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Relativities of fundamentality
Institution:1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH, United Kingdom;2. Amsterdam University College, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 113, 1090 GD Amsterdam, The Netherlands;3. Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, USA;4. Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ, United Kingdom
Abstract:S-dualities have been held to have radical implications for our metaphysics of fundamentality. In particular, it has been claimed that they make the fundamentality status of a physical object theory-relative in an important new way. But what physicists have had to say on the issue has not been clear or consistent, and in particular seems to be ambiguous between whether S-dualities demand an anti-realist interpretation of fundamentality talk or merely a revised realism. This paper is an attempt to bring some clarity to the matter. After showing that even antecedently familiar fundamentality claims are true only relative to a raft of metaphysical, physical, and mathematical assumptions, I argue that the relativity of fundamentality inherent in S-duality nevertheless represents something new, and that part of the reason for this is that it has both realist and anti-realist implications for fundamentality talk. I close by discussing the broader significance that S-dualities have for structuralist metaphysics and for fundamentality metaphysics more generally.
Keywords:Fundamentality  Ontic structural realism  Quantum field theory  Duality
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