Determinism and General Relativity
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2008. Pruning Some Branches from 'Branching Spacetimes'
CHAPTER 10 Pruning Some Branches from “Branching Spacetimes” John Earman* Abstract Discussions of branching time and branching spacetime have become com- mon in the philosophical literature. If properly understood, these concep- tions can be harmless. But they are sometimes used in the service of debat- able and even downright pernicious doctrines. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the pernicious branching and prune it back. 1. INTRODUCTION Talk of “branching time” and “branching spacetime” is wide spread in the philo- sophical literature. Such expressions, if properly understood, can be innocuous. But they are sometimes used in the service of debatable and even downright per- nicious doctrines. The purpose of this paper is to identify the pernicious branching and prune it back. Section 2 distinguishes three types of spacetime branching: individual branch- ing, ensemble branching, and Belnap branching. Individual branching, as the name indicates, involves a branching structure in individual spacetime models. It is argued that such branching is neither necessary nor sufficient for indeterminism, which is explicated in terms of the branching in the ensemble of spacetime mod- els satisfying the laws of physics. Belnap branching refers to the sort of branching used by the Belnap school of branching spacetimes. An attempt is made to sit- uate this sort of branching with respect to ensemble branching and individual branching. Section 3 is a sustained critique of various ways of trying to imple- ment individual branching for relativistic spacetimes. Conclusions are given in Section 4. * Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA The Ontology of Spacetime II © Elsevier BV ISSN 1871-1774, DOI: 10.1016/S1871-1774(08)00010-7 All rights reserved 187 188 Pruning Some Branches from “Branching Spacetimes” 2. -
Simultaneity As an Invariant Equivalence Relation
Simultaneity as an Invariant Equivalence Relation Marco Mamone-Capria Dipartimento di Matematica – via Vanvitelli, 1 – 06123 Perugia - Italy E-mail: [email protected] June 27, 2018 Abstract This paper deals with the concept of simultaneity in classical and relativistic physics as construed in terms of group-invariant equivalence relations. A full examination of Newton, Galilei and Poincar´einvariant equivalence relations in R4 is presented, which provides alternative proofs, additions and occasionally corrections of results in the literature, including Malament’s theorem and some of its variants. It is argued that the interpretation of simultaneity as an invariant equivalence relation, although interesting for its own sake, does not cut in the debate concerning the conventionality of simultaneity in special relativity. Keywords: special relativity, simultaneity, invariant equivalence relations, Malament’s theorem. Contents 1 Introduction 2 2 Invariant equivalence relations 2 2.1 Basicdefinitionsandnotation . .. .. 3 2.2 Lattices of equivalence relations on a set . 3 2.3 Transitive and nontransitive actions . 5 2.4 Semi-directproducts ............................. 5 arXiv:1202.6578v3 [math-ph] 26 Jul 2012 3 Simultaneity and invariant equivalent relations 6 3.1 Newton-invariant simultaneity . 7 3.2 Galilei-invariant simultaneity . 9 3.3 Poincar´e-invariant simultaneity . 10 3.4 Causality and simultaneity . 12 3.5 Theisotropysubgroupofanotionofrest . 14 3.6 The isotropy subgroup of a timelike straightline . 15 4 Discussion 17 1 5 Appendix 19 1 Introduction In his electrodynamical paper of 1905 Einstein stated that “all our statements in which time plays a role are always statements about simultaneous events” ([2], p. 893), which implies that the time ordering of events presupposes the existence of a simultaneity relation between events. -
Curriculum Vitæ Hans Halvorson
Curriculum Vitæ Hans Halvorson Department of Philosophy Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 http://www.princeton.edu/~hhalvors Permanent positions 2016{ Stuart Professor of Philosophy 2012{ associated faculty, mathematics 2010{ full professor, philosophy 2005{10 associate professor, philosophy 2001{05 assistant professor, philosophy, Princeton University Secondary affiliations 2021{ visiting professor, University of Copenhagen and the Niels Bohr Archive 2008{09 visiting researcher, Mathematical Institute, Utrecht 2006 visiting fellow, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics 2002{ associate fellow, Pittsburgh Center for the Philosophy of Science Education 2001 PhD philosophy, Pittsburgh 1999 visiting student researcher, Oxford 1998 MA mathematics, Pittsburgh 1997 MA philosophy, Pittsburgh 1995 BA philosophy, with honors, Calvin College Work in progress HH. \Carnap's formal philosophy of science" in Rudolf Carnap Handbuch, Metzler Vorlag. HH and JB Manchak. \What hole argument?" philpapers:HALWHA-4 T. Barrett and HH. \Theories are not partially ordered" philpapers:BARTAN HH. \There is no invariant four-dimensional stuff" philpapers:HALTIN-3 HH. \Momentum and context" philpapers:HALMAC-2 Books HH. How Logic Works. Princeton University Press (2020) HH. The Logic in Philosophy of Science. Cambridge University Press (2019) A. Briggs, HH, and A. Steane. It Keeps Me Seeking: The Invitation from Science, Philosophy and Religion. Oxford University Press (2018) HH, editor. Deep Beauty: Understanding the Quantum World through Mathematical Innovation. Cambridge University Press (2011) J. Butterfield and HH, editors. Quantum Entanglements: Selected Papers of Rob Clifton. Oxford University Press (2004) HH. Locality, Localization, and the Particle Concept: Topics in the Foundations of Quantum Field Theory. PhD Thesis, University of Pittsburgh (2001) Articles and book chapters HH. -
