Abstract

My dissertation is a discussion of the ontological commitment of spacetime theories. I am concerned about whether we should be realists about spacetime. I outline a version of substantivalism that I show is attractive on general grounds in that it treats spacetime in just the same way that a realist ought to treat entities she is a realist about. I then show that this version of substantivalism is immune to the hole argument and other recent criticisms of substantivalism. I also re-examine traditional arguments for substantivalism, and show that my version is at least as well supported as more traditional accounts. Finally I examine the positive case for substantivalism and find that it is far weaker than many philosophers of physics think. I offer a relationist reply to both Kant's argument from incongruent counterparts and Newton's bucket argument, and then show that a satisfactory case for substantivalism will have to wait for a solution to the more general problem of induction.