scholarly journals An apology for conflicts between metaphysics and science in naturalized metaphysics

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasmus Jaksland
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Gravity ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Loop Quantum Gravity ◽  
A Priori ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Spatial Distance ◽  
The World ◽  
Naturalized Metaphysics ◽  
Metaphysical Question

AbstractAccording to naturalized metaphysics, metaphysics should be informed by our current best science and not rely on a priori reasoning. Consequently, naturalized metaphysics tends to dismiss metaphysicians’ attempts to quarrel with science. This paper argues that naturalized metaphysics should instead welcome such conflicts between metaphysics and science. Naturalized metaphysics is not (and should not be) eliminative of metaphysics. So, if such conflicts are driven by the immediate absence in science of an answer to a metaphysical question, then the conflict should not be dismissed, but instead be received as an occasion to do (more) naturalized metaphysics. That conflicts between metaphysics and science might be beneficial for naturalized metaphysics is exemplified by the case of non-spatial theories of quantum gravity. These theories are criticized by metaphysicians who, often following David Lewis, argue that spatial distance is an indispensable fundamental element in any coherent metaphysics due to its role as the world-making relation. The resulting conflict, however, is found to be well-motivated since the non-spatial theories of quantum gravity offer no alternative world-making relation to spatial distance. Rather than dismissing this conflict, naturalized metaphysics should therefore receive the Lewisians’ resistance as a call to search for one. How this plays out as a negotiation between the scientific theory and the metaphysical question is exemplified in the last part of the paper where entanglement is proposed as an alternative world-making relation in loop quantum gravity.

Space, Structuralism, and Skepticism

2019 ◽  
pp. 190-205
Author(s):  
Jonathan Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Spatial Distance ◽  
Property Identity ◽  
The World ◽  
Related Point ◽  
Necessary Truths ◽  
Brain In A Vat

The chapter takes structuralism to be the thesis that if F and G are alike causally, then F and G are the same property. It follows that our beliefs about the world can be true in various brain-in-a-vat scenarios, giving us (some) refuge from skeptical arguments. The trouble is that structuralism doesn’t do justice to certain metaphysical aspects of property identity having to do with fundamentality, intrinsicality, and the unity of the world. A closely related point is that the relation…lies-at-some-spatial-distance-from…obeys necessary truths that need not apply to other relations with the same causal profile. This observation is especially important if, as David Lewis argued, the only alternatives to skepticism are structuralism and an anti-Humean stance toward modality. Some pertinent views of David Chalmers’s are discussed, and parallels are drawn between the structuralist response to skepticism and functionalism in the philosophy of mind.

6. Frontiers of gravitational physics

2017 ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Timothy Clifton
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
String Theory ◽  
Quantum Gravity ◽  
Cosmological Constant ◽  
Loop Quantum Gravity ◽  
Gravitational Interaction ◽  
Theoretical Description ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Cosmic Inflation ◽  
The World

‘Frontiers of gravitational physics’ considers some of the issues involved in the theoretical description of gravity. Since 1915, it has been Einstein’s theory that has shaped our understanding of the gravitational interaction, but a lot has happened in the world of theoretical physics since then. Quantum mechanics, devised by Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger, is incompatible with gravity and so has raised numerous questions. Several theories, including String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity, have been proposed with some success. The concepts of cosmic inflation, the cosmological constant, and the possibility of multiple universes are also discussed. It concludes that with further astrophysical studies a new fundamental theory may explain it all.

Philosophy Beyond Spacetime

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Gravity ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Loop Quantum Gravity ◽  
Quantum Theories ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Naturalized Metaphysics ◽  
Theories Of Gravity ◽  
Methodological Aspects ◽  
Emergence Of Spacetime

The present volume collects essays on the philosophical foundations of quantum theories of gravity, such as loop quantum gravity and string theory. Central for philosophical concerns is quantum gravity's suggestion that space and time, or spacetime, may not exist fundamentally, but instead be a derivative entity emerging from non-spatiotemporal degrees of freedom. In the spirit of naturalized metaphysics, contributions to this volume consider the philosophical implications of this suggestion. In turn, philosophical methods and insights are brought to bear on the foundations of quantum gravity itself. For instance, the idea of functionalism, borrowed from the philosophy of mind and discussed by several chapters, exemplifies this mutual interaction the collection seeks to foster. The chapters of this collection cover three main subjects: first, the potential emergence of spacetime in various approaches to quantum gravity; second, metaphysical and epistemological considerations concerning the nature of this relation of emergence; and third, broader methodological aspects of the philosophy of quantum gravity.

scholarly journals Alignments and Gaps Between Multi-fold Universes And Loop Quantum Gravity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephane Maes
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Gravity ◽  
Loop Quantum Gravity ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Superstring Theories

Multi-fold universes and LQG have a lot in common as well as complementarities. A priori, both models are compatible with each other. The present paper analyses these touch points and suggests ways forward both in terms of multi-fold universes and of LQG. Also, considering the relationships between multi-fold universes results and superstring theories, there are many ways that the three approaches could use lessons learned or mechanisms from each other, in order to fill gaps or improve some of their own models. Maybe they could even converge towards new and more encompassing combined frameworks. We conclude with a call for such a collaboration.

