Conceptual Issues, Foundational Questions and Quantum Cosmology

In this workshop rather diverging problems related to quantum gravity and quantum cosmology were discussed. Since it is almost impossible to summarize all these discussions in coherent and integrated expressions, in this report, I give a brief description of the content of each paper in order, with some additional comments on their backgrounds. In order to give a readable presentation, I classified the oral and poster papers presented in the workshop into six groups by their contents. The next section treats discussion on spacetime topology and includes a single paper by S. Carlip. Section 3 includes three papers on quantum cosmology by L.O. Pimentel and C. Mora, by R. Mansouri and F. Naseri, and by the author(H.K.). Section 4 treats papers on the interpretation problem in quantum gravity and cosmology by D.P. Datta, by M. Kenmoku and others, by M. Morikawa and others, by J. Larsson, and by A. Corichi and M.P. Ryan. Section 5 summarizes discussions related to supersymmetry by R. Ferraro and D.M. Sforza, by A.Yu. Kamenshchik and S.L. Lyakhovich, by H. Luckock, and by H. Luckock and H. Farajollahi. Section 6 includes papers on various non-standard approaches to quantum gravity and other arguments on foundational problems presented by O. Richter, by P. Kuusk and others, by J. Geddes, by R.S. Tung, by D.R. Finkelstein, by R.R. Karnik, and by E.G. Mychelkin. The final section is devoted to the single paper by S. Brave and T.P. Singh on the relation between the cosmic censorship and the second law of thermodynamics.