This book is aimed primarily at the practitioners of morals such as psychiatrists,lawyers and policy-makers. My professional background is clinical psychiatry It is divided into three parts. The first of these provides an overview of moral theory, morality in non-human species and recent developments in neuroscience that are of relevance to moral and legal responsibility. In the second part I offer a new paradigm of free action based on the overlaps between free will, moral value and art. In the overlap (...) between free will and moral value we find moral responsibility and moral autonomy. Free will and art share characteristics of originality, spontaneity and creativity. Art and moral value are related by way of the moral content of art and the formal similarities of moral and aesthetic judgments. In the overlap between art, free will and moral value we find religious belief, the creation of moral value and the creation of moral identity. In the third part, I discuss the application of these ideas to common clinical conditions such as eating disorders, addictions, personality disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and the dissociative disorders. Wherever possible, I illustrate the points that are made with real-life clinical examples. I finish by considering how ideas of free will and responsibility are relevant to psychotherapy. (shrink)

This article is an introduction to and advertisement of Erwin Schrödinger’s little-known real-valued wave equation, the first published time dependent Schrödinger equation. I argue that this equation is not merely a historical curiosity. Not only does it show that quantum mechanics need not be viewed as essentially complex-valued, but the real formalism also provides a deep insight into the puzzling nature of time reversal in a quantum world. It is hoped that this observation will stimulate the discovery of other areas (...) where ‘keeping it real’ will prove pedagogically or foundationally useful. (shrink)

Is the quantum state part of the furniture of the world? Einstein found such a position indigestible, but here I present a different understanding of the wavefunction that is easy to stomach. First, I develop the idea that the wavefunction is nomological in nature, showing how the quantum It or Bit debate gets subsumed by the corresponding It or Bit debate about laws of nature. Second, I motivate the nomological view by casting quantum mechanics in a “classical” formalism (Hamilton–Jacobi theory) (...) and classical mechanics in a “quantum” formalism (Koopman–von Neumann theory) and then comparing and contrasting classical and quantum wave functions. I argue that Humeans about laws can treat classical and quantum wave functions on a par and that doing so yields many benefits. (shrink)

Collection of original essays by leading philosophers on a range of questions about time.

Two females, Nadine and Fatu, are the sole surviving Northern White Rhinos (NWR). The subspecies is functionally extinct. Hope for NWR now lies in emerging reproductive and genetic technologies, which could potentially produce NWR from induced pluripotent stem cells. What is the rationale for this project? This question raises almost every philosophical issue facing conservation science today. I argue that NWR recovery is hard to justify via many traditional paths (e.g., historical fidelity, ecosystem health, biodiversity), but if we shift focus (...) to white rhinos in general or even mammals then clear benefits emerge. (shrink)

This is my commentary on Jonathan Schaffer's paper "Evidence for Fundamentality?”; both the paper and comments were presented at the Pacific APA, San Francisco, March 2001. Schaffer argues against the view that there is an ultimate fundamental level to the world. Seeing that quarks and leptons may have an infinite hierarchy of constituents, he claims, “empowers and dignifies the whole of nature” (15). Like Kant he holds that there are as good reasons for believing matter infinitely divisible as composed of (...) fundamental simples. I’m afraid that Schaffer’s provocative arguments have not convinced me. In the paper, I criticize the idea that fundamentalism 'weakens' and 'denigrates' the whole of nature and try to show that an infinite hierarchy can not do the work Schaffer needs it to. I then argue that we should not in fact be agnostic between the two rival hypotheses. (shrink)

Psychotherapy is an activity which takes many forms and which has many aims. The present paper argues that it can be viewed as a form of moral suasion. Kant's concepts of free will and ethics are described and these are then applied to the processes and outcome of psychotherapy. It is argued that his ideas, by linking rationality, free will and ethics into a single philosophical system, offer a valuable theoretical framework for thinking about aims and ethical issues in psychotherapy.

