Frank Cudek: 'Theoretical Possibility and Spacetime Substantivalism'.
Chair: James Glover
Abstract: Philosophical orthodoxy says that what is possible according to a physical theory is what is metaphysically possible given that the laws of that theory hold. I push back against this way of conceptualising what it is for something to be possible according to a given theory. I offer an alternative account, and illustrate it with a sketch of new semantics for modal propositions relativised to local spacetime theories, and discuss how this detachment from the orthodoxy allows a particular kind of substantivalist to escape a family of challenges recently raised by Trevor Teitel.
