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Empirical equivalence, artificial gauge freedom and a generalized kretschmann objection

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Background Independence, Diffeomorphism Invariance, and the Meaning of Coordinates.Oliver Pooley - 2016 - In Dennis Lehmkuhl, Gregor Schiemann & Erhard Scholz (eds.), Towards a Theory of Spacetime Theories. New York, NY: Birkhauser.details Diffeomorphism invariance is sometimes taken to be a criterion of background independence. This claim is commonly accompanied by a second, that the genuine physical magnitudes (the ``observables'') of background-independent theories and those of background-dependent (non-diffeomorphism-invariant) theories are essentially different in nature. I argue against both claims. Background-dependent theories can be formulated in a diffeomorphism-invariant manner. This suggests that the nature of the physical magnitudes of relevantly analogous theories (one background free, the other background dependent) is essentially the same. The temptation (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 21 citations
General Relativity, Mental Causation, and Energy Conservation.J. Brian Pitts - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (4):1931-1973.details The conservation of energy and momentum have been viewed as undermining Cartesian mental causation since the 1690s. Modern discussions of the topic tend to use mid-nineteenth century physics, neglecting both locality and Noether’s theorem and its converse. The relevance of General Relativity has rarely been considered. But a few authors have proposed that the non-localizability of gravitational energy and consequent lack of physically meaningful local conservation laws answers the conservation objection to mental causation: conservation already fails in GR, so there (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 3 citations
Artificial versus Substantial Gauge Symmetries: A Criterion and an Application to the Electroweak Model.Jordan François - 2019 - Philosophy of Science 86 (3):472-496.details To systematically answer the generalized Kretschmann objection, I propose a mean to make operational a criterion widely recognized as allowing one to decide whether the gauge symmetry of a theory is artificial or substantial. My proposition is based on the dressing field method of gauge symmetry reduction, a new simple tool from mathematical physics. This general scheme allows one in particular to straightforwardly argue that the notion of spontaneous symmetry breaking is superfluous to the empirical success of the electroweak theory. (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 6 citations
The nontriviality of trivial general covariance: How electrons restrict ‘time’ coordinates, spinors fit into tensor calculus, and of a tetrad is surplus structure.J. Brian Pitts - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 43 (1):1-24.details It is a commonplace in the philosophy of physics that any local physical theory can be represented using arbitrary coordinates, simply by using tensor calculus. On the other hand, the physics literature often claims that spinors \emph{as such} cannot be represented in coordinates in a curved space-time. These commonplaces are inconsistent. What general covariance means for theories with fermions, such as electrons, is thus unclear. In fact both commonplaces are wrong. Though it is not widely known, Ogievetsky and Polubarinov constructed (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 7 citations
The nontriviality of trivial general covariance: How electrons restrict 'time' coordinates, spinors (almost) fit into tensor calculus, and of a tetrad is surplus structure.J. Brian Pitts - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 43 (1):1-24.details It is a commonplace in the philosophy of physics that any local physical theory can be represented using arbitrary coordinates, simply by using tensor calculus. On the other hand, the physics literature often claims that spinors \emph{as such} cannot be represented in coordinates in a curved space-time. These commonplaces are inconsistent. What general covariance means for theories with fermions, such as electrons, is thus unclear. In fact both commonplaces are wrong. Though it is not widely known, Ogievetsky and Polubarinov constructed (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 8 citations

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