I’m a Philosophy PhD student at the University of Chicago
and research assistant for Giacomo Melis’s project on Animal Rationality and Epistemic Defeat (ARED).
My primary interests are in moral psychology, the philosophy of action, and non-human animal cognition.
Before coming to Chicago, I was at the University of Vienna.
There, I got a BA and MA in Philosophy,
and a BEd in English, Philosophy & Psychology.
In Vienna, I was also the chairperson of the awesome student-led organization that is the Vienna Forum for Analytic Philosophy.
I am the first in my family to finish high-school. Check out this awesome blog to learn more about first-gen philosophy students!
Before coming to university, I was a trained chef and waiter and worked at various restaurants, bars, and cafés.
My pronouns are he/him.
My last name is pronounced like ‘knee-dal’.
mwniederl[at]uchicago[dot]edu
About me
What I’m primarily intrigued by is how agents relate to and represent the reasons that inform their actions. The way I’m currently approaching this is by looking into theories of non-human animal agency and cognition. The idea is basically this: some animals clearly are agents, but actions are intricately related to reasons. So the challenge is to model both reasons and action in a way that allows beings with the cognitive capacity of animals like pigs and chimpanzees to count as agents proper.
When I don’t do philosophy, I play guitar and bass in various bands. I primarily do this with some of my best friends in Fritsch & the Jims, but occasionally help out my friends from Amanda.
Photo credits: Paul Tucek and Daniel Simair
mwniederl 