2007-2008
24 May 2008, 3:00pm, LPS seminar room
Topic: John Manchak on supertasks in Malament-Hogarth spacetimes
Readings: please read chapter 4 of John Earman`s Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers, and Shrieks: Singularities and Acausalities in Relativistic Spacetimes (Oxford UP, 1995). An electronic copy can be found here.
10 May 2008, 3:00pm, LPS seminar room
Topic: Jeff Barrett on the measurement problem in QFT
Readings: the reading for this meeting is a manuscript by Jeff entitled “Wigner`s friend and Bell`s field beables”. Find an electronic copy here. Also, Jeff suggested that we read a manuscript by David Albert, which can be found here. We will discuss Albert`s particle interaction story and consider a translation of it into a simple field theory.
5 April 2008, 3:00pm, LPS seminar room
Topic: David Albert on Significables
Readings: the reading for this meeting is a manuscript by David Albert entitled “The technique of significables”. Find an electronic copy here. Also, please read the first first chapter of a book he is currently writing.
16 February 2008, 3:00pm, LPS seminar room
Topic: Brett Bevers and Tucker Lentz, Arntzenius and Greaves on time reversal invariance
Readings: the primary reading for this meeting is Frank Arntzenius and Hilary Greaves, “Time reversal in classical electromagnetism” (find an electronic copy here); the secondary reading is Hilary Greaves, “Towards a geometric understanding of the CPT theorem” (find an electronic copy here); as background reading for those not familiar with the debate, Brett and Tucker recommend David Albert, Time and Chance, Chapter 1 (“Time-reversal invariance”) [.pdf], John Earman, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 16 (2002) 245-264 [.pdf], and David Malament, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (2004) 295-315 [.pdf]
19 January 2008, 3:00pm, LPS seminar room
Topic: Adrian Wüthrich, Minimal Assumption Derivation of a Bell-type Inequality
Readings: Adrian has put together a reader for the meeting. Find an electronic copy here. If you cannot read the entire reader, you should concentrate on the article by Grasshoff, Portmann and Wüthrich, “Minimal Assumption Derivation of a Bell-type Inequality”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (2005), 663-680.
1 December 2007, 3:00pm, LPS seminar room
Topic: Jeff Barrett and Craig Callender, Maudlin’s The Metaphysics within Physics
Readings: Tim Maudlin, The Metaphysics within Physics, Chapter 3 (“Suggestions from Physics for Deep Metaphysics”) and Chapter 4 (“On the Passing of Time”) Find an electronic copy here.
10 November 2007, 3:00pm, LPS seminar room
Topic: Steven Weinstein, Causality and Determinism in Classical Special-relativistic Theories
Readings: Weinstein, “Causality and Relativity” [140 kb .pdf].
Background reading: Price, “Causal Perspectivalism” [.pdf] and Kutach, “The Physical Foundations of Causation” [.pdf].
13 October 2007, 3:00pm, LPS seminar room
Topic: Sheldon Smith, Recent Work on Kant’s Philosophy of Physics
Readings: Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Chapter 2: “Metaphysical Foundations of Dynamics”.