INDUCTIVE METAPHYSICS
  • Subprojects 2017-2020
    • A1: The Research Programme of Inductive Metaphysics from Gustav Theodor Fechner to Erich Becher and beyond
    • A2: Creative Abductive Inference and Its Role for Inductive Metaphysics in Comparison to Other Metaphysical Methods
    • A4: Kant and Inductive Methods in 18th Century Metaphysics
    • B1: Modality in Physics and in Metaphysics
    • B2: Properties and Property Individuation
    • B4: Determinism, Control, and the Consequence Argument
    • B5: Statistical Causation, Intervention, and Freedom
  • Subprojects 2020-2023
    • A1: Inductive Metaphysics and Logical Empiricism
    • A2: Creative Abductive Inference and its Role for Inductive Metaphysics
    • A4: Inductive Methods in Kant and Neo-Kantianism
    • B6: The Role of Inference to the best explanation in the discovery of Gravitational Waves
    • B7: Graded Causation
    • B8: The Time of science and the time of our lives
    • B9: Complex biological dispositions: a case study in the metaphysics of biological practice
    • B10: Metaphysics of Evolution: justification and ontology of generalized evolution theory
    • B11: Abductive Methodology in the philosophy of logic
  • Events
    • Inductive Metaphysics: Insights, Challenges and Prospects
    • Non-Reductionism in the Metaphysics of Mind
    • Essences, Dispositions and Laws in Kant
    • The Methodology of Logic: Abductivist and Non-abductivist Approaches
    • Grounding and the Direction of Explanation
    • Wochenendseminar zur Philosophie der Physik
    • Dispositions in the Life-Sciences Contemporary and Historical Perspectives
    • New Work on Induction and Abduction
    • Compatibilist Libertarianism: Advantages and Challenges
    • Metaphysics as Modelling. Contemporary and Kantian Issues
    • Laws and Explanations in Metaphysics and Science
    • Causation and Responsibility
    • Thinking About the Cultural Evolution of Thinking
    • Causal Distinctions: Specificity and Beyond
    • Free Will and Causality
    • Epistemic Engineering
    • Counterpossibles, Counternomics and Causal Theories of Properties
    • The Possibility of Metaphysics
    • Abduction and Modelling in Metaphysics
    • Kant's Concepts of Metaphysics
    • Freedom and Determinism
    • What Do We Do When We Do Metaphysics?
    • Properties and Laws in the Light of Inductive Metaphysics
    • Free Will and Laws of Nature
    • Traditional and Inductive Metaphysics
    • Spacetime: Fundamental or Emergent?
  • People
  • Research
    • Publications
    • Talks
  • Contact
International Workshop

Spacetime: Fundamental or EmergenT?

International Workshop
Spacetime: Fundamental or Emergent?

​Universitätsclub Bonn, Konviktstr. 9, 53113 Bonn, Germany
Oct 26 - Oct 28, 2017
​https://www.philosophie.uni-bonn.de/de/aktuelles/tagung-spacetime

This workshop is organised by Andreas Bartels and Kian Salimkhani, as an event of the DFG-Research-Group "Inductive Metaphysics" (FOR 2495).

Description

Spacetime or spatiotemporal relations have traditionally been considered as perfect candidates for fundamental enti- ties or structures of reality. However, in modern physics and philosophy this general agreement has been challenged by, for example, physical theories that try to recover spacetime as an emergent structure resulting in the current debate on the (non-)fundamentality of spacetime.
With respect to this debate, our workshop attempts to explore three central aspects: First, what kind of entity is spacetime? Is it essentially a geometrical entity, as the received view has it, or just a physical field that can be described by geometrical means? Is that field grounding other physical fields, or is it rather one among many?
Second, this naturally evokes the question of what is involved in claims of fundamentality of physical entities, and thus is connected to a current debate in the metaphysics of science. We suggest that the issue of fundamentality or emergence is where the general metaphysical status of scientific entities is reflected within physics.
Third, the foregoing topics merge in the concrete question of what different approaches to quantum gravity, like loop quantum gravity, the spin-2 approach, or string theory, may reveal about the status of spacetime. Is spacetime an emer-gent entity as most approaches seem to suggest? If so, which concept of emergence will apply? We suggest that these questions indicate how closely metaphysical issues are entangled with the current development of physics.

