Our research group investigates philosophical topics concerning our central theme of Reasoning, Rationality and Science. We’re active in various sub-domains of philosophy and computer science, such as agent-based modeling, argumentation theory, nonmonotonic, deontic and other philosophical logics, philosophy of science, social and formal epistemology, etc. The group is coordinated by Dunja Šešelja and Christian Straßer.
Here are links to Events, Members, Info for Students, our Research Projects and the infamous profile page of Prof. Cali.
Latest News
2026-05-06 : New paper in KR 2026
Current Guests
Here are our current guests. Find our previous guests here and, more importantly, come and visit us! :-)
Nora Hangel
Nora Hangel (Leibniz Center for Science and Society, LCSS) serves as a substitute/visiting professor (2026-27) for Prof. Dr. Dunja Šešelja, Instiute for Philosophy II “Social Epistemology and Reasoning in Science” at Ruhr University Bochum. She is the principal investigator of the DFG project: “The role of scientific judgment in generating knowledge: A qualitative study about interpersonal, collective and collaborative belief and judgment formation in scientific practice” (DFG, 2022-2025) at the Leibniz Research Centre for Science and Society (LCSS) at Leibniz University Hannover. She received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna with a dissertation on Immanuel Kant and was a visiting scholar at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh (2025). Her articles have appeared in, a.o.: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, and EJPS. Her ORCID number is: 0000-0001-6809-4603 Learn more about here here.
Maurin Gilles
My name is Maurin (first name) Gilles (last name). I am currently pursuing my last year as a student at ISIMA, an engineering school in computer science located in Clermont-Ferrand, France. My cursus includes internships, and from April to September 2026 I am doing one at Ruhr University Bochum, in the research group “Reasoning, Rationality, Science”. Supervised by Dunja Šešelja and Christian Straßer, I am working on Argumentative Agent-Based Models, a topic combining epistemology, formal logic and programming in Julia. I will graduate in October 2026 and my goal is to pursue a PhD afterwards. I am actively looking for a position, and am more generally open to any interesting opportunity :) You find my webpage here.
Members
Here is our current line-up :-) If you want to see the hall of fame of previous members, it is only a click away.
Issam Aldahman
Issam is pursuing a PhD as part of the Qualitative Grading in Science project. His research interests are in computational philosophy of science and social epistemology. He is currently examining how qualitative grading of scientific hypotheses affects group deliberation, judgment aggregation, and collective decision-making using computational methods. Issam is jointly supervised by Dunja Šešelja (RUB) and Thomas Boyer-Kassem (University of Poitiers).
Tom-Felix Berger
Tom-Felix is a PhD student under the supervision of Albert Newen and Christian Straßer. He has a background Philosophy, Mathematics and Data Science. His interests are in the philosophy of AI, particularly AI alignment and deception in LLMs. He also works on evolutionary game theoretic models of morality and their use in the debate on evolutionary debunking and moral realism.
Cali
Without doubt Prof. Dr. Cali is the most prominent and cheerful member of the group is the Hoomanologist Cali, specialized for Hooman intelligence and well-known for his books “How to train the hooman. The limitations of the hooman mind.” and “Dogmatic Truths”.While working in our group he also got interested in logic, see his latest book “My barks don’t lie. Semantic paradoxes as a trademark of Hooman language.” Yes, we can learn a lot from him …
Matteo Cerasa
Matteo Cerasa’s work is at the intersection of Bayesian Epistemology and Decision Theory, with a focus on formal models of Awareness Growth (changes in the possibilities space) and Transformative Experiences (learning ‘what it is like’ and changes in fundamental preferences). For this research, he is jointly supervised by Christian in the Reasoning, Rationality, and Science group and by Peter Brössel in the RTG Situated Cognition.
Leander Hirschsteiner
Leander Hirschsteiner is investigates what makes a good explanation. For him, explaining happens in argumentation and dialogue and good explanations cater for the specific gaps in understanding of one’s partner. In his research, he develops models of these pratices so that humans and machines explain and understand one another (and themselves) more easily. Christian’s and Kees van Berkel’s supervision, as well as his background in the application of logical methods for formal modeling, defeasible reasoning, and social sciences, help him in this work.
Luca Redondi
Luca Redondi has a background in ethics with a focus on Kant and is especially interested in deontic logic. He works on applications of deontic logic and explanation in bioethics within the LoDEx project on Logical Methods for Deontic Explanation. Luca is supervised by Christian Straßer and Leon Van der Torre (Luxembourg).
Sam Sanders
Dunja Šešelja
Dunja is a full professor working in social epistemology and philosophy of science at the Institute II for Philosophy at Ruhr University Bochum. She serves as a co-editor in chief of the European Journal for Philosophy of Science. Her research topics include formal modeling of scientific inquiry (with focus on agent-based modeling), scientific disagreements and controversies, pursuit-worthiness of scientific theories, and integrated history and philosophy of science. Find more information on her academia page. Here you find more about me, including my and my CV.
Christian Straßer
Christian Straßer is a full professor of Logic in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence at the Institute for Philosophy II at Ruhr University Bochum. He is specialized in non-monotonic logics, defeasible reasoning, argumentation, deontic and adaptive logics. He is interested in utilizing formal methods (such as logical or computational methods) in philosophy. Beyond logic his research interests spread into the philosophy of science and social epistemology. You find more information on him and his CV (and a pdf here).
Soong Yoo
Should epistemic workers of the world unite? There are some thoughts or decision we would make only when hanging around with friends, colleagues, and strangers. Same for people doing cognitive tasks for their living. Soong Yoo is working with agent-based-models in hope to see how computer simulations would predict and suggest a better conveyor belt of knowledge production. Soong is jointly supervised by Dunja and Christian.
Events
- This is an upcoming event.
For past events see Events.