Meetings

Philosophy of Physics Thursday Research Seminars HT 2020

Convened by Oliver Pooley
Unless otherwise stated, the following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. 

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (23 January): Anders Sandberg (Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford)
Physical eschatology: how much can we say about the far future of the universe, and how much does it matter?

Week 2 (30 January): Mauro Dorato (Philosophy, University of Rome 3)
Overcoming dynamical explanations with structural explanations

Week 3 (6 February): NO SEMINAR

Week 3 (6–7 February):The first Oxford Philosophy of Physics Graduate Conference
https://philphysgradconference.com

Week 4 (13 February): John Dougherty (Centre for Mathematical Philosophy, Munich)

TBC

Week 5 (20 February): J. Brian Pitts (Philosophy, Cambridge)
‌Constraints, Gauge, Change and Observables in Hamiltonian General Relativity

Week 6 (27 February) Simon Saunders (Philosophy, Oxford)
TBC

Week 7 (5 March): NO SEMINAR

Week 8 (12 March): BLOC Seminar (Birmingham, Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge).Emily Adlam (Cambridge)
TBC
Note that the venue for the BLOC seminar is King’s College, London. Details TBA.

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Michaelmas Term 2019

Convened by Tushar Menon
The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. 

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (17 Oct): Patricia Palacios (Philosophy, University of Salzburg)
Redefining equilibrium for long-range interacting systems

Week 2 (24th Oct): Francesca Chadha-Day (Physics, University of Cambridge)
Dark matter: understanding the gravity of the situation

Week 3 (31st Oct): NO SEMINAR

Week 4 (7th Nov): Jamee Elder (Philosophy, University of Notre Dame/University of Bonn).
The epistemology of LIGO

Week 5 (14th Nov): Adam Caulton (Philosophy, University of Oxford)
Title TBC

Week 6 (21st Nov): Radin Dardashti (Philosophy, University of Wuppertal)
Title TBC

Week 7 (28th Nov): NO SEMINAR

Week 8 (5th Dec): Karim Thébault (Philosophy, University of Bristol)
Time and background independence

Week 9 (12th Dec): Barry Loewer (Philosophy, Rutgers)
The package deal account of fundamental laws

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Trinity Term 2019

<strong><em>Convened by Simon Saunders</em></strong>
<b>The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. </b>

<strong><a title=”Abstracts for Thursday Philosophy of Physics seminars” href=”http://www.philosophy-of-physics.ox.ac.uk/abstracts-forthursday-philosophy-of-physics-seminars/”>Abstracts </a>are posted weekly.</strong>

<strong>Week 1 (2 May) Olivier Darrigol (Paris)
</strong><em>Ludwig Boltzmann: Atoms, mechanics, and probability</em>

<strong>Week 2 (9 May)  NO SEMINAR</strong>
<em></em>

<strong>Week 3 (16 MAY) Jeremy Butterfield (Cambridge)</strong>
<em>On realism and functionalism about space and time</em>

<strong>Week 4 (23 MAY)  NO SEMINAR </strong>
<em></em>

<strong>Week 5 (30 May) Henrique Gomes (Cambridge and Perimeter)</strong>
<em> Gauge, boundaries, and the connection form </em>

<strong>Week 6 (6 June) Martin Lesourd (Oxford) </strong>
<em> Reasoning on the basis of past lightcones</em>

<strong>Week 7 (13th June) Harvey Brown (Oxford)</strong>
<em>TBA</em>

<strong>Week 8 (20th June) NO SEMINAR</strong>
<em></em>

Philosophy of physics research seminars Hilary Term 2019

Convened by James Read
The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. 

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (17 Jan) Laurenz Hudetz (LSE)
Title: The conceptual-schemas account of interpretation

Week 2 (24 Jan)  Patrick Dürr (Oxford)
Title: Philosophy of the Dead: Nordström Gravity

Week 3 (31 Jan)  Yang-Hui He (City, London)
Title: Exceptional and Sporadic

Week 4 (7 Feb)  Casey McCoy (Stockholm)
Title: Why is h-bar a universal constant?

Week 5 (14 Feb)  Joanna Luc (Cambridge)
Title: Generalised manifolds as basic objects of General Relativity

Week 6 (21 Feb)  Katie Robertson (Birmingham)
Title: Reducing the second law of thermodynamics: the demons and difficulties.

