Rethinking Fragmentalism: Perspectives from Special and General Relativity.

Fragmentalism denies the view that we have perspectival representations of a non-perspectival world, arguing instead that the world itself is intrinsically perspectival and composed of fragmented sets of facts. We first examine the arguments put forth by Fine and Lipman, who challenge the notion of...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Philosophia Vol. 53; no. 3; pp. 1147 - 1158
Autor principal: Zhao, Yi
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Jul2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Fragmentalism denies the view that we have perspectival representations of a non-perspectival world, arguing instead that the world itself is intrinsically perspectival and composed of fragmented sets of facts. We first examine the arguments put forth by Fine and Lipman, who challenge the notion of a single, coherent reality. Then, we critique their "standard" fragmentalist interpretation of Special Relativity and contend that it neglects the unifying role of invariant structures—such as the spacetime interval and the covariance of physical laws—that underpin the relativistic framework. Extending the analysis to General Relativity, we show that gravitational effects curve spacetime, undermining the idea of stable, idealized inertial frames and with them, the notion of clear-cut, isolated fragments. We also consider flow fragmentalism, which grounds fragments in causal relations rather than inertial frames, but argue that this move puts into question the very notion of fragments as metaphysically distinct. Drawing on the principle of equivalence and symmetry reasoning revealed by General Relativity, we conclude that fragmentalism is not metaphysically necessary and cannot exclude the possibility of a unified reality.