Meetings

Philosophy of physics research seminars Trinity Term 2017

Convened by Oliver Pooley
The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 1-4 and 6-8, in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Joint seminar, Philosophy of maths/philosophy of physics:
27th April (week 1): Peter Hylton (Philosophy, Illinois)
‘Analyticity, yet again’

4th May (week 2):Tushar Menon (Philosophy, Oxford)
Affine balance: algebraic functionalism and the ontology of spacetime

11th May (week 3): Michela Massimi (Philosophy, Edinburgh)
Perspectival models in contemporary high-energy physics

18th May (week 4): Paul Tappenden (Independent)
Quantum fission

25th May (week 5): NO SEMINAR

1st June (week 6): Jo Wolf (Philosophy, KCL)
Quantities – metaphysical choice points

8th June (week 7): David Jackson (Independent)
How to build a unified field theory from one dimension

BLOC seminar (joint with Birmingham, Bristol, London, Oxford and Cambridge):
15th June (week 8): Harvey Brown (Philosophy, Oxford)
QBism: the ineffable reality behind “participatory realism”

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Hilary Term 2017

Convened by Harvey Brown

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 1-2 and 4-8, in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

19th January (week 1): Emily Adlam (DAMTP, Cambridge)

‘Quantum mechanics and global determinism’

26th January (week 2): Antony Eagle (Philosophy, University of Adelaide)

‘Quantum location’

2nd February (week 3): NO SEMINAR

9th February (week 4): Alastair Wilson (Philosophy, University of Birmingham)

‘How multiverses might undercut the fine-tuning argument’

16th February (week 5): TBA

23rd February (week 6): Simon Saunders (Philosophy, Oxford)

Quantum monads

2nd March (week 7):Ronnie Hermens (Philosophy, University of Groningen)

How ψ-ontic are ψ-ontic models?

9th March (week 8): Michael Hicks (Physics, Oxford)

‘Explanatory (a)symmetries and Humean laws’

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Michaelmas Term 2016

Convened by Christopher Timpson

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 1-3 and 5-8, in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

13th October (week 1): David Wallace (University of Southern California)
‘Fundamental and emergent geometry in Newtonian gravity’

20th October (week 2): Niels Martens (Oxford)
‘Against comparativism about mass’

27th October (week 3): Ryan Samaroo (Bristol)
‘The principle of equivalence as a criterion of identity’

3rd Novermber (week 4): NO SEMINAR

10th November (week 5): Lina Jansson (Nottingham)
‘Newton’s methodology meets Humean supervenience about laws of nature’

17th November (week 6): Jim Weatherall (UC Irvine)
‘On stuff: the field concept in classical physics’

24th November (week 7): David Glick (Oxford)
‘Entanglement swapping and entanglement realism’

1st December (week 8): David Sloan (Oxford, Physics)
‘Relationalism, entropy and the Big Bang’

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Trinity Term 2016

Convened by Oliver Pooley

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, week 1 and weeks 3-8 in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Thu 28th April (week 1): Roman Frigg (LSE, Philosophy)
‘Further rethinking equilibrium’.

Thu 5th May (week 2): NO SEMINAR

Thu 12th May (week 3): Yvonne Geyer (Oxford, Mathematics)
‘Rethinking quantum field theory: traces of string theory in Yang-Mills and gravity’

Thu 19th May (week 4): Eleanor Knox (Kings, Philosophy)
Novel Explanation and the Emergence of Phonons

Thu 26 May (5th week): Tim Palmer (Oxford, Physics)
P-adic Integers and quantum reality: towards a realistic locally causal theory of fundamental physics

Thu 2 June (6th week): Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv, Physics)
In favor of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

Thu 9 June (7th week): Sebastian de Haro (Amsterdam and Cambridge, Physics)
On dualities and emergence of diffeomorphism invariance

Thu 16 June (8th week): Shane Mansfield (Paris Diderot University – Paris 7, Computer Science)
Reality of the quantum state: towards a stronger psi-ontology theorem

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars HT 2016

Convened by Harvey Brown and Simon Saunders

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 1-8 in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Note that the seminar on Thu 28th is a joint seminar with the Jowett Society, and takes place at the changed time and place of 5.30 p.m., T. S. Eliot Lecture Theatre, Merton College.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Thu 21st Jan (week 1): Philipp Roser (Clemson, Physics)
‘Time and York time in quantum theory’.

