Spacetime Emergence in Quantum Gravity: Functionalism and the Hard Problem

Spacetime functionalism is the view that spacetime is a functional structure implemented by a more fundamental ontology. Lam and Wüthrich have recently argued that spacetime functionalism helps to solve the epistemological problem of empirical coherence in quantum gravity and suggested that it also (dis)solves the hard problem of spacetime, namely the problem of offering a picture consistent with the emergence of spacetime from a non-spatio-temporal structure. First, I will deny that spacetime functionalism solves the hard problem by showing that it comes in various species, each entailing a different attitude towards, or answer to, the hard problem. Second, I will argue that the existence of an explanatory gap, which grounds the hard problem, has not been correctly taken into account in the literature

The Duality of the Universe

It is proposed that the physical universe is an instance of a mathematical structure which possesses a dual structure, and that this dual structure is the collection of all possible knowledge of the physical universe. In turn, the physical universe is then the dual space of the latter

Structuralism as a Response to Skepticism

Cartesian arguments for global skepticism about the external world start from the premise that we cannot know that we are not in a Cartesian scenario such as an evil-demon scenario, and infer that because most of our empirical beliefs are false in such a scenario, these beliefs do not constitute knowledge. Veridicalist responses to global skepticism respond that arguments fail because in Cartesian scenarios, many or most of our empirical beliefs are true. Some veridicalist responses have been motivated using verificationism, externalism, and coherentism. I argue that a more powerful veridicalist response to global skepticism can be motivated by structuralism, on which physical entities are understood as those that play a certain structural role. I develop the structuralist response and address objections

The Functional Method of Comparative Law

The functional method has become both the mantra and the bete noire of contemporary comparative law. The debate over the functional method is the focal point of almost all discussions about the field of comparative law as a whole, about centers and peripheries of scholarly projects and interests, about mainstream and avant-garde, about ethnocentrism and orientalism, about convergence and pluralism, about technocratic instrumentalism and cultural awareness, etc. Not surprisingly, this functional method is a chimera, both as theory and as practice of comparative law. In fact, the functional method is a trifold misnomer: There is not one ( the ) functional method but many, not all methods so called are functional at all, and some projects claiming adherence to it do not even follow any recognizable method. This paper first places the functional method in a historical and interdisciplinary context, in order to see its connections with, and peculiarities opposed to, the debates about functionalism in other disciplines. Second, it tries to use the functionalist method on the method itself, in order to determine how functional it is. This makes it necessary to place functionalism within a larger framework -- not within the development of comparative law, but instead within the rise and fall of functionalism in other disciplines, especially the social sciences. Thirdly, the comparison with functionalism in other disciplines enables us to see what is special about functionalism in comparative law, and why what would in other disciplines rightly be regarded as methodological shortcomings may in fact be fruitful for comparative law. This analysis leads to surprising results. Generally, one assumes that the strength of the functional method lies in its emphasis on similarities, its aspirations towards evaluation and unification of law. Actually, the functional method emphasizes difference, it does not give us criteria for evaluation, and it provides powerful arguments against unification. Further, one generally assumes that the functional method does not account sufficiently for culture and is reductionist. However, the functional method not only requires us to look at culture, but also enables us, better than other methods, to formulate general laws without having to abstract from the specificities. The problem is that the functional method, as generally described, combines a number of different concepts of function: an evolutionary concept, a structural concept, a concept focusing on equivalence. The relation between these different concepts within the method is unclear, its aspirations therefore unrealistic. If we reconstruct the method plainly on the basis of functional equivalence as the most robust of the three concepts of function and emphasize an interpretative as opposed to a scientific approach, we realize that the functional method can make less claims, but at the same time is less open to some of the critique voiced against it. In short, the functional method is strong as a tool for understanding, comparing, and critiquing different laws, but a weak tool for evaluating and unifying laws. It helps us in tolerating and critiqueing foreign law, it helps us less in critiquing our own

