[PhilPhys] Sigma Club at LSE - summer term events

[R.P.Frigg at lse.ac.uk]

Summer Term Events

May 17, 5.15-6.45

Adam Caulton 

University of Cambridge	

Weak Discernibility, But of What? 

The purpose of my talk is to tie up some loose ends in the current debate about the discernibility of “indistinguishable” quantum particles, and to make the case for a reorientation of the debate along lines which do away altogether with the usual way of talking about particles in quantum mechanics.
I make some criticisms of, and suggest some modifications to, the recent work by Saunders, Muller and Seevinck, which aims to show that all elementary particles – including fermions and bosons – are always weakly discernible. I show that their claim can be made to hold good, so long as we help ourselves to the Born rule. However, I will also make some rather deeper criticisms of their approach, in which a single particle's state is wrongly associated with a reduced density operator. I conclude with the assurance that, notwithstanding these criticisms, the weak discernibility claim is preserved.


May 24, 5.15-6.45

Michael Redhead

London School of Economics

The Gödel Argument and EPR Relativity Argument

Michael Redhead will present parts of his new book (with Sam Groom) entitled “God, Belief and Explanation”. (a) The Gödel Argument: Dan Dennett has argued that the Lucas – Penrose argument for the ineffability of human thought is incorrect. A new version of Gödel is presented with a simplified version of the original argument. (b) The Relativity EPR Argument: A review of the Ghirardi-Grassi argument is presented. This shows a lack of cogency. The argument is analysed afresh, and its limitations are exposed.



June 14, 5.15-6.46

Alexei Grinbaum

Ecole Polytechnique (Paris)

Understanding Quantum Mechanics via Information-Theoretic Reconstructions

After having reviewed the reconstruction program and well-known results in information-theoretic reconstructions, we shall discuss a new reconstruction of quantum mechanics using recent arguments based on quantum entropies.


June 28, 5.15-6.46

Thomas Prellberg

School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London

http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~tp

The Mathematics of the Casimir Effect

60 years ago Henrik Casimir predicted that quantum fluctuations give rise to an 
attractive interaction between two parallel plates in a vacuum. Early experiments 
have produced results which were ``not  inconsistent'' with the theoretical 
predictions, and only over the last decade has experimental accuracy increased to 
an extent as to verify the effect of quantum fluctuations in a quantitative way.

After a brief review of the basics of the Casimir effect, I will focus in this talk on some strange mathematics underlying this effect. In particular, I will explain why it makes sense to write 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... = -1/12.


For further information visit: 
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/CPNSS/events/SigmaClub/Home.aspx




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