Inflationary cosmology’s account for the emergence of the seeds of structure in the universe out of primordial quantum fluctuations is empirically successful as far as the so called scalar modes is concerned, but not so regarding the tensor modes. On the other hand, the usual account has some serious conceptual problems, connected to the quantum macro-objectification question. In the search for an approach to resolve the latter, we find substantially modified predictions (with respect to the standard ones) for one of the observables, specifically the estimates for the amplitude and shape of the spectrum primordial gravity waves. This is an interesting example, where considerations that might have initially thought to be “just of philosophical interest” actually led to novel and (so far better) predictions for empirical facts.
There will be at least three MAPS talks this semester (I am still waiting to hear back regarding a fourth). The preliminary schedule below should convey a sense of the basic plan.
A number of invited speakers asked to visit in Spring 2019 or Fall 2019 instead of this fall. In case you are interested, I list those future speakers below.
Best,
Isaac
Upcoming Talks
==============================
Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY)
Details: 4:30-6:30pm Tuesday Oct 16; 5307 CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave.).
Title: The variety of scientism and the limits of science
Abstract: Science is by far the most powerful approach to the investigation of the natural world ever devised. Still, it has limits, and there are many areas and questions where the scientific approach is ill suited, or at best provides only pertinent information rather than full answers. The denial of this modest attitude about science is called scientism, which declares science to be the only form of human knowledge and understanding, attempting to subsume everything else, including all the humanistic disciplines, into “science” very broadly (mis-)construed. In this talk, I argue that this is a mistake, and that it moreover has the potential to undermine public trust in science itself.
==============================
Mario Hubert (Columbia)
Details: 4:30-6:30pm Tuesday Nov20; location TBD.
Title: When Fields Are Not Degrees of Freedom (joint work with Vera Hartenstein).
Abstract: We show that in the Maxwell–Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon suggests that the Maxwell equations and the Lorentz force law ought rather to be read as a system of delay differential equations, that is, differential equations that relate a function and its derivatives at different times. This mathematical reformulation, however, leads to physical and philosophical consequences for the ontological status of the electromagnetic field. In particular, fields cannot be taken as independent degrees of freedom, which suggests that one should not add them to the ontology.
==============================
Spring 2019
===============================================================
Nina Emery (Mount Holyoke)
===============================================================
===============================================================
Fall 2019
===============================================================
Quayshawn Spencer (UPenn)
A panel discussion of Critical Theories and the Budapest School, edited by Jonathan Pickle and John Rundell.
Moderator:Dimitri Nikulin
Panelists: Andrew Arato, Richard J. Bernstein, Jonathan Pickle, and Agnes Heller
Presented by The New School for Social Research.
Loewer distinguishes two approaches to laws and time: Humean accounts, which deny primitive modality and explain temporal asymmetries in scientific terms, and non-Humean accounts that take temporal asymmetry and modality to be metaphysically fundamental. I’ll argue that Loewer neglects an important third approach: deny metaphysical claims about fundamentality, and explain temporal asymmetries as well as the function of modal entities in scientific terms. This pragmatist approach provides a clear ontology to science, and, and unlike the other two accounts, doesn’t use metaphysics in place of scientific explanation.
There will be dinner after the talk. If you are interested, please send an email with “Dinner” in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email isaac.wilhelm@rutgers.edu.
What we are hoping for is a free, open, wide-ranging and informal conversation about a number of topics that people have lately been thinking more and more about – and that seem likely to play increasingly central roles, over the next several years, in the foundations of physics. These include questions of the emergence/fundamentality of space and time, the philosophical analysis and scientific role of chance, the relationship between physics and agency, and the possibility, desirability and scientific appropriateness of a complete and fundamental theory of nature.
Location: Pupin Hall Theory Center (8th floor), Columbia University.
Directions: Pupin Hall is located at the northwest end of the campus, in between the Northwest Corner building and Schapiro (south side of 120th Street). The Center for Theoretical Physics is located on the left once you arrive on the 8th floor in Pupin Hall.
RSVP: Please send an email to sr3109@columbia.edu if you would like to attend.
Workshop schedule:
Friday October 26, First Session: “Questions of chance”
– 10:00 – 11.15: Lay-of-the-land talk by Barry Loewer (Rutgers): “The metaphysics of laws and chance in physics”
– 11.15 – 11.30: Break
– 11.30 – 1:00: Panel with Jeff Barrett (UCI), Sean Carroll (Caltech), Mario Hubert (Columbia) and Charles Sebens (UCSD)
– 1:00 – 1:30: General Discussion
– 1:30 – 3:00: Lunch in Columbia area
Friday October 26, Second Session: “Physics and agency”
– 3:00- 4:15: Lay-of-the-land talk by Jenann Ismael (Columbia): “Physics and agency: the missing piece of the puzzle”
– 4:15 – 4:30: Break
– 4:30 – 6:00: Panel with David Albert (Columbia), Thomas Blanchard (IWU), Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin) and Michael Strevens (NYU).
