Research
Butterfield's research centres around a variety of topics in the philosophy of physics and philosophy of science, and he has also made contributions to the philosophy of language and logic, particularly with regard to the treatment of time and tense. In this regard, he has argued in several papers for a detensed theory of time, according to which the present is a merely subjective or indexical notion, on analogy with one's spatial location.
In the philosophy of quantum theory, Butterfield has proposed several clarifications of the notions of locality operative in algebraic quantum field theories (especially 'stochastic Einstein locality'), and has investigated which of these clarified versions of locality hold in those theories. He has also investigated the impact of the Bell inequalities in the light of Reichenbach's principle of the common cause, and has argued that the violation of these inequalities implies causation between the space-like separated wings of a Bell experiment. In addition, he has written on the quantum measurement problem, and the implications for it due to, and of it for, the philosophy and science of consciousness. He has also investigated the problems of localizability in relativistic quantum theories, in collaboration with Gordon Fleming.
In the philosophy of spacetime physics, Butterfield has argued for a resolution of Einstein's 1913 hole argument that preserves spacetime substantivalism by utilizing David Lewis's theory of modal counterparts. More recently, he has appealed to tensor calculus, and its use in much of contemporary physics, to argue against the popular view (propounded by David Lewis) that the world may be described in terms of 'local matters of fact'; i.e. in terms of chiefly intrinsic properties instantiated at spatial or spatio-temporal points.
In the philosophy of classical mechanics, Butterfield has investigated the elimination of descriptively redundant formal elements through symplectic reduction, and the interdependence between conserved quantities and conservation laws. He has also made several appeals in his work, on classical mechanics and other physical theories, to the importance of an appreciation of modality in physics.
In several papers, Butterfield has collaborated with the theoretical physicist Chris Isham. These address the role of topos theory in understanding quantum theory (in particular the Kochen-Specker theorem), and the status of time in the various quantum gravity research programmes.
Recently, Butterfield has argued for a reconciliation of the idea of emergence – the idea that novel structures, not described by "fundamental" theories, appear at a certain level of complexity – with the possibility of inter-theoretic reduction.
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