Meetings

Convened by Oliver Pooley

NOTE THE NEW TIME: All seminars will take place in person at 3.00 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (12 Oct): David Wallace (Pittsburgh)

Thermodynamics with and without reversibility

Week 2 (19 Oct): Nicholas Teh (Notre Dame)

Understanding the Geroch–Jang argument

Week 3 (26 Oct): Sabine Hossenfelder (Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy)

Superdeterminism – the forgotten solution

Week 4 (2 Nov): NO SEMINAR

Week 5 (9 Nov): Tim Palmer (Oxford) and Chris Timpson (Oxford)

‌Superdeterminism and non-conspiracy revisited: a debate

Week 6 (16 Nov): Jonathan Halliwell (Imperial)

Aspects of Leggett–Garg tests of macrorealism

Week 7 (23 Nov): NO SEMINAR

Week 8 (30 Nov): Bryan Roberts (LSE)

How black holes are really hot

Convened by Patrick Durr and James Read
All seminars will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (27th April): Sebastian de Haro (Amsterdam)

Dualities and quasi-dualities: on solitons and phases of quantum field theories

Week 2 (4th May): Johannes Fankhauser (Oxford/Innsbruck)

Quantum uncertainty and empirical completeness

Week 3 (11th May): Renate Loll (Radboud University, Nijmegen)

Questions on quantum gravity

:Week 4 (18th May): Paul Skokowski (Stanford)

Superpositions and beliefs about superpositions

Week 5 (25th May): Fedele Lizzi (Naples)

Quantum Observers for Quantum Spacetime

Week 6 (1st Jun): Doreen Fraser (Waterloo)

Philosophical implications of measurement in QFT

Week 7 (8th June): Dennis Lehmkuhl (Bonn)

TBA

Week 8 (15th June): Natasha Oughton (Oxford)

Why quantum theory? Understanding and explanation through reconstruction

Convened by Oliver Pooley, Henrique Gomes, and Patrick Durr
All seminars will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (19th January): NO SEMINAR

Week 2 (26 January): Kobi Kremnitzer (Mathematical Institute, Oxford)
Scientific theories of consciousness, the closure
of the (current) physical, and quantum collapse

Week 3 (2 Feb): NO SEMINAR

Week 4 (9 February): James Read (Philosophy, Oxford)
‌An invitation to constructive axiomatics

Week 5 (16 February): Marco Giovanelli (Philosophy, Turin)
Special Relativity as a theory of principles. On Einstein’s distinction between constructive and principle theories

Week 6 (23 February): Yemima Ben-Menahem (Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Lawlessness

Week 7 (2 March): Marina Cortês (Institute for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, Lisbon)
Biocosmology: towards the birth of a new physics field

Week 8 (9 March): Johannes Fankhauser (Philosophy, Oxford)
‌The empirical completeness problem of quantum mechanics

Convened by Oliver Pooley and Henrique Gomes
All seminars (apart from the BBLOC seminar in Week 8) will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and (with speaker’s consent) published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (13 October): Caspar Jacobs (Oxford, philosophy)
‌The Model Is Not the Territory: On Quality and Isomorphism

Week 2 (20 October):Lu Chen (Koç University)
A discrete case for dynamicism

Week 3 (27 October):Christian Wüthrich (Geneva, Philosophy)
Laws beyond spacetime

Week 4 (3 November):NO SEMINAR

Week 5 (10 November):Ted Jacobson (Maryland and Cambridge, Physics)
Diffeomorphism invariance and the black hole information paradox

Week 6 (17 November):Patrick Dürr (Oxford and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Philosophy)
Conventionalism – a sophisticated philosophy for our (space)times

Week 7 (24 November):Natasha Oughton (University of Oxford)
Why quantum theory? Understanding and explanation through reconstruction

Week 8 (1 December): BBLOC seminar, Kings College London: Sam Fletcher (Minnesota and London)
The representation and determinable structure of quantum properties

For details of the BBLOC seminar, email Alex Franklin, KCL.

Convened by Oliver Pooley
Unless otherwise indicated, seminars will take place in person at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays of Hilary Term, in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. Talks will also be streamed, recorded, and published on our new You Tube channel

Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings online; others should contact the convenor directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (20th January): Tushar Menon (Cambridge)
Dynamical substantivalism

Week 2 (27th January): Claudio Calosi (Geneva)
Wavefunction monism

Week 3 (3rd February): Valeriya Chasova (Salzburg / Strasbourg / Louvain-la-Neuve) (Online only.)
Local symmetries have direct empirical status

Week 4 (10th February): Samuel Fletcher (Minnesota)
Relativistic spacetime: dependence and ontology

‌Week 5 (17th February): James Read (Oxford)
‌Curvature coupling, electromagnetic wave propagation, and the consistency of the geometrical optics limit

Week 6 (25th February): NO SEMINAR

Jowett Society talk (same venue as Thu seminar)
Week 6 (Friday 25 February):
Darrell Rowbottom (Lingnam University)

Week 7 (3rd March): NO SEMINAR

Jowett Society talk (same venue as Thu seminar)
Week 7 (Friday 4 March):Tim Maudlin (NYU)
‌Law, fact, or mathematical consequence? Metaphysical options in mathematical physics

Week 8 (10 March): Katherine Brading (Duke)
Du Châtelet, Euler, d’Alembert: constructive and principle approaches to philosophical mechanics

BBLOC SEMINAR Kings College London
Week 9 (17 March) Neil Dewar (Cambridge)
TBC