Week 7 (28 Feb)  Alex Franklin (KCL)
Title: On the Effectiveness of Effective Field Theories

Week 8 (7 Mar)  Karen Crowther (Geneva)
Title: As Below, So Before: Synchronic and Diachronic Conceptions of Emergence in Quantum Gravity

Philosophy of physics research seminars Michaelmas Term 2018

Convened by Adam Caulton
The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Lecture Room of Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. There will be no seminar in weeks 3, 4, and 7.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

11 October (week 1): David Wallace (Philosophy, USC)
Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in Finite Quantum Systems: a decoherent-histories approach.

18 October (week 2): Simon Saunders (Philosophy, Oxford)
Understanding particle indistinguishability.

25 October (week 3): NO SEMINAR

1 November (week 4): NO SEMINAR

8 November (week 5): Tushar Menon (Philosophy, Oxford)
Rotating spacetimes and the relativistic null hypothesis

15 November (week 6): Jonathan Barrett (Computer Science, Oxford)
Quantum causal models

22 November (week 7):James Nguyen (Philosophy, UCL)
Interpreting Models: A Suggestion and its Payoffs

29 November (week 8): NO SEMINAR

Philosophy of physics research seminars Trinity Term 2018

Convened by Adam Caulton and Chris 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.

26th April (week 1): Doreen Fraser (Philosophy, Waterloo)
Renormalization and scaling transformations in quantum field theory

3rd May (week 2): Jeremy Butterfiled (Philosophy, Cambridge)
On Dualities and equivalences between physical theories

10th May (week 3): Matt Farr (Philosophy, Cambridge)
The C theory of time

17th May (week 4): Seth Lloyd (Physics, MIT)
The future of quantum computing

24th May (Week 5): Emily Thomas (Philosophy, Durham)
John Locke: Newtonian absolutist about time?

31st May (Week 6): Minhyong Kim (Maths, Oxford)
Three dualities

7th June (Week 7) Owen Maroney (Philosophy, Oxford)
TBC

14th June (Week 8): Tushar Menon (Philosophy, Oxford)

Philosophy of physics research seminars Hilary Term 2018

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

Abstracts are posted weekly.

18th Jan (week 1): No Seminar

25th Jan (week 2): Giulio Chiribella (Computer Science, Oxford)
The Purification Principle

1st Feb (week 3): Christopher Timpson (Philosophy, Oxford)
Concepts of fundamentality: the case of information

8th Feb (Week 4): David Wallace (Philosophy, USC)
Why black hole information loss is paradoxical

15th Feb (Week 5): Dennis Lehmkuhl (Humanities and Social Sciences, Caltech)
The History and Interpretation of Black Hole Solutions

22nd Feb (Week 6): No seminar

1st Mar (Week 7): Carina Prunkl (Philosophy, Oxford
Black Hole Entropy is Entropy and not (necessarily) Information

8th Mar (Week 8): Nicholas Teh (Philosophy, Notre Dame)
TBC

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Michaelmas Term 2017

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

Abstracts are posted weekly.

12th Oct (week 1): No Seminar

19th Oct (week 2): Henrique Gomes (Perimeter)
New vistas from the many-instant landscape

26th Oct (week 3): Jonathan Halliwell (Imperial)
Comparing conditions for macrorealism: Leggett-Garg inequalities vs no-signalling in time
 
2nd Nov (Week 4): Sam Fletcher (Philosophy, Minnesota)
Emergence and scale’s labyrinth

9th Nov (Week 5): James Ladyman (Philosophy, Bristol)
Why interpret quantum mechanics?

16th Nov (Week 6): Hasok Chan (HPS, Cambridge)
Beyond truth-as-correspondence: realism for realistic people

23rd Nov (Week 7): Alison Fernandes (Philosophy, Warwick
The temporal asymmetry of chance

30th Nov (Week 8): Nancy Cartwright (Philosophy, Durham and UC San Diego)
TBC

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 6-7, 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: KCL, time to be announced:
15th June (week 8): Harvey Brown (Philosophy, Oxford)
TBA

Philosophy of Physics research seminars Hilary Term 2016

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’