1968: On Social, Epistemic, and Historiographic(?) Revolutions

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto D. Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Young Students ◽  
Historic Significance ◽  
Agent Of Change

This article addresses the meaning and significance of the “world revolution of 1968,” as well as the historiography of 1968. I critically interrogate how the production of a narrative about 1968 and the creation of ethnic studies, despite its world-historic significance, has tended to perpetuate a limiting, essentialized and static notion of “the student” as the primary actor and an inherent agent of change. Although students did play an enormous role in the events leading up to, through, and after 1968 in various parts of the world—and I in no way wish to diminish this fact—this article nonetheless argues that the now hegemonic narrative of a student-led revolt has also had a number of negative consequences, two of which will be the focus here. One problem is that the generation-driven models that situate 1968 as a revolt of the young students versus a presumably older generation, embodied by both their parents and the dominant institutions of the time, are in effect a sociosymbolic reproduction of modernity/coloniality’s logic or driving impulse and obsession with newness. Hence an a priori valuation is assigned to the new, embodied in this case by the student, at the expense of the presumably outmoded old. Secondly, this apparent essentializing of “the student” has entrapped ethnic studies scholars, and many of the period’s activists (some of whom had been students themselves), into said logic, thereby risking the foreclosure of a politics beyond (re)enchantment or even obsession with newness yet again.

How Reality is Reasonable

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C. Williams
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Dimensional Manifold ◽  
The World ◽  
Being There ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Fundamental Entity ◽  
Spatiotemporal Relations ◽  
Priori Knowledge

This chapter begins with a systematic presentation of the doctrine of actualism. According to actualism, all that exists is actual, determinate, and of one way of being. There are no possible objects, nor is there any indeterminacy in the world. In addition, there are no ways of being. It is proposed that actual entities stand in three fundamental relations: mereological, spatiotemporal, and resemblance relations. These relations govern the fundamental entities. Each fundamental entity stands in parthood relations, spatiotemporal relations, and resemblance relations to other entities. The resulting picture is one that represents the world as a four-dimensional manifold of actual ‘qualitied contents’—upon which all else supervenes. It is then explained how actualism accounts for classes, quantity, number, causation, laws, a priori knowledge, necessity, and induction.

Kant’s ‘Transcendental Deduction’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Structural Description ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
The World ◽  
Empirical Realism

This chapter presents a straightforward structural description of Immanuel Kant’s conception of what the transcendental deduction is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it. The ‘deduction’ Kant thinks is needed for understanding the human mind would establish and explain our ‘right’ or ‘entitlement’ to something we seem to possess and employ in ‘the highly complicated web of human knowledge’. This is: experience, concepts, and principles. The chapter explains the point and strategy of the ‘deduction’ as Kant understands it, as well as the demanding conditions of its success, without entering into complexities of interpretation or critical assessment of the degree of success actually achieved. It also analyses Kant’s arguments regarding a priori concepts as well as a posteriori knowledge of the world around us, along with his claim that our position in the world must be understood as ‘empirical realism’.

scholarly journals Review on hermiticity of the volume operators in Loop Quantum Gravity

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Ariwahjoedi ◽  
I. Husin ◽  
I. Sebastian ◽  
F. P. Zen
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Gravity ◽  
Loop Quantum Gravity

Hegel's Critique of Foundationalism in the “Doctrine of Essence”

1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 18-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Houlgate
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
The World

It is a commonplace among certain recent philosophers that there is no such thing as the essence of anything. Nietzsche, for example, asserts that things have no essence of their own, because they are nothing but ceaselessly changing ways of acting on, and reacting to, other things. Wittgenstein, famously, rejects the idea that there is an essence to language and thought — at least if we mean by that some a priori logical structure underlying our everyday utterances. Finally, Richard Rorty urges that we “abandon […] the notion of ‘essence’ altogether”, along with “the notion that man's essence is to be a knower of essences”.It would be wrong to maintain that these writers understand the concept of essence in precisely the same way, or that they are all working towards the same philosophical goal. Nevertheless, they do share one aim in common: to undermine the idea that there is some deeper reality or identity underlying and grounding what we encounter in the world, what we say and what we do. That is to say, they may all be described as anti-foundationalist thinkers — thinkers who want us to attend to the specific processes and practices of nature and humanity without understanding them to be the product of some fundamental essence or “absolute”.

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