For much of this century, philosophers hoped that Einstein’s general theory of relativity would play the role of physician to philosophy. Its development would positively influence the philosophy of methodology and confirmation, and its ontology would answer many traditional philosophical debates—for example, the issue of spacetime substantivalism. In physics, by contrast, the attitude is increasingly that GTR itself needs a physician. The more we learn about GTR the more we discover how odd are the spacetimes that it allows. Not only (...) does GTR permit singularities, naked and clothed, but it allows time travel, topology change, and event and particle horizons, to name but a few of these oddities. Rather than revel in the riches of the theory, however, many physicists seek to rule out one or more of the above “pathologies” on the grounds that they are “physically unreasonable.” Thus contemporary researchers hawk various “cures” for the “illnesses” of GTR: among them, Chronology Protection to ensure against time travel, Cosmic Censorship for naked singularities, Inflation for horizons, and so on. The physics of these illnesses and cures, and the problems they engender, are the source of much controversy in the physics literature. Philosophers have largely neglected it. But clearly the subject needs philosophers of physics to determine whether the patient is genuinely ailing, and if so, to sift the real antidotes from the snake oil. (shrink)

Why does time seem to flow in one direction? Can we influence the past? Is only the present real? Does relativity conflict with our common understanding of time? How does time relate to free will? Could science do away with time? These questions and others about time are among the most puzzling problems in philosophy and science. In this exciting collection of original articles, eminent philosophers propose novel answers to these and other questions. Based on the latest research in philosophy (...) and physics, these essays will be enjoyable to anyone with a speculative turn of mind. (shrink)

For the generalizations of thermodynamics to obtain, it appears that a very ‘special’ initial condition of the universe is required. Is this initial condition itself in need of explanation? I argue that it is not. In so doing, I offer a framework in which to think about ‘special’ initial conditions in all areas of science, though I concentrate on the case of thermodynamics. I urge the view that it is not always a serious mark against a theory that it must (...) posit an ‘improbable’ initial condition. (shrink)

Must space be a unity? This question, which exercised Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, is a specific instance of a more general one; namely, can the topology of physical space change with time? In this paper we show how the discussion of the unity of space has been altered but survives in contemporary research in theoretical physics. With a pedagogical review of the role played by the Euler characteristic in the mathematics of relativistic spacetimes, we explain how classical general relativity (modulo (...) considerations about energy conditions) allows virtually unrestrained spatial topology change in four dimensions. We also survey the situation in many other dimensions of interest. However, topology change comes with a cost: a famous theorem by Robert Geroch shows that, for many interesting types of such change, transitions of spatial topology imply the existence of closed timelike curves or temporal non-orientability. Ways of living with this theorem and of evading it are discussed. (shrink)

A persistent question about the deBroglie–Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics concerns the understanding of Born’s rule in the theory. Where do the quantum mechanical probabilities come from? How are they to be interpreted? These are the problems of emergence and interpretation. In more than 50 years no consensus regarding the answers has been achieved. Indeed, mirroring the foundational disputes in statistical mechanics, the answers to each question are surprisingly diverse. This paper is an opinionated survey of this literature. While acknowledging (...) the pros and cons of various positions, it defends particular answers to how the probabilities emerge from Bohmian mechanics and how they ought to be interpreted. (shrink)

What grounds the standard claim that classical mechanics is time-reversal invariant? Hutchison (1993, 1995) challenges the conventional reasoning underlying the belief that classical mechanics is time reversal invariant and argues that it is not in any well-defined sense. I find a defensible criterion that will exclude his cases, thereby rescuing a sense in which we can say that classical mechanics is time reversal invariant.

