Gordon Belot
· Lawrence Sklar Collegiate Professor of PhilosophyUniversity of Michigan · Philosophy
Active 1995–2025
About
Gordon Belot is the Lawrence Sklar Collegiate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, with primary interests in philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. His research explores the philosophical implications of modern cosmology and physics, including the significance of the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe for our understanding of time, geometry, and physics. His most recent book, Accelerating Expansion: Philosophy and Physics with a Positive Cosmological Constant, examines these topics. His earlier work, Geometric Possibility, investigates the adaptation of standard accounts of physical possibility to account for geometric possibility in the context of relationalism about space. Belot's papers often focus on inter-theory relations in physics, the interpretative, methodological, and metaphysical implications of symmetry principles, and issues of confirmation and underdetermination. His current projects include research on general relativity, cosmology, boundary conditions, and epistemology for computable agents. Before joining the University of Michigan in 2008, he taught at Princeton University, New York University, and the University of Pittsburgh. He has held fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His book Geometric Possibility received the 2014 Lakatos Award, and he is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Research topics
- Computer Science
- Mathematics
- Physics
- Mechanical engineering
- Engineering
- Thermodynamics
- Meteorology
- Geography
- Artificial Intelligence
- Data Mining
- Mathematical economics
- Quantum mechanics
- Discrete mathematics
- Philosophy
- Arithmetic
- Epistemology
- Environmental science
Selected publications
Journal of Philosophical Logic · 2025-01-22 · 16 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingPhilSci-Archive (University of Pittsburgh) · 2024-11-28
otherOpen access1st authorCorrespondingSome learning strategies that work well when computational considerations are abstracted away from become severely limiting when such considerations are taken into account. We illustrate this phenomenon for agents who attempt to extrapolate patterns in binary data streams chosen from among a countable family of possibilities. If computational constraints are ignored, then two strategies that will always work are learning by enumeration (enumerate the possibilities---in order of simplicity, say---then search for the one earliest in the ordering that agrees with your data and use it to predict the next data point) and Bayesian learning. But there are many families of computable data streams that, although they can be successfully extrapolated by computable agents, cannot be handled by any computable learner by enumeration. And while there is a sense in which Bayesian learning is a fully general strategy for computable learners, the ability to mimic powerful learners comes at a price for Bayesians: they cannot, in general, become highly confident of their predictions in the limit of large data sets and they cannot, in general, use priors that incorporate all relevant background knowledge.
PSA volume 91 issue 2 Cover and Front matter
Philosophy of Science · 2024-03-18
articleOpen access2023-08-24
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingExtract De Sitter spacetime began its career in general relativity as a counterexample. In his 1917 paper on cosmology Einstein espoused the Machian thesis that: In a consistent theory of relativity there can be no inertia relatively to "space," but only an inertia of masses relatively to one another.1 Einstein goes on to explain that in his attempts to construct a static, spatially infinite cosmological model meeting this standard he had encountered an insuperable difficulty: if the density of matter falls off at spatial infinity, then there will have to be a fixed empty-space background geometry that obtains in that limit—and that geometry will play a role in determining the inertia of bodies, so that we cannot say that the inertia of each body depends only on the locations and movements of the others. But Einstein had managed to find a static, homogeneous, matter-filled spacetime in which space had the structure of a three-sphere: the Einstein static universe. This spacetime was not a solution of the field equations he had published in November 1915. So Einstein proposed to modify those equations by adding a term depending on the cosmological constant Λ.2 In a letter to de Sitter, Einstein explained the significance that he attached to the combination of the new field equations and the idea of a spatially finite cosmos.
2023-08-24
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This chapter is concerned with disanalogies between the nature of time in special relativity and in de Sitter spacetime. Whereas in Minkowski spacetime the choice of a freely falling observer determines a natural notion of simultaneity, in de Sitter spacetime this is not true: time is stranger in de Sitter spacetime than in Minkowski spacetime. There are, however, geometrically natural subregions of de Sitter spacetime in which time and simultaneity are as well-behaved as one could wish. But each of the various notions of de Sitter simultaneity that we will consider has its unsettling features. The chapter concludes by making a case that it would require far-reaching changes in traditional concepts to assimilate the nature of time in de Sitter worlds.
2023-08-24
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This chapter is devoted to anti-de Sitter spacetimes, the analogues of de Sitter spacetimes that arise in the case of a negative cosmological constant. It surveys some facts about the surprising geometry and physics of the anti-de Sitter realm. It then turns to some ideas that will play important roles through the following chapters: the technique of conformal completion; observer complementarity as a response to the paradoxes of black hole evaporation; and the AdS-CFT correspondence, a profound conjectured correspondence between conformal field theories and the asymptotically anti-de Sitter sector of quantum gravity.
2023-08-24 · 7 citations
book1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This is an exploration of some of the philosophical implications of modern cosmology, focused on the significance that the discovery of the accelerating expansion of our universe has for our understanding of time, geometry, and physics. The appearance of a term featuring a positive cosmological constant in the equations of general relativity allows one to model universes in which space has an inherent tendency towards expansion. The cosmological constant was originally introduced by Einstein but was subsequently abandoned by him. After a tumultuous career, it is has returned to centre stage with the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. This pedagogically -oriented essay begins with a study of the of the most basic and elegant relativistic world that involves a positive cosmological constant, de Sitter spacetime. It then turns to the relatives of de Sitter spacetime that dominate modern relativistic cosmology. Some of the topics considered include: the nature of time and simultaneity in de Sitter worlds; the sense in which de Sitter spacetime is a powerful dynamical attractor; the limited extent to which observation can give us information about the topology of space in a world undergoing accelerated expansion; and cosmologists’’ favourite skeptical worry about the reliability of evidence and the possibility of knowledge, the problem of Boltzmann brains.
PSA volume 90 issue 3 Cover and Front matter
Philosophy of Science · 2023-07-01
articleOpen accessAn abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
2023-08-24
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This chapter is concerned with various senses in which topology of space or spacetime may be underdetermined by all possible evidence. It pays special attention to some classic results due to Glymour and to Malament and to some new results due to Ringström. In distinction from much of the recent philosophical literature on this topic, its focus is on cosmologically relevant examples in which underdetermination is a concomitant of exponential expansion.
Stability, Instability, and Hair
2023-08-24
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This chapter is concerned with the global non-linear stability of de Sitter spacetime and with the cosmic no-hair conjecture (according to which de Sitter spacetime is a powerful dynamical attractor when a term with a positive cosmological constant is included in the Einstein equation). By way of context, it includes some background about the notion of global non-linear stability. And by way of contrast it also considers the global non-linear instability of the Einstein static universe, the global non-linear stability of Minkowski spacetime and the global non-linear (in)stability of anti-de Sitter spacetime.
Frequent coauthors
- 369 shared
Michela Massimi
- 369 shared
John Dupré
University of Exeter
- 368 shared
Craig Callender
Case Western Reserve University
- 365 shared
Katherine Brading
- 365 shared
Michael Dickson
- 364 shared
Don Howard
Case Western Reserve University
- 364 shared
Kevin Zollman
University of Edinburgh
- 364 shared
Julian Reiss
Awards & honors
- Geometric Possibility won the 2014 Lakatos Award
- fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sc…
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