Prof. Ravi Gomatam M.E., Ph. D. Is the director of the Institute of Semantic Information Sciences and Technology, Mumbai. His main area of research is foundations of quantum physics, with related research interests in various areas in Philosoohy of science. He has published 45+ papers.  He is developing his own, paradox-free interpretation of quantum mechanics,  leading to a new,  post-quantum theory in physics.
Webpage: www.ravigomatam.com

Opening and Closing Remarks

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, Visiting Professor at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He works on philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, decision theory, and philosophy of science. He is the author of The Indispensability of Mathematics (OUP, 2001), An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics (CUP, 2012) and, with ecologist Lev Ginzburg, Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow (OUP, 2004 )

Webpage: http://www.colyvan.com/research.html

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TOPIC: The Role of Mathematics in Empirical Science

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ABSTRACT: The applicability of mathematics to empirical science is quite remarkable. Of course, sometimes mathematics is developed with a particular application to science in mind but this is not always so. Sometime mathematics is developed as pure mathematics, motivated by nothing other than intra-mathematical considerations, yet such pure mathematics often turns out to be important in applications in physics and elsewhere. Thanks to the physicist Eugene Wigner's famous essay on this topic, this has become known as "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics". In this talk, we will discuss what, if anything, is unreasonable about the applicability of mathematics and how we might understand the applications of mathematics in empirical science.

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, where he is PI of the ERC Advanced Grant Construction in the Formal Sciences (2023-27). His main research interests lie in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, metaphysics, and early analytic philosophy (especially Frege). He has published more than 80 scientific articles and is the author of three books, most recently Thin Objects: An Abstractionist Account (2018) and The Many and the One: A Philosophical Study of Plural Logic (with Salvatore Florio, 2021), both Oxford University Press. Linnebo is a member of Academia Europaea, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

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TOPIC: What is Infinity?

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ABSTRACT: The dominant view in mathematics and philosophy used to be that infinity must be understood as potential, not actual. In essence: while it is always possible to produce one more object, it is not possible for there to exist infinitely many objects simultaneously. This view was finally overthrown thanks to Georg Cantor’s discovery of modern set theory in the late 19th century. In this talk I describe how our conception of infinity has developed. I also show how the pre-Cantorian conception admits of a sharp mathematical analysis, which remains interesting to mathematicians and philosophers alike.​

An Indian physicist currently serving as a Professor at the School of Quantum Technology, Defense Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT), Pune, and an Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, in addition to his ongoing involvement with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. He earned his M.Sc. in Physics from IIT Madras and his Ph.D. from TIFR Mumbai. Prof. Unnikrishnan's research focuses on foundational issues in gravity and quantum physics—both experimental and theoretical—including his development of the Cosmic Relativity paradigm and Universal Action Mechanics. He has been a key proposer-scientist of the LIGO-India project and is an active member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, contributing significantly to gravitational-wave research.

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TOPIC: Philosophical considerations about the physical world

ABSTRACT: Physics is the study of the physical world of sensible matter, its motion, and the processes involving matter. With its self-contained structure of mathematically expressed universal laws and its reliance on precise empirical evidence, one may wonder why and how any philosophical issue can arise about topics of mature physics. The answer is to be found in the profound difference between a ‘description’ of the physical world and the ‘understanding’ of that description. The description (theory) relies on several conceptual entities to represent the physical world, which are often free creations of our mind. In other words, the physical world that the subject ‘physics’ deals with is really a mixture of the real observable (sensible) physical world and a consistent but unobservable world that physicists create conceptually, and encode mathematically. Physical theories need primary metaphysical concepts, like space and time, and synthetic conceptual entities with an ‘unprovable’ yet essential existence, like fields, potentials, wavefunction etc. Then the task of interpreting and justifying such created entities becomes an essential part of the understanding of physics. The fact that the physical world is observable by all, an understanding of its appearance and processes have to meet the criteria of consistency, rationality, and universality. This is achieved only approximately in practice at any time in the progress of physics, because our postulates are not always accessible to empirical verification. Philosophy of physics consists of the doubts and pointed questions about our understanding of the physical world, seeking consistent answers. Also, philosophical considerations of a broader nature examine issues like the methodology, the criteria for a physical truth, ethics, anthropological and sociological influences etc.  I will briefly survey the area with examples from classical and quantum physics. 

Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IISER Bhopal. His research interests span the philosophy of science, metaphysics, logic, epistemology, and the history of modern philosophy, with a particular focus on conceptual and theoretical issues such as interference. He has been awarded a research grant by the Indian Council for Philosophical Research in recognition of his work.

Webpage: https://hss.iiserb.ac.in/faculty_details?varun 

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TOPIC: Theory, Phenomenon & Data Relation in Science – Contextualising Bogen-Woodward Framework 

A Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher at the University of Athens with a background in Chemical Engineering. She is interested in examining issues in the philosophy of science from the perspective of chemistry.

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TOPIC: Philosophy of Chemistry: concepts, ideas and open questions

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ABSTRACT: Whether one realizes it or not, chemistry underlies many different aspects of our everyday life. So, it should not come as a surprise that phenomena that standardly belong to the subject matter of chemistry have been discussed in philosophy since ancient times. The aim of this talk is to present the main philosophical issues that arise by a consideration of chemistry and thus show the value of thinking philosophically about chemistry.

Senior Professor of Computer Science at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, and is also affiliated with the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR), Bengaluru, as well as serving as an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Automation, IISc Bangalore. He received his B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Kharagpur and Ph.D. from Rutgers University under Endre Szemerédi. His research spans combinatorics, communication complexity, information theory, randomness, pseudorandomness, and quantum information theory. A recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Mathematical Sciences (2008), he is also a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

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TOPIC: P vs NP: Finding answers may be hard even if checking them is easy

Kanwaljeet Kaur Saluja holds a Master’s degree in Microbiology from Osmania University and an MS in Consciousness Studies from the Bhaktivedanta Institute in collaboration with BITS, Pilani. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Biology on the topic "Biology and Information- A New Analysis" from the Institute of Semantic Information Sciences and Technology affiliated to the University of Mumbai under the guidance of Prof. Ravi V. Gomatam. 

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TOPIC: A Debate in Philosophy of Molecular Biology: What is genetic information?

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