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Excerpts from: Time Travel and Time Machines
Given that time travel cannot be straightforwardly ruled out as incoherent or logically impossible, we now face the following difficult questions. In...
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A General Theory of Objectivity: Contributions from the Reformational Philosophy Tradition
Objectivity in the sciences is a much-touted yet problematic concept. It is sometimes held up as characterising scientific knowledge, yet operational...
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Respecting boundaries: theoretical equivalence and structure beyond dynamics
A standard line in the contemporary philosophical literature has it that physical theories are equivalent only when they agree on their empirical...
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Appendix 2: How Aim-Oriented Empiricism Would Benefit Science
A major consideration in favour of aim-oriented empiricism is that it has fruitful implications for science. This chapter concentrates on fruitful...
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Qualia share their correlates’ locations
This paper presents the location-sharing argument, which concludes that qualia must share the locations of their physical correlates. The first...
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Philipp Frank’s Relativism: Presentation, Appreciation, and Critique
In his 1950 Relativity: a Richer Truth, Philipp Frank promotes a generalized “relativism”, or “doctrine of the relativity of truth”, requiring the...
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The Relational Ontology of Contemporary Physics
Quantum theory can be understood as pointing to an ontology of relations. I observe that this reading of quantum mechanics is supported by the...
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Existence Is Not Relativistically Invariant—Part 1: Meta-ontology
Metaphysicians who are aware of modern physics usually follow Putnam (1967) in arguing that Special Theory of Relativity is incompatible with the...
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Spacetime Is Material
Space and time are central concepts for understanding our World. They are important ingredients at the core of every scientific theory and subject of...
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Consequences from the Impossibility of Objectively Identifying Change. Philosophical Considerations Following Kurt Gödel
In A remark about the relationship between relativity theory and idealistic philosophy (1949a) Kurt Gödel argues that an objective identification of...
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Object and Something in General in Contemporary Formal Ontology
If the project of formal ontology was first formulated by Edmund Husserl in his third Logical Investigation, it has been pursued during the last...
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Temporal becoming in a relativistic universe: causal diamonds and Gödel’s philosophy of time
The theory of relativity is often regarded as inhospitable to the idea that there is an objective passage of time in the world. In light of this,...
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Adynamism in Physics: The Block Universe vs Barbour’s Relational Strategy
The block universe is generally considered as the metaphysical position that best accommodates the outcomes of relativistic physics. Its most...
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Consistency of Quantum Computation and the Equivalence Principle
The equivalence principle, being one of the building blocks of general relativity, seems to be crucial for analysis of quantum effects in gravity. In...
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Existential Inertia: Thesis and Taxonomy
We begin by surveying and comparing different articulations of the existential inertia thesis. We then raise and analyze a series of questions aiming...
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Konsequenzen aus der Unmöglichkeit einer objektiven Bestimmung von Veränderung. Philosophische Überlegungen im Anschluss an Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel argumentiert in A remark about the relationship between relativity theory and idealistic philosophy (1949a) für die Unmöglichkeit einer...
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Can Fractional Calculus be Applied to Relativity?
Interest has been recently devoted to historical and philosophical aspects about fractional calculus (FC) and its adoption as additional mathematical...
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A Theory of the Big Bang in McTaggart’s Time
There are long-standing questions about the Big Bang: What were its properties? Was there nothing before it? Was the universe always here? Many...
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The information-theoretic view of quantum mechanics and the measurement problem(s)
Until recently Jeffrey Bub and Itamar Pitowsky, in the framework of an information-theoretic view of quantum mechanics, claimed first that to the...
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Appearance and reality: Einstein and the early debate on the reality of length contraction
In 1909, Ehrenfest published a note in the Physikalische Zeitschrift showing that a Born rigid cylinder could not be set into rotation without...
