“School of Astronomy”
Back to Papers HomeBack to Papers of School of Astronomy
| Paper IPM / Astronomy / 18395 |
|
||||
| Abstract: | |||||
|
We argue for the claim that spacetime singularities in general relativity (GR) signal indeterminism, broadly construed. We first develop a schema for diagnosing a type of indeterminism for physical theories, which we denote by Indeterminism. Such indeterminism involves a broader notion of a lack of a determination than the usual Laplacian one. More precisely, Indeterminism arises in a model of a physical theory whenever future (or past) states of the model are (i) not unique, (ii) not specified, or (iii) incoherent that is, they fail to satisfy desiderata that the theory should reasonably satisfy. We then apply our schema to salient features of spacetime singularities in GR. We establish that, indeed, singularities signal a type of indeterminism that cannot comprehensively be understood as a variety of Laplacian indeterminism: namely, spacetime singularities in GR signal Indeterminism.
Download TeX format |
|||||
| back to top | |||||
