[spsp-members] Lunch Time Talk - Porter Williams - 9/24 and Annual Lecture Series - Thomas Ryckman 9/27

[Center for Philosophy of Science]

The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh invites you to join us for our Lunch Time Talk and Annual Lecture Series.  Attend in person or visit our live stream on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.  <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg>

LTT - Porter Williams
Tuesday, September 24th @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EDT
Room 1117 on the 11th floor of the Cathedral of Learning

Title: The Aim and Structure of Cluster Decomposition
Abstract:
The architecture of quantum field theory includes a handful of load-bearing locality or causality conditions. One of the most important is the cluster decomposition property: roughly speaking, a property intended to capture the fact that the outcome of experiments at Fermilab is independent of whatever might be happening in the accelerator tunnel at SLAC. Steven Weinberg went so far as to call it a foundational requirement of all experimental science. However, the statistical independence required by cluster decomposition is in tension with the long-range correlations characteristic of entangled states. Nevertheless, something very much like Weinberg's transcendental-ish claim is probably correct but appreciating that requires disentangling the role of the cluster decomposition property from its standard mathematical presentation and elucidating a delicate relationship between the cluster decomposition property and the ubiquity of entanglement in quantum field theory.

Can't make it in-person? This talk will available online through the following:
Zoom -   https://pitt.zoom.us/s/91855041780

YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg


ALS - Thomas Ryckman
Friday, September 27th @ 3:30 EDT
Room 1008 on the 10th floor of the Cathedral of Learning

Title: Niels Bohr: Transcendental Physicist
Abstract:
While it would be unwarranted to label Bohr as "neo-Kantian" or indeed adherent of any philosophical school, his understanding of quantum theory crucially employs an intricate transcendental argument. Bohr deemed the quantum postulate, or "wholeness" of interaction between agency of measurement and atomic system, to call into question a core epistemological distinction between subject and object familiar in the concept of 'observation' from everyday life and classical physics. Re-conceptualizing that distinction led to redefinition of the term 'phenomenon', a corresponding non-representationalist account of the wave function, and to situating the notion of objectivity within "conditions of the possibility of unambiguous communication".

This talk will available online through the following:
Zoom -   https://pitt.zoom.us/s/99943669767

YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg


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