This paper searches for an explicit expression of the so-called problem of the direction of time. I argue that the traditional version of the problem is an artifact of a mistaken view in the foundations of statistical mechanics, and that to the degree it is a problem, it is really one general to all the special sciences. I then search the residue of the traditional problem for any remaining difficulty particular to time's arrow and find that there is a special (...) puzzle for some types of scientific realist. (shrink)

How should one discount utility across time? The conventional wisdom in social science is that one should use an exponential discount function. Such a function is a representation of the axioms that provide a well-defined utility function plus a condition known as stationarity. Yet stationarity doesnt really have much intuitive normative pull on its own. Here I try to cast it in a normative glow by deriving stationarity from two explicitly normative premises, both suggested by the philosophical thesis of temporal (...) neutralism. Putting the argument in this form helps us better understand exponential discounting and challenges to it. (shrink)

This chapter unfolds a central philosophical problem of statistical mechanics. This problem lies in a clash between the Static Probabilities offered by statistical mechanics and the Dynamic Probabilities provided by classical or quantum mechanics. The chapter looks at the Boltzmann and Gibbs approaches in statistical mechanics and construes some of the great controversies in the field — for instance the Reversibility Paradox — as instances of this conflict. It furthermore argues that a response to this conflict is a critical choice (...) that shapes one's understanding of statistical mechanics itself, namely, whether it is to be conceived as a special or fundamental science. The chapter details some of the pitfalls of the latter ‘globalist’ position and seeks defensible ground for a kind of ‘localist’ alternative. (shrink)

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom dominating the social sciences and philosophy regarding temporal discounting, the practice of discounting the value of future utility when making decisions. Although there are sharp disagreements about temporal discounting, a kind of standard model has arisen, one that begins with a normative standard about how we should make intertemporal comparisons of utility. This standard demands that in so far as one is rational one discounts utilities at future times with an exponential discount function. Tracing (...) the justification for this standard through economics, philosophy and psychology, I’ll make what I believe is the best case one can for it, showing how a non-arbitrariness assumption and a dominance argument together imply that discounting ought to be exponential. Ultimately, however, I don’t find the case compelling. Non-exponential temporal discounting is often rational. If this is correct, Instead of trying to ‘fix’ non-exponential discounting because it is irrational and associated with negative life outcomes, we might instead focus attention on why the conditions obtain that make such discounting rational. (shrink)

As the study of time has flourished in the physical and human sciences, the philosophy of time has come into its own as a lively and diverse area of academic research. Philosophers investigate not just the metaphysics of time, and our experience and representation of time, but the role of time in ethics and action, and philosophical issues in the sciences of time, especially with regard to quantum mechanics and relativity theory. This Handbook presents twenty-three specially written essays by leading (...) figures in their fields: it is the first comprehensive collaborative study of the philosophy of time, and will set the agenda for future work. (shrink)

A realist causal model of quantum cosmology (QC) is developed. By applying the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics to QC, we resolve the notorious 'problem of time' in QC, and derive exact equations of motion for cosmological dynamical variables. Due to this success, it is argued that if the situation in QC is used as a yardstick by which other interpretations are measured, the de Broglie-Bohm theory seems uniquely fit as an interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Many believe that quantum mechanics makes the world hospitable to the tensed theory of time. Quantum mechanics is said to rescue the significance of the present moment, the mutability of the future and possibly even the whoosh of time’s flow. It allegedly does so in two different ways: by making a preferred foliation of spacetime into space and time scientifically respectable, and by wavefunction collapse injecting temporal ‘becoming’ into the world. The aim of this paper is to show that the (...) reasoning underlying these claims is wishful thinking. Against the first claim I develop what I call the “coordination problem” for tensers. The upshot of this problem is that if tensers escape the threat of relativity, they do so only by embracing conflict with the branch of physics they believed saved them, quantum mechanics. I then step back from the fray and examine some methodological issues, concluding that scientific methodology will always be “against” tenses as they are currently conceived. The Appendix deals with the confused tangle of issues linking wavefunction collapse to an open future. (shrink)

We propose that scientific representation is a special case of a more general notion of representation, and that the relatively well worked-out and plausible theories of the latter are directly applicable to thc scientific special case. Construing scientific representation in this way makes the so-called “problem of scientific representation” look much less interesting than it has seerned to many, and suggests that some of the (hotly contested) debates in the literature are concerned with non-issues.

