prof. dr. Lieven Decock

Full Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Philosophy, Politics and Economics

Full Professor, CLUE+

Full Professor, Network Institute

Personal information

Professor of Philosophy of the Sciences

Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities

Head of Department of Philosophy

Research

I started my career with a Ph.D. on Quine's ontology, and many themes of Quine's philosophy still play a role in my current work. I believe that philosophy is continuous with science, and most of my work is characterized by a combination of philosophical conceptual analysis, formal methods, and use of empirical data.

I have published in major philosophical journals such as Mind, Noûs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Philosophical Studies, as well as in interdisciplinary journals.

Research topics include:

- vagueness

- conceptual spaces

- ontological categories

- concepts and categories

- colour perception

- numerical cognition

- Quine scholarship

Education

I studied theoretical physics and philosophy at the University of Leuven (Belgium). From 1992-1996 I worked as an astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Leuven. I became a Ph.D. student in philosophy in 1997, and on December 3 1999, with promotor prof. dr. J. van Brakel, I defended my Ph.D. thesis in philosophy, Trading Ontology for Ideology. The Interplay of Logic, Set Theory, and Semantics in Quine's Philosophy.

Teaching

In previous years I have taught courses in logic, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind in the bachelor and master programmes in the philosophy department, and introductory courses in philosophy of Artificial Intelligence and philosophy of mathematics in the Faculty of Exact Sciences. At present I teach:

- Ba1 PPE: PPE in Practice (on climate change)

- Ba2 Philosophy: Metaphysics

- Ba3 PPE: Thesis tutorial

Ancillary activities