Thu 28th Jan (week 2): Saul Kripke (CUNY, Philosohy)
‘Wittgenstein, Russell, and our Concept of the Natural Numbers’

Thu 4th Feb (week 3): NO SEMINAR

Thu 11th Feb (Week 4): David Wallace (Oxford, Philosophy)
‘Who’s afraid of coordinate systems?’

Thu 18th Feb (week 5): Jean-Pierre Llored (Clermont, Philosophy)
‘From quantum physics to quantum chemistry’

Thu 25th Feb (Week 6): Stephen Blundell (Oxford, Physics)
‘Emergence, causation and storytelling: condensed matter physics and the limitations of the human mind’

Thu 3rd Mar (week 7): NO SEMINAR

Thu 10th Mar (week 8) Daniel Sudarsky (UNA, Mexico, Physics)
“The information loss during black hole a evaporation: A novel approach to diffusing the “paradox””

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars MT 2015

Convened by Christopher Timpson

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 1-8 in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Thu 15th October (week 1): Oscar Dahlsten (Oxford, Physics)
The role of information in work extraction

Thu 22nd October (week 2): Bryan Roberts (LSE, Philosophy)
On the future of the weakly interacting arrow of time

Thu 29th October (week 3) Chiara Marletto (Oxford, Materials)
Constructor theory of information (and its implications for our understanding of quantum theory)

Thu 5th November (week 4) Joseph Milia (Oxford, Philosophy)
Haecceitism, Identity and Indiscernibility: (Mis-)Uses of Modality in the Philosophy of Physics

Thu 12th November (week 5) Karim Thebault (Bristol)
Regarding the ‘Hole Argument’ and ‘The Problem of Time’

Thu 19th November (week 6) Dan Bedingham (Oxford, Philosophy)
Dynamical collapse of the wavefunction and relativity

Thu 26th November (week 7) Ellen Clarke (Oxford, Philosophy)
Biological Ontology

Thu 3rd December (week 8) Thomas Moller-Nielsen (Oxford, Philosophy)
Symmetry and the Interpretation of Physical Theories

Particles, Fields, and Relativity

Conference in Honour of Harvey Brown at 65

University of Oxford, 13-14th July, 2015

Particles and Fields

13th July 1.00-6.00, Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College

Physical Relativity: 10 Years On

14th July 9.15-6.00, T. S. Eliot Theatre, Merton College

Julian Barbour
Katherine Brading
Michel Ghins
Michel Janssen
Dennis Lehmkuhl
Wayne Myrvold
Oliver Pooley
George Svetlichny
Chris Timpson
Jos Uffink

Advance registration required

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Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars TT 2015

Convened by Oliver Pooley

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 2-8 ( note that there is no seminar week 1) in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Thu 30th April (week 1): NO SEMINAR

Thu 7th May (week 2): Mauro Dorato (University of Rome Roma Tre)
The passage of time between physics and psychology

Thu 14th May (week 3): Harvey Brown (Oxford) and Chris Timpson (Oxford)
Bell on Bell’s theorem: the changing face of nonlocality

Thu 21st May (week 4): Francesca Vidotto (Radboud University, Nijmegen)
Relational ontology from General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

Thu 28th May (week 5): George Ellis (Cape Town)
On the crucial role of top-down causation in complex systems

Thu 4th June (week 6): Neil Dewar (Oxford)

Symmetry and Interpretation: or, Translations and Translations

Thu 11th June (week 7): Tom Pashby (University of Southern California)
Saving Schroedinger’s cat: It’s about time (not measurement)

Thu 18th June (week 8): George Darby (Oxford)
Safe bets in analytic and naturalised metaphysics

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars HT 2015

Convened by Harvey Brown

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 1-8, EXCEPT for week 3 and week 8, in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Thu 22nd Jan (week 1): Jonathan Halliwell (Imperial College London)
Negative Probabilities, Fine’s Theorem and Quantum Histories

Thu 29th Jan (week 2): Raymond Lal (Cambridge/Oxford)
The topology of contextuality: a new perspective on quantum no-go theorems

Thu 5th Feb (week 3): NO SEMINAR

Thu 12th Feb (week 4): Erik Curiel (Munich)
Problems with the interpretation of energy conditions in general relativity

Thu 19th Feb (week 5): David Wallace (Oxford)
Fields as Bodies: a unified treatment of spacetime and gauge symmetry

Thu 26th Feb (week 6): James Ladyman (Bristol)
Do local symmetries have ‘direct empirical consequences’?

Thu 5th Mar (week 7): Nicholas Teh (Cambridge)
Theoretical Equivalence in Classical Mechanics: A Prolegomenon to Duality

12th Mar (week 8): NO SEMINAR