Deriving the manifestly qualitative world from a pure-power base

light-like networks

Sharon Ford

in: L'espace et le temps, Philosophia Scientiae 15 (3), 2011.

Abstract

Seeking to derive the manifestly qualitative world of objects and entities without recourse to fundamental categoricity or qualitativity, l’offer an account of how higher-order categorical properties and objects may emerge from a pure-power base. l’explore the possibility of ‘fields’ whose fluctuations are force-carrying entities, differentiated with respect to a microtopology of curled-up spatial dimensions. Since the spacetime paths of gauge bosons have zero ‘spacetime interval’ and no time-like extension, l’argue that according them the status of fundamental entities would support a pure-power ontology. Such entities, circulating within self-sustaining microtopological ‘networks’, feasibly maintain definite spatial configurations of conserved physical quan­tities, including energy-momentum. Perceived as time-like and massy, and representing fermionic entities, they give rise to the manifest world.