New Topics in the Philosophy of QFT - Pittsburgh, PA

New Topics in the Philosophy of QFT

April 3-4, 2027

On behalf of Senior Visiting Fellow Nick Huggett, we are pleased to announce a two-day interdisciplinary workshop hosted by the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Quantum field theory has grown as a subfield philosophy of physics in recent years, in particular with focus on the renormalization group and effective field theories, the nature of particles, and measurement theory attracting particular attention. Since these topics have rightly already deserved attention, the aim of this workshop is to spotlight new issues of philosophical significance that have so far received little or no attention from philosophers, in order to encourage their further study.

Possible topics include:

• The interpretation of symmetry in gauge quantization.

• Locality and tensor product structure in gauge quantization.

• Experimental testing of QFT.

• Coherent states in QFT.

• Decoherence in QFT.

• The meaning and role of anomalies in QFT.

• The interpretation of lattice QFT.

•   Bohmian, collapse, etc formulations of realistic, renormalizable QFTs.

•   Etc …

Confirmed Keynotes

The program will include keynote talks and panels by both philosophers and physicists:

•   Anthony Duncan (Pittsburgh)

•   Hugo Beauchemin (Tufts)

•  Georgi Dval (München)

•   James Read (Oxford)

• Laura Ruetsche (Michigan)

For the most up to date information, please visit the conference website: https://www.centerphilsci.pitt.edu/event/new-topics-in-the-philosophy-of-qft/