David B. Malament

David B. Malament (born 1947) is an American philosopher of science.

He attended Stuyvesant High School and received a B.A. in mathematics 1968 at Columbia College and Ph.D. in philosophy 1975 at Rockefeller University. After teaching for nearly a quarter-century at the University of Chicago, Malament left to become Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine.

Malament's work is centered about the conceptual foundations of Special and General Theory of Relativity.^[1][2]

In the question whether simultaneity in STR, the Einstein synchronisation, is conventional, Malament argues against conventionalism and is thought to have refuted Adolf Grünbaum's argument for conventionalism.^[3] Grünbaum,^[4] as well as Sahotra Sarkar and John Stachel,^[5] don't agree, whereas Robert Rynasiewicz sides with Malament.^[6] As of 2006^[update] there is on ongoing debate about Malament's argument in philosophical journals.^[7]

During the Vietnam War Malament was a conscientious objector to the draft, spending time in jail for refusing induction into the military. He published an article on the subject of selective conscientious objection in an early issue of the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs.

References

1. ^ D. Malament, 1977. "The class of continuous timelike curves determines the topology of spacetime," Journal of Mathematical Physics, July 1977, Volume 18, Issue 7, pp. 1399-1404 online
2. ^ D. Malament, 2005. "Classical General Relativity" (gr-qc/0506065, to appear in Handbook of the Philosophy of Physics, eds. J. Butterfield and J. Earman, Elsevier) online
3. ^ D. Malament, 1977. "Causal Theories of Time and the Conventionality of Simultaniety," Noûs 11, 293-300
4. ^ A. Grünbaum. David Malament and the Conventionality of Simultaneity: A Reply, online
5. ^ S. Sarkar, J. Stachel, Did Malament Prove the Non-Conventionality of Simultaneity in the Special Theory of Relativity?, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 66, No. 2
6. ^ R. Rynasiewicz, Definition, Convention, and Simultaneity: Malament's Result and Its Alleged Refutation by Sarkar and Stachel, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 68, No. 3, Supplement, online
7. ^ E.g. see: Hanoch Ben-Yami, Causality and Temporal Order in Special Relativity, British Jnl. for the Philosophy of Sci., Volume 57, Number 3, Pp. 459-479, abstract online

External links

• Malament's homepage at UCI
• Articles available at the philsci server

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Name	Malament, David
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Date of birth	1947
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