Philos-l equivalent in North America?

[Ian Jennings]

Have recently crossed the Atlantic and would like to have access to the same kind of information with regard to North America that philos-l provides with regard to the European philosophy world. Any suggestions from list members as to what the closest philos-l equivalent on the North American continent would be? Help would be much appreciated. Ian Jennings 18 East Lincoln Street 1st floor Verona NJ 07044 United States of America +1 973 978 9905 (Mobile) idjen...@hotmail.com (E-mail/Messenger) idjennings (Skype)
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[Clark, Stephen]

Philos-L actually covers a lot of North America as well, but the more specific lists are phil...@louisiana.edu (subscribe by emailing the one-liner "subscribe philosop" to majo...@louisiana.edu or contact István Berkeley <http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~isb9112/index.html> at ist...@louisiana.edu) and philosoph...@googlegroups.com <mailto:philosoph...@googlegroups.com> (see http://groups.google.com/group/philosophy-updates?hl=en).

Stephen

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[Roman Frigg]

Dear List,

Please find below the listing for the remaining Sigma Club talks this term. Please notice that Andreas Doering's talk has been moved to June 9 in order to avoid a clash with the annual meeting of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, and that a further talk has been added to the programme on Monday 7 July.

As always, further information can be found at http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CPNSS/projects/SigmaClub/Default.htm.

Best wishes,

Miklos Redei
Roman Frigg.

Monday 9 June, 5:00-7:00 pm

Andreas Doering

Imperial College, London

Topos Theory in the Foundations of Physics

I will report on current work with Chris Isham on the application of topos theory, a branch of category theory, to physics. The starting point is the famous Kochen-Specker theorem, which shows that in quantum theory it is impossible to consistently assign "true" and "false" to all propositions about the values of physical quantities. This failure of Boolean logic in quantum theory can be overcome by the use of topos theory. I will explain what a topos is and then show that using the internal, intuitionistic logic of a certain topos, truth-values can be assigned to all propositions. This gives a 'neo-realist' formulation of quantum theory.

Monday 23 June, 5:00-7:00 pm

Frank Arntzenius

University of Oxford

More Space, Less Clutter?

Physicists sometimes represent the state of the world by giving the locations of all elementary particles in ordinary 3-dimensional space, and sometimes they represent the state of the world by giving the location of one particle, the 'world' particle, in a multi-dimensional space, configuration space. Some philosophers have argued that there is a real choice to be made here; that there is a real question as to whether there exists only one fundamental object which lives in a multi-dimensional space, or whether there are many fundamental objects living in good old 3-dimensional space. Moreover, especially in the context of quantum mechanics, some have argued that configuration space is the true arena of events. I will discuss whether all of this is right.

Monday 7 July, 5:00-7:00 pm

Lamberto Rondoni

Politecnico di Torino

Deterministic Thermostats and Fluctuation Relations in Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics

The advent of computers in the second half of the twentieth century provided physicists with a new tool to investigate the behaviour of natural phenomena: numerical simulations. These are presently considered as quite useful to advance our understanding of physical phenomena, since they can explicate the content of mathematical theories, and constitute a valid substitute for many experiments. In particular, the work by Fermi, Pasta and Ulam, which was planned in 1952 and was published in 1955 as an internal report of the Los Alamos laboratories, marks the beginning of the Molecular Dynamics era.

In molecular dynamics a physical system is represented by a finite collection of (classical) particles whose equations of motion are numerically integrated. Standard statistical mechanical relations (like the proportionality between temperature and kinetic energy) are then used to link the simulated microscopic evolution with the physical observables of the system under investigation. This approach has been very successful, although its power and its limitations are not yet fully understood, especially in the case of nonequilibrium phenomena. For instance, nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) makes use of fictitious forces and synthetic 'deterministic thermostats', for the purpose of computing transport coefficients.

With this goal is thus brilliantly achieved, it is, however, not obvious which other properties of real nonequilibrium systems may be properly represented by such models. Nevertheless, in 1993, the time reversal invariance and the dissipation which characterize NEMD models led Evans, Cohen and Morriss to conjecture the validity of a certain relation describing the fluctuations of the energy dissipation rate in a nonequilibrium steady state. This relation has later been found to hold in a wide range of theoretical models, and has also been confirmed in a number of experiments.

In this lecture, the approach which led to deterministic thermostats and nonequilibrium fluctuation relations will be critically reviewed. Recent advances and applications will be briefly summarized and possible future developments will be suggested.

Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/secretariat/legal/disclaimer.htm

[Roland Pierik]

Dear colleagues,

Next year I will teach a course on deliberative democracy in theory and
practice.

I am looking for (1) recent political-theoretical articles on deliberative
democracy and (2) recent articles in which the political theory of
deliberative democracy is discussed in relation to the practice of
deliberative democracy - i.e. citizens' jury's, referenda, etc.

Suggestions are very welcome.

Many thanks in advance,

Roland Pierik

Assistant professor in political theory
Radboud University Nijmegen
www.rolandpierik.nl/theory