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Albert Einstein Meets David Lewis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Jeremy Butterfield
Jeremy Butterfield*
Affiliation:
Cambridge University
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Extract

With help from Einstein, John Norton and John Earman (1987; this volume) have invented a fascinating argument against spacetime substantivalism. It gives the philosophy of space and time a refreshing stimulus: all credit to them. The idea of the argument is that substantivalism rules out determinism, even of very weak kinds. Norton and Earman have no special brief to defend determinism. But they believe that if it fails, it should fail for reasons of physics that vary from case to case—it should not fail at a stroke for the sake of a philosophical doctrine such as substantivalism. They conclude that in the conflict between substantivalism and determinism, it is substantivalism that must go.

The conflict arises from ‘hole diffeomorphisms’. These enable us, once we are given a model for a spacetime theory, to produce another model.

Type
Part III. Natural Philosophy
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1988 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1988 , 1988 , pp. 65 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank my co-symposiasts, Philip Catton, John Earman, David Lewis, David Malament, Michael Redhead, Paul Teller and especially, John Norton and Roberto Torretti, for discussions and correspondence.

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