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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The absence of local observables is not an artefact of the canonical formulation of general relativity

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The requirement that observables be non-local (relational) results from the full spacetime diffeomorphism invariance of general relativity
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    • 2.This non-locality requirement is implicit in Torre's 1993 theorem
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    • 3.The same non-locality condition holds for four-dimensional (Lagrangian) versions, which must be spacetime diffeomorphism invariant
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Dirac's constraint analysis shows that gauge freedom in canonical GR reflects genuine physical underdetermination, not merely a formulation artifact.
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    • 2.Torre's 1993 result applies equally to reduced phase space formulations, which eliminate canonical structure while preserving the non-locality of observables.
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    • 3.If non-locality were an artifact of canonical formalism, Lagrangian path integral formulations of GR would recover local observables, but they demonstrably do not.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Bergmann's 1961 program established that genuine observables in GR must be invariant under the full diffeomorphism group, independent of any particular formalism.
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    • 2.Earman's hole argument demonstrates that spacetime points lack intrinsic physical identity, making any purely local quantity physically meaningless across all formulations.
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