A New Institutionalism? The English School as International Sociological Theory

In this article I engage with the theoretical opening provided by Barry Buzan’s From International to World Society? I present an argument for five functional categories, which should be able to encompass all the institutions identified by English School scholars throughout history. Their introduction should point the way towards a sounder analytical framework for the study of what Buzan believes should be the new subject of the discipline of International Relations (IR). This subject is defined as second-order societies, meaning societies ‘where the members are not individual human beings, but durable collectivities of humans possessed of identities and actor qualities that are more than the sum of their parts’, and where the content of these societies, and the key object of analysis, is primary institutions. The purpose of the five functional categories is to break down this ‘social whole’ and provide a set of lenses through which to potentially analyse international societies throughout history

Tales of function and form: the discursive legitimation of international technocracy

It has become commonplace to say that, in the past, international governance has been legitimated mainly, if not exclusively, by its welfare-enhancing ‘output’. There has been very little research, however, on the history of legitimating international governance by its output to validate this point. In this essay I begin to address this gap by inquiring into the origins of output-oriented strategies for legitimating international organizations. Scrutinizing the programmatic literature on international organizations from the early 20th century, I illustrate how a new and distinctive account of technocratic legitimation emerged and in the 1920s separated from other types of liberal internationalism. My inquiry, centring on the works of James Arthur Salter, David Mitrany, Paul S. Reinsch and Pitman B. Potter, explores their respective conceptions of ‘good functional governance’, executed by a non-political international technocracy. Their account is explicitly pitched against a notion of ‘international politics’, perceived as violent, polarizing, and irrational. The emergence of such a technocratic legitimation of international governance, I submit, needs to be seen in the context of societal modernization and bureaucratization that unfolded in the first half of the 20th century. I also highlight how in this account the material output of governance is intimately linked to the virtues of the organizational form that brings it about

Law after the welfare state: formalism, functionalism and the ironic turn of reflexive law

This paper analyzes the contemporary emergence of neo-formalist and neo-functionalist approaches to law-making at a time when the state is seeking to reassert, reformulate and reconceptualize its regulatory competence, both domestically and transnationally. While the earlier turn to alternative regulation modes, conceptualized under the heading of legal pluralism, responsive law, or reflexive law in the 1970s and 1980s, had aimed at a more socially responsive, contextualized, and ultimately learning mode of legal intervention, the contemporary revival of functionalist jurisprudence and its reliance on social norms embraces a limitation model of legal regulation. After revisiting the Legal Realist critique of Formalism and the formulation of functionalist regulation as a progressive agenda, this paper reflects on both the American and German justifications of market regulation and the Welfare State in order to trace the different evolution towards responsive law and legal pluralism in the U.S. and post-interventionist and reflexive law in Germany. This comparison allows for an identification of the emerging transnational qualities of legal normativity in the face of a declining welfare state paradigm, which - at the beginning of the 21st century - appears to provide the stage for turning the progressive gains of the former era into a set of market-oriented justifications of private autonomy and de-regulation. - Der Aufsatz rekonstruiert die wechselhafte Geschichte des Rechts nach dem Wohlfahrtsstaat. Nachdem die Krise des Wohlfahrtsstaats in den 1970er Jahren vornehmlich als eine Frage der Regulierungs- und Steuerungskrise wahrgenommen wurde, traten responsive und reflexive Rechtstheorien gleichzeitig als Erben und Zerstörer des Rechts als Steuerungsmittel auf. Die Suche nach Alternativen zum Recht in den USA wie auch in Deutschland mündete aber schon bald in eine weitreichende Privatisierungs- und Deregulierungsbewegung. Die sich schon lange ankündigende Skepsis nicht nur gegenüber parlamentarischer Gesetzgebung, sondern auch gerichtlicher Rechts(fort)bildung im Namen der Selbstregulierungskräfte der Privatrechtsgesellschaft durch den Markt und social norms verstärkte diese Kritik am Staat diesseits und jenseits des Atlantik. Der Aufsatz geht vor diesem Hintergrund der Frage nach, inwiefern die gegenwärtige Betonung gesellschaftlicher Selbstregulierung die Kritik der Rechtsrealisten und der frühen Rechtssoziologie am Rechtsformalismus aufgreift, nur um sie im Namen von Marktfreiheiten zu verkürzen und ihres kritischen Potentials beraubt. --