Abstract
A number of approaches to quantum gravity (QG) seem to imply that spacetime does not exist. Philosophers are quick to point out, however, that the loss of spacetime should not be regarded as total. Rather, we should interpret these approaches as ones that threaten the fundamentality but not the existence of spacetime. In this paper, I argue for two claims. First, I argue that spacetime realism is not forced by QG; spacetime eliminativism remains an option. Second, I argue that eliminativism provides a useful framework for developing two existing approaches to the metaphysics of QG, involving functionalism and mereology respectively.
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Notes
See Huggett and Wüthrich (2013) for an overview.
See Le Bihan (2018b) for more on realism and eliminativism.
See Butterfield and Isham (1999) for discussion.
See Carrol (2019) for details.
Wallace (2020) seems to hold this view.
This was noted by a referee.
For instance, Le Bihan and Linnemann (2019) take the presence of space and time to justify the existence of spacetime in a ‘minimal’ sense.
These views are not necessarily in competition, and may be held together.
If a spacetime region R has parts \(p_1 ... p_n\) that are not spatiotemporally located, then Inheritance of Location is false: the \(p_n\) are all parts of R and yet none are located where R is. H5 is also false: the \(p_n\) occupy no spatiotemporal regions and so a fortiori occupy no sub-region of R. Smaller than fails for much the same reason: some of the \(p_n\) will be proper parts of R. However, none of the \(p_n\) are smaller than R because none of them occupy any sub-region of R. Finally, the spatiotemporal extent of R is not a function of the spatiotemporal extent of the \(p_n\) because they are not spatiotemporally extended, and so Compositionality of Extension is false.
I am grateful to a referee for pressing me to clarify this argument.
This may require showing how spatial and temporal properties can be realised. Functionalist spacetime eliminativism may therefore be limited in so far as it requires the existence of fundamental spatial and temporal properties (on pain of facing a new dependence question about how spatial and temporal entities arise from non-spatial, non-temporal ones).
This was pointed out by a referee.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Baptiste Le Bihan, Kristie Miller and Jonathan Tallant for useful discussion of eliminativism. Research on this paper was funded by two grants from the Australian Research Council, a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE180100414) and a Discovery Project (DP180100105).
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Baron, S. Eliminating Spacetime. Erkenn 88, 1289–1308 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00402-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00402-z