For more information, please contact Francisco Calderón, fcalder@umich.edu

The speakers of this panel will discuss questions about if and how "naturalness" guides theory choice, how we only control and understand some theories at certain scales, and how to interpret what non-fundamental theories can tell us about the world, among others. Naturalness, like simplicity or empirical adequacy, is sometimes considered a criterion constraining the formulation of theories in high-energy physics or the choice among extant ones. One reason unnatural theories are deemed implausible is that their parameters are "fine-tuned;" too big or small for the scale in which the theory operates. By emphasizing how the physics we describe at a certain scale depends on physics at smaller distances, the methods known as "renormalization group techniques" have suggested that theories with unnatural parameters, like the Higgs boson's mass in the Standard Model of particle physics, are merely "effective" (as opposed to "fundamental"). Distinguishing the fundamental and the non-fundamental physical theories provides important guidance for future physics and naturalistic metaphysics.