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A New Twist in the Conventionality of Simultaneity Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Mark Zangari
Mark Zangari*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department La Trobe University
*
†Send reprint requests to the author, Philosophy Department, La Trobe University, BUNDOORA, Victoria, 3083, Australia.
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Abstract

To date, both sides in the conventionality of simultaneity debate grant that transformations from “standard” to “nonstandard” coordinates are possible without any empirically significant effects. However, it is argued here that the very possibility of defining nonstandard coordinates vanishes if one represents special relativity, not by real four-vectors (as has been the case so far in the debate), but by complex spinors as used in the representation of half-integer spin. Thus, in the topologically simplest representation of the Lorentz group, the transformation over which the debate has been fought does not exist and one of the most basic foundations of the conventionalist thesis is challenged.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 267 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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