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Single Idea 14588

[filed under theme 27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 6. Space-Time ]

Full Idea

Nowadays it is common for metaphysicians to hold both that space-time regions are less fundamental than the space-time points that compose them, and that facts about the regions are less fundamental than facts about the points and their arrangements.

Gist of Idea

Modern metaphysicians tend to think space-time points are more fundamental than space-time regions

Source

John Hawthorne (Three-Dimensionalism v Four-Dimensionalism [2008], 1)

Book Ref

'Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics', ed/tr. Sider/Hawthorne/Zimmerman [Blackwell 2008], p.264

A Reaction

I'm not quite sure what a physicist would make of this. It seems to be motivated by some a priori preference for atomism, and for system-building from minimal foundations.

The 16 ideas with the same theme [relative space and time, treated as one system]:

14014 Space alone, and time alone, will fade away, and only their union has an independent reality [Minkowski]
21232 Space-time arises from the connection between measurements of space and of time [Einstein, by Farmelo]
15482 We can't think of space-time as empty and propertyless, and it seems to be a substratum [Martin,CB]
20640 Space-time is indeterminate foam over short distances [Close]
22931 We distinguish time from space, because it passes, and it has a unique present moment [Le Poidevin]
15194 Time, as it appears in standard modern science, is bad verificationist metaphysics [Smith,Q, by Le Poidevin]
14735 Space is 3D and lacks a direction; time seems connected to causation [Sider]
15021 The central question in the philosophy of time is: How alike are time and space? [Sider]
14588 Modern metaphysicians tend to think space-time points are more fundamental than space-time regions [Hawthorne]
14901 Spacetime may well be emergent, rather than basic [Ladyman/Ross]
14924 If spacetime is substantial, what is the substance? [Ladyman/Ross]
22913 The universe expands, so space-time is enlarging [Bardon]
19475 Relativity makes time and space jointly basic; quantum theory splits them, and prioritises time [New Sci.]
19955 Space-time may be a geometrical manifestation of quantum entanglement [New Sci.]
19948 Einstein's merging of time with space has left us confused about the nature of time [New Sci.]
23002 In relativity space and time depend on one's motion, but spacetime gives an invariant metric [Baron/Miller]