MCMP – Philosophy of Physics

About MCMP – Philosophy of Physics

Mathematical Philosophy - the application of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy - is about to experience a tremendous boom in various areas of philosophy. At the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which is funded mostly by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, philosophical research will be carried out mathematically, that is, by means of methods that are very close to those used by the scientists. The purpose of doing philosophy in this way is not to reduce philosophy to mathematics or to natural science in any sense; rather mathematics is applied in order to derive philosophical conclusions from philosophical assumptions, just as in physics mathematical methods are used to derive physical predictions from physical laws. Nor is the idea of mathematical philosophy to dismiss any of the ancient questions of philosophy as irrelevant or senseless: although modern mathematical philosophy owes a lot to the heritage of the Vienna and Berlin Circles of Logical Empiricism, unlike the Logical Empiricists most mathematical philosophers today are driven by the same traditional questions about truth, knowledge, rationality, the nature of objects, morality, and the like, which were driving the classical philosophers, and no area of traditional philosophy is taken to be intrinsically misguided or confused anymore. It is just that some of the traditional questions of philosophy can be made much clearer and much more precise in logical-mathematical terms, for some of these questions answers can be given by means of mathematical proofs or models, and on this basis new and more concrete philosophical questions emerge. This may then lead to philosophical progress, and ultimately that is the goal of the Center.

Publisher

MCMP Team

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

9 Oct 2013

Latest episode

18 Apr 2019

Latest episodes

65 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   18 Apr 2019

   Shape Dynamics

   Tim A. Koslowski (New Brunswick) gives a talk at the Mini-Workshop on the Foundations of Shape Dynamics (23 June, 2014) titled "Shape Dynamics". Abstract: Based on the introduction to shape dynamics by Sean Gryb, I will discuss the question: "Given that gravity (from the perspective of shape dynamics) is fundamentally the evolution of spatial conformal geometry and not spacetime: How is the arrow of time generated? How is the illusion of a spacetime generated? What are the limitations of the spacetime description? I will give explicit answers to several aspect of these questions and I will explain where the uncharted territory begins.

2. 

   18 Apr 2019

   Bohmian Mechanics, speakable quantum physics

   Detlef Dürr (LMU) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (23 January, 2013) titled "Bohmian Mechanics, speakable quantum physics". Abstract: I introduce Bohmian Mechanics, which is a theory of particles in motion. The law of motion is not classical, i.e. the particles do not move on Newtonian trajectories. As this is often not appreciated I shall discuss some features which will help to sharpen one's intuition about this theory of nature.

3. 

   18 Apr 2019

   Quantisation as a guide to ontic structure

   Karim Thébault (MCMP/LMU) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (9 January, 2013) titled "Quantisation as a guide to ontic structure". Abstract: The ontic structural realist stance is motivated by a desire to do philosophical justice to the success of science, whilst withstanding the metaphysical undermining generated by the various species of ontological underdetermination. We are, however, as yet in want of general principles to provide a scaffold for the explicit construction of structural ontologies. Here we will attempt to bridge this gap by utilising the formal procedure of quantisation as a guide to ontic structure of modern physical theory. The example of non-relativistic particle mechanics will be considered and, for that case, it will be argued that, modulo certain mathematical ambiguities, a consistent candidate structural ontology can be established.

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