– 6:00 – 6:30: General Discussion
– 7:00: Conference Dinner
Saturday October 27, First Session: “The future of space and time”
– 10:00 – 11.15: Lay-of-the-land talk by Carlo Rovelli (Aix-Marseille): “Do we all mean the same, when we say ‘space’ and ‘time’?”
– 11.15 – 11.30: Break
– 11.30 – 1:00: Panel with Gordon Belot (Michigan), Sean Carroll (Caltech), Nick Huggett (UIC) and Jill North (Rutgers)
– 1:00 – 1:30: General Discussion
– 1:30 – 3:00: Lunch in Columbia area
Saturday October 27, Second Session: “Fundamentality and the ultimate aspirations of physics”
– 3:00- 4:15: Lay-of-the-land talk by Kerry McKenzie (UCSD): “Delusions of a final theory: the problem of progress in physics and metaphysics”
– 4:15 – 4:30: Break
– 4:30 – 6:00: Panel with David Albert (Columbia), Michael Miller (Toronto), Rachel Rosen (Columbia) and Porter Williams (USC)
– 6:00 – 6:30: General Discussion
Sponsor: The event is jointly organized by the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Physics at Columbia University, in association with the MA programme in the Philosophical Foundations of Physics. We would like in particular to acknowledge the generous and invaluable support both to the MA programme and to the workshop from Guerman Aliev.
I introduce a sequence which I call indefinite: a sequence every element of which has a successor but whose number of elements is bounded; this is no contradiction. I then consider the possibility of space and time being indefinitely divisible. This is theoretically possible and agrees with experience. If this is space and time’s structure, then even if the laws of nature are deterministic, the behaviour of physical systems will be probabilistic. This approach might also shed light on directionality in time and other physical phenomena.
There will be dinner after the talk. If you are interested, please send an email with “Dinner” in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email isaac.wilhelm@rutgers.edu.
Upcoming Talks
Mario Hubert (Columbia)
4:30-6:30pm Wednesday Nov 28; location TBD.
Title: When Fields Are Not Degrees of Freedom (joint work with Vera Hartenstein).
Abstract: We show that in the Maxwell–Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon suggests that the Maxwell equations and the Lorentz force law ought rather to be read as a system of delay differential equations, that is, differential equations that relate a function and its derivatives at different times. This mathematical reformulation, however, leads to physical and philosophical consequences for the ontological status of the electromagnetic field. In particular, fields cannot be taken as independent degrees of freedom, which suggests that one should not add them to the ontology.
We show that in the Maxwell–Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon suggests that the Maxwell equations and the Lorentz force law ought rather to be read as a system of delay differential equations, that is, differential equations that relate a function and its derivatives at different times. This mathematical reformulation, however, leads to physical and philosophical consequences for the ontological status of the electromagnetic field. In particular, fields cannot be taken as independent degrees of freedom, which suggests that one should not add them to the ontology.
(joint work with Vera Hartenstein)
There will be dinner after the talk. If you are interested, please send an email with “Dinner” in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email isaac.wilhelm@rutgers.edu.
MAPS is supported by Rutgers, Columbia, NYU, and most recently, a generous gift from member Dan Pinkel.
I argue that we do not understand gauge theory as well as we think we do, when boundaries are present. I will briefly explain the conceptual and technical issues that arise at the boundary. I will then propose a tentative resolution, which requires us to think of theories not in space-time, but in field-space.
Motivated by considerations from relativity theory, philosophers have recently contended that talk about an object’s existence in time should not be taken as fundamental, but rather analysed in the language of a formal theory of location in spacetime. This suggestion has important consequences for the debate about persistence: how do ordinary objects exist at different times? It has triggered a program of recovery whereby the main views from the classical debate, previously expressed using the language of temporal mereology, have been redefined in a locational framework. In this paper, I extend this program to the stage theory of persistence, the view according to which objects are instantaneous three-dimensional stages which exist at different times by virtue of having counterparts at these times. I offer a new characterization of the view, the first in a purely locational language, and argue that this locational approach helps dissolve confusions about the view.
