Wolfgang Prinz

Wolfgang Prinz (* September 24 1942 in boars, Lower Franconia ) is a German psychologist and cognitive scientist.

Career

After studying psychology, philosophy and zoology at the University of Münster, which he finished in 1966 with a degree in psychology, Wolfgang Prinz was until 1975 worked as a research assistant at the Department of Cognitive Psychology at the Psychological Institute of the Ruhr - University Bochum, where he in 1970 at Oskar Graefe and Hans Hörmann Dr. phil. received his doctorate.

From 1975 to 1990 he worked as a professor of psychology at the University of Bielefeld and was there from 1982 to 1989 scientific director at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research.

From 1990 to 2003 he was director of the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich, as the Department of Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig was incorporated in 2004; During this time he worked from 1990 to 1998 as a full professor at the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich. From 1997 to 2000 he was chairman of the Humanities Section of the Max Planck Society. From 2004 until his retirement in 2010, he was Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig.

Research

The research focuses on the areas of Prince perception, attention, will, action, self and consciousness. It exists after his conviction free will rather than scientific fact, but only in the sense of a cultural construct as the product of human interaction.

With its negation of free will as Prince has some brain researchers excited widely attention and attention. In deterministic- causal interpretation of statistical results of correlative experiments of Benjamin Libet he has taken against Libet's own interpretation of his works his view in the formula:

In his self-understanding as a scientific research- psychologist, he represents a priori a methodological least, to all appearances but rather fundamental, philosophical or ontological determinism when he declares in scientistic equating science with natural science:

However, Prince defends against the misconception that free will is therefore not real. He was the absolutely, but only as a social and cultural phenomenon.

It is just not possible to capture this social and cultural reality with neurophysiological arguments.

Awards (selection)

Publications (selection)

• Edited by Jochen Müsseler: General Psychology, Heidelberg, Berlin: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag 2002, ISBN 3-8274-1128-9.
• 2012: Open Minds. The Social Making of Agency and Intentionality. 2013: German by Jürgen Schröder; Self in the mirror. The social construction of subjectivity. Suhrkamp, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-518-58594-8.