Oxford University Press eBooks
Structure, Modality, and Unitary Inequivalence1
Steven French
Abstract
In this chapter the issue of unitarily inequivalent representations in QFT is examined. This has been raised as a fundamental problem for OSR. Here the issue of arriving at an appropriate ontology of QFT comes to the fore and in the context of recent debates in the foundations of QFT, the Lagrangian and Algebraic approaches are examined from a structuralist perspective. It us argued that the issue of unitarily inequivalent representations can be deflated in various ways, and in particular by adapting Ruetsche’s ‘Swiss Army Knife’ approach in the context of the view of primitive modality outlined in the previous chapter.