By developing an absurd counterfactual history, I show that many objections launched against Bohmian mechanics could also have been made against Newtonian mechanics. This paper introduces readers to Koopman–von Neumann dynamics, an operator-based Hilbert space representation of classical statistical mechanics. Lessons for quantum foundations are drawn by replaying the battles between advocates of standard quantum theory and Bohmian mechanics in a fictional classical history.

Fossil Free Research and other climate activist groups call for a ban on fossil fuel industry funding for climate research. The same call occurred two decades ago for tobacco industry funding and health research. The reasons for the proposed bans are that the funding can bias research and harm the public good. Opposition to bans claims that bans violate academic freedom. That view has mostly won the day. However, are research funding bans permissible, i.e., compatible with academic freedom, rightly understood? (...) Although there are compelling concerns on each side, once the brush is cleared away I think a tolerably clear path emerges for the conclusion that bans are permissible. Using an argument inspired by Mill, I’ll argue that one cannot use academic freedom to defend taking resources from agents of disinformation without thereby undermining the very grounds for academic freedom. (shrink)

From Kant’s first published work to recent articles in the physics literature, philosophers and physicists have long sought an answer to the question, why does space have three dimensions. In this paper, I will flesh out Kant’s claim with a brief detour through Gauss’ law. I then describe Büchel’s version of the common argument that stable orbits are possible only if space is three-dimensional. After examining objections by Russell and van Fraassen, I develop three original criticisms of my own. These (...) criticisms are relevant to both historical and contemporary proofs of the dimensionality of space (in particular, a recent one by Burgbacher, F. Lämmerzahl, C., and Macias). In general I argue that modern “proofs” of the dimensionality of space have gone off track. (shrink)

As we navigate through life, we model time as flowing, the present as special, and the past as “dead.” This model of time—manifest time—develops in childhood and later thoroughly infiltrates our language, thought, and behavior. It is part of what makes a human life recognizably human. Yet if physics is correct, this model of the world is deeply mistaken. This book is about this conflict between manifest and physical time. The first half dives into the physics and philosophy to establish (...) the conflict’s existence; but it also argues that the claim that physics “spatializes” time is overstated. Rather, even relativity theory makes time special in deep and significant ways. The second half turns to psychology, biology, and more, seeking to understand why creatures like us develop manifest time. The novel picture that results is that manifest time is a natural reaction to the many cognitive and evolutionary challenges that we face. For subjects embedded in our circumstances, it makes sense to develop—even if fundamentally wrong. (shrink)

No shield can protect scientific realism from dealing with the quantum measurement problem. One may be able to erect barriers around the observable or classical, preserving a realism about tables, chairs and the like, but there is no safety zone within the quantum realm, the domain of our best physical theory. The upshot is not necessarily that scientific realism is in trouble. That conclusion demands further arguments. The lesson instead may be that scientific realists ought to stake their case on (...) particular interpretations of quantum theory. In any case, the realist can’t ignore the interpretational issues plaguing quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Advocates of the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics have long claimed that other interpretations needlessly invoke "new physics" to solve the measurement problem. Call the argument fashioned that gives voice to this claim the Redundancy Argument, or ’Redundancy’ for short. Originating right in Everett’s doctoral thesis, Redundancy has recently enjoyed much attention, having been advanced and developed by a number of commentators, as well as criticized by a few others.[1] Although versions of this argument can target collapse theories of quantum (...) mechanics, it is usually conceived with no-collapse "hidden variable" interpretations in mind, e.g., modal and Bohmian interpretations. In particular, the argument is an attack against theories committed to both realism about the quantum state and realism about entities – what Bell 1987 calls "beables" – that supplement this state. Particles, fields, value states, and more have been suggested as possible ontology to supplement the quantum state. Redundancy is the argument that this supplementation is methodologically otiose, the superfluous pomp that Newton scorned. (shrink)

In Philip K. Dick’s Counter-Clock World the direction of time flips in 1986, putting the Earth into what its inhabitants call the ‘Hogarth Phase’. Named after the scientist who predicted that ‘time’s arrow' would change direction, the Hogarth Phase is a period in which entropy decreases instead of increases. During this time the dead call from their graves to be excavated, people clean their lungs by ‘smoking’ stubs that grow into mature cigarettes, coffee separates from cream, and so on. Although (...) such reversals may be familiar from works of fiction, we are utterly unfamiliar with them in experience. The processes of nature behave in a temporally asymmetric manner. Once the cream mixes with the coffee, it stays that way, never to return to its original separated state. Neither cigarettes nor people ever fully reconstitute themselves. This kind of asymmetric behaviour is ubiquitous in thermodynamic, radiative, and quantum mechanical phenomena. But we also find our common-sense impression ofthe world painted with temporally asymmetric concepts. Time feels like it is ‘f|owing’ forward and causation appears to be an asymmetric relation. These phenomena and impressions stand in sharp contrast with the world as perceived through eyes tutored by modem science. Spacetime, rather than.. (shrink)

is the thesis that everything supervenes upon the spatiotemporal distribution of local intrinsic qualities. A recent threat to HS, originating in thought experiments by Armstrong and Kripke, claims that the mere possibility of rotating homogeneous discs proves HS false. I argue that the rotating disc argument (RDA) fails. If I am right, Humeans needn't abandon or alter HS to make sense of rotating homogeneous discs. Homogeneous discs, as necessarily understood by RDA, are not the sorts of things in which we (...) should believe. These discs do not belong in our ontology - not because there is a problem with their homogeneity, but (surprisingly) because there is a problem with their rotation. RDA is shown to be a kind of parody of classic arguments for spatial substantivalism. (shrink)

Phase transitions are an important instance of putatively emergent behavior. Unlike many things claimed emergent by philosophers, the alleged emergence of phase transitions stems from both philosophical and scientific arguments. Here we focus on the case for emergence built from physics, in particular, arguments based upon the infinite idealization invoked in the statistical mechanical treatment of phase transitions. After teasing apart several challenges, we defend the idea that phase transitions are best thought of as conceptually novel, but not ontologically or (...) explanatorily irreducible to finite physics; indeed, by looking at ongoing work on “smooth phase transitions” we even suggest that they’re not even conceptually novel. In the case of renormalization group theory, consideration of infinite systems and their singular behavior provides a central theoretical tool, but this is compatible with an explanatory reduction. Phase transitions may be “emergent” in some sense of this protean term, but not in a sense that is incompatible with the reductionist project broadly construed. (shrink)

This paper considers the possibility that nonrelativistic quantum mechanics tells us that Nature cares about time reversal. In a classical world we have a fundamentally reversible world that appears irreversible at higher levels, e.g., the thermodynamic level. But in a quantum world we see, if I am correct, a fundamentally irreversible world that appears reversible at higher levels, e.g., the level of classical mechanics. I consider two related symmetries, time reversal invariance and what I call ‘Wigner reversal invariance.’ Violation of (...) the first is interesting, for not only would it fly in the face of the usual story about temporal symmetry, but it also appears to imply (as I’ll explain) that time is ‘handed’, or as some have misleadingly said in the literature, ‘anisotropic’. Violation of the second is, as I hope to show, even more interesting. The paper also contains a discussion of two mostly neglected topics: what it means to say time is handed and what warrants such an attribution to time. (shrink)

I show how the two great Humean ways of understanding laws of nature, projectivism and systems theory, have unwittingly reprised developments in metaethics over the past century. This demonstration helps us explain and understand trends in both literatures. It also allows work on laws to “leap- frog” over the birth of many new positions, the nomic counterparts of new theories in metaethics. However, like leap-frogging from agriculture to the internet age, it’s hardly clear that we’ve landed in a good place. (...) My reactionary advice is to return to Hume and work on the central insights that motivated Humeanism about modality in the first place. When updated with contemporary insights, there we will find an attractive naturalistic theory of laws, or so I’ll argue, and along the way we’ll see how projectivism and systems theory both get something right about this overall theory. (shrink)

