David Malament and the Conventionality of Simultaneity: A Reply

David Malament and the Conventionality of Simultaneity: A Reply

On the conventionality of simultaneity

Starting from the experimental fact that light propagates over a closed path at speed c, we show to what extent the isotropy of the speed of light can be considered a matter of convention. We prove the consistence of anisotropic and inhomogenous conventions, limiting the allowed possibilities. All conventions lead to the same physical theory even if its formulation can change in form. The mathe...

Kant and the Conventionality of Simultaneity

In his Third Analogy of Experience, Kant argues that a universal system of mutual causal interaction-at-a-distance is presupposed in the very construction of experience, and thereby also can be assumed to hold of objects of experience qua appearances. This implies in turn a notion of objective simultaneity. I discuss whether Kant’s project is rendered wholly obsolete by the relativity and conve...

Conventionality of Simultaneity and Reality

An important epistemological lesson can be learned from the impossibility to determine the one-way velocity of light and the immediate implication that simultaneity is conventional. The vicious circle – to determine whether two distant events are simultaneous we need to know the one-way velocity of light between them, but to determine the one-way velocity of light we need to know that the two e...

“Definability,” “Conventionality,” and Simultaneity in Einstein–Minkowski Space-Time

In this article, I attempt to clarify certain misunderstandings that have contributed to continuing controversy over the status of the concept of relative simultaneity in the special theory of relativity. I also correct a number of technical errors in the literature of the subject, and present several new technical results that may further serve to clarify matters. Controversy over the status o...