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Spacetime and Holes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Carolyn Brighouse
Carolyn Brighouse*
Affiliation:
Occidental College and University of Southern California
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Extract

Here I describe and defend a version of space-time substantivalism. My account is meant partly as a reply to an argument against a particular substantivalist position that can be found both in John Earman and John Norton's “What price spacetime substantivalism? The hole story”, and Earman's World Enough and Spacetime. Their argument, the Hole Argument, purports to show that substantivalism leads to a radical form of indeterminism within a class of theories that includes our best theory of spacetime, namely, General Relativity (GTR). The hole argument contends that the substantivalist must view diffeomorphic models of a spacetime theory as representing genuinely distinct physical situations. It is this contention I argue against.

The version of substantivalism I present, although not a traditional account, incorporates the important features of traditional substantivalist views.

Type
Part III. Spacetime and Related Matters
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 117 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Hartry Field, Frank Amtzenius, John Norton, Seth Crook, Gordon Belot and Tom Cuda for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

References

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