Calendar – Blog of Noah Greenstein

Foundations of Physics Workshop, In Celebration of David Albert’s Birthday @ Columbia U Hamilton Hall 717

Nov 15 – Nov 16 all-day

David Albert’s work has been of seminal importance to the foundations of physics, exerting central influence on the direction the field and laying foundations for much of its ongoing development. In celebration of David’s many past and continuing contributions, we will be hosting a conference at Columbia University on the foundations of physics. We expect talks on a range of topics, including the foundations of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, the possible emergence of space and time, the metaphysics of science, and the nature of agency.

Confirmed Speakers

Jeff Barrett (UC Irvine)

Gordon Belot (Michigan)

Craig Callender (UC San Diego)

Sean Carroll (Caltech)

Eddy Chen (UC San Diego)

Sidney Felder (Rutgers)

Alison Fernandes (Dublin)

Shelly Goldstein (Rutgers)

Ned Hall (Harvard)

Barry Loewer (Rutgers)

Tim Maudlin (NYU)

Michael Miller (Toronto)

Alyssa Ney (UC Davis)

Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv)

David Wallace (Pittsburgh)

Nino Zanghi (Genoa)

Organizing Committee

Alison Fernandes (alison.fernandes@tcd.ie)

Michael Miller (mike.miller@utoronto.ca)

Porter Williams (porterwi@usc.edu)

.

The conference is open to the public. Please direct any questions to Porter Williams (porterwi@usc.edu).

Friday, November 15

8:45 am: Breakfast

9:30 am: Jeff Barrett (UC Irvine): Quantum Randomness and Empirical Underdetermination

10:15 am: Shelly Goldstein (Rutgers): Typicality, Humean Probability, and the Mentaculus

11:00: Coffee Break

11:20 am: Craig Callender (UC San Diego): No Time for Time from No-Time

12:05 pm: Alyssa Ney (UC Davis): WFR or QFT?

12:50: Lunch

2:20 pm: Gordon Belot (Michigan): The Mach-Einstein Principle of 1917-1918

3:05 pm: Sean Carroll (Caltech): The Mentaculus as a Causal Network

3:50: Coffee Break

4:10 pm: David Wallace (Pittsburgh): TBA

4:55 pm: Ned Hall (Harvard): Respectful Deflationism

5:45 pm: Adjourn

Saturday, November 16

8:45 am: Breakfast

9:30 am: Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv): The many-worlds interpretation and the Born rule

10:15 am: Eddy Chen (UC San Diego): Nomic Vagueness

11:00: Coffee Break

11:20 am: Michael Miller (Toronto): Infrared Cancellation and Measurement

12:05 pm: Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin): The Direction of Records

12:50: Lunch

2:20 pm: Sidney Felder (Rutgers): Gödel’s Rotating Solutions, Bilking, and Natural Laws

3:05 pm: Nino Zanghi (INFN Genova): TBA

3:50: Coffee Break

4:10 pm: Tim Maudlin (NYU): S = k ln(B(W)): Boltzmann entropy, the Second Law, and the Architecture of Hell

4:55 pm: Barry Loewer (Rutgers): The Consequence Argument Meets the Mentaculus

5:45 pm: Adjourn

Categories: Columbia U Tags: conference physics science

Mar

29

Wed

The Paris School of Jewish Thought: An Intellectual, Philosophical, and Spiritual Renewal in the Wake of the Holocaust @ Maison Française East Gallery

Tickets

Mar 29 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

In France, during the decades that followed World War II and the Shoah, an impressive attempt was made to rebuild Jewish life and thought, and to invent new ways of being Jewish in the post-Holocaust secular world. Known as the Paris School of Jewish Thought, this collective enterprise gathered an incredible variety of Jewish scholars, rabbis, philosophers, scientists, and writers, both religious and secular, from a wide range of backgrounds. This talk sheds light on the major role played by these thinkers who addressed political, philosophical, and spiritual challenges that remain relevant today.

Sophie Nordmann teaches Philosophy, Ethics, and Jewish Thought in the Department of Religious Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris (PSL University). A specialist of modern and contemporary Jewish thought, her early work focused on Judeo-German Philosophy in 20th century Europe (H. Cohen, F. Rosenzweig, M. Buber) and its extension in the United States and Israel. Among her current projects, Dr. Nordmann studies how post WWII France became a laboratory for Jewish thinkers who undertook to rethink the modern Jewish condition after the Shoah.

This talk is co-presented by the Columbia Maison Française and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, and sponsored by the Knapp Family Foundation.

Categories: Columbia U Tags: French Jewish

May

5

Fri

Speak, Memory: Dignāga, Consciousness, and Awareness. Nicholas Silins (Cornell) @ Faculty House, Columbia U

Tickets

May 5 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

When someone is in a conscious state, must they be aware of that state? The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga offers a brilliant route to answering this question by leveraging the role awareness might play as a constraint on memory. I begin by clarifying his strategy and what conclusions it might be used to establish. Here I examine different candidate directions of explanation between consciousness and inner awareness. I interpret the metaphor of consciousness as a lamp that lights itself, and use the metaphor to distinguish between his view and contemporary higher-order theories of consciousness. I then turn to explain why the memory argument fails. The first main problem is that, contrary to Dignāga’s contemporary defenders, there is no good way to use the argument to reach a conclusion about all conscious states. The second main problem is that the proposed awareness constraint on memory is highly problematic, in tension both with ancient objections as well as current psychology.

With responses from Lu Teng (NYU Shanghai)