See below for two upcoming Philosophy of Physics events hosted at King’s as part of the Bristol-London-Oxford Cambridge (BLOC) network. Please do sign up and come along! 

Lucy James – Cosmic Censorship in Quarantine

Thursday 7th December 2023, 4:30-6:30pm, King’s College London Strand Campus, Strand Building S-1.04

Sign-up link: https://philevents.org/event/show/116597

Abstract: An entailment of strong cosmic censorship is that models of spacetime are to be globally hyperbolic. This talk challenges the motivation for imposing such a constraint in a ‘top-down’ manner. From a functionalist point of view, it is argued, our understanding of the global structure of spacetime at cosmological scales ought to arise from careful generalisations of dynamical laws that apply locally. A link is shown between partial differential equations of the hyperbolic type (the form of many dynamical laws) and hyperbolic manifolds, providing some reason to regard spacetime as being hyperbolic at cosmological scales. However, if the analysis includes approaches to quantum gravity whose laws may not be of the hyperbolic form, such as Euclidean approaches, this link breaks down. Strong cosmic censorship, therefore, is relevant only to a restricted set of regimes.

If you’d like to attend dinner, please email alexander.r.franklin@kcl.ac.uk

Graduate Philosophy of Physics Workshop

Thursday 14th December 2023, King’s College London Strand Campus, Bush House (SE) 1.06

Sign-up link: 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScjKGCotVZ8Xuh_iCk_YyyvMGZD4RU4BCG5uN59dBGNSdpInw/viewform?pli=1

Program (all talks will take place in person):
10.30-11.00 – Arrivals and Welcome
11.00-11.50 – Noemi Bolzonetti (University of Italian Switzerland) – Pattern Wave Function Priority Monism
11.50-12.40 – Jonathan Fay (University of Bristol) – On the Relativity of Magnitudes: Delboeuf’s forgotten contribution to the 19th Century problem of space
12.40-14.00 – Lunch
14.00-14.50 – Paolo Faglia (University of Oxford) – Relational Quantum Mechanics: what is an interaction?
14.50-15.40 – Marta Pedroni (University of Geneva) – The singular case of spacetime singularities in quantum gravity
15.40-16.00 – Break
16.00-16.50 – Nicola Bamonti (Scuola Normale Superiore) – What is reference frame in General Relativity?
16.50-17.40 – Anton Sverdlikov (Bergische Universität Wuppertal) – Event Structural Realism
After – Drinks and Dinner

If you choose to attend online we will send a link a few days before. Looking forward to seeing people there! Any questions please contact bblocgradworkshop@gmail.com.

The King’s College London Centre for Doctoral Studies are offering one studentship to support underrepresented communities for PhD study in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities.

If you identify as being of Black or Mixed-Black ethnicity, you are warmly invited to apply for one of these studentships.

The scheme offers full financial support and a skills development programme.

• Duration: 4 years FT or 7 years PT
• Number awards: 1 studentship
• The Award is available for the 2023/24 academic year (February 2024 or June 2024 entry)

Application deadline: 23 October 2023

The Studentship covers:

• Tuition fees at home level
• An annual stipend (living allowance): at the UKRI rate (£20,622 for 2023/24) (pro-rata for PT registration)
• Research costs: up to £1,000 per annum (pro-rata for PT registration)

Applicants MUST:

• Apply for a PhD in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at King’s College London to start either on 1^st February 2024 or 1^st June 2024;
• Be UK-permanent residents who are liable for fees at the home rate;
• Identify as one of the following ethnic groups (as identified by the applicant in the admissions application):
• Black British, Black or Black British African, Black or Black British Caribbean, Black or Black British other or Mixed Black.

For more details, including how to apply, see https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study-legacy/funding/harold-moody-pgr-studentship-202324-call-2

For more information on the Philosophy PhD programme, see https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/areas/philosophy-research-mphil-phd

You can also contact the PhD Admissions Tutor, Alex Franklin, for advice on the Philosophy PhD programme, and applying for the scholarship.

