Related papers: Reopening the Hole Argument
The 'hole argument'(the English translation of German 'Lochbetrachtung') was formulated by Albert Einstein in 1913 in his search for a relativistic theory of gravitation. The hole argument was deemed to be based on a trivial error of…
"The last remnant of physical objectivity of space-time" is disclosed in the case of a continuous family of spatially non-compact models of general relativity (GR). The {\it physical individuation} of point-events is furnished by the…
Einstein presented the Hole Argument against General Covariance, understood as invariance with respect to a change of coordinates, as a consequence of his initial failure to obtain covariant equations that, in the weak static limit, contain…
Jim Weatherall has suggested that Einstein's hole argument, as presented by Earman and Norton (1987), is based on a misleading use of mathematics. I argue on the contrary that Weatherall demands an implausible restriction on how mathematics…
In this two-part paper, we review, and then develop, the assessment of the hole argument for general relativity. This first Part reviews the literature hitherto, focussing on the philosophical aspects. It also introduces two main ideas we…
The Hamiltonian structure of General Relativity (GR), for both metric and tetrad gravity in a definite continuous family of space-times, is fully exploited in order to show that: i) the "Hole Argument" can be bypassed by means of a specific…
(Abridged Abstract) This paper deals with a number of technical achievements that are instrumental for a dis-solution of the so-called {\it Hole Argument} in general relativity. The work is carried through in metric gravity for the class of…
The hole argument of general relativity threatens a radical and pernicious form of indeterminism. One natural response to the argument is that points belonging to different but isometric models should always be identified, or…
Arguing from his "hole" thought experiment, Einstein became convinced that, in cases in which the energy-momentum-tensor source vanishes in a spacetime hole, a solution to his general relativistic field equation cannot be uniquely…
The celu of the philosophical literature on the hole argument is the 1987 paper by Earman \& Norton ["What Price Space-time Substantivalism? The Hole Story" Br. J. Phil. Sci.]. This paper has a well-known back-story, concerning work by…
For the past two decades, Einstein's Hole Argument (which deals with the apparent indeterminateness of general relativity due to the general covariance of the field equations) and its resolution in terms of Leibniz equivalence (the…
The hole argument was developed by Einstein in 1913 while he was searching for a relativistic theory of gravitation. Einstein used the language of coordinate systems and coordinate invariance, rather than the language of manifolds and…
We exploit the results of Bamonti and Gomes (2024) concerning the dynamical (un)coupling of reference frames to gravity to analyse the role of reference frames in the Hole Argument. We introduce a new possible threat to determinism, which…
We make some remarks on the mathematics and metaphysics of the hole argument, in response to a recent article in this journal by Weatherall ([2018]). Broadly speaking, we defend the mainstream philosophical literature from the claim that…
Upon reading Einstein's views on quantum incompleteness in publications or in his correspondence after 1935 (the EPR paradox), one gets a very intense feeling of deja-vu. Einstein presents a quantum hole argument, which somewhat reminds of…
An alternative approach to Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) is reviewed, which is motivated by a range of serious theoretical issues inflicting the theory, such as the cosmological constant problem, presence of non-Machian…
The canonical formalism of general relativity affords a particularly interesting characterisation of the infamous hole argument. It also provides a natural formalism in which to relate the hole argument to the problem of time in classical…
One of the main features of covariant theories, in particular general relativity, is that the field equation possesses gauge freedom associated with global diffeomorphisms of the underlying manifold. I shall explain here how the hole…
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…
Two of the most fundamental problems at the nexus of Einstein's classical General Relativity (GR) and Quantum Field Theory (QFT) are: (1) complete gravitational collapse, presumed in classical GR to lead to a Black Hole (BH) horizon and…