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Abstract |
Eleanor Knox has argued that our concept of spacetime applies to whichever structure plays a certain functional role in the laws (the role of determining local inertial structure). I raise two complications for this approach. First, our spacetime concept seems to have the structure of a cluster concept, which means that Knox's inertial criteria for spacetime cannot succeed with complete generality. Second, the notion of metaphysical fundamentality may feature in the spacetime concept, in which case spacetime functionalism may be uninformative in the absence of answers to fundamental metaphysical questions like the substantivalist/relationist debate.
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Keywords | spacetime classical physics symmetries/invariances metaphysics of science |
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Reprint years | 2018 |
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References found in this work BETA
Emergent Spacetime and Empirical (in) Coherence.Nick Huggett & Christian Wüthrich - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 44 (3):276-285.
Realism and Reason.Hilary Putnam - 1977 - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 50 (6):483-498.
Physical Relativity From a Functionalist Perspective.Eleanor Knox - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 67:118-124.
View all 29 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
The Metaphysics of Emergent Spacetime Theories.Niels C. M. Martens - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (7).
On the Empirical Coherence and the Spatiotemporal Gap Problem in Quantum Gravity: And Why Functionalism Does Not (Have to) Help.Niels Linnemann - 2020 - Synthese 199 (S2):395-412.
On the empirical coherence and the spatiotemporal gap problem in quantum gravity: and why functionalism does not (have to) help.Niels Linnemann - 2020 - Synthese 199 (Suppl 2):1-18.
View all 7 citations / Add more citations
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