Spacetime is as spacetime does: pro and contra

A class of approaches to Quantum Gravity (QG) suggests that the fundamental degrees of freedom are neither quantised continuum fields nor entities characterizable in spatiotemporal terms (Oriti, 2017). In such theoretical scenarios, an explanation for how the spatiotemporal structure of GR gets recovered from this fundamentally non-spatiotemporal background needs to be offered. Lam and Wüthrich (2018) have argued that spacetime functionalism – the view according to which spacetime is functionally realised by a set of underlying, more fundamental entities – is the path to go if one aims to account for the emergence of spacetime. On this perspective, one has first to pinpoint the functional role of spacetime, and then identify what plays this specific functional role. On the one side, a recent attempt in this direction is Huggett and Wüthrich’s (2021), who aim to apply it in the context of three approaches to QG, that is, Causal Set Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity, and String Theory. On the other side, a critical assessment of the functionalist view in QG is provided in Le Bihan (2020). This workshop is meant to investigate a set of issues related to spacetime functionalism, thus exploring its pro and contra.

References

Huggett, N., Wüthrich, C. (2021). Out of Nowhere: Introduction: The emergence of spacetime. arXiv:2101.06955.

Lam, V. and Wüthrich, C. (2018). Spacetime is as spacetime does. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 64: 39-51.

Le Bihan, B. (2020). Spacetime emergence in quantum gravity: functionalism and the hard problem. Synthese, 199: 371-393.

Oriti, D. (2017). Spacetime as a quantum many-body system. arXiv:1710.02807.