Högre seminarium i vetenskapsfilosofi: Neil Dewar (University of Cambridge)

Making Space: The Semantics of Geometrical Conventionalism

Seminarium

Datum:

fredag 14 november 2025

Tid:

13.15 – 15.00

Plats:

D734

Abstract

Geometrical conventionalism holds that the geometry of space, or of space-time, is not a matter of fact but rather a matter of convention.

However, how exactly this view should be understood can be rather obscure. In this talk, I distinguish three ways that we might unpack the conventionalist slogan—which I call semantic, epistemic, and metaphysical conventionalism—and argue that the most interesting is semantic conventionalism. However, to avoid collapsing into triviality, the semantic conventionalist must belong to what Coffa calls “the semantic tradition”.

Once we place the conventionalist in that tradition, we find that the conventionalist has two natural opponents: geometrical realism on the one hand, and geometrical functionalism on the other.