International Conference on the Ontology of Spacetime


Conference Program*

(Session Talks - 45 min; question period - 15 min)
(All rooms are equipped with overhead projectors and computers for PowerPoint presentations)


Tuesday, May 11, 2004

8:45 - 9:00 Welcome Remarks

Chair: Steven Savitt (University of British Columbia)

9:00 - 10:30 Jeremy Butterfield (Department of Philosophy, Oxford University) - Room H 767 (see map)
Classical Mechanics is not Pointilliste, and can be Perdurantist

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break

 
Session I - Room H 767
 
Session II - H 760
Chair: Steven Savitt (University of British Columbia)

11:00 - Yvon Gauthier (Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal)
Hermann Weyl on Minkowskian space-time

12:00 - Robert DiSalle (Department of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario)
"World Structure" and the Physical Meaning of Spacetime Geometry

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

Chair: Mauro Dorato (University of Rome Three)

14:30 - Richard T. W. Arthur (Department of Philosophy, McMaster University)
Minkowski Spacetime and the Dimensions of the Present

15:30 - Kent A. Peacock (Department of Philosophy, University of Lethbridge)
Covariant Simultaneity Relations and the Ontology of Events

16:30 - 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 - Robert Rynasiewicz (Department of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University)
Against Simultaneity, Becoming, and All That... The View from Neuro-Psychology
Chair: John Corbett (Macquarie University)

11:00 - Thomas D. Angelidis (Centre for Mathematical Physics, London)
Special Relativity prohibits spacelike causation

12:00 - Jan Broekaert (CLEA, FUND, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Poincaré’s Geometric Conventionalism and Relativity Principle: a physical perspective on GRT

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

Chair: Lawrence Fagg (Catholic University of America)

14:30 - Jonathan Bain (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, New York)
Spacetime Structuralism

15:30 - John Corbett (Mathematics Department, Macquarie University, Australia)
Ontology of Quantum Space interpreted by Quantum Real Numbers

16:30 - 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 - Giuseppe Guzzetta (Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Napoli "Federico II")
On an undervalued implication of the Minkowski space-time

19:00 - Reception - Room H 763



Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Chair: Mark Stuckey (Elizabethtown College)

9:00 - 10:30 Brian Greene (Department of Physics, Columbia University) - Room H 767

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break

 
Session I - Room H 767
 
Session II - H 760
Chair: Mark Stuckey (Elizabethtown College)

11:00 - Gordon Belot (Department of Philosophy, New York University)
No-Really. The Problem of Time

12:00 - Michael C. Cifone (Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland) and Michael Silberstein (Department of Philosophy, Elizabethtown College)
Static for dynamism: special relativity and the nature of time

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

Chair: Robert DiSalle (University of Western Ontario)

14:30 - David Taylor (Department of Philosophy, University of Iowa)
Rediscovering the C-Series: McTaggart's Lost Insight

15:30 - Harvey R. Brown and Oliver Pooley (Department of Philosophy, Oxford University)
Minkowski space-time: a glorious non-entity


16:30 - 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 - David P. Hunt (Department of Philosophy, Whittier College)
Free Agency in a Block Universe
Chair: Young S. Kim (University of Maryland)

11:00 - Christian Wüthrich (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh)
Quantum Gravity and the 3D vs. 4D

12:00 - Luca Lusanna (Sezione di Firenze, Istituto nazionale di fisica nucleare (INFN))
A Physicist Viewpoint on Space-time, Simultaneity, and Accelerated Observers


13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

Chair: Kent A. Peacock (University of Lethbridge)

14:30 - Young S. Kim (Department of Physics, University of Maryland)
Does special relativity prevail inside relativistic particles? Yes!

