1 Job Description and Further Particulars

Job Description and Further Particulars

Postdoctoral Research Associate: Understanding Temporal Asymmetry (Information at the Quantum Physics/Statistical Mechanics Nexus)

Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge Vacancy Reference: GV01692 Full time, fixed term post: 1 January 2014 - 31 December 2016 Salary range: £27,854–£29,541

Introduction

Appplications are invited for a full-time Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on the Project Information at the Quantum Physics/Statistical Mechanics Nexus: Entropy, Time Asymmetry, Probability and Perspective. The Project, which is funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, is hosted jointly by the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. The Directors of the Project are Dr Christopher Timpson (Oxford) and Professor Huw Price FBA (Cambridge)

The Project includes two Postdoctoral Research Associate positions, one in Oxford and one in Cambridge. Applicants for either position will automatically be considered for the other unless they specify otherwise in their application. This set of further particulars applies to the position at Cambridge, the holder of which will work under the direction of Professor Price. The further particulars for the position based in Oxford are available from www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/vacancies.

The Cambridge Faculty of Philosophy

The Faculty is one of the most distinguished university philosophy departments in the world and has an outstanding reputation for teaching and research.

In the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) the Faculty was awarded the highest mark of 5*, and in the 2008 RAE 62% of the submission was rated as world-leading or internationally excellent.

The Faculty also received the highest possible rating (24/24) in the most recent Teaching Quality evaluation by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education in 2001.

It has a team of first-rate academic staff and also attracts excellent undergraduate and postgraduate students. PhD students from the Faculty have a strong track record of progressing to academic positions.

There are twelve permanent (‘established’) University Teaching Officer (UTO) posts, and a variable number of temporary teaching staff, Affiliated Lecturers and Research Fellows:

Professors Prof Huw Price (Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy), Prof Tim Crane (Knightbridge Professor), Prof Raymond Geuss, Prof Richard Holton, Prof Rae Langton, Prof Alex Oliver, Prof Michael Potter

University Senior Lecturers Dr Arif Ahmed, Dr Clare Chambers,

University Lecturers Dr Angela Breitenbach, Dr Tim Button, Dr Paulina Sliwa

Senior Research Fellows Dr Jeremy Butterfield, Professor John Marenbon (at Trinity College)

Junior Research Fellows Dr Adam Caulton, Dr Will Davies, Dr Lorna Finlayson, Dr Thomas Land, Dr John Maier, Dr Brian Pitts

Emeritus Professors/Honorary Professors Prof Simon Blackburn, Prof Jane Heal, Prof Hugh Mellor, Prof Onora O’Neill, Prof Timothy Smiley

Temporary Lecturers Dr Raphael Ehrsam, Dr Luca Incurvati, Dr Chris Thompson

The Faculty has a regular stream of overseas visiting philosophers. It also benefits from close links with cognate Faculties/Departments including Classics; Divinity; History; Law; Experimental Psychology; History and Philosophy of Science; and Politics and International Studies.

The Faculty is friendly and informal place in which to work. It has an excellent administrative team and dedicated library and IT support.

RESEARCH

Recent and proposed research by members of the Faculty of Philosophy falls into the following areas:

Aesthetics Breitenbach, Geuss Kant Breitenbach, Land Metaphysics and Epistemology Ahmed, Button, Crane, Maier, Mellor, Oliver, Price, Sliwa Philosophy of Mind Blackburn, Crane, Heal, Maier, Mellor Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics Ahmed, Button, Incurvati, Oliver, Potter, Smiley Philosophy of Language and Logic Blackburn, Crane, Heal, Oliver, Price Philosophy of Psychology Crane, Davies Philosophy of Science Breitenbach, Butterfield, Caulton, Pitts, Price Ethics Blackburn, Connell, Lillehammer, O'Neill, Oliver, Sliwa Political Philosophy Chambers, Finlayson, Geuss, O'Neill, Thompson, History of Modern Philosophy Blackburn, Breitenbach, Geuss, Potter, O'Neill

History of Medieval Philosophy Marenbon History of Ancient Philosophy Geuss

The Faculty actively supports and encourages staff and students in their research.

Research seminars are held throughout the academic year, and there are many opportunities for stimulating philosophical debate. A wide range of invited speakers give papers at the Moral Sciences Club each week during term-time. In addition, there are regular specialist seminars, reading groups and workshops on a variety of subjects. Recent research seminars organised by members of the Faculty have been on Logic and the Philosophy of Mathematics, the Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics, Ethics and Political Philosophy. Faculty members are also actively involved with the national Mind Network, which they helped to found in 2010 (http://mindcogsci.net). The new Cambridge Philosophy of Science (CamPoS) network was launched in 2012.

GRADUATE TEACHING and SUPERVISION

All teaching officers contribute to graduate teaching by participating in admissions, supervising students, and examining. The graduate intake is widely international and of a high calibre: the ratio of applications to acceptances is around 6 to 1. The MPhil provides initial training for those wishing to proceed to the PhD. It also offers an opportunity to work intensively on some philosophical subjects for those proposing careers other than in Philosophy. It involves the preparation of three long essays and a dissertation (which are individually supervised) and attendance at a weekly seminar. In a typical year 15 - 20 students take the MPhil, and in addition there are approximately 25 PhD students at any one time.

Each PhD student has, in addition to their main supervisor, a "shadow" supervisor on whom they can call for advice, and who independently monitors their progress. There is also a fortnightly seminar for PhD students to present their work and discuss that of their peers. A Director of Graduate Studies oversees all these arrangements.

UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING

Philosophy is a full time undergraduate subject, not part of a joint course, even in the first year. Typically there are between fifty and sixty undergraduates in each of the three years.

Teaching is by lectures, classes, discussion groups and seminars (which are organised by the Faculty) and by weekly supervision (normally individual or at most in pairs, organised by Colleges). Assessment is mainly by end-of-year examination on a published syllabus, although some elements of submitted work can also contribute to the examination.

The areas taught in the first year of study are all compulsory. They are Metaphysics, Ethics and Political Philosophy, Logic, and Set Texts. At the end of the second year two papers are compulsory (Logic, Metaphysics & Epistemology) and students also choose any two papers from the following list: Ethics, Greek and Roman Philosophy, Early Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Political Philosophy and Experimental Psychology.

In the third and final year there are no compulsory papers, but students choose any four from: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, European Philosophy from Kant, Philosophy in the Long Middle Ages, Philosophy of Science, Mathematical Logic, Philosophical Logic, Political Philosophy, Aesthetics, and the Special Subject Paper. The last paper offers students a particularly specialised course on a major topic. In 2013-14 it will be Wittgenstein. 3

Cambridge allows students to transfer from one subject to another between academic years. Each year, typically about one fifth of Philosophy students change to another subject, and a similar number transfer into Philosophy.

ACCOMMODATION AND RESOURCES

A significant expansion of the Faculty's accommodation was completed in October 2006. The Faculty occupies the top floor and part of the middle floor of one wing of the Raised Faculty Building on Sidgwick Avenue, with administrative offices, library and Teaching Officers' rooms all conveniently together. In the same area there are also graduate work- spaces, a graduate/staff common room and an undergraduate common room. The library has some 14,500 books and takes 38 periodicals.

Most of the Faculty’s lectures, seminars and classes take place on the Sidgwick Site in the Lecture Block, or in the Raised Faculty Building itself.

The Faculty is close to other Humanities Faculties (Classics, Economics, History, English, Law, Modern and Medieval Languages and Divinity). It is a five-minute walk from University Library, a copyright deposit library with more than 8 million books and some 250 Philosophical periodicals.

COGNATE FACULTIES

The Faculty has close contacts with colleagues in cognate Faculties, including:

Department of History and Philosophy of Science Anna Alexandrova, Hasok Chang, Marina Frasca-Spada, Richard Jennings, Tim Lewens

Faculty of Divinity Sarah Coakley, Douglas Hedley

Faculty of Classics Nick Denyer, David Sedley, James Warren, Robert Wardy

Faculty of History Annabel Brett, Joel Isaac

Faculty of Law Matthew Kramer

Faculty of Politics, Psychology, Sociology and International Studies Duncan Bell, David Runciman

Experimental Psychology Michele Miozzo, James Russell

Centre for Quantum Information and Foundations (DAMTP) Adrian Kent, Nazim Bouatta

The Colleges

The University, the Faculties and Departments, and the Colleges are linked in a complicated historical relationship that is mutually beneficial but not simple. Students (both graduate and

4 undergraduate) are admitted by one of the 31 colleges, although in the case of graduate students the Faculties and Departments determine admissions before the Colleges are involved. Almost all undergraduates, and many graduate students, live in a College. The teaching of undergraduate students is shared between the Colleges and the Faculties and Departments, with the Colleges arranging small group teaching (“supervision”) and the Faculties and Departments providing lecturing, laboratory classes, and advanced supervisions. College teaching is remunerated separately from the University teaching, and appointment to a College is a separate matter from a University appointment. Membership of a College adds an important social and intellectual dimension for many of the academic and research staff. Senior colleagues can give more advice.

