Eugene Y. S. Chua

Registration

Registration for the 1st conference of the Asian Philosophy of Science Association is now open! Keynotes feature Craig Callender, @cdutilhnovaes.bsky.social, @kevinzollman.com & 1st winner of APSA early career scholar essay prize (tbd). Excited to host everyone in SG! www.ntu.edu.sg/soh/news-eve...

Postdoc opportunity at the Taft Research Center here at the University of Cincinnati for which philosophers are eligible to apply. See here for details and to apply: jobs.uc.edu/job/Taft-Pos...

Yichen Luo & Eugene Y. S. Chua, De-Idealizing De-Idealization: Beyond Full Reversal - PhilPapers There is a question of whether de-idealization is needed for justified use of -- for 'checking' -- idealizations. We argue that the standard philosophical account of de-idealization has become too ide...

My paper with @yichenluo.bsky.social has been accepted for publication at @thebjps.bsky.social! We argue that standard pictures of de-idealization are themselves idealized, and develop a practice-first account of de-idealization for validating idealized models. Preprint: philpapers.org/rec/LUODDB

Thankful to be invited to present my work on atypicality in LLM-powered psychiatry (jme.bmj.com/content/earl..., preprint on arxiv) and be part of a roundtable dialogue on responsible AI in mental health. Human-centered AI w/ sociotechnical p.o.v., involving all stakeholders, is essential here!

Putting Pressure Under Pressure: On the Status of Classical Pressure in Special Relativity Much of the century-old debate surrounding the status of thermodynamics in relativity has centered on the search for a suitably relativistic temperature; recent works by Chua (2023) and Chua and Calle...

Happy to share that my paper on the special relativistic pressure has been accepted for publication in Synthese! It's the last (for now) of a trilogy of papers on the generalization of thermodynamics into relativity, and I'm glad it found a nice home.

Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2601.22133

The biggest ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ yet — physicists put 7,000 atoms in superposition Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 21 January 2026

7000 atoms in superposition!

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I am hiring a second postdoctoral Research Fellow to join the Foundations of Thermodynamics group! This will be a two-year position. Deadline: March 20, 2026. Please share with anyone who's interested. I'm happy to answer any questions 😄

See PhilJobs ad for more info: philjobs.org/job/show/30726

Berggruen Institute Ideas for a Changing World.

1/ I am truly honoured and completely delighted to have won the 2025 Berggruen Essay Prize (English), for my submission “The Mythology of Conscious AI” @berggruen.org @noemamag.com berggruen.org/eu/news/2025...

✨Reminder✨ The symposia deadline for PSA 2026 is 15 January (this Thursday!)

I had an excellent time taking part in the inaugural round of this program in 2023 -- highly recommend it! Deadline: Jan 15.

Physicists have recently been "looking for work in quantum thermodynamics", but what would count as success? (To what extent) can quantum foundations help? My paper on these questions has been accepted at the @thebjps.bsky.social!

Preprint: philsci-archive.pitt.edu/27846/

#hps #philsci #philphys

Home - CSHPS/SCHPS Call for Papers:

Canadian Society for the History & Philosophy of Science (CSHPS) invites submissions for annual meeting, to be held in Halifax June 4-6, 2026. Submission Deadline: Monday January 19, 2026
Submission Portal: forms.gle/GVq5SZuLv1yE...
Webpage
cshps.ca
#HPS

A short piece now published on JME Forum, introducing, in brief, our paper on the ethical risk of LLM-powered psychiatry: blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethi...

Last day to submit abstracts! Please note that the deadline is in Singapore time.

Final call for papers for APSA26! Please share widely, and we are looking forward to hosting everyone in Singapore!

Asian Philosophy of Science Association (APSA) Conference 2026

There's about a month left to submit something to the Asian Philosophy of Science Association's inaugural conference! Consider submitting an abstract, and encouraging early-career scholars (especially those from or based in Asia) to submit an essay for the APSA Essay Prize.

Wrote a short piece for the IAI, on my recent paper on black holes and global energy! Contrary to title, I don't claim to have the messy truth behind black hole physics, but I do think we can move (and ppl are) from idealized global approaches to quasi-local approaches, in search of deidealization.

