Thursday seminars

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

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, 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)
TBA

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): Harvey Brown and Christopher Timpson (Oxford)
Bell on Bell’s theorem: the changing face of nonlocality

Thu 26th Feb (week 6): James Ladyman (Bristol)
TBA

Thu 5th Mar (week 7): Nicholas Teh (Cambridge)
TBA

12th Mar (week 8): TBA

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Michaelmas Term 2014

Convened by Simon Saunders

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

On Thu of week 5 (13 November), the first of the joint Bristol-London-Oxford-Cambridge (BLOC) seminars will take place at 5.30 p.m., Kings College, London. There will be no Oxford seminar on that date.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Thu 16 Oct (week 1): Dennis Lehmkuhl (Oxford and Wuppertal):
Einstein, Cartan, Weyl, Jordan: The neighborhood of General Relativity in the space of spacetime theories

Thu 23rd Oct (week 2): Daniel Bedingham (Oxford):
Time reversal symmetry and collapse models

Thu 30th Oct (week 3): David Wallace (Oxford):
How not to do the metaphysics of quantum mechanics

Thu 6th Nov (week 4) : Vlatko Vedral (Oxford):
Macroscopicity

13th Nov (week 5) BLOC seminar: Huw Price (Cambridge):
Two paths to the Paris Intepretation

Thu 20th Nov (week 6): Boris Zilber (Oxford):
On the semantics of the canonical commutation relations

Thu 27th Nov (week 7): Owen Maroney (Oxford):
How epistemic can a quantum state be?

Thu 4th Dec (week 8): Tony Sudbery (York):
The logic of the future in the Everett-Wheeler understanding of quantum theory

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Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Trinity Term 2014

Convened by Oliver Pooley

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 1-8, in the Lecture Room of the Philosophy Centre.

Please note the Centre’s NEW ADDRESS: Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. (This is the old Radcliffe Infirmary building.) The Lecture Room is on the second floor.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Thu 1 May (week 1): Oliver Pooley (Oxford):
New work on the problem of time

Thu 8 May (week 2): Simon Saunders (Oxford):
Reference to indistinguishable particles, and other paradoxes

Thu 15 May (week 3): Julian Barbour (Oxford)
A gravitational arrow of time

Thu 22 May (week 4): Elise Crull (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Whence physical significance in bimetric theories?

29 May(week 5): Adrian Kent (Cambridge)
A solution to the Lorentzian quantum reality problem

Thu 5 June (week 6): Mike Cuffaro (LMU, Munich)
Reconsidering quantum no-go theorems from a computational perspective

Thu 12 June (week 7): Antony Valentini (Clemson)
Hidden variables in the early universe: quantum nonequilibrium and the cosmic microwave background

Thu 19 June (week 8): Antony Valentini (Clemson)
Hidden variables in the early universe: towards an explanation for large-scale cosmic anomalies

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Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars Hilary Term 2014

Convened by Dennis Lehmkuhl

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 1-8, in the Lecture Room of the Philosophy Centre. 

Please note the Centre’s NEW ADDRESS: Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. (This is the old Radcliffe Infirmary building.) The Lecture Room is on the second floor.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Thu 23 January (week 1): Peter Vickers (Durham):

          Divide et impera realism and single slit diffraction: a reply to Brooker, Saatsi, and Vickers

Thu 30 January (week 2): David Wallace  (Oxford):

          Deflating the Aharonov-Bohm Effect

Thu 6 February (week 3): No seminar

Thu 13 February (week 4): Joerg Schmiedmayer :

           How does the classical world emerge from microscopic quantum evolution?

Thu 20 February (Week 5): Domenico Giullini (Hannover and Bremen):

           Gravitation and Quantum Mechanics

Thu 27 February (Week 6): Tessa Baker (Oxford):

           Cosmological Tests of Gravity

Thu 6 March (Week 7): Sean Gryb  (Perimeter Institute):

            Symmetry and Evolution in Quantum Gravity

Thu 13 March (Week 8): Philip Goyal (SUNY):

             An Informational Approach to Identical Particles in Quantum Theory

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Philosophy of Physics research seminars Michaelmas Term 2013

Convened by Harvey Brown

The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays, weeks 1-6, in the Lecture Room of the Philosophy Centre. In week 7, in place of the Thursday seminar, see Relativity Meets Quantum Theory at the LSE, Nov 28-29th (Centre for Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences, LSE), and Irreversibility in Axiomatic Thermodynamics, Nov 30 (Department of Philosophy, University of Cambridge). In week 8, in place of the Thursday seminar, see Anthropics: selection effects and fine-tuning in cosmology (miniseries as part of the ‘Establishing the Philosophy of Cosmology’ initiative, at St Anne’s College, Oxford University).

Please note the Centre’s NEW ADDRESS: Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG. (This is the old Radcliffe Infirmary building.) The Lecture Room is on the second floor.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

 

Thu 17 October: Edward Anderson, DAMPT, Cambridge

Background independence

Thu 24 October: Basil Hiley, Birkbeck College, London

Bohmian non-commutative dynamics: local conditional expectation values are weak values

Thu 31 October: Paul Hoyningen-Heune, Leibniz University of Hannover

The dead end objection against convergent realisms

Thu 7 November: Sam Fletcher, University of California at Irvine

On the reduction of General Relativity to Newtonian gravitation

Thu 14 November: Jeffrey Bub, University of Maryland

Quantum Interactions with Closed Timelike Curves and Superluminal Signaling  

Thu 21 November: Owen Maroney, Oxford

How is there a physics of information?

Thu 28 November: No Seminar

Thu 5 December: No Seminar

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