The Philosophy of Science Association meeting in Montreal was great fun. For one thing it was in Montreal; for another I got to hang out with Doctor Free-Ride; and as a bonus there were some interesting and provocative talks about the nature of time. I chatted with Tim Maudlin, Huw Price, Craig Callender, Nick Huggett, Chris Wuttrich, David Wallace, John Norton, and other people I always learn from when I talk to. Philosophers always force you to think hard about things.

Here are the slides from my own talk, which was supposed to be about time but ended up being more about space. Not much in the way of original research, just some ruminations on what is and is not “fundamental” about spacetime (with the caveat that this might not be a sensible question to ask). I made two basic points, which happily blended into each other: first, that the distinction between “position” (space) and “momentum” is not a fundamental aspect of classical mechanics or quantum mechanics, but instead reflects the particular Hamiltonian of our world; and second that holography implies that space is emergent, but in a very subtle and non-local way. This latter point is one reason why many of us are skeptical of approaches like loop quantum gravity, causal set theory, or dynamical triangulations; these all start by assuming that there are independent degrees of freedom at each spacetime point, and quantum gravity doesn’t seem to work that way.

Sadly the slides aren’t likely to be very comprehensible. There’s a lot of math, and the equations don’t come out completely clearly — my first time using Slideshare, so perhaps they would look better if I uploaded a pdf file rather than PowerPoint. (Hint: the slides are much more clear if you click “Menu” at the bottom left, and switch to full-screen mode.) Also I didn’t make any attempt to have the slides stand by themselves without the accompanying words. But at least this will serve as documentation that I really did give a talk at the conference, no just hang out in restaurants in Montreal.