This paper is published as part of special issue on the theme of ‘justice without retribution’. Any attempt to consider how justice may be achieved without retribution has to begin with a consideration of what we mean by justice. The most powerful pleas for justice usually come from those who feel that they have been harmed by the wrongful acts of others. This paper will explore this intuition about justice and will argue that it arises from the central importance of (...) reciprocity, in the form of equity, balance and fairness, in human relationships. This is expressed in our image of justice, one of whose core symbols is a set of scales. I will use a clinical case to illustrate what can happen when criminal harm is not followed by any form of restitution. In this case, the punitive impulse was internalised in the victim and turned against herself in the form of deliberate self harm and, ultimately, death by suicide. I will argue that human relationships largely consist of reciprocal acts of good or harm and that we constantly strive for a balanced reciprocity in our relationships with others. This theme has been played out throughout human history in personal relationships, social customs, legal systems, religion and culture. It is also seen in higher primates. When someone is a victim of wrongful harm, there is a need to take measures to restore the balance which has been lost. I will attempt to draw a distinction between retributivism as the term is usually understood and the application of the principle of reciprocity in criminal justice. This distinction is one that has found expression in what has become known as ‘restorative justice’ as opposed to conventional justice. There are two cardinal features of restorative justice in this context. The first is that it brings offender and victim into a relationship with the aim of repairing the harm that has been caused. The second is that it gives the offender the opportunity to give something back to his victim. I will conclude that our responses to criminal wrong-doing should be based on restorative principles and that punishment can sometimes be part of the process by which moral harm is made good. (shrink)

Philosophy of science appears caught in what Einstein (1933) called the ‘eternal antithesis between the two inseparable components of our knowledge – the empirical and the rational’ (p. 271). It wants to employ metaphysical speculation, but impressed with the methods of the subject it studies, it fears overreaching. Philosophy of science thus tries to walk a fine line between scientifically grounded metaphysics and its more speculative cousins. Here I try to draft some of the contour of this boundary.

ABSTRACT Unlike the relativity theory it seeks to replace, causal set theory has been interpreted to leave space for a substantive, though perhaps ‘localized’, form of ‘becoming’. The possibility of fundamental becoming is nourished by the fact that the analogue of Stein’s theorem from special relativity does not hold in CST. Despite this, we find that in many ways, the debate concerning becoming parallels the well-rehearsed lines it follows in the domain of relativity. We present, however, some new twists and (...) challenges. In particular, we show that a novel and exotic notion of becoming is compatible with causal sets. In contrast to the localized becoming considered compatible with the dynamics of CST by its advocates, our novel kind of becoming, while not answering to the typical A-theoretic demands, is global and objective. _1_ Introduction _2_ The Basics of Causal Set Theory _3_ Facing the Same Dilemma? _4_ Taking Growth Seriously _5_ Conclusion. (shrink)

The manifest image is teeming with activity. Objects are booming and buzzing by, changing their locations and properties, vivid perceptions are replaced, and we seem to be inexorably slipping into the future. Time—or at least our experience in time— seems a very turbulent sort of thing. By contrast, time in the scientist image seems very still. The fundamental laws of physics don’t differentiate between past and future, nor do they pick out a present moment that flows. Except for a minus (...) sign in the relativistic metric, there are few differences between the temporal and spatial coordinates in natural science. We seem to have, to echo another debate, an “explanatory gap” between time as we find it in experience and as we find it in science. Reconciling these two images of the world is the principal goal of philosophy of time. (shrink)

Does a temporal dual process theory explain the illusive flow of time? I point out one shortcoming of such a theory and propose an alternative that does not require either dual cognitive processes or demand such a stark asymmetry between space and time in the brain.

