46 - Tim Maudlin: Laws of Nature, Absolute Space, & Free Will

Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU. Before that, he did his undergraduate work in philosophy and physics at Yale and received his PHD from Pittsburgh in the History and Philosophy of Science. Tim is renowned as one of the leading philosophers of physics, and he also works in the philosophy of science and metaphysics. Among other things, Robinson and Tim talk about whether metaphysics should come prior to or after physics, the debates over absolute time and space, free will, the nature of physical laws, and David Lewis’s views on the Humean supermosaic. You can find out more about Tim and his work on his website, www.tim-maudlin.site.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

Outline:

00:00 Introduction

2:35 Studying Physics and Philosophy

8:38 Theoretical Physics, Foundations, and Metaphysics

15:54 Physics and Free Will

26:17 The Mathematical Structure of the Universe

37:49 Hume, Lewis, and the Supermosaic

49:16 Laws of Nature

1:04:02 Moral facts

1:18:03 Absolute and Relative Space

1:34:27 Space and the Ether

1:39:31 The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence

1:46:08 Absolute Space, Time, and Relativity

1:53:07 The Infinity of Time and Space