Berlin 2005 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AKPHIL: Philosophie der Physik

AKPHIL 2: Realismus und Vereinheitlichung

AKPHIL 2.2: Vortrag

Dienstag, 8. März 2005, 14:45–15:15, TU TC6

Moderate structural realism about space-time — •Vincent Lam — University of Lausanne, Department of Philosophy, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

We advocate a moderate version of structural realism that puts objects (or constituents) and relations (or structure) on the same ontological level. We claim that this position constitutes a convincing interpretative framework for space-time. After stating explicitly what we understand by moderate structural realism, we argue that it provides a coherent interpretation of space-time as described by GR in the standard tensor formulation and in the frame bundle formulation. In particular, the invariance of the theory under (active) diffeomorphisms receives a natural understanding that accounts for the practice in physics. The main claim is that space-time should be considered as a mind-independent physical structure whose constituents are not intrinsically characterized. We then situate this ontological position in the debate about the nature of space-time and of the relationship between space-time and matter.