King’s College London Mark Sainsbury Lecture 2023

Friday 2 June, 6-8pm

“Consequentialism, Cluelessness, Clumsiness, and Counterfactuals”

By Alan Hájek, Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities

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Abstract: According to objective consequentialism, a morally right action is one that has the best consequences. (These are not just the immediate consequences of the actions, but the long-term consequences, perhaps until the end of history.) I will argue that on one understanding this makes no sense, and on another understanding, it has a startling metaphysical presupposition concerning counterfactuals. Objective consequentialism has faced various objections, including the problem of “cluelessness”: we have no idea what most of the consequences of our actions will be. I think that on these understandings, objective consequentialism has a far worse problem: its very foundations are highly dubious. Even granting these foundations, a worse problem than cluelessness remains, which I call “clumsiness”. Moreover, I think that these problems quickly generalise to a number of other moral theories. But the point is most easily made for objective consequentialism, so I will focus largely on it.

I will consider three ways that objective consequentialism might be improved:

    1. Appeal instead to short-term consequences of actions;

    2. Understand consequences with objective probabilities;

    3. Understand consequences with subjective/evidential probabilities.

But even here, there be dragons.

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Chaired by David Sosa (UT Austin).

Venue: KCL Strand, Safra Lecture Theatre

All are welcome. The event is free, but registration is mandatory. Registration ends on 31 May at 11:30 p.m.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/annual-mark-sainsbury-lecture-tickets-623672530327

KCL Event’s page: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/annual-mark-sainsbury-lecture-1

Graduate students at KCL Philosophy are organising an interdisciplinary conference on Infinity taking place next Friday and Saturday (12th – 13th May). The conference features keynote addresses from Adrian Moore (Oxford) and Øystein Linnebo (Oslo). Here is the description from the organisers, Amedeo Robiolio and Pablo Dopico:

To study infinity is to study things which have no limit, no ends, or no bounds. Consequently, it touches the areas of study of philosophers, scientists and mathematicians in a remarkable number of ways, and often causing interesting difficulties in doing so, some of which, such as Zeno’s paradoxes of Hilbert’s hotel, have achieved great popularity. Infinity is philosophically relevant in Mathematics, with issues such as the different sizes of infinity, the topic of infinitesimals, and the problems of infinity in probabilistic mathematics.

But infinity encompasses a much wider range of philosophical issues than those present in the philosophy of mathematics. In metaphysics and the philosophy of physics, the issues both of infinite extension and infinite divisibility of space and of time have troubled thinkers for millennia. In the Philosophy of Religion, the infinity of God is a vast and ancient area of investigation. Indeed, the history of the philosophy of infinity, engaging with the long and complex evolution of this topic is itself an important area of research.

The conference aims to bring together researches working on all of these different perspectives on Infinity and more, hoping that this encounter will mutually benefit the advancements of these areas.  

Please click here to go to the conference website for more information on accommodation, registration and locations, and see below for the schedule. A book of abstracts can be found here. You can get in contact with the organisers here.

Conference Schedule

Day 1: Friday 12th May
9:50 Welcome
10:00 – 10:40 Bas Kortenbach (SNS Pisa): Transfinite Level Inference and Global Validity
10:45 – 11:25 Amit Pinsker (Connecticut): Potential Infinity and Decision-Theoretic Paradox
11:30 – 12:10 Julie Lauvsland (Oslo): Mathematical pluralism and the nature of the continuum
12:10 – 14:00 Lunch Break (off-site, not included)
14:00 – 14:40 Guillaume Massas (UC Berkeley): Possibility semantics and Galileo’s paradox
14:45 – 15:25 Osvaldo Ottaviani (Technion): Infinity and Monadology: What Kind of Infinity Does
Leibniz Ascribe to Individual Substances?
15:30 – 16:10 Davide Sutto (Oslo): Potentialist Set Theory: New Paths and Open Questions
16:15 – 17:45 Keynote Address, Professor Adrian Moore (Oxford): Wittgenstein and Infinity
18:15 Dinner offered to the speakers
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Day 2: Saturday 13th May
10:00 – 11:30 Keynote Address, Professor Øystein Linnebo (Oslo): Potentialism in the Philosophy and Foundations of Mathematics
11:30 – 12:30 Break
12:30 – 13:10 Markel Kortabarria (Barcelona): Grounding the Infinite Descent
13:15 – 13:55 Laura Molinaro (USI Lugano): Failure of Multilocational Endurantism in a Gunky
Spacetime
14:00 – 14:40 Chen Yang (Purdue): Hegel on Mathematical Infinity
14:40 Goodbyes