Classical Spacetime Structure
Classical Spacetime Structure James Owen Weatherall Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science University of California, Irvine Abstract I discuss several issues related to \classical" spacetime structure. I review Galilean, Newto- nian, and Leibnizian spacetimes, and briefly describe more recent developments. The target audience is undergraduates and early graduate students in philosophy; the presentation avoids mathematical formalism as much as possible. 1. Introduction One often associates spacetime|a four-dimensional geometrical structure representing both space and time|with relativity theory, developed by Einstein and others in the early part of the twentieth century.1 But soon after relativity theory appeared, several authors, such as Hermann Weyl (1952 [1918]), Elie´ Cartan (1923, 1924), and Kurt Friedrichs (1927), began to study how the spatio-temporal structure presupposed by classical, i.e., Newtonian, physics could be re-cast using the methods of four-dimensional geometry developed in the context of relativity. These reformulations of classical physics were initially of interest for the insight they offered into the structure of relativity theory.2 But this changed in 1967, when Howard Stein proposed that the notion of a \classical" spacetime could provide important insight arXiv:1707.05887v1 [physics.hist-ph] 18 Jul 2017 Email address: [email protected] (James Owen Weatherall) 1The idea of \spacetime" was actually introduced by Minkowski (2013 [1911]), several years after Einstein first introduced relativity theory. 2And indeed, they remain of interest for this reason: see, for instance, Friedman (1983), Malament (1986a,b, 2012), Earman (1989b), Fletcher (2014), Barrett (2015), Weatherall (2011a,b, 2014, 2017d,c), and Dewar and Weatherall (2017) for philosophical discussions of the relationship between relativity theory and Newtonian physics that make heavy use of this formalism. -
PHIL 146 Winter 11 Syllabus
Philosophy of Physics 146 This quarter the course will focus on the philosophical foundations of spacetime physics, both classical and relativistic. This topic is an exceptionally rich one, for it has attracted some of the all-time greatest thinkers in philosophy and physics, e.g., Descartes, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, Kant, Reichenbach, Einstein, Gödel, and others. We'll focus on a diverse array of deep questions, e.g.: are physical geometry and topology conventional in some sense? how do we know the physical geometry of space? does relativity prove that time does not flow? that time travel is possible? what does E=mc2 really mean? does quantum non- locality threaten relativity? Tackling these questions will help one better understand both the physics of spacetime and the philosophy of science. Instructor Professor Craig Callender http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/ccallender/ Office: HSS 8077; Office hrs: Tues 2-3 Contact: [email protected]; 24911 Coordinates WLH 2206, TuTh 3:30-4:50 Final Exam 3-20-12, Fri 3-6 Prerequisites Most or all of the math/physics needed will be presented in class, assuming only a small bit of calculus. Every effort will be made to present the technicalia as cleanly and simply as possible. Students with non-technical backgrounds have succeeded in this course; but if you are math-o-phobic, this is not the course for you. Reading I have ordered two books for the course: • Geroch, General Relativity from A to B. • Huggett, Space: From Zeno to Einstein And we will also use many articles in journals. These will be found on jstor.org, reserves.ucsd.edu, and elsewhere on the internet. -
Lost in the Tensors: Einstein's Struggles with Covariance Principles 1912-1916"
JOHN EARMAN and CLARK GL YMOUR LOST IN THE TENSORS: EINSTEIN'S STRUGGLES WITH COVARIANCE PRINCIPLES 1912-1916" Introduction IN 1912 Einstein began to devote a major portion of his time and energy to an attempt to construct a relativistic theory of gravitation. A strong intimation of the struggle that lay ahead is contained in a letter to Arnold Sommerfeld dated October 29, 1912: At the moment I am working solely on the problem of gravitation and believe 1 will be able to overcome all difficulties with the help of a local, friendly mathemat- ician. But one thing is certain, that I have never worked so hard in my life, and that I have been injected with a great awe of mathematics, which in my naivet~ until now I only viewed as a pure luxury in its subtler forms! Compared to this problem the original theory of relativity is mere child's play.' Einstein's letter contained only a perfunctory reply to a query from Sommerfeld about the Debye-Born theory of specific heats. Obviously disappointed, Som- merfeld