Co-authored by a mathematical physicist and a philosopher of science, this book is a welcome addition to the growing literature in the foundations of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. A large and inter-disciplinary book, it contains an impressive range of information about the history, philosophy, and mathematics of thermostatistical physics. Fourteen chapters of physics and history of physics are sandwiched between two more philosophical chapters on the nature of theories and models. Throughout these middle chapters the authors describe, more or less (...) in historical order, a range of topics, including thermodynamics, kinetic theory, probability theory, ergodicity, phase transitions and more. The concentration is on the mathematical models used to describe physical systems. Usually the models are set in their historical context before being described. The necessary mathematical facts are either introduced or relegated to one of the five appendices. References for further reading are copious: there are almost sixty pages of references. (shrink)

Perhaps the most significant contemporary theory of lawhood is the Best System (/MRL) view on which laws are true generalizations that best systematize knowledge. Our question in this paper will be how best to formulate a theory of this kind. We’ll argue that an acceptable MRL should (i) avoid inter-system comparisons of simplicity, strength, and balance, (ii) make lawhood epistemically accessible, and (iii) allow for laws in the special sciences. Attention to these problems will bring into focus a useful menu (...) of novel MRL theories, some of which solve problems the original MRL theory could not. Hence we conceive of the paper as moving toward a better Best System theory of laws. (shrink)

Philosophy of time, as practiced throughout the last hundred years, is both language- and existence-obsessed. It is language-obsessed in the sense that the primary venue for attacking questions about the nature of time—in sharp contrast to the primary venue for questions about space—has been philosophy of language. Although other areas of philosophy have long recognized that there is a yawning gap between language and the world, the message is spreading slowly in philosophy of time.[1] Since twentieth-century analytic philosophy as a (...) whole often drew metaphysical conclusions from arguments with linguistic premises, philosophy of time perhaps may be forgiven for this transgression. Connected to this language-saturated way of doing philosophy, however, is a hitherto unnoticed obsession, equally unhealthy; namely, an obsession with existence. Existence draws the very lines of debate in philosophy of time: “eternalists” believe past, present and future events all ‘equally’ exist, “possibilists” believe that past and present events exist, and “presentists” believe that only present events enjoy this lofty status.[2] These differences between what events exist as of some other time are supposed to explain the main puzzles surrounding time. This fixation on existence, I submit, is a lingering symptom of the language-saturated days of philosophy of time.[3] And just as linguistic issues such as the ineliminability of tense fail to elucidate time and temporal experience, so too do the “existence debates” fail to explain much of what is interesting about time. Philosophers should have more to say about such a fascinating topic. (shrink)

Suppose that God or a demon informs you of the following future fact: despite recent cosmological evidence, the universe is indeed closed and it will have a ‘final’ instant of time; moreover, at that final moment, all 49 of the world’s Imperial Faberge eggs will be in your bedroom bureau’s sock drawer. You’re absolutely certain that this information is true. All of your other dealings with supernatural powers have demonstrated that they are a trustworthy lot.

Thermodynamics is the science that describes much of the time asymmetric behavior found in the world. This entry's first task, consequently, is to show how thermodynamics treats temporally ‘directed’ behavior. It then concentrates on the following two questions. (1) What is the origin of the thermodynamic asymmetry in time? In a world possibly governed by time symmetric laws, how should we understand the time asymmetric laws of thermodynamics? (2) Does the thermodynamic time asymmetry explain the other temporal asymmetries? Does it (...) account, for instance, for the fact that we know more about the past than the future? The discussion thus divides between thermodynamics being an explanandum or explanans. In the former case the answer will be found in philosophy of physics; in the latter case it will be found in metaphysics, epistemology, and other fields, though in each case there will be blurring between the disciplines. (shrink)

