Matt Farr

contact + download cv google scholar philpapers twitter

About

I'm a philosopher specialising on the metaphysics and epistemology of time and causation. I'm currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the project The Causal Power of Information in a Quantum World at the University of Queensland and an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. From 2013-2014 I was a postdoc on the project New Agendas for the Study of Time at the University of Sydney's Centre for Time. In 2013, I was awarded a PhD in Philosophy by the University of Bristol for my thesis Towards a C Theory of Time, which was written under the supervision of James Ladyman and examined by Huw Price and Alexander Bird.

Research

My research covers various issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of science, in particular the relationship between the directionality of time and causation, the roles of non-causal constraints and self-locating beliefs in scientific explanation, the psychology of time and causation, and the relationship between science and metaphysics more generally. + read more about my current research

My current work covers three main issues.

1. It is popular to picture the world as ‘evolving’ from earlier to later times. This picture is poorly motivated by the kinds of time-asymmetric phenomena in the world, by our experience of time, and by modern physics. My work defends a ‘C theory of time,’ according to which ‘earlier’ and ‘later’ function as perspectival notions, much like ‘up’ and ‘down’, and explores the significance of this view for the metaphysics of causation, laws, chance, and modality more generally.
[Relevant works: On A- and B-theoretic elements of branching spacetimes; Causation and time reversal; Review of Maudlin]

2. What is the status of the directionality of causation in physics? It is common to provide causal explanations across the sciences, including physics. However, contemporary fundamental theories are ‘non-causal’ in a number of ways. For instance, the time symmetries of classical theories are prima facie at odds with the asymmetry of cause and effect, and the existence of non-local quantum correlations has led many to hold that quantum mechanics is non-causal in structure, or (alternatively) requires retrocausality. My work assesses the significance for causation of spatially and temporally non-local constraints, and defends ‘compatibilist’ accounts of causation, such as agency theories.
[Relevant works: A relic of a bygone age; Review of Frisch; Causal realism in physics; Causation, Time Symmetry and Russell's Directionality Argument]

3. How do the physics and psychology of time relate? It is commonly held that physics ‘leaves out’ key aspects of our experience of time, namely the distinction between the past, present and future, and the ‘passage’ of time. My work explores this ‘explanatory gap’ and its parallels with the philosophy of mind. I defend a reductionist account of temporal phenomenology, arguing that our experience of temporal passage just is our experience of change, motion, succession, and other such features of the world well studied by psychophysics.
[Relevant works: Temporal Ontology in Perspective; Temporal Experience, Temporal Passage and the Cognitive Sciences]

Activites

In 2016, I spent a term visiting the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, and have given talks in Munich, at the Congrès de la Société de Philosophie des Sciences at the University of Lausanne, the British Society for the Philosophy of Science Annual Conference at Cardiff University, the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and at Foundations2016 at the London School of Economics. I'm currently back in the Southern Hemisphere, spending the term writing. I have the following talks lined up for rest of 2016:

University of Adelaide

New Zealand Association of Philosophers Annual Conference

In 2015 I coorganised the conference Causality in a Quantum World with my colleague Pete Evans on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. I have previously organised/co-organised the following conferences: Free Will and Retrocausality in a Quantum World (with Huw Price) at Trinity College, Cambridge; Time Symmetry: A Unified Approach at the University of Sydney; The Present State of Presentism at the University of Bristol; and Conventional Principles in Science (with Milena Ivanova), Bristol. From 2013-2014, I ran the Sydney Foundations of Physics seminar series.

Teaching

I recently coordinated the following courses:

2015. Advanced Topics in Metaphysics: Time and Causation + info

2014. Advanced Topics in Metaphysics: What is Time? + info

Other

My Erdös number is 5: Erdös→Anderson→Binmore→Paternotte→Ivanova→Me.

Had I been less interested in counterfactuals, I'd probably make my living as a drummer.

I'm (very) happily married to this fellow philosopher.

+ latest news