The Department’s colloquium series typically meets on Thursdays in the Seminar Room at Gateway Transit Building, 106 Somerset Street, 5th Floor at 3:00 p.m. Please see the Department Calendar for scheduled speakers and more details.
- 01/08 – 01/11 Eastern APA, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- 02/13 Mesthene Lecture-Prof. Jennifer Saul (Sheffield)
- 02/26 Jay Garfield, 3:00-5:00 pm
- 02/26 – 02/29 Central APA, Chicago, Illinois
- 02/27 Break It Down Lecture, José Eduardo Porcher, “Delusion”
- 03/26 Sanders Lecture, Kris McDaniel (Syracuse), TBD
- 04/08 – 04/11 Pacific APA, San Francisco, California
- 04/10 – 04/11 Alec Walen & Doug Husak Conference, location TBD
- 04/16 Class of 1970’s Lecture presents Prof. Susan Neiman (Potsdam) Alexander Teleconf. Lecture Hall, 4:30-7:30 pm
- 04/17 5th Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (Zimmerman) 8:00 am-5:00 pm, Brower Commons Conference Rooms A & B, 145 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
- 04/23 Workshop on Laws (Loewer) 1:00-6:00 pm
- 04/24 Workshop on Laws (Loewer) 9:00 am-6:00 pm
- 04/25 Rutgers Day; No events to be scheduled on this date
- 04/30 Shamik Dasgupta (UC Berkeley) TBA
- 05/07 Climate Lecture, Prof. Myisha Cherry (UC Riverside) 05:30 – 07:30 pm
The Department’s colloquium series typically meets on Thursdays in the Seminar Room at Gateway Transit Building, 106 Somerset Street, 5th Floor at 3:00 p.m. Please see the Department Calendar for scheduled speakers and more details. Please note: All events are virtual until otherwise stated.
Abstract: The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter and non-Humeans who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction of time in the universe. In this paper, we propose a minimal primitivism about laws of nature (MinP) according to which there is no such requirement. On our view, laws govern by constraining the physical possibilities. Our view captures the essence of the governing view without taking on extraneous commitments about the direction of time or dynamic production. Moreover, as a version of primitivism, our view requires no reduction / analysis of laws in terms of universals, powers, or dispositions. Our view accommodates several potential candidates for fundamental laws, including the principle of least action, the Past Hypothesis, the Einstein equation of general relativity, and even controversial examples found in the Wheeler-Feynman theory of electrodynamics and retro-causal theories of quantum mechanics. By understanding governing as constraining, non-Humeans who accept MinP have the same freedom to contemplate a wide variety of candidate fundamental laws as Humeans do.
The talk will take place over Zoom. I will send out the Zoom link closer to the meeting.
Please note: All events are virtual until otherwise stated.
Please note: All events are virtual until otherwise stated.
Please note: All events are virtual until otherwise stated.
Please note: All events are virtual until otherwise stated.
Class of 1970’s Lecture-Prof. Susan Neiman
Thursday, March 24, 2022, 04:30pm – 06:30pm