousness (graduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Summer semester 2022 Gualtiero Piccinini: Neurocognitive mechanisms (graduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Winter semester 2021/2022 Machine consciousness (graduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Summer semester 2021 Philosophy of digital and computational psychiatry (graduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
2019 Philosophy of mind. Four lectures at the spring school Interdisciplinary College, Günne, Germany, March 12–19, 2019.
2018 Philosophy of mind. Four lectures at the spring school Interdisciplinary College, Günne, Germany, March 10–17, 2018.
2016 Predictive processing and consciousness, Tutorial at ASSC20, Buenos Aires, June 14, 2016.

In German

Summer semester 2025 Can we trust science? An introduction to philosophy of science. (undergraduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Winter semester 2024/25 Introduction to philosophy of psychiatry (undergraduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Summer semester 2024 Can we trust science? (undergraduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Winter semester 2023/2024 Economy and Society (undergraduate seminar, University Witten/Herdecke)
Winter semester 2023/2024 Formal Logic and Critical Thinking (undergraduate seminar, University Witten/Herdecke)
Summer semester 2023 Introduction to the ethics of artificial intelligence (undergraduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Winter semester 2022/2023 Introduction to philosophy of psychiatry (undergraduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Summer semester 2022 Introduction to the ethics of artificial intelligence (undergraduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Winter semester 2021/2022 Introduction to the mind-body problem (undergraduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)
Summer semester 2021 Introduction to philosophy of AI (undergraduate seminar, Ruhr University Bochum)

At Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz:
Winter semester 2020/2021 From philosophy of mind to philosophy and ethics of AI (graduate seminar)
Winter semester 2020/2021 Knowledge – Language – Mind (undergraduate seminar on epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind)
Summer semester 2020 Foundational texts in theoretical philosophy (undergraduate seminar on philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics)
Summer semester 2020 Advanced course on theoretical philosophy (graduate seminar on philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and metaphysics)
Winter semester 2019/20 Beliefs, rationality, and the ethics of belief. (graduate seminar)
Winter semester 2019/20 Phenomenal consciousness. An introduction to philosophy of mind. (undergraduate seminar)
Summer semester 2019 Philosophy of AI. (graduate seminar)
Summer semester 2019 Mechanistic theories (of the mind). (graduate seminar)
Summer semester 2019 Intentionality and mental representation. An introduction to philosophy of mind. (undergraduate seminar)
Winter semester 2018/19 The mind-body problem. An introduction to philosophy of mind. (undergraduate seminar)
Winter semester 2017/18 Phenomenal consciousness. An introduction to philosophy of mind. (undergraduate seminar)
Winter semester 2017/18 Transhumanism, science fiction, mortality denial, and philosophy of mind. (graduate seminar)
Winter semester 2017/18 Philosophical problems in the scientific study of subjectivity and consciousness. The philosophy of Thomas Metzinger. (graduate seminar)
Summer semester 2017 Mental representation and cognitive architectures. Introduction to the philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. (undergraduate seminar)
Summer semester 2017 Time consciousness. (graduate seminar)
Winter semester 2016/17 Introduction to the philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. (undergraduate seminar)
Winter semester 2016/17 Hermann von Helmholtz. Philosophy (of mind) in the work of a polymath. (graduate seminar)
Summer semester 2016 Philosophy of mathematics in the works of Plato and Aristotle. (undergraduate seminar)
Summer semester 2016 The unity of consciousness: Kant, Brentano, Bayne, Dainton, and others. (graduate seminar)
Winter semester 2015/16 Phenomenology and Gestalt theory: Brentano, Husserl, von Ehrenfels, Stumpf, Meinong, Wertheimer, Koffka. (undergraduate seminar)
Summer semester 2015 Structural representation. (undergraduate seminar)
Winter semester 2011/12 Introduction to Logic. (undergraduate seminar)
Winter semester 2007/08 Introduction to Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, and Philosophy of Mind (undergraduate tutorial).
Winter semester 2007/08 Introduction to Higher Mathematics (Analysis and Linear Algebra, undergraduate tutorial).
Summer semester 2007 Introduction to Informal Logic (undergraduate tutorial).
Winter semester 2006/07 Introduction to Informal Logic (undergraduate tutorial).

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This website is maintained for personal use and informational purposes only. All content reflects my personal opinions and does not constitute professional advice. While I strive to keep information accurate and up to date, I make no guarantees regarding its completeness, reliability, or accuracy. Any action you take based on the information on this website is strictly at your own risk.

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Wanja Wiese

Universitätsstraße 150

44801 Bochum

E-Mail: wanja.wiese@rub.de

Website: www.wanja-wiese.de

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