Prof. Dr. Joerg Fingerhut

Background and Research Interests

Joerg Fingerhut was the Deputy Professor of Philosophy of Mind at the LMU Munich from 10/2021 through 9/2022 and an active member of the CVBE group and the Graduate School in Systemic Neuroscience (GSN) in Munich. He is the PI at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, within the EU Horizon 2020 project “ARTIS” (Art and Research on Transformations of Individuals and Societies) that ­­explores the transformative potential of art from a cognitive science perspective. ARTIS comprises a consortium of nine partner institutions: Universities of Vienna (Coordinator), Amsterdam, Oxford, Royal Holloway (London), Aarhus, etc. His research centers around theories of 4E (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive) cognition and recent extension of this framework towards and embodied predictive processing theories of the mind. He argues that an enactive, embodied prediction framework can best explain central aspects of our engagement with cultural artifacts (film, architecture, images) and art.

More generally, he believes that and empirically engaged philosophy of mind should go beyond reflecting the current state of research in cognitive science and get more involved by (a) both proposing and conducting experiments in interdisciplinary research collaborations and by (b) engaging in a transdisciplinary manner with the actors outside of academia, e.g., by collaborating with museums and exploring citizen science approaches.

SELECTED Publications

• Fingerhut, J. (2021). Enacting Media. An Embodied Account of Enculturation between Neuromediality and New Cognitive Media Theory. Frontiers in Psychology 12:635993.
• Fingerhut, J., J. Gomez-Lavin, C. Winklmayr, and J.J. Prinz (2021). The Aesthetic Self. The Importance of Art and Aesthetic Taste Changes for our Perceived Identity, Frontiers in Psychology 11:577703.
• Fingerhut, J. (2020). Twofoldness in Moving Images. On the Philosophy and Neuroscience of Film Experience, Projections 14(3), 1-20.
• Fingerhut, J. (2020). Habits and the Enculturated Mind. Pervasive Artifacts, Predictive Processing, and Expansive Habits, in: Habits. Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Neuroscience to Social Science. F. Caruana, I. Tesla (Hrsg). Cambridge: CUP.
• Fingerhut, J. & J.J. Prinz (2020). Aesthetic Emotions Reconsidered, The Monist 103(2), 223-239.
• Fingerhut, J. (2020). Empirischer Ästhetik und die Bildfrage. Perspektive, Komplexität und Leere in der japanischen und europäischen Tradition, in: Bilder als Denkmittel und Kulturform - Bildwissenschaftliche Dialoge zwischen Japan und Deutschland. Y. Sakamoto, F. Jäger, J. Tanaka (Eds.), de Gruyter, Berlin & New York.
• Kaltwasser, L., N. Rost, M. Ardizzi, M. Calbi, L. Settembrino, J. Fingerhut, M.Pauen, V. Gallese (2019). Sharing the Filmic Experience. The physiology of socio-emotional processes in the cinema, PLoS ONE 14(10), e0223259.
• Katrin Heimann, M.Calbi, S. Uithol, A. Umiltà, M. Guerra, J. Fingerhut, V. Gallese (2019). Embodying the camera: an EEG study on the effect of camera movements on film spectators´ sensorimotor cortex activation. Vittorio Gallese, PLoS ONE 14(3), 1-18.
• Fingerhut, J. (2018). Embodied Seeing-In, Empathy, and Expansionism, Projections 12(2), 28-38.Fingerhut, J. (2018). Enactive Aesthetics and Neuroaesthetics, Phenomenology and the Mind 1, 80-97.
• Fingerhut, J. (2018). Verkörperung, in: 23 Manifeste zu Bildakt und Verkörperung, de Gruyter, Berlin & New York, 183-190.
• Fingerhut, J. & J.J. Prinz (2018). Wonder, Appreciation, and the Value of Art, Progress in Brain Research, 237, 107-128.
• Fingerhut, J. & J.J. Prinz (2018). Grounding Evaluative Concepts, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 373(1752).
• Fingerhut, J. & K. Heimann (2017). Movies and the Mind. On Our Filmic Body, in: Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture. Investigating the Constitution of the Shared World, Th. Fuchs, Chr. Durt, Chr. Tewes (Eds.), MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 353-377.
• Fingerhut, J. & C.C. Carbon (2017). Editorial: Bridging Art and the Visual Sciences, Art and Perception 5(4), 347-352; Abstracts from the 5th Visual Science of Art Conference (VSAC), Art and Perception 5(4), 337-426.
• Fingerhut, J. & R. Hufendiek (2017). Philosophie der Verkörperung - Ein Forschungsbericht zur Embodied Cognition, Information Philosophie 2017 (3), 16-32.
• M. Adli, …, J. Fingerhut, et al. (2017) Neurourbanism: Towards a new discipline, The Lancet Psychiatry 4(3), 183-185.