The limitations of inertial frame spacetime functionalism.

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 spacet...

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Published in:Synthese Vol. 199; no. 2; pp. 229 - 252
Main Authors: Read, James, Menon, Tushar
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Dec2021 Supplement 2
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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          Read, James
          Menon, Tushar
        affil: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford Radcliffe Humanities, Woodstock Road, OX2 6GG, Oxford, United Kingdom
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        Spacetime
        Structural frames
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          Spacetime
          Structural frames
      ab: 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.
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