15:30 - Rathindra Nath Sen (Department of Mathematics, Ben Gurion University, Israel)
Physics and the Local Mathematical Structure of Space-Time

16:30 - 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 - Vesselin Petkov (Philosophy Department, Science College, and Liberal Arts, Concordia University)
Inertia as a manifestation of the reality of spacetime

19:00 - Poster Session and Reception - Room H 763



Thursday, May 13, 2004

Chair: Steven Weinstein (Dartmouth College)

9:00 - 10:30 Simon Saunders (Department of Philosophy, Oxford University) - Room H 767
Are frame-dependent quantities physically real?

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break

 
Session I - Room H 767
 
Session II - H 760
Chair: Steven Weinstein (Dartmouth College)

11:00 - Dennis Dieks (Department of History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University)
Becoming, Relativity and Locality

12:00 - Craig Callender (Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego)
The subjectivity of the present


13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

Chair: Richard T.W. Arthur (McMaster University)


14:30 - Mauro Dorato (Department of Philosophy, University of Rome Three)
Becoming, Occurring and Minkowski spacetime

15:30 - Jan Faye (Department of Education, Philosophy and Rethoric, University of Copenhagen)
Who is afraid of the Causal-General Approach?

16:30 - 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 - Steven Savitt (Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia)
Presentism and Eternalism in Perspective

Chair: Gordon Belot (New York University)

11:00 - Nick Huggett (Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago)
The Regularity Account of Relative Space

12:00 - James Mattingly (Philosophy Department, Georgetown University)
Overcoming Metaphysics (Again!): Cassirer, Weyl, and Carnap on the Ontology of Spacetime

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

Chair: Nick Huggett (University of Illinois at Chicago)

14:30 - Bradford Skow (Department of Philosophy, New York University)
What is it for the world to be temporal?

15:30 - Bradley Monton (Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky)
Presentism and Quantum Gravity

16:30 - 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 - Alexey Kryukov (Department of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin)
On the problem of emergence of classical space-time: The quantum-mechanical approach




Friday, May 14, 2004

Chair: Jan Faye (University of Copenhagen)

9:00 - 10:30 John Earman (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh) - Room H 767
The Implications of General Covariance for Spacetime Ontology

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break

 
Session I - Room H 767
 
Session II - H 762
Chair: Jan Faye (University of Copenhagen)

11:00 - Nicholas Maxwell (Science and Technology Studies, University College, London)
Special Relativity, Time, Probabilism, and Ultimate Reality

12:00 - Jean-Louis Hudry (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh)
Is time in classical physics discrete, dense, or continuous?

13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

Chair: James Mattingly (Georgetown University)

14:30 - Storrs McCall (Department of Philosophy, McGill University)
Philosophical Consequences of the Twins Paradox


15:30 - Yuval Dolev (Department of Philosophy, Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
Relativity Theory and the Tenseless View of Time

16:30 - 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 - Steven Weinstein (Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College)
Superluminal Signaling and Relativity
Chair: Jan Broekaert (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

11:00 - James Brian Pitts (Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame)
Gravity as (Really) a 'Spin 2' Universal Force in Minkowski Spacetime

12:00 - W. M. Stuckey and Kevin J. McGrath (Department of Physics, Elizabethtown College)
Quantum Non-Locality and the Structure of Spacetime


13:00 - 14:30 Lunch

Chair: Luca Lusanna (Istituto nazionale di fisica nucleare)

14:30 - Louis Marchildon (Département de physique, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières)
Space and Time in Mohrhoff's Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

15:30 - Thierry Grandou and Jacques L. Rubin (Institut du Non-Linéaire de Nice, CNRS-Université de Nice - Sophia Antipolis)
Time ‘betwins’

16:30 - 17:00 Coffee break


19:30 - Public Lecture / Debate - Room H 110

A joint event of the Conference and the Montreal Inter-University Seminar on the History and Philosophy of Science.

Speaker: Simon Saunders (Oxford University)
Title: "Time lost, and time recovered"

Commentator: Steven Savitt (University of British Columbia)
Commentator: Vesselin Petkov (Concordia University)



* The program takes into account the fact that many speakers cannot give their talks on given days.