This group is a forum for philosophers (faculty members and graduate students) in Southern California to meet and discuss their own research and other recent articles in philosophy of physics. We intend to meet 2-3 times per quarter, with topics determined by the interests of the group.
Unless otherwise noted, meetings will be hosted by the LPS department at UC Irvine, in the LPS seminar room (777 Social Science Tower) [campus map]. For instructions regarding parking and to reserve a permit, contact Olga Dunaevsky, LPS Department Manager.
Please contact me (james.owen.weatherall [AT] uci [DOT] edu) if you would like to join the group.
Upcoming talks
25 October 2025
Eddy Chen (UCSD), “Typical Quantum States of the Universe are Observationally Indistinguishable”
(Joint work with Roderich Tumulka) We establish three new impossibility results regarding our knowledge of the quantum state of the universe — a central object in quantum theory. We show that, if the universal quantum state is a typical unit vector from a high-dimensional subspace H_0 of Hilbert space H (such as the one defined by a low-entropy macro-state as prescribed by the Past Hypothesis), then no observation can determine or just significantly narrow down which vector it is. In other words, the overwhelming majority of possible state vectors are observationally indistinguishable from each other (and from the density matrix of H_0). Moreover, we show that for any observation that isn’t too unlikely and most pairs of unit vectors from H_0, the observation will not significantly favor one vector over the other. We further show that the uniform distribution over the unit sphere in H_0, after Bayesian updating in the light of any observation that isn’t too unlikely, is still extremely close to uniform. Our arguments rely on a typicality theorem from quantum statistical mechanics. We also discuss how theoretical considerations beyond empirical evidence might inform our understanding of this fact and our knowledge of the universal quantum state.
Participants can read a pre-print of this work here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16860
10 January 2026, Mahmoud Jalloh (Caltech)
7 February 2026, Ellen Shi (UC Irvine / UC Berkeley)
7 March 2026, Porter Williams (Pittsburgh)
4 April 2026, James Read (Oxford)
16 May 2026, Chris Smeenk (Western / UCLA)
