Lugano Philosophy Colloquia (Hybrid)
by events.isfi＠usi.ch
We are pleased to announce that on Monday, December 4 at 16:30 (CET), Alyssa Ney (UC Davis) will give the talk The Argument from Locality for Many Worlds Quantum Mechanics as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2023 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in the Multiuso room, Theology Building, USI West Campus and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining it online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/25721
Here is the abstract of the talk:
One motivation for preferring the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics over realist rivals, such as collapse and hidden variables theories, is that the interpretation is able to preserve locality (in the sense of no action at a distance) in a way these other theories cannot. The primary goal of this paper is to make this argument for the many worlds interpretation precise, in a way that does not rely on controversial assumptions about the metaphysics of many worlds.
5 months
Lugano Philosophy Colloquia (Hybrid)
by events.isfi＠usi.ch
We are pleased to announce that on Friday, December 1 at 17:30 (CET), Balthasar Grabmayr (University of Tübingen) will give the talk On the Limits of Mathematics and Their Philosophical Consequences as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2023 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in the Multiuso room, Theology Building, USI West Campus and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining it online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/25721
Here is the abstract of the talk:
There is a well-known gap between metamathematical theorems and their philosophical interpretations. Take Tarski's Theorem. According to its prevalent interpretation, the collection of all arithmetical truths is not arithmetically definable. However, the underlying metamathematical theorem merely establishes the arithmetical undefinability of a set of specific Gödel codes of certain artefactual entities, such as infix strings, which are true in the standard model. That is, as opposed to its philosophical reading, the metamathematical theorem is formulated (and proved) relative to a specific choice of the Gödel numbering and the notation system. Similar observations apply to Gödel and Church's theorems, which are commonly taken to impose severe limitations on what can be proved and computed using the resources of certain formalisms. The philosophical force of these limitative results heavily relies on the belief that these theorems do not depend on contingencies regarding the underlying representation choices. The main aim of this talk is to put this belief under scrutiny by exploring the extent to which we can abstract away from specific representations in the formulations and proofs of several metamathematical results.
5 months
Lugano Philosophy Colloquia (Hybrid)
by events.isfi＠usi.ch
We are pleased to announce that on Friday, November 17 at 17:30 (CET), Marta Pedroni (University of Geneva) will give the talk The singular case of spacetime singularities in quantum gravity as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2023 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in the Multiuso room, Theology Building, USI West Campus and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining it online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch<mailto:events.isfi@usi.ch>
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/25721
Here is the abstract of the talk:
I analyse the status of spacetime singularities in light of singularity resolution in quantum gravity (QG). The avoidance of singularities in QG appears to make a strong case for the view that spacetime singularities are nothing more than mathematical pathologies of general relativity. However, this conclusion may be too hasty. Spacetime singularities are more accurately understood as global properties of spacetime rather than things. Talks about singularities are replaced by talks about singular spacetimes in rigorous definitions. Therefore, if spacetime emerges in QG -- as it is often claimed -- then so may its singular structure. Although this proposal is intriguing, I argue that the attempt to (re)instate singularities in QG through spacetime emergence fails.
5 months, 2 weeks