Statistical Mechanics and the Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence

Thermodynamics began as the science that elucidated the law-like order present in the behaviour of heat and in its transformations to and from mechanical work. It became of interest to philosophers of science when the nature of heat was discovered to be that of the hidden energy of motion of the microscopic constituents of matter. Attempts at accounting for the phenomenological laws of heat that make up thermodynamics on the basis of the so-called kinetic theory of heat gave rise to the first fundamental introduction into physics of probabilistic concepts and of probabilistic explanation. This led to so-called statistical mechanics. Some of the issues of thermodynamics with importance to philosophers are: the meaning of the probabilistic claims made in statistical mechanics; the nature of the probabilistic explanations it proffers for the observed macroscopic phenomena; the structure of the alleged reduction of thermodynamic theory to the theory of the dynamics of the underlying microscopic constituents of matter; the place of cosmological posits in explaining the behaviour of local systems; and the alleged reducibility of our very notion of the asymmetry of time to thermodynamic asymmetries of systems in time.

Download Full-text

Time

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-q107-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Lawrence Sklar

Keyword(s):

Quantum Mechanics ◽

Statistical Mechanics ◽

Physical Theory ◽

Temporal Order ◽

Fundamental Concept ◽

Causal Order ◽

Newtonian Dynamics ◽

The Asymmetry ◽

Immediate Experience

Time is the single most pervasive component of our experience and the most fundamental concept in our physical theories. For these reasons time has received intensive attention from philosophy. Reflection on our ordinary-tensed language of time has led many to posit a relation of metaphysical importance between time and existence. Closely connected with such intuitions are claims to the effect that time is unlike space, and in deep and important ways. The development of physical theories from Newtonian dynamics through relativistic theories, statistical mechanics, and quantum mechanics has had a profound effect on philosophical views about time. Relativity threatens the notion of a universal, global present, and with it the alleged connections of time to existence. The connection between temporal order and causal order in relativity theories, and between the asymmetry of time and entropic asymmetry in statistical mechanics, suggest various ‘reductive’ accounts of temporal phenomena. Finally, the radical differences between time as it appears in our physical theory and time as it appears in our immediate experience, show important and difficult problems concerning the relation of the time of ‘theory’ to the time of ‘our immediate awareness’.

Download Full-text

The Asymmetry of Influence

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199298204.003.0009 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Douglas Kutach

Keyword(s):

Physical Theory ◽

Ad Hoc ◽

Counterfactual Dependence ◽

Fundamental Physics ◽

Causal Asymmetry ◽

The Asymmetry

This chapter considers the nature of the causal asymmetry, or even more generally, the asymmetry of influence. Putting aside explanations which would appeal to an asymmetry in time as explaining this asymmetry, it aims to show, using current physical theory and no ad hoc time asymmetric assumptions, why it is that future-directed influence sometimes advances one's goals but backward-directed influence does not. The chapter claims that agency is crucial to the explanation of the influence asymmetry. It provides an exhaustive account of the advancement asymmetry that is connected with fundamental physics, influence, causation, counterfactual dependence, and related notions in palatable ways.

Download Full-text