DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

Ph.D. University of Frankfurt, specializes in philosophy of language, general philosophy of natural science and American pragmatism. He also published on Kant and has interests in the history of analytic philosophy. He wrote the book Referenz und Fallibilismus (DeGruyter, 2001), on the interactions between conceptual content, fallible (theoretical and background) assumptions and empirical knowledge of particulars (mainly in the work of Hilary Putnam). He has published articles on the normative structure of inductive concepts and on the relations of scientific practice and realism. Currently he is working on a series of articles that aim at an extended analysis of the semantic basis of mental content externalism in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and on several publications on themes in pragmatism. The overarching purpose of these is to see whether and how actual contextual and background, i.e. pragmatic elements in determining reference and scientific results can be used to disarm skeptically-minded arguments from underdetermination. More recently, he also has been publishing on topics in political philosophy, like Jane Addams' pragmatist arguments regarding the foundations of cosmopolitan peace and on the possibility of democratic legitimacy for supranational political institutions. Mueller has been invited and occupied visiting positions, e.g., in Madrid, Mexico, Santiago de Chile. Most recently (2012-13), Mueller was DAAD Visiting Professor for philosophy at the Center for European Studies at the University of Flensburg/University of South Denmark (Flensburg, Germany).

Books

• Referenz und Fallibilismus, De Gruyter: Berlin/New York, 2001.

Articles

• “The meaning of ’Populism’”, Philosophy & Social Criticism (Sage Publishers) 45, no. 9–10 (December 2019): 1025–57. 
• "A Public no Demos: What Supranational Democratic Legitimacy (in the EU and Elsewhere) Requires” European Journal of Philosophy25(4) (2017),  1248-1278.    
• "Putnam versus Quine on revisability and the analytic-synthetic distinction", in Maria Baghramian (ed.), Reading Putnam, Oxford: Routledge 2012, pp.145-178.
• "Does Kantian mental content externalism help metaphysical realists?", Synthese (forthcoming 2010).
• "Goodman, Nelson", in Koertge, N. (ed.), The New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, New York : Charles Scribner's Sons/MacMillan, 2007.
• "Realism, Beyond Miracles", co-authored with Arthur Fine, in Ben-Menahim, Y. (ed.): Contemporary Philosophy in Focus: Hilary Putnam, Cambridge MA : Cambridge University Press 2005, 83-124.
• "Pragmatismo y Naturalismo: dos programas filosóficos, un presente en duda", in Galán, F./Xolocotzi, A./De la Garza, M.T. (eds.), El Futuro de la Filosofía , Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana 2005, 81-96.
• "Some remarks on Semantic Externalism and Conceptual Pluralism", Teorema XXII/3 (2003), 59-83.
• "Putnams pragmatischer Kognitivismus", in Willaschek, M./Rater, M.L. (eds.) Hilary Putnam und die Tradition des Pragmatismus, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002, 65-87.
• "Self-Critical Theory. On the development of theory in Siegfried Kracauer's work", Teoría/Crítica 4 (1998), 281-314.
• "Natural Kinds and Projectible Predicates", Sorites 1 (1995), 1-36.

Work in Process

• "Kant's Semantic Externalism". This is a chunk on Kant and Semantic Externalism, which has far outgrown all its ancestors and will, eventually and hopefully, result in a couple of smaller pieces. Comments welcome; please ask me before citing or quoting.