CFP: Graduate Conference in Logic, Philosophy of Mathematics, and Philosophy of Physics at Western Ontario

The 12th annual Logic, Mathematics, and Physics Graduate Philosophy Conference will take place on Sunday-Monday, May 20-21, 2012, at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada.

We are pleased to announce that

Hartry Field (New York University)

will be giving the keynote address.

The conference is held in conjunction with the Annual UWO Conference in the Philosophy of Science, taking place on May 18-19. LMP attendees are invited to join us for this conference.

Postdoc: Philosophy Sydney, time’s arrow

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW
UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND HISTORICAL INQUIRY
REFERENCE NO. 2059/1111

· Investigate the philosophy and physics of time’s arrow

· New grant funded research project

· Full-time, 2 year fixed term, remuneration package: $92.6K p.a. (which includes salary leave loading and up to 17% super)

The University of Sydney has received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to explore the nature of time using psychological and philosophical approaches.

Postdoc: Philosophy Sydney, time and temporal passage

(Note that this concerns a different position from the previous post)

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW
UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND HISTORICAL INQUIRY
REFERENCE NO. 2057/1111

· Investigate the metaphysics of time and temporal passage

· New grant funded research project

· Full-time, 2 year fixed term, remuneration package: $92.6K p.a. (which includes salary leave loading and up to 17% super)

The University of Sydney has received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to explore the nature of time using psychological and philosophical approaches.

Postdoc: HPS Sydney

This one should be a very attractive postdoc position–with an extremely high salary!

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW
UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
FACULTY OF SCIENCE
UNIT FOR HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
REFERENCE NO. 2055/1111

· Explore the history and philosophy of time throughout the sciences

· New grant funded research project

· Full-time, 2 year fixed term, attractive remuneration package: $92.6K p.a. (which includes salary, leave loading and up to 17% super)

The University of Sydney has received a prestigious grant from the John Templeton Foundation to explore the nature of time and streamline worldwide academic research on the subject.

Conference: 2012 Dubrovnik Conference on Philosophy of Science

As every year in April, there will be a conference on philosophy of science at the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from 16 to 21 April 2012. The reason why I post this announcement in this blog is because the philosophy of physics is one of the themes this year!

CFP: Quantum Interaction Symposium, Paris 26-29 June 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS for QI Symposium

The Sixth International Symposium on Quantum Interaction (QI’2012),

http://qi-2012.quantuminteraction.org/, 26th – 29th June 2012, Paris, France.

After highly successful previous meetings
· QI’2007 at Stanford,
· QI’2008 at Oxford,
· QI’2009 at Saarbrücken,
· QI’2010 at Washington DC,
· QI’2011 at Aberdeen,

the Sixth International Quantum Interaction Symposium will take place in Paris, France from 26 to 29 June 2012.

LARSIM Paris workshops this spring/summer

LARSIM and QuPa joint workshops on foundations of physics:

1st workshop: Foundational questions of quantum information
April 4-5, 2012 (Amphi Opale, 46 rue Barrault, Paris 13e)

Invited speakers:

Giacomo Mauro d’Ariano (University of Padova)
Caslav Brukner (University of Vienna, to be confirmed)
Oscar Dahlsten (University of Oxford)
Matthew Pusey (Imperial College London)
Robert Raussendorf (University of British Columbia)

2nd workshop: Physics and Computation

New journal: Lato Sensu, revue de la Société de philosophie des sciences

The Société de philosophie des sciences launches its journal!

Call for papers for issues 1 and 2
Lato Sensu, revue de la Société de philosophie des sciences

Journal Description:
The Société de philosophie des sciences was founded in 2002, with the aim of promoting philosophy of science in the wide sense (comprising such fields as epistemology, philosophy of mind and language, philosophy of medicine and clinical ethics, as well of course as philosophy of social sciences and the closely related areas of rationality, social choice, law, environmental ethics, etc.). Its intended constituency includes scholars working in totally or partially French-speaking countries, as well as those who are interested in interacting with those or in working on authors writing in French. It is thus an international learned society, based in France. Our website provides a more detailed view of its goals and activities, such as the biennial congress, the Duhem Lectures and the yearly Young Scholars’ Prize:

http://www.sps-philoscience.org/

Postdoc positions: Cambridge

Two Postdoctoral Research Fellowships – GV11552

Salary: £25,854 or £27,427 – £29,099

The Faculty of Philosophy intends to appoint two Research Fellows, each for two years from 1st October 2012. The posts arise from the recent appointment of Professor Huw Price to the Bertrand Russell Chair of Philosophy. One of the positions will be in Philosophy of Physics and/or Foundations of Physics; this post has been created thanks to the generosity of the Isaac Newton Trust. For the second position, a research interest in pragmatic approaches to modality will be a strong advantage, and suitable candidates are likely to have a background in Pragmatism, Metaphysics, and/or Philosophy of Language.

Upcoming Talk: “On the Relationship between Spacetime Singularities, Holes, and Extensions”

I will be presenting some recent work at the next Southern California Philosophy of Physics Group meeting (Jan 14, 3:00pm, UC Irvine, SST 777).

Abstract: The Hawking-Penrose-Geroch singularity theorems tell us that (almost) all physically reasonable cosmological models are geodesically incomplete (i.e. they have “singularities”). On the other hand, a number of geodesically incomplete models seem to be artificial in various senses (e.g. they contain “holes” or have “extensions”). Two independent conditions — hole-freeness and inextendibility — serve to rule out some (but by no means all) of these seemingly artificial models. Here, I examine the relationship between these two conditions and the existence of singularities. First, I review what is known: geodesic completeness implies inextendibility. Next, I show that geodesic completeness also implies hole-freeness. (This answers a question posed by Geroch.) In addition, I introduce a simple intermediate condition — effective completeness — which is entailed by geodesic completeness and also entails both hole-freeness and inextendibility. Why might such a condition be of interest? It seems to be strong enough to rule out, in one fell swoop, both types of seemingly artificial models at issue here (and possibly other types as well) but weak enough to allow the more physically reasonable, geodesically incomplete models guaranteed by the singularity theorems. Finally, I show that under certain causality assumptions, there is a useful hierarchy of singularity types: geodesic completeness entails effective completeness which entails inextendibility which entails hole-freeness.