18 September - 12-14, L208 (Landolt), co-taught by Marcel Weber and Chistian Wüthrich: Truth in Science
It its widely assumed that science aims at truth and is sometimes successful in this quest. Time and again, philosophers, historians and sociologists of science have called these assumptions into question. In this seminar, we will discuss some recent challenges as well as attempts of defending the traditional view. Among other topics, we will discuss the view that science should aim at empirically adequate theories, because truth is not justifiable. Another approach to be critically examined takes the widespread practices of idealization as a point of departure for arguing that the goal of science is to provide understanding, which does not require truth. Of course, we will also consider what sorts of entities (e.g., theories, models, causal hypotheses) can be said to be true or perhaps approximatively true.
19 September - 10-12, U365 (Dufour), co-taught by Marta Pedroni and Christian Wüthrich: Philosophy of Physics and Metaphysics
Philosophy of physics and metaphysics are intimately interconnected. In this seminar, students will confront issues at the intersection between these two areas. Different debates and methodologies in metaphysics of physics will be introduced and discussed. What are the metaphysical implications of our best physical theories? How can the tools of metaphysics inform the philosophy of physics? How do metaphysical debates evolve and develop in light of physics?
This seminar deals with topics at the intersection between philosophy of physics and metaphysics, such as laws of nature, (in)determinism, identity and individuality of the entities of our best physical theories, the part-whole relation, fundamentality, and emergence.
Accessibility and Prerequisites. No previous knowledge in physics or philosophy is presupposed, although familiarity with issues in metaphysics of science will be helpful. An overview of the relevant metaphysical debates will be presented at the beginning of the course. Notions of relativity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics will be introduced in dedicated lectures.
- 19 September - 16-18, Saint-Ours 019, co-taught by Annica Vieser, Baptiste Le Bihan and Christian Wüthrich: Metaphysics of Quantum Gravity
The philosophy of physics deals with methodological, epistemological, and metaphysical issues in physics. This seminar has the dual purpose of systematically introducing the background necessary to do research in philosophy of physics as well as discussing current research in the field.
This seminar focuses on a young research field within metaphysics and philosophy of physics: the metaphysics of quantum gravity. Quantum gravity is an umbrella term for research programs aiming at the formulation of a physical theory that reconciles the theory of general relativity with quantum physics. A striking feature of most of those theories is that various features usually ascribed to space and/or time seems to disappear, prompting questions about how to relate such exotic ontologies to the familiar world of our daily lives, happening in space and time. The seminar will first introduce three important approaches to quantum gravity emphasizing the features of spacetime missing in each approach: string theory, loop quantum gravity, and causal set theory. Then, a number of problems of conceptual and empirical coherence for claims of spacetime emergence will be investigated and linked to a variety of interpretations of the non-fundamentality of spacetime. The last part of the seminar will focus on some consequences of the non-fundamentality of spacetime for other areas of metaphysics, such as the philosophy of time, modality, and laws of nature.
2 October, 16:15-17:45: Dominic Dold (joint event with Beyond Spacetime)
12 and 13 December: Workshop Laws of Nature and Quantum Gravity (organised by the Space, Time and Causation in Quantum Gravity project)