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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 Chang (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)
What are pragmatic trials in medicine good for?

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 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””

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 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 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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