wrote to Hilbert: 'My letter to Einstein was in vain . Einstein is evidently so deeply mired in gravitation that he is deaf to everything else? Sommerfeld's words were more prophetic than he could possibly have known; the next three years were to see Einstein deeply mired in gravitation, sometimes seemingly hopelessly so. In large measure, Einstein's struggle resulted from his use and his misuse, his understanding and his misunderstanding of the nature and implications of covariance principles. In brief, considerations of general covariance were bound up with Einstein's motive for seeking a 'generalized' theory of relativity; mis- understandings about the meaning and implementation of this motivation threatened to wreck the search; and in the end, the desire for general covariance helped to bring Einstein back onto the track which led to what we now recognize *Present address c/o Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn, U.S.A. -
091 Second Philosophy a Naturalistic Method.Pdf
This page intentionally left blank Second Philosophy This page intentionally left blank Second Philosophy A naturalistic method Penelope Maddy 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Penelope Maddy 2007 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–927366–9 10987654321 For David This page intentionally left blank Preface The roots of this project trace to my previous book—Naturalism in Math- ematics—in two ways, one foreseen and one not. -
Lawrence Sklar
LAWRENCE SKLAR Born: June 25, 1938 in Baltimore, MD Married to: Elizabeth S. Sklar; one child Education Oberlin College, B.A., 1958 Princeton University, M.A., 1960; Ph.D., 1964 Fellowships, Awards and National Offices Held Undergraduate Ford Foundation Early Admission Scholarship Honors List (all years) Phi Beta Kappa (elected in junior year) Sigma Xi (associate member) Graduate Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 1959-60 Chancellor Green Fellowship, 1960-61 Charlotte Elizabeth Proctor Advanced Fellowship (awarded to top ten students in third year graduate class), 1961-62 National Science Foundation Cooperative Fellowship, 1962-63 Post-Graduate American Council of Learned Societies Study Fellowship (held at Oxford University), 1965-66 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1974-75 Franklin J. Matchette Prize. Awarded by the American Philosophical Association to Space, Time, and Spacetime as outstanding philosophical book of 1973 and 1974 National Science Foundation Research Grants, 1977-78, 1979-80, 1982, 1984-85, 1986-87, 1988-89, 1998-2001, 2002-03 Rackham Foundation Summer Research Fellowship, 1983, 1994 2 Nelson Fellow, Philosophy Department, University of Michigan, l991-l994, 1995- James B. and Grace J. Nelson Professorship, Philosophy Department, University of Michigan, 1994-95 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 1995-96 Faculty Recognition Award, University of Michigan, 1995-98 William K. Frankena Collegiate Professorship, University of Michigan, 1995-2002 Lakatos Award. Awarded to Physics and Chance as outstanding book in the philosophy of science for 1995. Physics and Chance selected by Choice Magazine as Outstanding Academic Book in philosophy of science for 1995 Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences John Locke Lectureship in Philosophy, 1998, Oxford University Visiting Fellowship, All Souls College, Oxford University, 1998 Michigan Humanities Award, 1998-99. -
Determinism and General Relativity
Determinism and General Relativity Chris Smeenk and Christian W¨uthrich∗ 16 September 2020 Abstract We investigate the fate of determinism in general relativity (GR), comparing the philosopher's account with the physicist's well-posed initial value formulations. The fate of determinism is interwoven with the question of what it is for a spacetime to be `physically reasonable'. A central concern is the status of global hyperbolicity, a putatively necessary condition for determinism in GR. While global hyperbolicity may fail to be true of all physically reasonable models, we analyze whether global hyperbolicity should be (i) imposed by fiat; (ii) established from weaker assumptions, as in cosmic censorship theorems; or (iii) justified by beyond-GR physics. 1 Introduction Two foundational questions one might ask about any physical theory bring out particularly subtle and interesting features of general relativity (GR). First, is GR a deterministic theory? Second, do all mathematical models of the theory represent physically possible spacetimes? There is a tight connection in GR between these two questions, i.e., between an assessment of what spacetimes are physically possible or reasonable and of whether determinism holds. It is this connection that we explore in this essay. Determinism holds if specifying the state of a system uniquely fixes its dynamical evolution. Spacetimes with exotic causal structure raise a distinctive set of questions regarding the status of determinism in GR, differing from those raised by the (in)famous hole argument. Below we will bypass the hole argument by assuming that the existence of a unique solution `up to diffeomor- phism invariance' is sufficient for determinism in GR. -
Indeterminism Is a Modal Notion: Branching Spacetimes and Earman’S Pruning