Speakers
  • Karen Crowther (Geneva, Switzerland)
  • Richard Dawid (Stockholm, Sweden)
  • Neil Dewar (Munich, Germany)
  • Michael Esfeld (Lausanne, Switzerland)
  • Dennis Lehmkuhl (Caltech, California)
  • J. Brian Pitts (Cambridge, England)
  • James Read (Oxford, England)
  • Kian Salimkhani (Bonn, Germany)
  • Alastair Wilson (Birmingham, England)
  • Christian Wüthrich (Geneva, Switzerland)

Program

Thursday, Oct 26
10:30 - 10:45

10:45 - 12:00

12:00 - 14:00

14:00 - 15:15

15:15 - 15:30

15:30 - 16:45
Official Welcome

Dennis Lehmkuhl: "Is it possible for spacetime to be neither fundamental nor emergent? Learning from Einstein’s path towards field realism"
lunch

Neil Dewar: "Noether’s theorems from the perspective of general covariance"

coffee break

James Read: "Two miracles of general relativity"


Friday, Oct 27
9:15 - 10:30

10:30 - 10:45

10:45 - 12:00

12:00 - 14:00

14:00 - 15:15

15:15 - 15:30

15:30 - 16:45

16:45 - 17:00

17:00 - 18:15

19:30
Christian Wüthrich: "Spacetime is as spacetime does"

coffee break

Karen Crowther: "Fundamentality and emergence in quantum gravity"

lunch

Michael Esfeld: "An argument for fundamental distance relations"

coffee break

Alastair Wilson: "Dependence without spacetime"

coffee break

Kian Salimkhani: "Lorentz invariance and the non-fundamentality of spacetime"

Conference Dinner


Saturday, Oct 28
9:15 - 10:30

10:30 - 10:45

10:45 - 12:00

12:00 - 13:00

13:00 - 15:00
J. Brian Pitts: "What represents space-time and what follows for substantivalism vs. relationalism and for gravitational energy?"
coffee break

Richard Dawid: "String theory, empirical equivalence and fundamentality"

lunch

social program

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  • Subprojects 2017-2020
    • A1: The Research Programme of Inductive Metaphysics from Gustav Theodor Fechner to Erich Becher and beyond
    • A2: Creative Abductive Inference and Its Role for Inductive Metaphysics in Comparison to Other Metaphysical Methods
    • A4: Kant and Inductive Methods in 18th Century Metaphysics
    • B1: Modality in Physics and in Metaphysics
    • B2: Properties and Property Individuation
    • B4: Determinism, Control, and the Consequence Argument
    • B5: Statistical Causation, Intervention, and Freedom
  • Subprojects 2020-2023
    • A1: Inductive Metaphysics and Logical Empiricism
    • A2: Creative Abductive Inference and its Role for Inductive Metaphysics
    • A4: Inductive Methods in Kant and Neo-Kantianism
    • B6: The Role of Inference to the best explanation in the discovery of Gravitational Waves
    • B7: Graded Causation
    • B8: The Time of science and the time of our lives
    • B9: Complex biological dispositions: a case study in the metaphysics of biological practice
    • B10: Metaphysics of Evolution: justification and ontology of generalized evolution theory
    • B11: Abductive Methodology in the philosophy of logic
  • Events
    • Inductive Metaphysics: Insights, Challenges and Prospects
    • Non-Reductionism in the Metaphysics of Mind
    • Essences, Dispositions and Laws in Kant
    • The Methodology of Logic: Abductivist and Non-abductivist Approaches
    • Grounding and the Direction of Explanation
    • Wochenendseminar zur Philosophie der Physik
    • Dispositions in the Life-Sciences Contemporary and Historical Perspectives
    • New Work on Induction and Abduction
    • Compatibilist Libertarianism: Advantages and Challenges
    • Metaphysics as Modelling. Contemporary and Kantian Issues
    • Laws and Explanations in Metaphysics and Science
    • Causation and Responsibility
    • Thinking About the Cultural Evolution of Thinking
    • Causal Distinctions: Specificity and Beyond
    • Free Will and Causality
    • Epistemic Engineering
    • Counterpossibles, Counternomics and Causal Theories of Properties
    • The Possibility of Metaphysics
    • Abduction and Modelling in Metaphysics
    • Kant's Concepts of Metaphysics
    • Freedom and Determinism
    • What Do We Do When We Do Metaphysics?
    • Properties and Laws in the Light of Inductive Metaphysics
    • Free Will and Laws of Nature
    • Traditional and Inductive Metaphysics
    • Spacetime: Fundamental or Emergent?
  • People
  • Research
    • Publications
    • Talks
  • Contact