In 1866 J.C. Maxwell thought he had discovered a Maxwellian demon—though not under that description, of course [1]. He thought that the temperature of a gas under gravity would vary inversely with the height of the column. From this he saw that it would then be possible to obtain energy for work from a cooling gas, a clear violation of Thompson’s statement of the second law of thermodynamics. This upsetting conclusion made him worry that “there remains as far as I (...) can see a collision between Dynamics and thermodynamics.” Later, he derived the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law that made the temperature the same throughout the column. However, he continued to think about the relationship between dynamics and thermodynamics, and in 1867, he sent Tait a note with a puzzle for him to ponder. The puzzle was his famous “neat-fingered being” who could make a hot system hotter and a cold system colder without any work being done. Thompson in 1874 christened this being a “demon”; Maxwell unsuccessfully tried to rename it “valve.” However named, the demon’s point was to “show that the second law of thermodynamics has only a statistical validity.” Since that time a large physics literature has arisen that asks a question similar to that asked in theology, namely, does the devil exist? Beginning with Popper, philosophers examining the literature on Maxwell’s demon are typically surprised—even horrified [2,3,4,5,6,7]. As a philosopher speaking at a physics conference exactly 100 yrs after Popper’s birth, I want to explain why this is so. The organizers of this conference instructed me to offend everyone, believers and non-believers in demons. Thus my talk, apart from an agnostic middle section, contains a section offending those who believe they have exorcized the demon and a section offending those who summon demons. Throughout the central idea will be to clearly distinguish the various second laws and the various demons.. (shrink)

Unlike the relativity theory it seeks to replace, causal set theory has been interpreted to leave space for a substantive, though perhaps ‘localized’, form of ‘becoming’. The possibility of fundamental becoming is nourished by the fact that the analogue of Stein’s theorem from special relativity does not hold in causal set theory. Despite this, we find that in many ways, the debate concerning becoming parallels the well-rehearsed lines it follows in the domain of relativity. We present, however, some new twists (...) and challenges. In particular, we show that a novel and exotic notion of becoming is compatible with causal sets. In contrast to the ‘localized’ becoming considered compatible with the dynamics of causal set theory by its advocates, our novel kind of becoming, while not answering to the typical A-theoretic demands, is ‘global’ and objective. (shrink)

The no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much-discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent `wholesale' arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilistically, we can see very clearly why realists (...) and anti-realists have been talking past one another. We then formulate a dilemma for advocates of either argument, answer potential objections to our criticism, discuss what remains (if anything) of these two major arguments, and then speculate about a future philosophy of science freed from these two arguments. In so doing, we connect the point about base rates to the wholesale/retail distinction; we believe it hints at an answer of how to distinguish profitable from unprofitable realism debates. In short, we offer a probabilistic analysis of the feeling of ennui afflicting contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

An important feature of life is the temporal value asymmetry. Not to be confused with temporal discounting, the value asymmetry is the fact that we prefer future rather than past preferences be satisfied. Misfortunes are better in the past--where they are "over and done"--than in the future. Using recent work in empirical psychology and evolutionary theory, we develop a theory of the nature and causes of the temporal value asymmetry. The account we develop undercuts philosophy of time arguments such as (...) that of Prior (1959), but more importantly, also begins a serious study of an interesting but understudied feature of our valuations and emotional attitudes. While in the spirit of certain past sketches about the possible origins of the temporal value asymmetry, our theory improves on them in many significant respects and suggests many clear avenues of future study. More generally, our hope is that work on the temporal value asymmetry will eventually attain the degree of rigor and explanatory power that the discounting asymmetry presently enjoys, for like this latter asymmetry, we believe the temporal value asymmetry has relevance to many practical issues in decision-making. Our paper can thus be seen as a call for a more unified methodological treatment of the two temporal asymmetries. (shrink)

The Past Hypothesis is the claim that the Boltzmann entropy of the universe was extremely low when the universe began. Can we make sense of this claim when *classical* gravitation is included in the system? I first show that the standard rationale for not worrying about gravity is too quick. If the paper does nothing else, my hope is that it gets the problems induced by gravity the attention they deserve in the foundations of physics. I then try to make (...) plausible a very weak claim: that there is a well-defined Boltzmann entropy that *can* increase in *some* interesting self-gravitating systems. More work is needed before we can say whether this claim answers the threat to the standard explanation of entropy increase. (shrink)