The Project

Information at the Quantum Physics/Statistical Mechanics Nexus: Entropy, Time Asymmetry, Probability and Perspective. This interdisciplinary project will bring together expertise in physics and in philosophy to address long-standing questions in each of these disciplines about the nature and role of information in the physical world. It seeks to:

 Settle the question of the role of information in the foundations of modern physics;  Resolve puzzles over the application of statistical mechanical methods that arise in quantum information processing;  Come to a proper understanding of the nature of apparent time asymmetries in information processing and how these relate to the problem of time’s arrow more generally.

In addition to the project directors, Dr Timpson (PI) and Professor Price (Co-I), the project team includes Dr Owen Maroney and Dr Joseph Melia.

We begin with a puzzling problem regarding the role of probability at the nexus of quantum information and statistical mechanics. Statistical mechanics explains the behaviour of everyday objects by averaging over many atoms. Quantum information is a new field, studying systems with very few atoms, but needs statistical mechanics to solve theoretical and technological problems. The link between them is vital, but poorly understood. How can statistical mechanics be fruitful in quantum information, far from its original domain?

Our guiding question is: What is the role of information in the foundations of statistical mechanics and how should statistical mechanics in quantum information processing be understood?

By carefully examining the way in which statistical reasoning operates in quantum information theory, we will show how it can be applied in distinct but related ways (i) to observers as physically embodied quantum agents, (ii) to probabilities arising from the interactions of such agents with the quantum world, and (iii) to the perspectives of those agents as possessors of information about the world. In clarifying these

5 issues, we will throw new light on core topics in the foundations of physics, metaphysics and the philosophy of science, such as time-asymmetry, probability, causation and the relationship between the abstract and the concrete.

The project divides into three strands:

1. The Nature of Information (led by Timpson) This strand concerns what distinct notions of information are required in statistical mechanics and how they interrelate; the question of how the abstract/concrete relation should be understood and how this bears on the existence and physical instantiation of information; and the extent to which information can be considered a fundamental physical concept, alongside analysis of what ‘fundamental’ might mean in this context.

2. From Quantum Information to Statistical Mechanics (led by Maroney) This strand concerns the different roles played by probability within quantum information and how these roles can be understood in statistical mechanics; what the role of the observer as bearer of information about and intervener upon physical systems is; and how internal and external perspectives - of the observer, and of the observer modelled as a physical system - relate to the alternative Boltzmann and Gibbs approaches to the foundations of statistical mechanics.

3. Understanding Temporal Asymmetry (led by Price) This strand concerns whether asymmetries in information processing can be shown to have the same perspectival elements as the asymmetry of causation; how non-trivial causal structures and information flows can emerge out of temporally neutral probabilistic reasoning; and whether the emergence of an asymmetry in quantum information processing can be related to the statistical mechanical asymmetry, and/or to asymmetric features of agents and observers.

Overview of the role

Applications are invited for a full-time Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on the Project Information at the Quantum Physics/Statistical Mechanics Nexus: Entropy, Time Asymmetry, Probability and Perspective. The post will be fixed-term for the period 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2016, and is funded by a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

The Postdoctoral Research Associate will be employed by the University of Cambridge, and will work under the supervision of Professor Huw Price. The successful candidate will be expected to work in collaboration with other members of the Project’s team in Oxford and Cambridge, and with external collaborators. The Postdoctoral Research Associate will be expected to undertake advanced research in Strand 3 of the project (‘Understanding Temporal Asymmetry’, as described above) on temporal symmetry and asymmetry in information processing, statistical mechanics and probabilistic reasoning.

The successful candidate must demonstrate relevant expertise in, and provide evidence of the ability to undertake significant research on, one or more of:  The philosophy or foundations of statistical mechanics;  The philosophy or foundations of quantum mechanics;  The philosophy or foundations of time asymmetry. Experience with frameworks for temporally neutral probabilistic reasoning and with the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism and its generalisations will be an advantage.

