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Winfried LÖFFLER, PhD, JSD, MTh
Associate Professor

Department of Christian Philosophy
Karl-Rahner-Platz 1 (room 116)
A-6020 Innsbruck

Tel.: +43 512 507-8525
Fax: +43 512 507-2736
E-mail: winfried.loeffler@uibk.ac.at

Office hours:   Mon. 12.00 - 12.45

Philosophical interests

Welcome to my webpages! My current work concentrates on logic, philosophy of science, and especially philosophy of religion. In this field, I try to connect the contemporary analytic approach with insights of the aristotelian-scholastic tradition; some of them have ongoing topicality. An obvious example where logic, philosophy of science and philosophy of religion encounter is the issue of religious convictions and explanations: religious people claim that religious convictions are a sort of explanation for certain features of our world, and sometimes they offer arguments for their convictions. Can such arguments in some way be compared with scientific explanations (in the more recent conceptions of "scientific explanation" spelled out in the current debate)? And are certain standards from contemporary argumentation theory applicable also to arguments in the sphere of religions and world-views?

 

Such and other questions are discussed in my Introduction to the philosophy of religion (2006, revised 2nd edition 2013; in German. For two English reviews see here (by William Lane Craig) and the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 1/2 (2009), 150-154 (by Peter Schneider).

 

Another book is an Introduction to logic  (2008, in German, for an English review (Siegfried J. Gottwald) see here). I hope it is useful not only for students of philosophy, but also of other disciplines, and especially for theologians.

 

 

Beyond that, I authored more than 150 scholarly contributions to journals, collected volumes, handbooks, and encyclopedias, and (co-)edited a dozen of volumes. A comprehensive list of my written work is available here, a selection of my papers is also online.

Short CV

Studies of philosophy (PhD 1995, thesis on probabilistic arguments for God's existence), law (JSD 1991, thesis on Austrian army law) and Catholic theology (MTh 1992, thesis on P.F.Strawson's concept of person) at the University of Innsbruck; habilitation (= a kind of second research doctorate which is expected of professors in some European countries) in philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy 2004.

AOS: Analytic philosophy of religion, Logic, Philosophy of Science, Thought of Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848)

AOC: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Law, Applied Ethics (Medical Ethics, Environmental Ethics)

For further information on me and my work, please consult my German pages!