The First International Colloquium: ‘Emergence and Time’
The Catholic University of Portugal announces a call for papers for the First International Colloquium: ‘Emergence and Time,’ to be held at the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Portugal (Universidade Católica – Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais) in Braga, Portugal, July 3-5, 2023
Continue readingThe Working Group “Philosophy of Physics” (AGPhil) of the German Physical Society (DPG) invites submissions for its annual workshop. Contributions on any topic in philosophy of physics are welcome; the focus, however, will be on the foundations of quantum mechanics. The workshop takes place 20-24 March 2023 at the TU Dresden and will be part of the Annual Meeting of the DPG (https://smuk23.dpg-tagungen.de/index.html?set_language=en).
Continue readingFoundations 2023
The 21st European Conference on Foundations of Physics
https://foundations2023.wordpress.com/
8-10 July 2023, Bristol
Conference Announcement
The 21st European Conference on Foundations of Physics will take place on the Clifton Campus of the University of Bristol from the 8th to the 10th July 2023. This conference brings together philosophers of physics and physicists to discuss foundational and philosophical issues in physics in the tradition of the highly successful editions at Paris (2021), Utrecht (2018) and London (2016). Contributed talks, symposia and keynote lectures will cover various foundational and philosophical aspects of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, classical and quantum theories of gravity, thermal and statistical physics, astrophysics, cosmology and beyond.
Continue readingWe invite submissions for a workshop on Spacetime Functionalism held by the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. This conference will be held in person in Pittsburgh on April 1st-2nd 2023. Submissions should be directly relevant to the conference topic. You are welcome to submit EITHER an extended abstract of up to 1000 words, OR a paper. There is no word limit on the latter, but it should be suitable for presentation in 45 minutes.
The Center will cover accommodation costs for accepted papers, but participants will need to make their own travel arrangements.
Submissions should be emailed to spacetimefunctionalism@gmail.com by 5pm EST on Friday 23rd December.
For more information, please see the workshop website at https://www.centerphilsci.pitt.edu/event/spacetime-functionalism-conference/.
The workshop is part of The Gravitational Constant, from the Local to the Universal, an interdisciplinary collaborative project between St Andrews and the Lichtenberg Group for History and Philosophy of Physics, University of Bonn (https://www.gravconstant.net/ ). The project brings perspectives from transnational history, philosophy, mathematics and physics to bear on the question of how the constant, G, was transformed from a controversial innovation in the 1880s to an unquestioned fundamental constant of nature by 1915. The aim of the workshop is to explore the wider context and foster collaborations around emerging research questions.
Continue readingI am excited to report that the new open-access journal Philosophy of Physics is finally online and ready to receive submissions. The Philosophy of Physics Society, together with LSE Press who will be our publishing house, have launched the new journal today.
Thank you very much to everyone in the Governing Board and the Society who contributed to realizing our key initiative!
Special thanks go to David Wallace for having accepted to act as the journal’s founding Editor-in-Chief. Read his announcement on the LSE Press’s blog here.
Please consider submitting your best work to Philosophy of Physics. In order to do so, you should become a member of the Society. It’s free for students and unwaged people, £10 for postdocs, and £20 for others. Once you are a member, you will find instructions on how to submit a paper inside the members’ area, as explained here.
We are delighted to announce the Third Chilean Conference on the Philosophy of Physics. The conference will be hosted by the Philosophy Institute at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
It will be held in Santiago, between December 14 and 16, 2022.
Invited speakers: Elise Crull, Wayne Myrvold
We invite scholars to submit an abstract of 500-1000 words to phil.phys.chile.2022@gmail.com, before september 20. Notification of acceptance: october 1.
For any questions, please contact Professor Pablo Acuña: ptacuna@uc.cl / phil.phys.chile.2022@gmail.com
Website of the conference: https://philphyschile.wixsite.com/2022
Guest editors:
Michael Cuffaro (LMU Munich)
Stephan Hartmann (LMU Munich)
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 May 2023
Description:
Continue readingSubmission deadline: July 11, 2022
Aarhus, Denmark
November 23, 2022 – November 24, 2022
As part of Establishing the Nordic Network for Philosophy of Physics, we will host a workshop on Theoretical Virtues and Non-Empirical Guides in Scientific Theory-Development.
Theoretical virtues are desirable features of scientific theories, and may include principles such as consistency, simplicity, unification, and consilience/coherence—not all of which are directly related to empirical evidence. These principles play various roles in scientific theory development, including as heuristic, exploratory guides in scientific discovery, as indicators of pursuit-worthiness, or means of confirmation. But there are also other non-empirical features used in these roles that are not typically classified as theoretical virtues, such as analogy and thought experiment.
Continue readingA session organized by the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism (Texas Tech University) to be held at the Central Division APA Meeting in
Denver, 22-25 February 2023
The various recent approaches to quantum worlds appear to be reaching a consensus: that spacetime is quantized, relational, and emergent out of a fundamentally new, pre-geometric order that exists “before” and “below.” Conventional reality, then, emerges as an explicate order from more fundamental, relational pre-geometric and pre-quantum implicate order(s), which exist beyond conventional science and philosophy. This pre-geometric implicate order has the potential to answer the two most fundamental questions in all of the philosophia naturalis: what is the origin of spacetime and the fields within it, and ultimately, why is there something rather than nothing? Hence, the sub-Planckian order promises profound consequences, not just for foundational (meta)physics, but also for cosmic evolution in quantum cosmology and human knowledge of it.
Continue readingA blog on (all of) philosophy of physics run by Christian Wüthrich (wuthrich), with contributions by John Manchak (manchak) and Chris Smeenk (smeenk).
(Photograph by Jonathan Cohen)
Taking up Spacetime 