[PhilPhys] Next Week - Lunch Time Talks - 3/26 Jacob Barandes and Nick Huggett 3/29

[Center for Phil Sci]

The Center for Philosophy of Science invites you to join us for our Lunch Time Talks.  Attend in person, Room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh or visit our live stream on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.
LTT: Jacob Barandes
Tuesday, March 26 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT


Title: On Causal Locality in a Deflationary Account of Quantum Theory


Abstract: Quantum theory can be reformulated in terms of old-fashioned configuration spaces and ‘indivisible’ stochastic laws, without a fundamental role for Hilbert spaces, wave functions, density matrices, or even the complex numbers. After reviewing this axiomatically simpler and more transparent formulation, I will argue that it does not suffer from some of the major foundational problems of textbook quantum theory, like the measurement problem, and that it deflates various exotic claims about superposition, interference, and entanglement. I will also use this new formulation to introduce a microphysical definition of causal influences, which can be used to exploit loopholes in the existing no-go theorems, including Bell’s theorem, with potentially significant consequences for causal locality.


 This talk will also be available live streamed on:  Zoom https://pitt.zoom.us/j/99341013372

LTT: Nick Huggett
Friday, March 29 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT


Title: The Physics of Memory


Abstract:  Much of the mystery of time arises from the asymmetry of past versus future: not only asymmetries themselves, such as the apparent ‘openness’ of the future and ‘settledness’ of the past, but the ‘passage’ of time – ‘turning’ open future into settled past. In turn, much of the difference between open and settled lies in the knowledge asymmetry: that we know so much more, so much better, about the past than future. In Time and Chance David Albert proposes that the asymmetry arises because knowable particular matters of fact are just those made likely by physical law, given uniform probability over states compatible with the ‘current surveyable condition’ and an asymmetric ‘Past Hypothesis’. This paper presents an ‘Information Gathering and Utilizing System’ as a model of memory, in order to better understand the physical nature of the asymmetry. I will argue that we can in fact know more about the past than Albert’s condition allows.

Based on my paper, “Reading the Past in the Present”, in Loewer, Weslake, and Winsberg (ends) The Probability Map of the Universe.



This talk will also be available live streamed on:  Zoom at https://pitt.zoom.us/j/91212860150.



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