Instructor: Brad Skow.
Class Meetings: Tuesdays, 2pm, 8th floor.
Descrption: Thermodynamics and the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics raise a whole host of philosophical questions. The aim of this class is to address some of them.
A physical theory is time reversal invariant if, roughly, according to that theory "anything that can happen forward can happen backward." Our "everyday experience" seems to teach us that the true physical theory cannot be time reversal invariant. Dropped eggs splatter on the floor and warm soup cools; the time-reverses of these processes never happen, and (one might think) cannot happen. Thermodynamics, which is not time reversal invariant, explains why these processes never happen in reverse. But the theory to which thermodynamics is reduced---statistical mechanics---is time reversal invariant. How is this possible?
In addition to physical asymmetries there are also modal, epistemic, and "experiential" asymmetries. The future depends on the present while the past does not; we know about the past in ways we cannot know about the future; we seem to have an experience as of the present moving into the future. Can statistical mechanics, which (supposedly) explains the asymmetric second law of thermodynamics, also explain these asymmetries?
The reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics raises other questions that are not directly about the direction of time. One we will focus on (time permitting) is the nature of chance in statistical mechanics. The dynamics behind classical statistical mechanics is deterministic, yet seemingly-objective probabilities play a crucial role in the theory. Can there be objective chances in deterministic worlds? What kind of philosophical account of these chances is plausible?
February 1: What is the problem of the direction of time?
Albert, Time and Chance, Ch. 1
February 8: Thermodynamics and the Second Law
Albert Ch. 2; appendix.
Uffink, Bluff Your Way in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, sections 1-6.
February 15: Statistical Mechanics and the Second Law
Albert Ch. 3.
Goldstein, Boltzmann's Approach to Statistical Mechanics.
Schroeder and Moore, A Different Approach to Introducting Statistical Mechanics.
Styer, Insight Into Entropy.
February 25 (Friday!): Chancy Explanation in a Deterministic World
Strevens, Depth, Chs. 3 and 10 (and other parts that you deem necessary to understand ch 10; e.g, Ch. 7.3 may turn out to be important).
March 8: The Past Hypothesis
Albert Ch. 4
Earman, The Past Hypothesis: Not Even False.
Wald, The Arrow of Time and the Initial Conditions of the Universe.
Price, Boltzmann's Time Bomb.
Callender, Measures, Explanations and the Past.
March 15: The Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence
Reading notes: Just skim the Bennett; the other two readings will be the focus.
Lewis, Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow.
Bennett, Counterfactuals and Temporal Direction.
Elga, Statistical Mechanics and the Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence.
March 29 (10am!): Can Statistical Mechanics Explain the Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence?
Kutach, The Entropy Theory of Counterfactuals.
Loewer, Counterfactuals and the Second Law.
Frisch, Influencing the Past.
April 5: The Reduction of Temporal Direction to Entropic Gradient?
Sklar, Up and Down, Left and Right, Past and Future.
Sklar, Time in Experience and in Theoretical Description of the World.
April 12: Probability in Statstical Mechanics
Schaffer, Deterministic Chance?
Loewer, Determinism and Chance.
Meacham, Contemporary Approaches to Statistical Mechanical Probabilities, part 2.
April 26: Probability Continued
Schaffer, Loewer, and Meacham continued.
May 3: The Knowledge Asymmetry
Barrett and Sober, Is Entropy Relevant to the Asymmetry between Retrodiction and Prediction?
May 20: The Asymmetry of Causation.
Weslake, Common Causes and the Direction of Causation.
Arntzenius, The Common Cause Principle.
Arntzenius, Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle.