Philosophy of Physics Seminar (Thursday - Week 6, HT23)
Thursday 23 February, 4:30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Yemima Ben-Menahem (Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem): 'Lawlessness'
I examine three kinds of potential deviation from the standard understanding of the regime of (natural) law. The first is Feynman's derivation of the principle of least action from an underlying quantum level. The second stems from Davidson's anomalous monism (the thesis that the mental is lawless and irreducible to fundamental physics) and will be shown to have other applications both within and outside of physics. The third derives from the algorithmic notion of randomness, raising the question of the compatibility of this notion with determinism.
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