Master Meetings

Metaphysics and Physics
Prof. Costa, Prof. Calosi

There is a raging controversy on how things persist through time. This disagreement represents the core of the debate in the metaphysics of persistence. In the last decade, advancements in the debate on persistence have mostly come from a corner in philosophy of physics. What is now regarded as a crucial distinction between mereological accounts and locational accounts of persistence, was drawn withing the context of relativistic spacetimes. Relativity has also played a major role in developing new arguments in favor of a particular metaphysics of persistence, namely four-dimensionalism. By contrast, new arguments coming from quantum mechanics seem to point to the fact that the most traditional variants of such a metaphysical thesis are unsatisfactory if not untenable. In the seminar we will discuss these and other central issues in the metaphysics and physics of persistence. While the focus will mostly be on physics and metaphysics, we will address questions of persistence in the history of philosophy and within the arts as well.

Topics in Philosophy of Physics
Prof. Wuthrich

The philosophy of physics deals with methodological, epistemological, and metaphysical issues in physics. This seminar addresses topics in naturalized metaphysics, the philosophy of space and time as they relate to physics, the philosophical implications of quantum physics, the physical origin of the direction of time, issues in the philosophy of cosmology and the philosophy of quantum gravity, or similar problems and debates.

For the spring semester 2022, the tentative topics are presentism and modern physics, time travel in physics, and the disappearance and re-emergence of spacetime in quantum gravity