Dr. Lucy James

Dr. Lucy James is an early-career researcher in Philosophy of Physics. Her primary research interests involve questions relating to the metaphysics of space and time. This includes studying the use of applied mathematics to constrain theories of quantum gravity, as well as  in the development of cosmological models.

​Her CV can be downloaded here.

Current Projects:

Drafts are available on request.
  • Mathematical Simplicity in Einstein’s Mature Philosophy
    • Aim: to make descriptive to normative inferences regarding methodology in theoretical physics.
    • Einstein allegedly claimed that mathematical simplicity, as paucity of logical elements in a theory’s conceptual foundations, is a good heuristic.
    • Norton (2000), and Janssen and Renn (2004) claim, contra Einstein, that it is not.
    • This paper clarifies to what extent Einstein did indeed claim that simplicity is a good heuristic, and defends these claims against the criticisms of Norton, and Janssen and Renn.
    • The conclusions are supportive of Penrose’s use of spinors, for example, but unsupportive of Rovelli’s assertion that GR geometrizes gravity.
  • Finding the ‘Real’ in Perspectival Realism
    • Aim: to critique Massimi’s (2022) Perspectival Realism, on the grounds that it lacks what is required of a realist philosophy of science.
    • PR is, according to Massimi herself, only ‘compatible’ with realism.
    • This paper gives a concise reconstruction of massimi’s view, shows that the kind of ‘realism’ it is compatible with is an inferentialist modal realism, and attempts to plug the gap in the view’s conceptual foundation so that realism is implied rather than merely asserted.
  • Naturalised Metaphysics: Back to the Armchair
    • ​Aim: To argue for post-naturalistic, a priori metaphysics.
    • NM approach recommends ‘reading off’ metaphysics from bona fide successful physical theories. The trouble is, progress in physics is ongoing, and relies heavily on evolving metaphysical ideas.
    • We ought, therefore, to make a careful examination of which metaphysical principles have helped, which have hindered, and which have been redundant for historical progress, and to adjust our credences accordingly.
    • This paper discusses Smolin (2018)’s list of 5 principles.
  • Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
    • ​Aim: To argue that ‘aeon pluralism’ is preferable to ‘aeon monism’.
    • The argument is partly based on an expectation of stochastic time evolution, associated with non-unitarity.
    • Problem 1 (physics): non-unitarity does not strictly entail stochasticity.
    • Problem 2 (philosophical): To make the case that stochastic laws will actually produce different outcomes when allowed to act on the same initial conditions an infinite number of times relies on a generative approach to physical laws.

Publications:

Recorded Talks on Youtube: