The heuristic function of duality

Haro, Sebastian De

doi:10.1007/s11229-018-1708-9

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…280-1 for an informal account. 7 See for instance Matsubara & Johansson (2018); De Haro (2018); Le Bihan & Read (2018). 8 Huggett (2017).…”

Section: The Problem Of Empirical Coherencementioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking about Spacetime

Yates¹

2021

Philosophy Beyond Spacetime

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Several different quantum gravity research programmes suggest, for various reasons, that spacetime is not part of the fundamental ontology of physics. This gives rise to the problem of empirical coherence, which I frame in terms of entailment: how could a non-spatiotemporal fundamental theory entail spatiotemporal evidence propositions? Solutions to this puzzle can be classified as realist or antirealist, depending on whether or not they posit a non-fundamental spacetime structure grounded in or caused by the fundamental structure. These approaches place different constraints on our everyday concepts of space and time. Applying lessons from the philosophy of mind, I argue that only realism is both conceptually plausible and suitable for addressing the problem at hand. I suggest a role-functionalist version of realism, which is consistent with both grounding and causation, and according to which our everyday concepts reveal something of the true nature of emergent spacetime.

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“…280-1 for an informal account. 7 See for instance Matsubara & Johansson (2018); De Haro (2018); Le Bihan & Read (2018). 8 Huggett (2017).…”

Section: The Problem Of Empirical Coherencementioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking about Spacetime

Yates¹

2021

Philosophy Beyond Spacetime

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“…Two months before Witten's M-theory proposal, Paul Townsend had suggested that tendimensional strings might descend from quantum supermembranes in eleven dimensions; in the diagram of Figure 6, this would be captured by moving from the Type IIA endpoint towards the centre. 64 Supergravity in eleven dimensions (the theory depicted at the 62 The heuristic role of dualities, of guiding the search for a successor theory such as M theory, has also been explored in De Haro (2019a).…”

Section: Downward Extrapolation and M Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Emergence and correspondence for string theory black holes

Dongen

Haro

Visser

et al. 2020

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in

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This is one of a pair of papers that give a historical-cum-philosophical analysis of the endeavour to understand black hole entropy as a statistical mechanical entropy obtained by counting string-theoretic microstates. Both papers focus on Andrew Strominger and Cumrun Vafa's ground-breaking 1996 calculation, which analysed the black hole in terms of D-branes. The first paper gives a conceptual analysis of the Strominger-Vafa argument, and of several research efforts that it engendered. In this paper, we assess whether the black hole should be considered as emergent from the D-brane system, particularly in light of the role that duality plays in the argument. We further identify uses of the quantum-toclassical correspondence principle in string theory discussions of black holes, and compare these to the heuristics of earlier efforts in theory construction, in particular those of the old quantum theory.

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“…In this sense, the overarching theory approach can be combined with the common core approach. For further detailed discussion of the differences between these two approaches, and the extent to which they can be combined, see De Haro ().…”

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confidence: 99%

Duality and ontology

Bihan

Read

2018

Philosophy Compass

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A ''duality'' is a formal mapping between the spaces of solutions of two empirically equivalent theories. In recent times, dualities have been found to be pervasive in string theory and quantum field theory. Naïvely interpreted, duality-related theories appear to make very different ontological claims about the world-differing in, for example, spacetime structure, fundamental ontology, and mereological structure. In light of this, duality-related theories raise questions familiar from discussions of underdetermination in the philosophy of science: in the presence of dual theories, what is one to say about the ontology of the world? In this paper, we undertake a comprehensive and nontechnical survey of the landscape of possible ontological interpretations of duality-related theories. We provide a significantly enriched and clarified taxonomy of options-several of which are novel to the literature. INTRODUCTIONContemporary physics is built upon two central-and prima facie incompatible-frameworks: the theory of general relativity, on the one hand, and the standard model of particle physics-a certain quantum field theory-on the other.Although these two frameworks are strikingly effective at describing the actual world in their relevant domains (viz., macroscopic, astrophysical, and cosmological scales for general relativity, and atomic, subatomic, and molecular scales for the standard model), they rest upon very different assumptions. For example, one central feature of general relativity is that spacetime is rendered dynamical (i.e., it is not a fixed background, but rather ''curves'' in response to its matter content); by contrast, spacetime remains a fixed background in the standard model of particle physics.This notwithstanding, various fields of physics-such as the study of the early universe or of black holes-lie at the intersection of the domains of these two theories and thereby call for a quantum theory of gravity. 1 Constructing such a theory capable of overcoming the tensions between general relativity and the standard model is an ongoing matter of profound difficulty; at present, there exist several candidate options which remain the subject of active research (cf. Huggett & Wüthrich, 2013 for a philosophical overview of such options.)According to the naïve ontological picture presented by string theory-arguably the most popular extant research programme in quantum gravity-reality is constituted by one-dimensional strings, as well as by other higher dimensional entities called ''branes.'' Moreover, reality is not made up of four spacetime dimensions (three spatial

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The heuristic function of duality

Cited by 19 publications

References 33 publications

Thinking about Spacetime

Thinking about Spacetime

Emergence and correspondence for string theory black holes

Duality and ontology

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