The limitations of inertial frame spacetime functionalism
Journal article
Read, James and Vasudev Menon, Tushar. (2021). The limitations of inertial frame spacetime functionalism. Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science. 199, pp. 229-251. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02299-2
Authors | Read, James and Vasudev Menon, Tushar |
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Abstract | For Knox, ‘spacetime’ is to be defined functionally, as that which picks out a structure of local inertial frames. Assuming that Knox is motivated to construct this functional definition of spacetime on the grounds that it appears to identify that structure which plays the operational role of spacetime—i.e., that structure which is actually surveyed by physical rods and clocks built from matter fields—we identify in this paper important limitations of her approach: these limitations are based upon the fact that there is a gap between inertial frame structure and that which is operationally significant in the above sense. We present five concrete cases in which these two notions come apart, before considering various ways in which Knox’s spacetime functionalism might be amended in light of these issues. |
Keywords | Knox; spacetime functionalism; amendments |
Year | 01 Jan 2021 |
Journal | Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science |
Journal citation | 199, pp. 229-251 |
Publisher | Springer |
ISSN | 0039-7857 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02299-2 |
Web address (URL) | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-019-02299-2 |
Open access | Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access |
Research or scholarly | Research |
Page range | 229-251 |
Publisher's version | License File Access Level Open |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | |
Online | 29 Jun 2019 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 20 Jun 2019 |
Deposited | 26 Aug 2024 |
Additional information | © The Author(s), 2019. |
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. | |
Place of publication | Germany |
https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/90x09/the-limitations-of-inertial-frame-spacetime-functionalism
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Publisher's version
OA_Vasudev-Menon_2019_The_limitations_of_intertial_frame_spacetime.pdf | |
License: CC BY 4.0 | |
File access level: Open |
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