Prof. Dr. Thomas B. Sattig

Theoretical Philosophy

Contact Details

Philosophisches Seminar
Bursagasse 1
D - 72070 Tübingen

Tel.: +49-7071-29 76079

About Ambiguity

Thomas Sattig’s philosophical studies on vagueness and indeterminacy address the question if the vagueness of certain descriptions of material objects (like, for example, the description of a mountain as spatially vague) has its source in our verbal representation of material objects or rather in the objects themselves. Is vagueness always of a linguistic nature or does it exist in a worldly (i.e. actual) form? The most common theory explains vagueness following a model of systematic semantic ambiguity. Sattig argues against applying this theory to an important class of vague descriptions of material objects. Instead, he offers his own theory of vague objects (2010, 2013, 2014, 2015).

Biography

From 1991 to 1997, Thomas Sattig studied Philosophy and German Studies in Tübingen and Stanford. He took his B.Phil. in 1999 and his D.Phil. of Philosophy in 2001 at Oxford University. From 2002 to 2005, he was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Junior Research Fellow at Brasenose College (Oxford). From 2005 to 2007, he was Assistant Professor for Philosophy at Tulane University and from 2007 to 2012 Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He became Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Tübingen in 2012.

Research

Thomas Sattig’s research focusses on the fields of metaphysics, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. His fields of special interest include: the metaphysics of material objects; metaphysics and mental/linguistical representation of time; the metaphysics of possibility and necessity; metaphysics and the mental/linguistical representation of the person and the self; the philosophy of the part and the whole; the philosophy of vagueness; the philosophy of explanation; interfaces of metaphysics, physics, the philosophy of mind, epistemology and semantics.

Teaching

Thomas Sattig teaches in the fields of metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the philosophy of science.

Publications on "Ambiguity"

Sattig, Thomas (2021). Material Objects.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sattig, Thomas (2015). The Double Lives of Objects: An Essay in the Metaphysics of the Ordinary World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sattig, Thomas (2014). "Mereological Indeterminacy: Metaphysical But Not Fundamental." Vague Objects and Vague Identity: New Essays on Ontic Vagueness. Eds. Ken Akiba und Ali Abasnezhad. Berlin: Springer. 25-42.
Sattig, Thomas (2013). "Vague Objects and the Problem of the Many." Metaphysica 14: 211-223.
Sattig, Thomas (2010). "Many as One." Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 5: 145-75.