String dualities and empirical equivalence

Dawid, Richard

doi:10.1016/j.shpsb.2016.06.002

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Dualities raise a number of questions that have been of interest to philosophers. Following the physicists who seem to take dual theories to be equivalent descriptions of the world, Matsubara (); De Haro, Teh, and Butterfield, (, ); Rickles (); Huggett (); and Dawid () have explored the interpretational consequences of such equivalences. Rickles (), for instance, argues that dual theories provide apparently different descriptions of the same physical “structure” and suggests that any apparent incompatibilities between them should be viewed as illusory or physically insignificant, in the same sense that “gauge structure” may be taken to lack physical significance.…”

Section: Dualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Part 2: Theoretical equivalence in physics

Weatherall

2019

Philosophy Compass

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I review the philosophical literature on the question of when two physical theories are equivalent. This includes a discussion of empirical equivalence, which is often taken to be necessary, and sometimes taken to be sufficient, for theoretical equivalence; and ''interpretational'' equivalence, which is the idea that two theories are equivalent just in case they have the same interpretation. It also includes a discussion of several formal notions of equivalence that have been considered in the recent philosophical literature, including (generalized) definitional equivalence and categorical equivalence. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the relationship between equivalence and duality. The article is in two parts; this is Part 2, which addresses categorical equivalence, interpretational equivalence, and duality. PREFACEFor reasons related to journal policy, this article has been split into two parts. This is Part 2, which addresses categorical equivalence, interpretational equivalence, and duality; Part 1 addressed empirical equivalence and definitional equivalence. Readers are encouraged to read Part 1 before Part 2.

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Section: Dualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Part 2: Theoretical equivalence in physics

Weatherall

2019

Philosophy Compass

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“…2 For a representative sample of this literature, see Rickles (2011Rickles ( , 2017, Matsubara (2013), Dieks et al (2015), Read (2016), Dawid (2017), Huggett (2017), , and De Haro and Butterfield (2017). It is perhaps helpful to remark that de Haro, in various places, uses the expression "theoretical equivalence", but his meaning is different from how it is used in the theoretical equivalence literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equivalence and Duality in Electromagnetism

Weatherall¹

2019

Preprint

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In this paper I bring the recent philosophical literature on theoretical equivalence to bear on dualities in physics. Focusing on electromagnetic duality, which is a simple example of S-duality in string theory, I will show that the duality fits naturally into at least one framework for assessing equivalence-that of categorical equivalence-but that it fails to meet a necessary condition for equivalence on that account. The reason is that the duality does not preserve "empirical content" in the required sense; instead, it takes models to models with "dual" empirical content. I conclude by discussing how one might react to this.

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“… See, e.g., 't Hooft (1993);Verlinde (2011);Rickles (2013);Teh (2013);Dieks et al (2015); de Haro (2017);Vistarini (2017).17 This is a loose characterisation, and one may debate its adequacy in general (particularly regarding the idea of "physical quantities"). Questions regarding the specific nature of dualities are beyond the scope of this paper, but interested readers are encouraged to dig into the philosophical literature, includingButterfield (2018);Dawid (2017);Read & Møller-Nielsen (2018) and the special issueCastellani & Rickles (2017).18 Cf. the philosophy references in Fn.…”

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confidence: 99%

As below, so before: ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’ conceptions of spacetime emergence

Crowther

2020

Synthese

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Typically, a less fundamental theory, or structure, emerging from a more fundamental one is an example of synchronic emergence. A model (and the physical state it describes) emerging from a prior model (state) upon which it nevertheless depends is an example of diachronic emergence. The case of spacetime emergent from quantum gravity and quantum cosmology challenges these two conceptions of emergence. Here, I propose two more-general conceptions of emergence, analogous to the synchronic and diachronic ones, but which are potentially applicable to the case of emergent spacetime: an inter-level, hierarchical conception, and an intra-level, 'flat' conception. I then explore whether, and how, these ideas may be applicable in the case of several putative examples of relativistic spacetime emergent from the non-spatiotemporal structures described by different approaches to quantum gravity, and of spacetime emergent from a non-spatiotemporal 'big bang' state according to different examples of quantum cosmology. Contents

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String dualities and empirical equivalence

Cited by 8 publications

References 34 publications

Part 2: Theoretical equivalence in physics

Part 2: Theoretical equivalence in physics

Equivalence and Duality in Electromagnetism

As below, so before: ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’ conceptions of spacetime emergence

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