Autonomous levels of description: the metaphysics within (philosophy of) physics

Philosophy Work in Progress Seminar Series 2018/19

• Speaker: Dr Katie Robertson
• Title: Autonomous levels of description: the metaphysics within (philosophy of) physics

The Philosophy department's work in progress seminar is an opportunity for the members of staff at Birmingham to present the material they are working on to each other and to the department's postgraduate students.
The seminar meets roughly on fortnightly Wednesdays from 13:00 to 14.00 in the ERI. All welcome!

Abstract

Even if fundamental physics in some sense applies to everything, higher-levels of descriptions about gases, magnets and mountains seem to enjoy a considerable about of independence, or autonomy from, fundamental physics. In this talk, I discuss the different forms of autonomy - methodological, explanatory, causal and dynamical - and how they relate to one another. I argue that a higher-level description can be autonomous, even if reducible in practice, and connect this to the metaphysics implicit within the philosophy of physics literature.