Michael O'Leary

Michael O'Leary


Doktorand (Philosophisch-Historische Fakultät)

Michael O'Leary

Interests: Philosophy of Mind and Language, Cognitive Sciences, Animal Philosophy, Philosophical Anthropology, Iconic Criticism

languages: Swiss German, Standard German, French, English, Italian

BA in Philosophy and English, Université de Fribourg
MA in Philosophy and English, Universität Basel
MA Thesis: “Bildliches Denken: Mentale Repräsentationen im Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Bild und Wort” (‘Iconic Thought: Mental representations spanning from images to words’)


Since Fall 2016, I have been working on my PhD project "The Formats of Mental Representation. Explaining Differences in Human and Nonhuman Animal Thought", which is supervised by <link de personen markus-wild internal link in current>Markus Wild (Basel) and Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers). The project is funded by a Doc.CH fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation and associated with eikones - Center for the Theory and History of the Image. The PhD project elaborates how our understanding of human and non-human animals can be informed by our theories on mental content, in particular thoughts that are structured in a non-propositional way. In Spring 2018, I was visiting graduate student in the philosophy department at Rutgers University.

On June 11th 2019, Markus Wild and I are hosting the workshop “Varieties of Non-Propositional Content” with Elisabeth Camp and young researchers from the University of Basel. Poster

teachings & assistantships

University of Basel

  • Fall 2019 : undergraduate seminar “Maschine, Mensch, Tier: Wer denkt wie?” in German (Machines, Humans, Animals: Varieties of «thinking»?).
  • Spring 2019: introduction to theoretical philosophy in German.
  • Fall 2016 : graduate seminar "Representing in/with maps" in German, jointly with Markus Wild.
  • Spring 2014  : introduction to theoretical philosophy in German.
  • May 2013 - Jul 2016: student assistant to the research project “Biosemantics and Normative Pragmatism” directed by Prof. Dr. Markus Wild, funded by the Swiss National Sciences Foundation (SNSF). Universities of Fribourg and Basel.

University of Fribourg

  • Fall 2011 : introduction to logic in French.
  • Spring 2011 : advanced logic in German.
  • Fall 2010 : introduction to logic in German.