Dr. Christoph Durt – Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

Dr. Christoph Durt

University of Vienna
Philosophy

External Junior Fellow (Marie S. Curie FCFP)
July 2021 – January 2023

Last Update: 08.11.2024

Curriculum Vitae

While Christoph Durt’s teaching and research cover a wide array of topics, his principal investigation concerns human subjectivity and reason in connection with embodiment, culture, and technologies such as AI. Christoph’s work is founded in careful investigations in theoretical philosophy and the history of philosophy, which he uses for conceptual clarification and to develop innovative ideas. Together with Prof. Julian Nida-Rümelin, he is the leading researcher of the interdisciplinary VolkswagenStiftung project “AI and its Integration into the World of Human Meaning and Experience.” Christoph has taught philosophy and carried out interdisciplinary research at the University of Munich, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Heidelberg, the University of Vienna, and the Parmenides Foundation. He has received numerous teaching and research awards, including one for an essay on the question “What can corporality as a constitutive condition of experience (still) mean in the digital age?“ The essay, “The Computation of Bodily, Embodied, and Virtual Reality,” applies insights from classical phenomenology on the relation between the digital representation of the world, corporality, and the world of ordinary experience to some more recent developments of the digital age. This and other publications can be accessed on Christoph Durt’s website, which also provides more details on his approach and work.

Selected Publications

Durt, Christoph. 2020. “The Computation of Bodily, Embodied, and Virtual Reality: Winner of the Essay Prize ‘What Can Corporality as a Constitutive Condition of Experience (Still) Mean in the Digital Age?’” Phänomenologische Forschungen 2020, no. 1 (2020). http://www.durt.de/publications/bodily-embodied-and-virtual-reality/.
Durt, Christoph. 2020. “The Embodied Self and the Paradox of Subjectivity.” Husserl Studies 36 (1): 69–85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-019-09256-4.
Durt, Christoph. 2018. “From Calculus to Language Game: The Challenge of Cognitive Technology.” Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology. https://doi.org/10.5840/techne2018122091.
Durt, Christoph. 2012. “The Paradox of the Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction and Husserl’s Genealogy of the Mathematization of Nature. Dissertation.” eScholarship University of California. http://www.durt.info/diss/Paradox.html.

FRIAS Project

A Novel Approach to Artificial Intelligence that Builds on Phenomenological Philosophy

The proposed project breaks ground for a novel understanding of the nature of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It shows how core developments in AI such as deep learning, language recognition, and Augmented, Extended, and Virtual reality are intrinsically intertwined with human experience and understanding. The project advances international research in three respects. It (1) uses insights from classical phenomenology to advance the study of the nature of AI and its relation to human experience and understanding. It thereby (2) contributes to remedy the neglect of important streams of phenomenology in the philosophy of technology. It (3) furthermore contributes to Husserl scholarship by reconsidering important concepts such as life-world and mathematization in relation to new developments.