CFP: Call for Abstracts - New Topics in the Philosophy of QFT in 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 Scienceat 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 Dvali(München)

•  James Read(Oxford)

•  Laura Ruetsche(Michigan)

Submission Instructions

We invite abstracts for 40 minute talks on appropriate topics, of interest to philosophers of physics and physicists.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words (excluding references) to [email protected] by December 15, 2026 (midnight anywhere on earth).

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by January 15, 2027.

Practical Details

Dates: April 3-4, 2027 (ending early afternoon on the 4th to facilitate travel)
Location: Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Funding: For accepted speakers, accommodation will be covered and some travel support may be available in cases of need.