For the first time in Switzerland and especially in 'Suisse Romande' there is an important critical mass of senior and junior researchers sharing their basic philosophical methodology (in spite of their disagreements on specific philosophical issues). As a consequence, fruitful philosophical debate can take place and serious exchange and collaboration can be achieved on a regular and scientific basis. Indeed, all participants to the Doctoral Program (see 2.6 below) share a common methodology which we may label 'the analytic approach' that distinguishes itself by its commitment to clarity, and rigor of argumentation. A common methodology guarantees the shareability of progress report (useful and serious feedback from researchers to each other at all levels about the progress of their work) and research results, as well as important and regular interconnections between the different research areas of the research modules : in different areas, the same or similar patterns of argumentation can be found. One first central topic in the school concerns the mind. On way of prospective research in the philosophy of mind concerns the nature of the self, its boundaries, its determination within the structure of the world and its relation to the body (see the Research Module Boundaries of the self); another perspective on the mind is given by the study of the first-person perspective on phenomenal concepts and how those concepts depend in their application and in their nature on the fact that they are essentially applied in the first person; a further perspective on the mind concerns the way the mind is integrated into the natural world and more specifically into its causal structure; and a final perspective concerns the normative dimensions of mental activities such as judging and acting (see the RM Norms of Mind and Knowledge). Clarification of these different issues requires conceptual means which belong to the typical domain of metaphysics, as for instance the question needs to be clarified as to what normative and phenomenal properties are.