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Jb Manchak

University of California, Irvine
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University of California, Irvine
The Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science
PhD, 2009
Homepage
Irvine, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
General Relativity
Areas of Interest
General Relativity
PhilPapers Editorships
General Relativity
  •  44
    On the Inextendibility of Space-Time
    Philosophy of Science 84 (5): 1215-1225. 2017.
    It has been argued that spacetime must be inextendible – that it must be “as large as it can be” in some sense. Here, we register some skepticism with respect to this position.
    Space and Time
  •  80
    Is the Universe As Large As It Can Be?
    Erkenntnis 81 (6): 1341-1344. 2016.
    In this note, we cast doubt on the requirement of spacetime inextendibility; it is not at all clear that our universe is “as large as it can be.”
  •  42
    Time Travel: Why It May Not Pay to Work out All the Kinks
    Philosophy of Science 78 (5): 1037-1045. 2011.
    Here, we hypothesize that a smooth nongeodesic closed timelike curve is never most efficient with respect to total acceleration if a kink is permitted at the initial point. We support our hypothesis in a variety of ways. Most notably, we show Malament's opposing conjecture concerning Gödel space-time to be false.
    Time TravelScience, Logic, and Mathematics
  •  72
    On Gödel and the Ideality of Time
    Philosophy of Science 83 (5): 1050-1058. 2016.
    Gödel's remarks concerning the ideality of time are examined. In the literature, some of these remarks have been somewhat neglected while others have been heavily criticized. In this note, we propose a clear and defensible sense in which Gödel's work bears on the question of whether there is an objective lapse of time in our world.
  •  58
    Global Spacetime Structure
    Cambridge University Press. 2013.
    This exploration of the global structure of spacetime within the context of general relativity examines the causal and singular structures of spacetime, revealing some of the curious possibilities that are compatible with the theory, such as `time travel' and `holes' of various types. Investigations into the epistemic and modal structures of spacetime highlight the difficulties in ruling out such possibilities, unlikely as they may seem at first. The upshot seems to be that what counts as a `phy…Read more
    Space and Time