Related papers: Laws beyond spacetime
The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans, who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter, and non-Humeans, who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the…
In recent literature, it has become clear that quantum physics does not refute Humeanism. This point has so far been made with respect to Bohms quantum theory. Against this background, this paper seeks to achieve the following four results:…
We pursue the view that quantum theory may be an emergent structure related to large space-time scales. In particular, we consider classical Hamiltonian systems in which the intrinsic proper time evolution parameter is related through a…
The pros and cons of various forms of atomism and holism that are applicable both in physical science and today's philosophy of nature are evaluated. To this end, Lewis' thesis of Humean supervenience is presented as an important case study…
The paper compares dispositionalism about laws of nature with primitivism. It argues that while the distinction between these two positions can be drawn in a clear-cut manner in classical mechanics, it is less clear in quantum mechanics,…
It is shown that Lewis' ontological doctrine of Humean supervenience incorporates at its foundation the so-called separability principle of classical physics. In view of the systematic violation of the latter within quantum mechanics, the…
The paper sets out a primitive ontology of the natural world in terms of primitive stuff, that is, stuff that has as such no physical properties at all, but that is not a bare substratum either, being individuated by metrical relations. We…
Theories of quantum gravity generically presuppose or predict that the reality underlying relativistic spacetimes they are describing is significantly non-spatiotemporal. On pain of empirical incoherence, approaches to quantum gravity must…
Quantum Gravity by Causal Dynamical Triangulation has over the last few years emerged as a serious contender for a nonperturbative description of the theory. It is a nonperturbative implementation of the sum-over-histories, which relies on…
Since the advent of quantum mechanics we have mainly been concerned with its predictions from the perspective of an external observer. This is in strong contrast to the theory of general relativity, where the physics is governed by the…
We show that the local and deterministic mode of description is not only in conflict with the quantum theory, but also with relativity. We argue that elementary relativistic properties of spacetime lead to the emergence of a…
When compared to quantum mechanics, classical mechanics is often depicted in a specific metaphysical flavour: spatio-temporal realism or a Newtonian "background" is presented as an intrinsic fundamental classical presumption. However, the…
The descriptions of the quantum realm and the macroscopic classical world differ significantly not only in their mathematical formulations but also in their foundational concepts and philosophical consequences. When and how physical systems…
Research in quantum gravity strongly suggests that our world in not fundamentally spatiotemporal, but that spacetime may only emerge in some sense from a non-spatiotemporal structure, as this paper illustrates in the case of causal set…
Hamiltonian mechanics describes the evolution of a system through its Hamiltonian. The Hamiltonian typically also represents the energy observable, a Noether-conserved quantity associated with the time-invariance of the law of evolution. In…
It is univocally anticipated that in a theory of quantum gravity, there exist quantum superpositions of semiclassical states of spacetime geometry. Such states could arise for example, from a source mass in a superposition of spatial…
The paper shows how the Bohmian approach to quantum physics can be applied to develop a clear and coherent ontology of non-perturbative quantum gravity. We suggest retaining discrete objects as the primitive ontology also when it comes to a…
General relativity is a background-independent theory of a dynamical classical spacetime geometry. Quantum theory is formulated in a classical spacetime, as an intrinsically probabilistic, contextual theory of non-classical, interfering…
Numerous approaches to a quantum theory of gravity posit fundamental ontologies that exclude spacetime, either partially or wholly. This situation raises deep questions about how such theories could relate to the empirical realm, since…
Without wasting time and effort on philosophical justifications and implications, we write down the conditions for the Hamiltonian of a quantum system for rendering it mathematically equivalent to a deterministic system. These are the…