
arXiv: 2009.07555
We investigate the fate of determinism in general relativity (GR), comparing the philosopher’s account with the physicist’s well-posed initial value formulations. The fate of determinism is interwoven with the question of what it is for a spacetime to be ‘physically reasonable’. A central concern is the status of global hyperbolicity, a putatively necessary condition for determinism in GR. While global hyperbolicity may fail to be true of all physically reasonable models, we analyze whether global hyperbolicity should be (i) imposed by fiat; (ii) established from weaker assumptions, as in cosmic censorship theorems; or (iii) justified by beyond-GR physics.
Physics - History and Philosophy of Physics, History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph), FOS: Physical sciences, Einstein's equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems), General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc), Space-time singularities, cosmic censorship, etc., General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Physics - History and Philosophy of Physics, History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph), FOS: Physical sciences, Einstein's equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems), General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc), Space-time singularities, cosmic censorship, etc., General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
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