Katalin Balog is a philosopher of mind interested in the nature of mind, self, consciousness, subjectivity, and value, as well as the history of these concepts. She write both scholarly articles and essays for a general audience (her webpage). Her scholarly work has been mostly on consciousness and the mind-body problem, with a recent focus on illusionism. Her public-facing work has appeared in The New York Times and in the magazine 3 Quarks Daily. Recently she has been writing mostly on themes connected to the changes in our concept of mind since the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution.
She came to the US to study philosophy from Budapest, Hungary in 1989. She got her PhD at Rutgers, New Brunswick. Since 2010, she has been teaching at Rutgers University–Newark. Before that, she taught at Yale University for 10 years.
Currently she is on leave for Fall 2024 at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Central European University in Budapest, and has an NEH grant for the year 2025 to complete her book What is left of the mind. Here is a recent essay on the topics of the book project.
