SMuK 2021 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 8: Quantum Gravity 2

AGPhil 8.3: Talk

Thursday, September 2, 2021, 15:00–15:30, H7

Simplicity and naturalness in a fundamental complex dynamics — •Aldo Filomeno — Universidad Católica de Valparaiso

Some traditional criteria for the fundamentality of a theory -- naturalness, simplicity, unification, among other conditions -- appear to be inconsistent with our current best physics. In light of this, while some expect these criteria to show up in future quantum gravity theories, others argue that such criteria ought to be abandoned. In this paper we stress that there is a third way of thinking about this situation. If such criteria are preserved, another qualitatively different physics at the fundamental level gains plausibility, in that it would restore the naturalness and simplicity: a highly complex dynamics at the fundamental level. This amounts to an account of fundamental laws of nature that has long been studied and defended in various (unorthodox) projects in physics, while it has been neglected in philosophical accounts of laws of nature.