My main research interests are in metaphysics, philosophy of physics, and philosophy of science, including topics where these areas overlap. My ongoing projects in metaphysics focus on the metaphysics of modality and essence, laws and counterfactuals, as well as issues in the metaphysics of space and time. I also work on some central debates in philosophy of physics and general philosophy of science, often trying to show how we can make progress using tools from contemporary metaphysics.
Publications
Holes in Spacetime: Some Neglected Essentials
Forthcoming in The Journal of Philosophy. [Preprint]
Background Independence: Lessons for Further Decades of Dispute
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 65, February 2019: 41-54. [Preprint] [Journal]
Contingent Existence and the Reduction of Modality to Essence
Mind 128(509), January 2019: 39-68. [Preprint] [Journal]
Dissertation
My dissertation, Metaphysical Possibilities in Fundamental Physics, brings together all of my areas of research. The dissertation focuses on three case-studies: theoretical equivalence, background independence, and the famous hole argument in the foundations of spacetime theories. Throughout I try to show how we can advance these debates by bringing to bear work from contemporary metaphysics (particularly the metaphysics of modality in the case of these three case-studies), and also approaching the issues using a metaphysics-oriented methodology, which contrasts with a certain mathematics-oriented methodology common amongst philosophers of physics. I also try to illustrate throughout how reflecting on these issues in philosophy of physics and general philosophy of science can yield important lessons for some central debates in contemporary metaphysics.
Current Research Interests
Publications
Holes in Spacetime: Some Neglected Essentials
Forthcoming in The Journal of Philosophy. [Preprint]
- Abstract: The hole argument purports to show that all spacetime theories of a certain form are indeterministic, including the General Theory of Relativity. The argument has given rise to an industry of searching for a metaphysics of spacetime that delivers the right modal implications to rescue determinism. In this paper, I first argue that certain prominent extant replies to the hole argument—namely, those that appeal to an essentialist doctrine about spacetime—fail to deliver the requisite modal implications. As part of my argument, I show that threats to determinism of the sort brought out by the hole argument are more general than has heretofore been recognized. I then use these results to propose a novel essentialist doctrine about spacetime that successfully rescues determinism, what I call sufficiency metric essentialism. However, I go on to argue that once we realize what an essentialist doctrine about spacetime must look like in order to address the hole argument, we should reject all such doctrines, because they can't fulfill their ambition of improving on standard modal replies to the argument. I close by suggesting some lessons for future work on spacetime and the metaphysics of physics more broadly, and also drawing some general morals for contemporary metaphysics, in particular about (i) whether essence can be used to articulate a precise structuralist doctrine, and (ii) the relationship between essence and modality.
Background Independence: Lessons for Further Decades of Dispute
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 65, February 2019: 41-54. [Preprint] [Journal]
- Abstract: Background independence begins life as an informal property that a physical theory might have, often glossed as 'doesn't posit a fixed spacetime background'. Interest in trying to offer a precise account of background independence has been sparked by the pronouncements of several theorists working on quantum gravity that background independence embodies in some sense an essential discovery of the General Theory of Relativity, and a feature we should strive to carry forward to future physical theories. This paper has two goals. The first is to investigate what a world must be like in order to be truly described by a background independent theory given extant accounts of background independence. The second is to argue that there are no non-empirical reasons to be more confident in theories that satisfy extant accounts of background independence than in theories that don't. The paper concludes by drawing a general moral about a way in which focussing primarily on mathematical formulations of our physical theories can adversely affect debates in the metaphysics of physics.
Contingent Existence and the Reduction of Modality to Essence
Mind 128(509), January 2019: 39-68. [Preprint] [Journal]
- Abstract: This paper first argues that we can bring out a tension between the following three popular doctrines: (i) the canonical reduction of metaphysical modality to essence, due to Fine, (ii) contingentism, which says that possibly something could have failed to be something, and (iii) the doctrine that metaphysical modality obeys the modal logic S5. After presenting two such arguments (one from the theorems of S4 and another from the theorems of B), I turn to exploring various conclusions we might draw in light of these results, and argue that none comes cost-free. In the course of laying out possible responses to my arguments, we’ll have a chance to evaluate various doctrines about the interplay between contingency and essence, as well as develop some alternative reductions of metaphysical modality to essence. I don’t come down decisively in favour of one response over the others, though I say some things that point towards the conclusion that essence has no role to play in reducing metaphysical modality.
Dissertation
My dissertation, Metaphysical Possibilities in Fundamental Physics, brings together all of my areas of research. The dissertation focuses on three case-studies: theoretical equivalence, background independence, and the famous hole argument in the foundations of spacetime theories. Throughout I try to show how we can advance these debates by bringing to bear work from contemporary metaphysics (particularly the metaphysics of modality in the case of these three case-studies), and also approaching the issues using a metaphysics-oriented methodology, which contrasts with a certain mathematics-oriented methodology common amongst philosophers of physics. I also try to illustrate throughout how reflecting on these issues in philosophy of physics and general philosophy of science can yield important lessons for some central debates in contemporary metaphysics.
Current Research Interests
- The metaphysics of spacetime, and how the debate changes in General Relativity and in various theories of quantum gravity.
- Theoretical equivalence, and why work on this topic doesn't offer an alternative to engaging with questions about the metaphysics of our best physical theories.
- Counterfactuals, including the miracle/no-miracle debate, as well as central applications of counterfactuals in the metaphysics of laws, the causal modeling literature, and the foundations of statistical mechanics.
- The metaphysics of quantities, in particular rate of change quantities like velocity.