Asian Philosophy of Science Association (APSA) Conference 2026

Very happy to announce that the CFP is now open for APSA26: The Inaugural Biennial Conference of the Asian Philosophy of Science Association! It will be held at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The keynote will be Craig Callender. Submission deadline: 31 Dec 2025. URL: tinyurl.com/APSA26

ABSTRACT. The Tolman effect conflicts with ordinary classical thermodynamics, but is rarely discussed outside of relativistic cosmology. We try to better understand this effect from a foundational perspective and make five claims. (1) It was Einstein who first discovered the effect and his derivation helps us appreciate how robust it is. (2) The standard interpretation in terms of ‘local temperature’ leads to the breakdown of much of classical thermodynamics. (3) We can rescue thermodynamics using Einstein’s preferred interpretation in terms of the ‘wahre Temperatur’ but it too has costs. (4) The effect is best understood in terms of clocks rather than energy loss. (5) We sketch an interpretation of the effect in terms of a third novel temperature. Here, temperature—and thermodynamics—is defined only in relation to local clocks. In sum, we view the fragmentation of temperature in thermodynamics as a natural and expected result of the fragmentation of time in general relativity.

Just accepted:

'The Toll of the Tolman Effect: On the Status of Classical Temperature in General Relativity'
– Eugene Chua & Craig Callender

Abstract in alt text or read the full paper here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

#philsci #philsky

Many thanks to Caltech's Linde Center for Science, Society, and Policy for their gracious support, and to Frederick Eberhardt, David Danks, @kathleencreel.bsky.social, @whcsung.bsky.social, and participants of the 2024 TeXneCon, for helpful comments and suggestions!

The problem of atypicality in LLM-powered psychiatry Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly proposed as scalable solutions to the global mental health crisis. But their deployment in psychiatric contexts raises a distinctive ethical concern: the ...

My paper w/ Bosco Garcia (UCSD) & Harman Brah (UCLA) on the 'problem of atypicality' for LLM-powered psychiatry is now published at the Journal of Medical Ethics! Just as GPT5 is touting capability as "active thought partner"...

JME link: bit.ly/jme-atypical...
Preprint: bit.ly/atypicality-...

@uberwensch.bsky.social link to talks on YouTube are here :)

We are hiring in Philosophy at NTU!

Open rank and open area call for tenure-track/tenured positions: philjobs.org/job/show/29338

2025 Foundations of Thermodynamics Workshop, Singapore - YouTube Recordings of talks from the Foundations of Thermodynamics Workshop held at NTU Singapore 16-18 July 2025.

Talks from the 2025 Foundations of Thermodynamics workshop held at NTU Singapore, co-organized with @wmyrvold.bsky.social, are now available on YouTube here: bit.ly/yt-ftd2025

Thanks again to all participants for attending the workshop and contributing to the lively and fruitful discussions! :)

Thanks especially to @wmyrvold.bsky.social for co-organizing. For those interested, talk recordings will be uploaded onto YouTube soon. Already looking forward to the next iteration!

It's a wrap! Many thanks to participants of the 2025 Foundations of Thermodynamics workshop for making it a great success. Glad that the first workshop I organized went smoothly :) I got helpful feedback on some new work on the concept of quantum work, and learnt so much from the other speakers!

The Toll of the Tolman Effect: On the Status of Classical Temperature in General Relativity The Tolman effect is well-known in relativistic cosmology but rarely discussed outside it. That is surprising because the effect -- that systems extended over a varying gravitational potential exhibit...

Temperature falls apart yet again! Jokes aside, very excited to share that my paper with Craig Callender, "The Toll of the Tolman Effect: On the Status of Classical Temperature in General Relativity", was accepted for publication in the BJPS! Preprint available here: arxiv.org/abs/2507.10529

When Two LLMs Debate, Both Think They'll Win Can LLMs accurately adjust their confidence when facing opposition? Building on previous studies measuring calibration on static fact-based question-answering tasks, we evaluate Large Language Models ...

When two LLMs debate, both think they’ll win

Absolutely fascinating paper shows that LLMs basically cannot judge their own performance. None of the prompting techniques worked

arxiv.org/abs/2505.19184

Co-organized with @wmyrvold.bsky.social, the 2025 Foundations of Thermodynamics workshop will be held in NTU from 16-18 July 2025. We have a great slate of participants and I am very much looking forward to it!

Attendance is free and there will be a Zoom option. Details here: bit.ly/3SxvSNi