Indeterminism is a modal notion: branching spacetimes and Earman’s pruning Tomasz Placek and Nuel Belnap Contents 1 Three types of branching 4 1.1 Ensemble and individual branching defined . 5 1.2 BST branching . 6 2 BT/BST branching 8 2.1 BST: Our World and its point events . 8 2.2 BST: histories . 9 2.3 BST: axioms . 10 2.4 BST: space-like relatedness . 10 2.5 BST: modal thickness and thinness . 10 2.6 BST: applications . 11 2.7 Spatiotemporal locations . 12 3 Physically-motivated BST models 13 3.1 Minkowskian Branching Structures . 13 3.2 Defining MBS’s . 18 3.3 Takingstock............................ 22 3.4 Historical remarks . 23 4 Further replies to Earman 24 4.1 BST: Hausdorffproperty..................... 24 4.2 The thin red line . 31 4.3 Semantic rule (R)......................... 33 4.4 Past/future asymmetry . 35 5 Indeterminism 37 1 6 Final 40 2 Abstract The paper defends an Aristotelian notion of indeterminism, as rig- orously formulated in the framework of branching space-times (BST) of Belnap (1992), against criticism by Earman (2008) based on a model-theoretic characterization of indeterminism. It delineates BST branching against the background provided by Earman’s (2008) dis- tinction between individual vs. ensemble branching. Partly in order to motivate our responses to Earman, it describes a construction of physically-motivated BST models, in which histories are isomorphic to Minkowski spacetime. Finally it responds to Earman’s criticisms leveled against BST by addressing a topological issue, the question of an actual future, the past/future asymmetry, and some semantical questions. -
Physics and the Philosophy of Science at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Physics and the Philosophy of Science at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Forthcoming in the Enciclopedia Italiana di Storia della Scienza under the title, “Fisica e Filosofia della Scienza all’Alba del XX Secolo”) I believe that philosophy can be helped to its feet again only if it devotes itself seriously and fervently to investigations of cognitive processes and the methods of science. There it has a real and legitimate task . Philosophy has obviously come to a standstill because it . still has taken no new life from the vigorous development of the natural sciences. — Hermann von Helmholtz to Adolf Fick, ca. 1875 (as quoted in Koenigsberger 1902–1903, 243) Introduction: Disciplinary Symbiosis Theoretical physics and the philosophy of science are among the most important fields of research in the twentieth century, this as gauged both by their prominence within their respective disciplines and by their broader social and intellectual impact. Yet in 1850 neither field, as we know it today, would have been recognized in the academy or elsewhere as constituting an autonomous mode of inquiry with associated institutional structures. With hindsight, each might be glimpsed in germ. Some would read Hermann von Helmholtz’s 1847 lecture, Über die Erhaltung der Kraft (Helmholtz 1848) as marking the advent of the search for generalizable explanatory structures whose deployment is a distinguishing mark of theoretical physics. Some would read Auguste Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive (1830–1842) or William Whewell’s The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840) as inaugurating the systematic study of those general questions about scientific method, the nature and limits of scientific knowledge, and the structure and interpretation of scientific theories whose focal significance later defined the field in the form made famous by the members of the Vienna Circle. -
Aspects of Determinism in Modern Physics
ASPECTS OF DETERMINISM IN MODERN PHYSICS John Earman 1 INTRODUCTION The aims of this chapter are to review some aspects of determinism that are famil- iar to physicists but are little discussed in the philosophical literature and to show how these aspects connect determinism to issues about symmetries in physics, the structure and ontological status of spacetime, predictability, and computability.1 It will emerge that in some respects determinism is a robust doctrine and is quite hard to kill, while in other respects it is fragile and requires various enabling as- sumptions to give it a fighting chance. It will also be seen that determinism is far from a dead issue. Whether or not ordinary non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM) admits a viable deterministic underpinning is still a matter of debate. Less well known is the fact that in some cases QM turns out to be more deterministic than its classical counterpart. Quantum field theory (QFT) assumes determinism, at least at the classical level, in order to construct the field algebra of quantum observables. Determinism is at the heart of the cosmic censorship hypothesis, the most important unsolved issue in classical general relativity theory (GTR). And issues about the nature and status of determinism lie at the heart of key foundation issues in the search for a theory of quantum gravity. 2 PRELIMINARIES 2.1 The metaphysics of determinism The proposal is to begin by getting a grip on the doctrine of determinism as it was understood pre-GTR and pre-QM, and then subsequently to try to understand how the doctrine has to be adjusted to accommodate these theories.