January 2013 - philphysmunich

Final CfP: Foundations of Physics 2013 (LMU Munich, 29-31 July 2013)
by Karim Thebault Jan. 24, 2013

Jan. 24, 2013

FOUNDATIONS OF PHYSICS 2013 The 17th UK and European Meeting LMU Munich 29-31 July 2013 http://www.lmu.de/FoundationsOfPhysics2013 ********************************************* This conference will consider topics across the entire spectrum of foundational and philosophical approaches to physical theory. Whilst there will be a particular focus upon the analysis of specific physical theories (e.g. classical and quantum theories of spacetime, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, statistical physics), we also invite submissions on methodological questions, experimental practices, and the study of philosophically interesting episodes from the history of physics. It is hoped that bringing together philosophers of physics, historians of physics, and working physicists to discuss topics of mutual interest, will be of great benefit to practitioners of each discipline. We invite submissions of extended abstracts of 1000 words for contributed talks and proposals for symposia by 1st February 2013. Decisions will be made by 1st March 2013. KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Markus Aspelmeyer (Vienna), Julian Barbour (Oxford), Jean Bricmont (Brussels), Fay Dowker (London), Tim Maudlin (New York), John D. Norton (Pittsburgh), Rob Spekkens (Perimeter) ORGANIZERS: Detlef Dürr, Mathias Frisch, Stephan Hartmann, Christian Joas, Roland Poellinger, Karim Thebault GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS: A few travel bursaries for graduate students are available (up to 500 Euro). See website for details. _______________________________________________ philphysmunich mailing list philphysmunich(a)lists.lrz.de https://lists.lrz.de/mailman/listinfo/philphysmunich

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Talk by Paul Naeger at MCMP (Wed. 30th Jan.)
by Karim Thebault Jan. 24, 2013

Jan. 24, 2013

Speaker: Paul Naeger (Bremen) Wednesday January 30th Ludwigstr.31 /II room 225 Time: 4 to 6 pm Title: The causal structure of EPR experiments Abstract: In this talk we examine possible causal structures of experiments with entangled quantum objects. We try to surpass previous discussions in that (i) we proceed from a recent stronger version of Bell's theorem (Näger 2012, preprint) and (ii) use the rigorous methods of causal graph theory. Our result will be that EPR correlations come about exclusively by common causes. Among the common causes there must be the quantum state and at least one of the measurement settings. Particularly, we provide an argument that there is no direct causal relation between the measurement outcomes. This refutes the standard view that EPR correlations arise due to an influence from one outcome to the other ("outcome dependence"). Our result also improves on conclusions from information theoretic considerations (Maudlin 1994; Pawlowski 2010), which wrongly allow for such direct connections between the outcomes. _______________________________________________ philphysmunich mailing list philphysmunich(a)lists.lrz.de https://lists.lrz.de/mailman/listinfo/philphysmunich

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Talk by Detlef Dürr at MCMP (Wed. 23rd Jan.)
by Karim Thebault Jan. 18, 2013

Jan. 18, 2013

Speaker: Detlef Dürr (Mathematics Institute/LMU) Wednesday January 23rd Ludwigstr.31 /II room 225 Time: 6 to 8 pm Title: Bohmian Mechanics, speakable quantum physics. Abstract:I introduce Bohmian Mechanics, which is a theory of particles in motion. The law of motion is not classical, i.e. the particles do not move on Newtonian trajectories. As this is often not appreciated I shall discuss some features which will help to sharpen one's intuition about this theory of nature. _______________________________________________ philphysmunich mailing list philphysmunich(a)lists.lrz.de https://lists.lrz.de/mailman/listinfo/philphysmunich

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Talk by Luigi Scorzato at MCMP (Wed. 16th Jan.)
by Karim Thebault Jan. 14, 2013

Jan. 14, 2013

Speaker: Luigi Scorzato (ECT*, Trento) Wednesday January 16th Ludwigstr.31 /II room 225 Time: 6 to 8 pm Title: The interplay between simplicity and measurability in scientific theories. Abstract: Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. Moreover, according to a common general argument, the simplicity of a theory is always trivial in a suitably chosen language. However, this "trivialization argument" is always either applied to toy-models of scientific theories or applied with little regard for the empirical content of the theory. In this paper I show that the trivialization argument fails, when one considers realistic theories and requires their empirical content to be preserved. In fact, the concepts that enable a very simple formulation, are not necessarily measurable, in general. Moreover, the inspection of a theory describing a chaotic billiard shows that precisely those concepts that naturally make the theory extremely simple are provably not measurable. This suggests that, whenever a theory possesses sufficiently complex consequences, the constraint of measurability prevents too simple formulations in any language. In this paper I propose a way to introduce the constraint of measurability in the formulation of a scientific theory in such a way that the notion of simplicity acquires a general and sufficiently precise meaning. I argue that this explains why the scientists often regard their assessments of simplicity as largely unambiguous. _______________________________________________ philphysmunich mailing list philphysmunich(a)lists.lrz.de https://lists.lrz.de/mailman/listinfo/philphysmunich

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Talk by Karim Thébault at MCMP (Wed. 9th Jan.)
by Karim Thebault Jan. 4, 2013

Jan. 4, 2013

Speaker: Karim Thébault (Munich) Title: Quantisation as a guide to ontic structure Wednesday January 9th Ludwigstr.31 /II room 225 Time: 6 to 8 pm Abstract: The ontic structural realist stance is motivated by a desire to do philosophical justice to the success of science, whilst withstanding the metaphysical undermining generated by the various species of ontological underdetermination. We are, however, as yet in want of general principles to provide a scaffold for the explicit construction of structural ontologies. Here we will attempt to bridge this gap by utilising the formal procedure of quantisation as a guide to ontic structure of modern physical theory. The example of non-relativistic particle mechanics will be considered and, for that case, it will be argued that, modulo certain mathematical ambiguities, a consistent candidate structural ontology can be established. _______________________________________________ philphysmunich mailing list philphysmunich(a)lists.lrz.de https://lists.lrz.de/mailman/listinfo/philphysmunich

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