We are happy to invite you to our open lecture on May 26th 2025 from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm CET.
The open lecture is born to be a safe and friendly space for every student who wants to have a taste of one of our classes. The Master in Philosophy is glad to welcome you with the help of Prof. Achille Varzi and his lecture “Ontology: Material vs. Formal”.
Here is the abstract of the lecture:
"There are two main ways, philosophically, of characterizing the business of ontology. On one account, made popular by Quine, ontology is concerned with the material question of what there is. On the other, which made its way into our times through Brentano and his pupils, especially Husserl, ontology is concerned with the task of laying bare the formal structure of all there is, whatever it is. In this lecture, we will first of all try to be clear about this distinction. Then we shall address the question of how material and formal ontology relate to each other. Particularly, we shall focus on whether one can pursue one sort of inquiry without also engaging in the other—whether, or to what extent, the tasks of material ontology presuppose the backing of some formal-ontological theory, and whether or to what extent formal ontology can be, in the material sense of the term, ontologically neutral.”
Open lectures are held on campus for philosophy students and on Zoom for everyone. To attend either in presence or online, please register by filling out the form on this page: https://join.usi.ch/en/master-philosophy-open-lecture
If you choose to attend the lecture remotely, we will send you an email to the Zoom meeting a couple of hours before the event. Alternatively, if you prefer to join us on campus, please arrive 20 minutes early for check-in.
The lecture will not be recorded! Don’t miss the opportunity to learn about ontolgy with Professor Achille Varzi!
If you wish to know more about our Master in Philosophy, visit www.usi.ch/map<http://www.usi.ch/map>
We are pleased to announce that on Friday, May 9 at 5.30pm (CET), Cristian Mariani (University of Italian Switzerland) will give the talk Non-Markovian Collapse Models as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Spring 2025 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room 1.2 FTL Building (USI west campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
Spontaneous collapse models (SCM) employ an imaginary noise term in the modification of Schrödinger's equation in order to achieve a stochastic collapse process. Such noise term is typically assumed to be white, and therefore uncorrelated in time, which results in the dynamics being Markovian. In this talk I begin by discussing the reasons why physicists are exploring the possibility to instead employ non-white stochastic noise terms in the dynamics of SCM, and I then briefly introduce these models. In the second part, I am going to evaluate two broadly philosophical consequences of the non-Markovian models. First, I challenge some arguments, made by Builes & Impagnatiello (forthcoming) and by Adlam (2018), pointing to a connection between Markovianity (or lack thereof) and temporal ontology. Second, I discuss the ontological status of the noise field within the context of SCM.
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/31750
We are pleased to announce that on Friday, May 9 at 5.30pm (CET), Cristian Mariani (University of Italian Switzerland) will give the talk Non-Markovian Collapse Models as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Spring 2025 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room 1.2 FTL Building (USI west campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
Spontaneous collapse models (SCM) employ an imaginary noise term in the modification of Schrödinger's equation in order to achieve a stochastic collapse process. Such noise term is typically assumed to be white, and therefore uncorrelated in time, which results in the dynamics being Markovian. In this talk I begin by discussing the reasons why physicists are exploring the possibility to instead employ non-white stochastic noise terms in the dynamics of SCM, and I then briefly introduce these models. In the second part, I am going to evaluate two broadly philosophical consequences of the non-Markovian models. First, I challenge some arguments, made by Builes & Impagnatiello (forthcoming) and by Adlam (2018), pointing to a connection between Markovianity (or lack thereof) and temporal ontology. Second, I discuss the ontological status of the noise field within the context of SCM.
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/31750
