Manchak, JB and Barrett, Thomas William and Halvorson, Hans and Weatherall, James Owen (2025) Determinism and Asymmetry in General Relativity. [Preprint]
![[img]](https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/fileicons/text.png) |
Text
DetAsymFinal.pdf - Submitted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (821kB) |
Abstract
This paper concerns the question of which collections of general relativistic spacetimes are deterministic relative to which definitions. We begin by considering a series of three definitions of increasing strength due to Belot (1995). The strongest of these definitions is particularly interesting for spacetime theories because it involves an asymmetry condition called ``rigidity'' that has been studied previously in a different context (Geroch 1969; Halvorson and Manchak 2022; Dewar 2024). We go on to explore other (stronger) asymmetry conditions that give rise to other (stronger) forms of determinism. We introduce a number of definitions of this type and clarify the relationships between them and the three considered by Belot. We go on to show that there are collections of general relativistic spacetimes that satisfy much stronger forms of determinism than previously known. We also highlight a number of open questions.
| Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
| Social Networking: |
| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators: |
|
|||||||||||||||
| Keywords: | General Relativity, Determinism, Hole argument, Symmetry, Heraclitus | |||||||||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances |
|||||||||||||||
| Depositing User: | James Owen Weatherall | |||||||||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 10 Mar 2025 14:00 | |||||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 10 Mar 2025 14:00 | |||||||||||||||
| Item ID: | 24881 | |||||||||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory Specific Sciences > Physics > Symmetries/Invariances |
|||||||||||||||
| Date: | 2025 | |||||||||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/24881 |
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}