The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Current Status and Relation to Other Interpretations

Research workshop of the Israeli Science Foundation.

Hosted by QuanTAU, Quantum Science and Technology Center Tel-Aviv University

18-24 October 2022

https://www.mwi2022tau.com/

Submission deadline: June 18th

The MWI solves the measurement problem, avoids action at a distance and indeterminism and does not contradict empirical evidence. Why, then, it is not in the consensus? 

The workshop will  aim to promote the ongoing debate on the foundations of quantum mechanics by dealing with the major open questions regarding the MWI, together with objections and alternatives.

Submission includes a short abstract and an optional extended abstract/preprint/published paper. All submissions should be submitted through the submission form by June 18th, but please submit as early as possible and your submission will be favored. 

The format of the workshop is not fixed yet and will depend on submitted contributions, COVID-19 restrictions, etc. Please visit the workshop website for more details. For questions please contact mwiconference2022@gmail.com. 

CFA: History, Philosophy and Sociology of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Conference

Submission deadline: 21 March 2022

Event details: Bonn, Germany, 29-30 June 2022 with pre-event on 28 June at 16:15.

Website: https://www.lhc-epistemologie.uni-wuppertal.de/events/hps-cap.html

The DFG-funded research unit Epistemology of the LHC is organising a two-day conference on the history, philosophy and sociology of cosmology and astroparticle physics. This event follows up on the 2019 conference in Aachen on dark matter & modified gravity, a special journal issue on the same topic, and the 2021 online workshop on the philosophy of dark matter. The conference will take place on the 29^th and 30^th of June 2022 in Bonn, Germany. Philosophers, physicists, historians, sociologists and other interested scholars are invited to attend.

2nd CFA: ‘Cosmology Beyond Spacetime’ Summer Institute, 26 June – 1 July 2022

2nd Call for Applications:

International Summer Institute in Philosophy of Physics on the PHILOSOPHY OF COSMOLOGY and the PHILOSOPHY OF QUANTUM GRAVITY

Hosted by the University of Geneva-University of Illinois at Chicago Cosmology Beyond Spacetime project

Hotel Le Crêt, Morzine, France 

26 June – 2 July 2022

Further information, when available, at http://beyondspacetime.net/2022summerinstitute/.

In recent years, the philosophy of quantum gravity and the philosophy of cosmology have emerged as new fields in their own right, with several summer schools dedicated to each. However, they remain largely unconnected, even though their intersection promises new scientific insights of great significance to philosophical question and the advancement of physics. This Summer Institute proposes to address conceptual, metaphysical, and epistemological implications of big bang, black hole, and multiverse models in quantum gravity: the fundamental nature of space and time, especially the beginning of spacetime, ‘before’ time or ‘outside’ space; the multiverse; the nature of physical law; and how we might have knowledge of such things.

These are just some of the questions that we will discuss in this Summer Institute, which addresses graduate students and postdocs from philosophy of physics and related fields.

Faculty:

Call for Abstracts: “Quantum Epistemology Beyond Quantum Measurement”

Call for Abstracts: “Quantum Epistemology Beyond Quantum Measurement” (QEBQM)

Early Career Summer Seminar Retreat

August 17 to 21, 2022

Description

Recent work on the interconnections between formal epistemology and foundations of quantum mechanics has prompted exciting developments on important philosophical questions. For example:

• Are there objective probabilities in quantum theories? If so, what grounds them?
• Might all the probabilities in quantum theory be subjective, the partial beliefs of an agent?
• Are there compelling justifications for partial beliefs about quantum systems that do not depend on a particular solution to the measurement problem?
• What implications does quantum theory have for the belief structure of rational agents and vice versa?

This retreat gathers early-career scholars working on these or closely related questions.

Call for Abstracts: Philosophy of Physics Group of the German Physical Society

CALL FOR PAPERS (Online Conference, Deadline: 21 January 2021)

Call for abstracts for the annual conference of the Philosophy of Physics Group of the German Physical Society, 21-25 March 2022.

The Philosophy of Physics Group (AGPhil) of the German Physical Society (DPG) invites submissions for its annual conference which will take place within the framework of the annual conference of the DPG. Contributions on any topic in the philosophy of physics are welcome. A particular focus in this year will be the philosophical analysis of gravitational wave and black hole physics, and we particularly encourage submissions on this topic.

Western: Philosophy of Logic, Mathematics, and Physics (LMP) Graduate Conference

The 21^st annual Philosophy of Logic, Mathematics, and Physics Graduate Conference will take place on June 23-24, 2022. We are pleased to announce that Craig Callender (University of California, San Diego) will be giving the keynote address. 

Call for Papers:
Graduate students who have not yet defended their PhD thesis are invited to submit papers on any topic in philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of physics. Papers in philosophy of physics will be considered for the Annual Clifton Memorial book prize. The contest will be adjudicated by philosophy of physics faculty members at Western. 

CFP: Workshop on The Role of Theory Confirmation in Science, Stockholm, 5-7 May 2022

There are two ways of viewing theory confirmation. At a formal level, a theory is taken to be confirmed when collected data agrees with the theory’s predictions. At a pragmatic level, confirmation provides the basis for scientists’ confidence that the confirmed theory provides a viable representation of a set of phenomena and its so far untested predictions in the given context are true. Though the two roles of confirmation are of course related, the precise connection between them is non-trivial. The workshop focuses on the trust-generating role of confirmation with the aim of shedding light on the stated connection. Specific questions to be addressed will include: what are the criteria that turn evidence into empirical confirmation? In which way and to what extent do non-empirical considerations play a role in assessing a theory? What is the role of non-epistemic considerations in theory assessment? To what extent and in which ways does the notion of theory confirmation depend on the research field? The workshop aims to compare perspectives from various scientific disciplines.

CfA: Edited volume in Philosophy of Astrophysics

While cosmology has long attracted attention from philosophers, the rise of philosophy of astrophysics as a distinctive focus of research is relatively new. To be sure, since the 1980s, there has been sporadic attention to astrophysics, but the field has really started to stir in the last decade or so, and now seems to have properly fledged. Work in philosophy of astrophysics has provided substantive contributions to the literature on modeling, simulations, experiments, and natural kinds. This edited volume will, for the first time, collect together a representative sample of work in philosophy of astrophysics.

Submission guidelines

Call for abstracts for the Online-Workshop “Metaphysics of Physics”, 30 August – 3 September 2021 (Deadline: 8 July 2021)

The Working Group “Philosophy of Physics” (AGPhil) of the German Physical Society (DPG) invites submissions for its annual workshop at the virtual DPG conference, organized by Jena. Contributions on any topic in the philosophy of physics are welcome. The workshop takes place 30 August – 3 September 2021 as an online event (https://smuk21.dpg-tagungen.de/). As part of this event, the AGPhil organizes a small workshop on the “Metaphysics of Physics”. Contributions in this area are especially welcome.

Confirmed speakers

Karen Crowther (Oslo)
Matt Farr (Cambridge)
Kerry McKenzie (UC San Diego)
Christopher Timpson (Oxford)
Alastair Wilson (Birmingham)

CFA: ‘Cosmology Beyond Spacetime’ Summer Institute, 27 June – 2 July 2021

Call for Applications:

International Summer Institute in Philosophy of Physics on the PHILOSOPHY OF COSMOLOGY and the PHILOSOPHY OF QUANTUM GRAVITY

Hosted by the University of Geneva-University of Illinois at Chicago Cosmology Beyond Spacetime project

Hotel Le Crêt, Morzine, France
27 June – 2 July 2021

Further information, when available, at http://beyondspacetime.net/2021summerinstitute/.