Philosophy of Physics Seminar (Thursday - Week 7, MT23)
Thursday 23 November, 3pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Neil Dewar (Cambridge): 'The Hole Argument and Mathematical Practice'
Weatherall (2018)’s claim that the Earman-Norton Hole Argument was based on a misconception of mathematical practice—and therefore did not need the attention of philosophers—has resulted in a renewed wave of philosophical attention for that very argument. In this talk, I seek to do three things. The first is to disentangle some of the recent back-and-forth between those sympathetic to Weatherall’s approach, and those who think the Hole Argument requires metaphysical commitments for its resolution—focusing, especially, on a recent exchange between Halvorson & Manchak (forthcoming) and Menon & Read (unpublished). The second is to draw out the implications of this exchange for the issue of determinism in General Relativity and other spacetime theories. The third is to consider what, on Weatherall’s view of mathematical practice, a legitimate version of the Hole Argument might look like.
With speaker’s consent, talks will be recorded and published on YouTube. Our channel is:
