Abstract
Distance, it is often argued, is the only coherent and empirically adequate world-making relation that can glue together the elements of the world. This paper offers entanglement as an alternative world-making relation. Entanglement is interesting since it is consistent even with quantum gravity theories that do not feature space at the fundamental level. The paper thereby defends the metaphysical salience of such non-spatial theories. An account of distance (space) is the predominant problem of empirical adequacy facing entanglement as a world-making relation. A resolution of this obstacle utilizes insights from the Ryu–Takayanagi formula (a holographic relation between entanglement and spacetime) and Susskind and Maldacena’s related ER = EPR conjecture (a relation between bell pairs and wormholes). Together these indicate how distance can be recovered from entanglement and thus carves the way for entanglement fundamentalism.
Highlights
A number of our most prominent contending theories of quantum gravity—among them causal set theory and loop quantum gravity—do not feature space at the fundamental level of their ontology (Huggett and Wüthrich 2013). 1 In these ‘non-spatial’ theories of quantum gravity, space is instead conjectured to be emergent from or reducible to underlying non-spatial degrees of freedom, for instance non-metrical lat-Synthese (2021) 198:9661–9693 tices or spin networks
While Esfeld’s want of a world-making relation is part of the larger metaphysical program of minimalist ontology, the need for a world-making relation can be seen as originating in the apparent fact that we— and the elements we surround ourselves with—belong to the same world: “given a plurality of objects, there has to be a certain type of relations in virtue of which these objects make up a world” (Esfeld and Deckert 2017, p. 3)
With distance no longer acting as the world-making relation, such an account might be less urgent from the perspective of metaphysical coherence, but it certainly remains as part of the empirical adequacy of the ontology
Summary
A number of our most prominent contending theories of quantum gravity—among them causal set theory and loop quantum gravity—do not feature space at the fundamental level of their ontology (Huggett and Wüthrich 2013). 1 In these ‘non-spatial’ theories of quantum gravity, space is instead conjectured to be emergent from or reducible to underlying non-spatial degrees of freedom, for instance non-metrical lat-. As regards Esfeld and Deckert, the definition is still consistent with their agnosticism whether there are any decoupled sectors; either in the form of other possible worlds or disconnected parts of a single multiverse With or without such decoupled sectors, the world-making relation accounts for the connectedness of the ontology as exemplified by distance when it—in the minimalist ontology—establishes the coexistence of matter points. With distance no longer acting as the world-making relation, such an account might be less urgent from the perspective of metaphysical coherence, but it certainly remains as part of the empirical adequacy of the ontology (as suggested by Esfeld) It is this stronger program that will be pursued here: How an ontology of entangled subsystems can (1) make a world where (2) spatial distances are manifest, but non-fundamental. One might regard the present proposal as partaking in this program attempting to indicate that the distance role can be played by entanglement
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