Building Space Out of Nowhere: New Directions for Space Emergence in Fundamental Physics

According to wave function realism (WFR) in quantum mechanics, the most fundamental space of
the physical world is not the familiar three-dimensional one, but an incredibly high-dimensional space. Similarly, some theories of quantum
gravity (QG) suggest that our world is fundamentally non-spatiotemporal. Nonetheless - even though the fundamental ontology is non-spatial -
those who work on WFR and QG usually claim that space and spatial objects are in a certain (derivative) way genuinely
real. In fact, they suggest that space and/or three-dimensional objects somehow emerge from the fundamental non-spatial level. However,
emergence is usually taken here as a proxy term, standing in need of clarification. The central topic of my research project will be the nature of
this emergence relation. I shall discuss the major issues related to the elimination of space from the fundamental level, and set out the desiderata
for a theory of space emergence. Thus, I will assess the main existing account within the literature, namely space functionalism. I will discuss how
space functionalism fares against the issues mentioned above, and I will try to set out what are precisely the ontological committments of this
theory, and how it can account for the emergence of space. Finally, if space functionalism will turn out to be an unsatisfactory solution, I will try
to formulate an alternative account