The Postdoctoral Research Associate will be expected to produce a number of publications (either single- or co-authored) as a direct consequence of his or her involvement with the project. To be eligible to apply, candidates must have received the degree of PhD by 1 January 2014.

The particular duties of the post will be as follows:  To produce significant publications as a result of the aforementioned research, both independently and in collaboration with Project colleagues.  To assist with dissemination of the Project’s research results, and with the Project’s promotion. This may include representing the Project at conferences and seminars, as well as contributing to the design and maintenance of a Project website.  To develop ideas for generating research income, and present detailed research proposals to the Project Director.  To assist with the organisation of conferences, workshops and seminars hosted by the Project.  To work, if required, with external collaborators in partner institutions and research groups.  To undertake other reasonable duties for the Faculty of Philosophy, as requested and with the agreement of the Project directors.

This list is indicative, and not intended to be exhaustive. The appointee will also have the opportunity to deliver short courses of lectures or seminars in areas related to their research interests.

The postholder will have the title of ‘Postdoctoral Research Associate: Understanding Temporal Asymmetry (Information at the Quantum Physics/Statistical Mechanics Nexus)’, in the Cambridge Faculty of Philosophy. During the course of the project, the postholder will be encouraged to develop and extend existing close links with colleagues – in Oxford – in the Physics, Computer Science, and Materials Sciences departments; and – in Cambridge – with colleagues in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.

Limited relocation funds will be available to the successful candidate. This position offers excellent opportunities for career advancement. Previous holders of comparable positions within the Faculty have gone on directly to permanent academic posts at universities in the USA, UK, and elsewhere. Opportunities for further postdoctoral research may also be available.

Selection criteria

Below are the selection criteria for the post; candidates should address these in their applications and ask their referees to do so in their letters of recommendation.

Essential criteria

Candidates must have: (i) Received the degree of PhD by 1 January 2014, in Philosophy or Foundations of Physics, or in a closely related area. (ii) The ability to produce outstanding research in the philosophy or foundations of statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and time asymmetry, demonstrated by a record of research publications or outputs appropriate to the present stage of the applicant’s career, in these or closely related areas. (iii) Interest, aptitude, and experience providing a good fit to the research themes of the project. (iv) The ability to work closely and productively with research collaborators. (v) The ability to conduct advanced research individually and without close supervision. (vi) Excellent verbal and written communication. (vii) Excellent organisational and time-management skills. (viii) Excellent English writing skills.

Desirable criteria

(ix) Expertise in general frameworks for temporally neutral probabilistic reasoning and with the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism and its generalisations; and/or expertise in issues of causality and locality in quantum foundations, and temporal symmetries and asymmetries in probabilistic and causal reasoning. (x) Experience of organising workshops or conferences. (xi) Experience of writing, or contributing to, successful grant applications.

Salary and Benefits

The pensionable salary scale is £27,854 - £29,541 per annum.

The University of Cambridge offers a number of employee benefits, for example, family-friendly benefits, financial benefits, staff discounts, and opportunities for personal and professional development. For details see http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/staff/benefits/

How to apply Applications for this post will be administered by the University of Cambridge, and must be submitted via their Job Application system: http://www2.phil.cam.ac.uk/job_apps_online/

Applicants for this position will automatically be considered for the equivalent position at Oxford unless they specify otherwise in their application.

Applications must consist of the following materials:

a. A covering letter, which should explain candidates’ interest in the post and explain how they fit the selection criteria; b. An up to date curriculum vitae, including publication list; c. The names and contact details of three academic referees. Using the Job Applications system, candidates must submit automated requests to their three referees. References will need to be submitted by referees via the Job Applications system by the application deadline.

d. A writing sample of published or unpublished written work, about the length of a thesis chapter or article (co-authored pieces should be identified as such).

e. A statement (of up to 1,000 words) explaining candidates’ existing research interests and how these align with the project.

f. A completed CHRIS 6 form (Parts I and III only), available on the system.

All applications must be received by 3pm (local time) on Friday 25 October 2013.

Informal enquiries may be directed to Chris Timpson ([email protected]). Queries about the Job Application system may be directed to Heather Sanderson ([email protected]) at Cambridge University.

Interviews will be held in early November. The selection panel for this post will include Dr Christopher Timpson, Dr Owen Maroney, and Professor Huw Price.