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Lena Kästner

Prof. Dr. at University of Bayreuth

Major works

Books

Kästner, L. (2017). Philosophy of Cognitive Neuroscience: Causal Explanations, Mechanisms, and Experimental Manipulations. Berlin: Ontos/DeGruyter.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Kästner, L. & Crook, B (under revision). Explaining AI Through Mechanistic Interpretability. EJPS . (PhilSci Archive)

Kästner, L. (2023). Modeling Psychopathology: 4D Multiplexes to the Rescue. Synthese, 201.

Haueis, P. & Kästner, L. (2022). Mechanistic Inquiry and Scientific Pursuit: The Case of Visual Processing. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 93, 123-135.

Abdin, A.Y., Jacob, C. & Kästner, L. (2021). The Enigmatic Metallothioneins: A Case of Upward-Looking Research. International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

Langer, M., Oster, D., Speith, T., Hermanns, H., Kästner, L., Schmidt, E. & Baum, K. (2021). XAI – What is it good for? Introducing an organizing framework for interdisciplinary research on explainable artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence: Special Issue on Explainable Artificial Intelligence. doi: 10.1016/j.artint.2021.103473.

Abdin, A.Y., Jacob, C. & Kästner, L. (2020). Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science. Environmental Research and Public Health, 17, 1833. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17061833.

Rudner, M., Orfanidou, E., Kästner, L., Cardin, V., Capek, C.M., Woll, B. & Rönnberg, J. (2019). Neural Networks Supporting Phoneme Monitoring Are Modulated by Phonology but Not Lexicality or Iconicity: Evidence From British and Swedish Sign Language. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00374.

Kästner, L. & Haueis, P. (2019). Discovering Patterns: On the Norms of Mechanistic Inquiry. Erkenntnis. doi: 10.1007/s10670-019-00174-7.

Kästner, L. & Andersen, L. (2018). Intervening into Mechanisms: Prospects and Challenges. Philosophy Compass. doi: 10.1111/phc3.12546.

Kästner, L. (2018). Integrating mechanistic explanations through epistemic perspectives. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 68, 68-79.

Kästner, L. & Newen, A. (2017). Good Things Come in Threes: Communicative Acts Comprise Linguistic, Imagistic, and Modifying Components. Commentary on: S. Goldin-Meadow & D. Brentari, Gesture, sign and language: The coming of age of sign language and gesture studies, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40, 1-59.

Cardin, V. Orfanidou, E., Kästner, L., Rönnberg, J., Woll, B. Capek, C., Rudner M. (2016). Monitoring different phonological parameters of sign language engages the same cortical language network but distinctive perceptual ones. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 28, 20-40.

De Bruin, L.C. & Kästner, L. (2012). Dynamic Embodied Cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 11, 541-563.

Walter, S. & Kästner, L. (2012). The where and what of cognition: the untenability of cognitive agnosticism and the limits of the Motley Crew Argument. Cognitive Systems Research, 13, 12-23. (link)

Social links

About me

I am professor for philosophy, computer science and artificial intelligence at University of Bayreuth since 2022. My primary research areas are philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, especially mechanistic explanations and explainable AI (XAI) as well as philosophy of neuroscience and cognitive science. I specialize in research on scientific explanations (particularly explanations of natural and artificial cognition). Apart from that, my research topics include machine learning, models of cognitive systems, mental illnesses, causation, and scientific discovery and experimentation. I am currently head PI of the project “Explainable Intelligent Systems”.

My background is in cognitive science (BSc., University of Osnabrück) and cognitive neuroscience (MSc., University College London). During my PhD, which I received from Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany in 2014, I worked extensively on mechanistic explanations and the interventionist account of causation. During my postdoc phase, which started at Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, I became more and more interested in psychopathology and models and mental illnesses. My recent interest in philosophy of AI and explainable AI has sparked during my time at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany where I’ve been a junior professor between 2019 and 2022. Before moving to Bayreuth, I have briefly been appointed an assistant professor for philosophy of science with a specialization in data and digital society at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

If you want to find out more about me and my current research projects, please visit my personal homepage. Until my eRef entry has been set up, you find my list of publications here.

Areas of Specialization

philosophy of artificial intelligence, explainable AI (XAI), philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy of cognitive science, scientific discovery and explanation, causation, mechanist philosophy, models of mental illnesses, computational psychiatry, extended mind.

Areas of Competence

levels, history of cognitive science, experimental design, manipulations and measurement.