Laws beyond spacetime

TL;DR

This paper explores how theories of laws of nature like Humeanism and primitivism can be adapted to a quantum gravity context where spacetime is emergent, revealing significant conceptual challenges.

Contribution

It demonstrates reconceptualizations of laws of nature that do not rely on fundamental spacetime, highlighting profound difficulties for existing analyses in quantum gravity.

Findings

Humean supervenience can be reformulated without fundamental spacetime

Primitivist and dispositionalist accounts face challenges in non-temporal frameworks

The viability of traditional law theories is questionable in quantum gravity contexts

Abstract

Quantum gravity's suggestion that spacetime may be emergent and so only exist contingently would force a radical reconception of extant analyses of laws of nature. Humeanism presupposes a spatiotemporal mosaic of particular matters of fact on which laws supervene; primitivism and dispositionalism conceive of the action of primitive laws or of dispositions as a process of `nomic production' unfolding over time. We show how the Humean supervenience basis of non-modal facts and primitivist or dispositionalist accounts of nomic production can be reconceived, avoiding a reliance on fundamental spacetime. However, it is unclear that naturalistic forms of Humeanism can maintain their commitment to there being no necessary connections among distinct entities. Furthermore, non-temporal conceptions of production render this central concept more elusive than before. In fact, the challenges run so deep that the survival of the investigated analyses into the era of quantum gravity is questionable.