Against the disappearance of spacetime in quantum gravity

DOI10.1007/S11229-019-02168-YMaRDI QIDQ6144820zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Michael Esfeld

Publication date 30 January 2024

Published in Synthese (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.06637

zbMATH Keywords

Bohmian mechanicsfunctionalismgeneral relativity theorymeasurement problemprimitive ontologyquantum field theoryquantum gravityquantum mechanicsshape dynamics

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Quantization of the gravitational field (83C45)

Abstract: This paper argues against the proposal to draw from current research into a physical theory of quantum gravity the ontological conclusion that spacetime or spatiotemporal relations are not fundamental. As things stand, the status of this proposal is like the one of all the other claims about radical changes in ontology that were made during the development of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. However, none of these claims held up to scrutiny as a consequence of the physics once the theory was established and a serious discussion about its ontology had begun. Furthermore, the paper argues that if spacetime is to be recovered through a functionalist procedure in a theory that admits no fundamental spacetime, standard functionalism cannot serve as a model: all the known functional definitions are definitions in terms of a causal role for the motion of physical objects and hence presuppose spatiotemporal relations.

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Cited in

(6)

• Entanglement as the world-making relation: distance from entanglement
• Spacetime functionalism in general relativity and quantum gravity
• Spacetime emergence in quantum gravity: functionalism and the hard problem
• On the empirical coherence and the spatiotemporal gap problem in quantum gravity: and why functionalism does not (have to) help
• Empirical incoherence and double functionalism
• Against radical relationalism: in defense of the ordinal structure of time

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