Barrett, Thomas William and Manchak, JB (2024) What Do Privileged Coordinates Tell Us About Structure? [Preprint]

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which the 'privileged coordinates' of a physical theory provide a window into how much structure it posits. We first isolate a problem for this idea. We show that there are geometric spaces that admit the same privileged coordinates, but have different amounts of structure. We then compare this 'coordinate approach' to comparing amounts of structure to the familiar 'automorphism approach,' and we conclude with some brief remarks about implicit definability.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Barrett, Thomas William thomaswbarrett@ucsb.edu Manchak, JB jmanchak@uci.edu
Keywords:	coordinates, structure, symmetry
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory General Issues > Structure of Theories Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances
Depositing User:	Thomas Barrett
Date Deposited:	26 Jul 2024 13:34
Last Modified:	26 Jul 2024 13:34
Item ID:	23727
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory General Issues > Structure of Theories Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances
Date:	July 2024
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23727

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• What Do Privileged Coordinates Tell Us About Structure? (deposited 26 Jul 2024 13:34) [Currently Displayed]
  • What Do Privileged Coordinates Tell Us About Structure? (deposited 03 Oct 2024 11:56)

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