Floris Eskens

We argue that time is the great enabler: it is that which makes causation and change possible. We develop this idea into a functionalist account of time that has some very nice features: (i) it differentiates time from space where needed, (ii) it illuminates time via its connection to causation and change, (iii) it accounts for the apparent multiple realizability of time, and (iv) it correctly classifies worlds that have time as such. We compare our account to three rivals: time as the great necessitator, time as the great informer, and time as the measure of change. We show that treating time as an enabler does better.

It has been suggested that causal set theory is particularly accommodating to a structuralist interpretation. In this paper, we will evaluate this claim, focusing on a recent version of structuralism proposed by Wüthrich (2012, 2024). We show that structuralism of this variety conflicts with the standard dynamics of causal set theory, and that removing this conflict may require reworking the dynamics. We also show that a structuralist interpretation along these lines requires metaphysically privileging the dynamical aspect of the theory. We consider three potential ways forward for a structuralist, but suggest that matters are difficult: two of these likely require reworking CST and one invokes controversial metaphysical assumptions.

In this paper, we will develop a novel philosophical account of effective dualities. Building on De Haro and Butterfield’s schema for duality, we will present our notion of effective duality using the concepts of an approximate isomorphism and a limiting operation. We define these concepts on the space of models by adopting the similarity space approach to analysing intertheoretic concepts developed in Fletcher (forthcoming). In doing so, we will discuss the notion of mathematical structure, and discuss the properties of this notion of effective duality. From our account of effective dualities we will see that there emerges a typology of effective dualities. We will present and discuss this typology. Next, we will present two case studies of effective dualities to illustrate how our framework can be used to find effective dualities: (1) the effective duality between high-energy quantum field theories and effective field theories, and (2) the effective duality between finite information quantity classical mechanics and $$\mathbb{R}$$ classical mechanics. Finally, we will discuss what the heuristic function of effective dualities is, and compare it to the heuristic function of approximate dualities as outlined in De Haro (2017, 2019a).