Peter Schroeder-Heister

Fellow, SCAS.
Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Language, Universität Tübingen

After studying philosophy, mathematics, musicology and theology at the universities of Bonn,
Cologne and Aachen, Peter Schroeder-Heister received a Dr. phil. in Logic and Foundational
Research from Universität Bonn in 1981 and a Habilitation in Philosophy from Universität
Konstanz in 1988. He became Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Language at Universität
Tübingen in 1989. Since 1991, he has held joint appointments at the Faculties of Philosophy
and Computer Science. He spent his entire professorial career in Tübingen, declining offers
from elsewhere in Germany and abroad. Visiting fellowships have led him to universities in
Sweden, Serbia, the UK, China and France, and he was awarded an honorary doctorate from
the University of Belgrade in 2015. Within his profession he has held the positions of programme
chair, secretary general and treasurer of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of
Science and Technology.

Schroeder-Heister’s main research topic is what he has called “proof-theoretic semantics”, which
is based on the idea that the key notions of philosophical semantics should be those of argument
and proof, rather than of denotation and truth. He has published a great number of scientific papers
on this subject, both from a philosophical and from a computational perspective. Together with his
Tübingen group, he has organised a number of influential conferences in the field and edited many
collections on the topic. Further academic interests that have led to published work concern logic
in computer science, the history of modern logic, and cognitive science, including issues of cognitive
psychology.

Schroeder-Heister will use his time at the Collegium to continue and intensify his work on a joint
monograph on General Proof Theory with Professor Dag Prawitz (Stockholm University).


This information is accurate as of the academic year 2019-20.