The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 in room TBD of the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 5th Avenue). The (provisional) schedule is as follows:
Feb 4. Melvin Fitting, CUNY
Feb 11. Benjamin Neeser, Geneva
Feb 18. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING
Feb 25. Achille Varzi, Columbia
Mar 4. Eric Bayruns Garcia, CUNY
Mar 11. Romina Padro, CUNY
Mar 18. Jeremy Goodman, USC
Mar 25. Kit Fine, NYU
Apr 1. Elena Ficara, Paderborn
Apr 8. Chris Scambler, NYU
Apr 15. Jenn McDonald, CUNY
Apr 22. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING
Apr 29. Tommy Kivatinos, CUNY
May 6. Daniel Durante, Natal
May 13. Martina Botti, Columbia
May 20. Vincent Peluce, CUNY
Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute will jointly present the conference “Political Theology Today as Critical Theory of the Contemporary: Reason, Religion, Humanism,” to be held at Deutsches Haus at NYU, from February 15-17. Reverend Eugene F. Rivers III will deliver one of the keynote speeches. For a detailed conference schedule, please click here.
Across the globe the liberal logic of capitalism and technocracy has seemingly triumphed, and with it a culture of secularism, now the dominant ideology of the liberal establishment that prefers progress to tradition, an individualized identity to a sense of shared belonging, and free choice to common purpose. As much as this regime has produced wealth, it has also generated inequality and dissatisfaction. The populist insurgency that is sweeping the West is in large part a repudiation of this secular politics, opening the space for a post-liberal political theology. A resurgence of religion is underway that marks the failure of the secularization thesis and the need for alternative cultural resources, beyond positivism, to understand the place of humanity within the cosmos. Is this our new “Great Awakening”?
Amid the crisis of rationalism, critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas have sought to rescue the project of a reasonable humanism from the twin threats of religious fundamentalism and secular naturalism. Yet Habermas’s conception of postsecularity remains residually secularist because he does not permit faith to make any substantive or critical contribution to public discussion that could undermine the primacy of formal, procedural reason. In response Pope Emeritus Benedict invoked Adorno and Horkheimer’s dialectic of enlightenment because the slogan “reason alone” leads to the dissolution of reason—to the conclusion that only will and power have any reality. The only way to avoid this outcome is to recall—so Benedict’s argument in his much-commented but poorly understood 2006 Regensburg address—that the West’s commitment to humanist reason is grounded in the classical and Christian idea that human rationality participates in the infinite reason of transcendence. Otherwise the rational is but the illusion of our own and of nature’s will to power.
The 2019 Telos Conference will discuss the role of political theology as critical theory of the contemporary: the reappearance of faith in civic life. The focus will not be on intellectual history but rather on how faith is reshaping politics and culture today.
Please note: Sessions taking place at Deutsches Haus at NYU will be open to the general public. Attendance for break-out sessions will be limited to conference participants who have registered with the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute only. Events at Deutsches Haus are free and open to the public. If you would like to attend this event, please send an email to deutscheshaus.rsvp@nyu.edu. As space at Deutsches Haus is limited, please arrive ten minutes prior to the event to ensure you get a good seat. Thank you!
Physicists and philosophers question the validity of one of the most observed and seemingly obvious appearance in our world: that time flows. Many in the physics and philosophy communities contend that the flow of time is not a fundamental feature of the world, nor even a fact of the world, but is an illusion. As a case in point, we will consider Brian Greene’s view of time in his PBS exposition “The Elegant Universe” holding that time may not flow, the past may not be gone, the future may already exist, and that now is not special. Most people, as observers of time’s passage, might agree with the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who expressed the idea that all is change and that change occurs with the flow of time. I will explore some of the motivation and reasons given for these positions and contrast the arguments made for each viewpoint.
The schedule: a short presentation on topic of 3-D Printing, and then Stuart’s presentation for about 1 hr. plus time for questions. It is necessary to register beforehand to be admitted.
CV: Stuart Kurtz graduated from MIT with an SB in Chemical Engineering and from Princeton with an MS degree in Polymer Engineering and an MA and PhD. in Chemical Engineering. He taught at RPI and in Brazil as Professor Titular in Materials Engineering. This was followed by a research career in industry accumulating around 30 patents and publishing at least a few good papers. He now focuses on Philosophy of Science and Physics and climbing mountains because they are there. He has spoken to the Lyceum Society many times; most recently in January, 2018 he spoke on the topic: Lessons from Science Lysenko, Velikovsky and the Demarcation Problem; In February, 2018 he spoke on Geoengineering for Climate Change Mitigation. In December, 2018 he reviewed the Nobel Prize in Physics for that year.