Local events

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars TT 2021

Convened by Adam Caulton
The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays of Trinity Term online by Zoom.

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

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (29 Apr): Caspar Jacobs (Oxford)
Comparativist theories and conspiracy theories: the no miracles argument against comparativism

Week 2 (6 May): Nora Boyd (Siena College, NY)
Is Laboratory astrophysics astrophysics?

Week 3 (13 May): Alyssa Ney (UC Davis)
Three arguments for wave function realism

Week 4 (20 May): Gordon Belot (Michigan, Ann Arbor)
The Mach—Einstein principle of 1917—1918

Week 5 (27 May): Mike Miller (Toronto)
Cluster decomposition and entanglement

Week 6 (3 June): Jacob Barandes (Harvard)
Why we shouldn’t believe in Hilbert Spaces anymore, and the case for Platonic quantum theory

Week 7 (10 June):David Albert (Columbia)
How to teach quantum mechanics

Week 8 (17 June): Tim Maudlin (NYU)
The PBR theorem, quantum state realism, and statistical independence

Seminars given in HT 2021 are now available on You Tube

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars HT 2021

Seminars given in HT 2021 are now available on You Tube

Convened by Simon Saunders
The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays of Hilary Term online by Zoom.
A BBLOC seminar (Birmingham, Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge) will take place at 4.30 p.m. on 19th March.
Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meetings; others should contact the convenor directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (21st Jan): Martin Lesourd (Black Hole Initiative, Harvard)
Penrose crosses the street and what’s happened since

Week 2 (28thJan): Eddy Chen (Philosophy, UCSD):
The Wentaculus: Density Matrix Realism meets the Arrow of Time

Week 3 (4th Feb): Guy Hetzroni (Open University, Israel)
Symmetry arguments, methodological equivalence and relational quantities

Week 4 (11th Feb): David Wallace (Philosophy, Pittsburgh)
Quantum Gravity at Low Energies; or: Yes, Virginia, there is a cosmological constant problem

Week 5 (18th Feb): John Norton (HPS, Pittsburgh)
How to make possibility safe for empiricists

Week 6 (25th Feb): Wayne Myrvold, (Philosophy, UWT)
Subjectivists about probability should be realist about quantum states

Week 7 (4th Mar): Nick Huggett (Philosophy, Illinois)
Missing the point in (non-commutative) field theory

Week 8 (11th Mar): Jenann Ismael (Philosophy, Columbia)
Totality, self-reference and physics

BBLOC seminar (18th Mar): Tushar Menon (Philosophy, Cambridge)
TBA

Oxford seminars given in HT 2021 are now available on You Tube

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars MT 2020

Convened by James Read
The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays online, with the exception of Nov 5 and Nov 19, when it will be held at 11.00 a.m. Note that a BBLOC seminar (Birmingham, Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge) will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Nov.19.

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

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (15th Oct): Kian Salimkhani (Philosophy, University of Cologne)
The dynamical approach to spin-2 gravity

Week 2 (22nd Oct): Jeremy Steeger (Philosophy, Washington).
One world is (probably) just as good as many

Week 3 (29th Oct): Porter Williams (Philosophy, University of Southern California)
Identifying Causal Directions in Quantum Theories via Entanglement

Week 4 (5 Nov 11.00 am): Sarita Rosenstock (Philosophy, Australian National University)
A category theoretic framework for physical representation

Week 5 (12th Nov):Trevor Teitel (Philosophy, University of Toronto)
How to be a spacetime substantivalist

Week 6 (19th Nov 11.00 am): Nicolas Menicucci (Philosophy, RMIT University)
Sonic relativity and the sound postulate

Week 6 (19th Nov 4.30): BBLOC Seminar: please contact Alex Franklin for details: Emily Adlam
Spooky action at a temporal distance

Week 7 (26th Nov):Martin Lipman (Philosophy, Leiden University)
Realism about relative facts and special relativity

Week 8 (3rd Dec): Baptiste Le Bihan (Philosophy, University of Geneva)
What Does the World Look Like According to Superdeterminism?

Philosophy of Physics Research Seminars TT 2020

Convened by Tushar Menon and Carina Prunkl
The following seminars will take place at 4.30 p.m. on Thursdays online. Those on the philosophy of physics mailing list will receive an invitation to join the meeting; others should contact the convenors directly.

Abstracts are posted weekly.

Week 1 (30 Apil): Sir Roger Penrose (Mathematics, Oxford)
Conformal cyclic cosmology and Hawking points in the night sky

Week 2 (7 May): David Wallace (Philosophy, Pittsburgh)
Isolated systems and their symmetries

Week 3 (14 May): Erik Curiel (Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy, and Black Hole Initiative, Harvard)
On the cogency of quantum field theory on curved spacetime and semi-classical gravity

Week 4 (21 May): BBLOC lecture (Birmingham, Bristol, London, Oxford, Cambridge): James Read (Philosophy, Oxford)
Newtonian equivalence principles

Week 5 (28 May): David Baker (Philosophy, Michigan)
What are symmetries?

Week 6 (4 June): Marij van Strien (Philosophy, Wuppertal)
Bohm’s theory of quantum mechanics and the notion of classicality

Week 7 (11 June): Chiara Marletto (Physics, Oxford)
TBC

Week 8 (18 June): Niels Linnemann(Philosophy, Bremen)
TBC

Philosophy of Physics 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)

Why Why ghosts are real and “surplus structure” isn’t

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)
Particles trajectories, indistinguishable particles, and the discovery of the photon

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 MT 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)
Is a particle an irreducible representation of the Poincaré group?

Week 6 (21st Nov): Radin Dardashti (Philosophy, University of Wuppertal)
Understanding Problems in Physics

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

Convened by Simon Saunders
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 (2 May) Olivier Darrigol (Paris)
Ludwig Boltzmann: Atoms, mechanics, and probability

Week 2 (9 May)  NO SEMINAR

Week 3 (16 MAY) Jeremy Butterfield (Cambridge)
On realism and functionalism about space and time

Week 4 (23 MAY)  NO SEMINAR

Week 5 (30 May) Henrique Gomes (Cambridge and Perimeter)
Gauge, boundaries, and the connection form

Week 6 (6 June) NO SEMINAR

Week 7 (13th June) Harvey Brown (Oxford)
Aspects of probabilistic reasoning in physics

Week 8 (20th June) Martin Lesourd (Oxford)
The Epistemic constraints that observers face in General Relativistic spacetimes

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)
The conceptual-schemas account of interpretation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Week 8 (7 Mar)  Karen Crowther (Geneva)
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)