Speaker: Neil Dewar (Oxford)
Friday 18th July 2014
Location: Ludwigstr. 31 room *028*
Time: 14:15 - 15:45
The Grammar of the Problem of Time
It is widely agreed that the Problem of Time indicates that the the methods
of the constrained Hamiltonian formalism are inappropriate when applied to
General Relativity; the interesting question involves getting clear on why
these formal methods, which work so well in other contexts, break down so
radically in this case. In this talk, I argue that the basic reason is
straightforward, and concerns the different representational roles of
independent and dependent variables: to apply the constrained Hamiltonian
method to independent variables is to treat subjects as though they were
predicates, and so to lapse into ungrammatical confusion.
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Dear all,
the Summer 2014 reading group on Quantum Information Theory will begin
this coming Monday, April 14th, from 18:00 - 20:00 (CT). After that we
will meet bi-weekly. The location is Ludwigstraße 31, Room 021.
The first part of the meeting on Monday will be devoted to
organisational matters and to discussing subsequent meeting topics.
During the second part of the meeting, *Seamus Bradley* will introduce
us to *Classical Information Theory*. As background reading, you may
want to look at Parts I and II of Claude Shannon's "A Mathematical
Theory of Communication" (1948). It can be downloaded from:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf
Everyone interested in the topic of quantum information theory is
encouraged to attend the group. Please also feel free to distribute this
to anyone not subscribed to this mailing list who you think may be
interested in attending.
If you are receiving this email twice because you belong to this mailing
list but are explicitly included in the Cc list, please let me know and
I will remove you from the latter.
I hope to see many of you next week.
Best wishes,
--
Michael Cuffaro
Postdoctoral Fellow
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Fakultät für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Religionswissenschaft
Lehrstuhl für Wissenschaftstheorie
Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
80539 München, Deutschland
http://www.michaelcuffaro.com
Speaker: Radin Dardashti (MCMP)
Wednesday 2nd July 2014
Location: Ludwigstr. 31 room 021
Time: 16:15 - 17:45
On the Distinction between Internal and External Symmetries
There is no doubt that symmetries play an important role in fundamental
physics, but there is no agreement among physicists on what this role
exactly is. So it is not surprising that it has caught the interest of
philosophers in recent years leading to a lively discussion on the
epistemological and ontological significance of symmetries. Especially in
this context it becomes relevant whether common distinctions made between
different kinds of symmetries are purely conventional or have a deeper
mathematical and/or physical justification. It is the aim of this talk to
discuss the distinction between internal and external (or spacetime)
symmetries and its possible justification.
First, I will discuss attempts at combining internal and external
symmetries, which lead to several no-go theorems. A naive interpretation of
these results leads to the conclusion that the distinction is
physically/mathematically justified. Second, the strong dependence of the
no-go results on physical and mathematical assumptions is discussed and it
is shown how the distinction becomes blurred once mathematical assumptions
are weakened. This is exactly what happens in supersymmetric extensions of
the standard model of particle physics. So, in the final part, I will argue
that under a certain (philosophical) assumption the question about the
status of the distinction can be made into an experimental question
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