Philipp Berghofer

Intentionality and Symbolic Construction: The Phenomenological Background of Hermann Weyl’s Philosophy of Physics

Principal Investigator: Harald Wiltsche
PostDoc Researcher: Philipp Berghofer
Funding Agency: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Duration: 01.03.2019 – 31.08.2024

Project link:
https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-radar/10.55776/P31758

Quantum Mechanics and Phenomenology: Specifying the Philosophical Foundations of QBism

Principal Investigator: Philipp Berghofer
PostDoc Researcher: Dr. Mahdi Khalili
Duration: 01.10.2022 – 30.11.2023
Funding Agency: Province of Styria
Funding Amount: € 97.287,00

Project description:
Quantum mechanics is on the one hand the most empirically successful theory in the history of the natural sciences and on the other hand the most misunderstood theory in the sense that there is the greatest possible disagreement about what it actually says about the world. This research project aims to establish a new approach to the (philosophy of) quantum mechanics: The philosophical tradition of phenomenology is to be used as a philosophical-conceptual foundation in order to reconstruct, interpret and understand quantum mechanics.

Research Output: 
In the course of the project, one volume on “Phenomenology and QBism” has been completed (Berghofer & Wiltsche, Routledge, 2023), several papers have been published by Mahdi Khalili and Philipp Berghofer, and two conferences have been organized. The talks of our conference on the quantum reconstruction program can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmwfpp46IJw&list=PLwREx7Z8un5At01EIjuRCB0eBSYic2U3z

The Ontology and Future of Gauge Theories

Principal Investigator: Philipp Berghofer
PostDoc Researcher: Dr. Jordan Francois
Duration: 01.06.2023 – 31.05.2027
Funding Agency: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Funding Amount: € 543.490,50

Project description:
Modern physics is written in the language of gauge field theories. The Standard Model of particle physics is a gauge field theory, covering three of four known interactions. The Standard Model is a gauge theory in the sense that is rests on internal local symmetries. General relativity covers the other interaction, namely gravity. General relativity is a gauge theory in the sense that it rests on an external local symmetry. Since gauge symmetries play such a prominent role in modern physics, they more than deserve due conceptual reflection.

The central topic of this project concerns the ontological status of gauge symmetries. Should they be interpreted as mere mathematical structure of our descriptions of reality or do they represent the structure of reality? There is some consensus among physicists and philosophers that gauge symmetries do not constitute symmetries of nature. They are not physically real but rather are mathematical redundancy that can be used to describe reality but does not represent structures of reality. Gauge symmetries have no direct empirical significance and physically real quantities must be gauge-invariant. However, if this is so, then we find worrisome conflicting assumptions at the very heart of modern particle physics. For instance, textbook approaches to the Higgs mechanism imply that the Higgs field gives mass to particles via the spontaneous symmetry breaking of a gauge symmetry. But how could the breaking of unphysical mathematical redundancy have any physical impact on our world? Furthermore, given the fact that each and every “elementary” field in the Standard Model is actually a gauge-variant quantity, this means that the fields/particles we typically consider the building blocks of reality cannot be physically real (because they are gauge-variant). Where does this leave us? The underlying thesis of this project is that such tensions and conceptual problems can be avoided by pursuing novel gauge-invariant approaches. It is the objective of this project to clarify the philosophical foundations of these approaches and to spell out the ontological implications. Furthermore, the project is expected to contribute to the development of such gauge-invariant approaches, thereby shedding light on new physics beyond the Standard Model and supporting research in quantum gravity.

Project link: 
https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-radar/10.55776/P36542

News:
We are organizing regular online meetings to discuss conceptual-philosophical and technical aspects of gauge-invariant approaches. If you want to join the email-list contact me. We are also organizing a three-day in-person conference in mid-July 2024: “From Philosophical Reflections on Gauge Symmetries to Gauge-Invariant Approaches to (Particle) Physics”

The Phenomenological Turn: From Epistemology to Quantum Mechanics

Project description:

The wider research context of the FWF ASTRA project “The Phenomenological Turn: From Epistemology to Quantum Mechanics” concerns the epistemological significance of experiences and the philosophy of quantum mechanics. The overall objective is to make progress in philosophy of physics and epistemology by engaging experience-first epistemologies with agent-centered approaches to quantum mechanics. More precisely, the main aim is to establish a phenomenological-epistemological framework for reconstructing, interpreting, and understanding quantum mechanics. The hypotheses driving this project are (i) that all epistemic justification and every piece of knowledge can be traced back to epistemically foundational experiences, (ii) that all justification-conferring experiences gain their justificatory force by virtue of their distinctive presentive phenomenology, and (iii) that it is the most fundamental aim of science to develop the formalism that allows the experiencing subject to answer the following question: Given my previous experiences, what should I expect to experience next?

Project link: 
https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-radar/10.55776/AST1252624