Natural Philosophers

Interview with Prof. Alastair Wilson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, where he also leads the FraMEPhys (A Framework for Metaphysical Explanation in Physics) research project. We talk about the metaphysics of quantum physics, and in particular, about his thesis of quantum modal realism, which is, roughly, the view that the many worlds of the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics are what we think of as being metaphysically possible. This thesis is developed in detail in his new and excellent book The Nature of Contingency: Quantum Physics as Modal Realism (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-nature-of-contingency-9780198846215).  

Interview with Prof. Sean Carroll, Research Professor of Physics at Caltech and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. We mainly talk about quantum spacetime: the idea that  our familiar spacetime might be actually emergent from some complex quantum mechanical system. We cover entanglement, decoherence, entropic gravity, the AdS/CFT correspondence, string theory, black holes, along with several philosophical questions concerning these topics, including reduction and emergence, substantivalism vs. relationalism, monism, and much more.  

Interview with Prof. David Wallace, Mellon Professor in Philosophy and History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. We talk about black holes: particularly black hole thermodynamics, black hole statistical mechanics, and the black hole information paradox. Loosely based on his work published in the following papers:   

Interview with Prof. Colin Allen, Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. We talk mainly about animal consciousness, but also about consciousness more broadly, cognition, learning, and evolutionary biology, among other topics.