•  10
    What spacetime does: ideal observers and (Earman's) symmetry principles
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 38 (1): 67-85. 2023.
    The interpretation and justification of Earman’s symmetry principles (stating that any spacetime symmetry should be a dynamical symmetry and vice-versa) are controversial. This is directly connected to the question of how certain structures in physical theories acquire a spatiotemporal character. In this paper I address these issues from a perspective (arguably functionalist) that relates the classical discussion about the measurement and geometrical determination of space with a characterizatio…Read more
  •  9
    How to be a realist about Minkowski spacetime without believing in magical explanations
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 35 (2): 175-195. 2020.
    The question about the relation between spacetime structure and the symmetries of laws has received renewed attention in a recent discussion about the status of Minkowski spacetime in Special Relativity. In that context we find two extreme positions (either spacetime explains symmetries of laws or vice-versa) and a general assumption about the debate being mainly about explanation. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to argue that the ontological dimension of the debate cannot be ignored; s…Read more
  •  23
    Relativity without miracles
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (1): 1-33. 2020.
    It has been claimed, recently, that the fact that all the non-gravitational fields are locally Poincaré invariant and that these invariances coincide, in a certain regime, with the symmetries of the spacetime metric is miraculous in general relativity. In this paper I show that, in the context of GR, it is possible to account for these so-called miracles of relativity. The way to do so involves integrating the realisation that the gravitational field equations impose constraints on the behaviour…Read more
  •  9
    Categorías, intuiciones y espacio-tiempo kantiano
    Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 8 223. 2016.
    Kant afirma que espacio y tiempo son condiciones a priori de toda experiencia, a la vez que parece comprometerse con la naturaleza euclidiana del espacio y la simultaneidad absoluta. Su defensa del carácter a priori de estas nociones pasa por considerarlas intuiciones puras, de ahí que su naturaleza newtoniana parecería tener su origen en la configuración de lo que Kant llama intuición. No obstante, como muestran ciertas discusiones recientes, no está claro qué sea la intuición en Kant y cómo se…Read more
  •  18
    Explanation, analyticity and constitutive principles in spacetime theories
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 65 15-24. 2019.
    Much discussion was inspired by the publication of Harvey Brown's book \textit{Physical Relativity} and the so-called dynamical approach to Special Relativity there advocated. At the center of the debate there is the question about the nature of the relation between spacetime and laws or, more specifically, between spacetime symmetries and the symmetries of laws. Originally, the relation was mainly assumed to be explanatory and the dispute expressed in terms of the arrow of explanation – whether…Read more
  •  10
    The physical significance of symmetries from the perspective of conservation laws
    In Dennis Lehmkuhl, Gregor Schiemann & Erhard Scholz (eds.), Towards a theory of spacetime theories, Springer. pp. 267-285. 2017.
  • General Relativity and the Physical Content of General Covariance
    Dissertation, Universitat Autònoma De Barcelona. 2008.
  •  51
    On the Explanation of Inertia
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 45 (2): 293-315. 2014.
    In General Relativity (GR), it has been claimed that inertia receives a dynamical explanation. This is in contrast to the situation in other theories, such as Special Relativity, because the geodesic principle of GR can be derived from Einstein’s field equations. The claim can be challenged in different ways, all of which question whether the status of inertia in GR is physically different from its status in previous spacetime theories. In this paper I state the original argument for the claim p…Read more
  •  20
    Corrigendum to “Dark matter, the Equivalence Principle and modified gravity” [Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci. Part B: Stud. Hist. Philos. Mod. Phys. 45 66–71] (review)
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 52 (Part B): 371. 2015.
  •  40
    Dark matter, the Equivalence Principle and modified gravity
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 45 66-71. 2014.
    Dark matter is an essential ingredient of the present Standard Cosmological Model, according to which only 5% of the mass/energy content of our universe is made of ordinary matter. In recent times, it has been argued that certain cases of gravitational lensing represent a new type of evidence for the existence of DM. In a recent paper, Peter Kosso attempts to substantiate that claim. His argument is that, although in such cases DM is only detected by its gravitational effects, gravitational lens…Read more