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Switch to: References
Citations of:
The Mysteries of the Entropic Arrow
In Craig Callender (ed.), Time, Reality & Experience. Cambridge University Press (2002)
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The paper has two parts: First, I describe a relatively popular thesis in the philosophy of propositional attitudes, worthy of the name ‘taking tense seriously’; and I distinguish it from a family of views in the metaphysics of time, namely, the A-theories (or what are sometimes called ‘tensed theories of time’). Once the distinction is in focus, a skeptical worry arises. Some A-theorists maintain that the difference between past, present, and future, is to be drawn in terms of what exists: (...) |
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A new version of the ontological argument for the existence of God is outlined and examined. After giving a brief account of some traditional ontological arguments for the existence of God, where their defects are identified, it is explained how this new argument is built upon their foundations and surmounts their defects. In particular, this version uses the resources of impossible worlds to plug the common escape route from standard modal versions of the ontological argument. After outlining the nature of (...) |
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We discuss Boltzmann’s probabilistic explanation of the second law of thermodynamics providing a comprehensive presentation of what is called today the typicality account. Countering its misconception as an alternative explanation, we examine the relation between Boltzmann’s H-theorem and the general typicality argument demonstrating the conceptual continuity between the two. We then discuss the philosophical dimensions of the concept of typicality and its relevance for scientific reasoning in general, in particular for understanding the reduction of macroscopic laws to microscopic laws. Finally, (...) |
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I first distinguish several notions that have traditionally been conflated (or otherwise neglected) in discussions of the metaphysics of time. Thus, for example, I distinguish between the passage of time and temporal becoming. The former is, I maintain, a confused notion that does not represent a feature of the world; whereas a proper understanding of the latter provides the key for a plausible and comprehensive account of the nature of temporal reality. There are two general classes of views of the (...) |
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Two views on the direction of time can be distinguished—primitivism and non-primitivism. According to the former, time’s direction is an in-built, fundamental property of the physical world. According to the latter, time’s direction is a derivative property of a fundamentally directionless reality. In the literature, non-primitivism has been widely supported since most our fundamental dynamical laws are time-reversal invariant. In this paper, I offer a way out to the primitivist. I argue that we do have good grounds to support a (...) |
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Frege taught us how to understand one form of predication: an atemporal one. There is also a different, temporal form of predication, which I briefly introduce. Accordingly, there are two fundamentally different approaches to time: a reductive one, aiming to account for time in terms of Frege’s atemporal predication, and a non-reductive one, insisting that the temporal form of predication is sui generis, and that time is to be understood in its terms. I do not directly argue for or against (...) |
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Since the late nineteenth century, physics has been puzzled by the time-asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena in the light of the apparent T-symmetry of the underlying laws of mechanics. However, a compelling solution to this puzzle has proved elusive. In part, I argue, this can be attributed to a failure to distinguish two conceptions of the problem. According to one, the main focus of our attention is a time-asymmetric lawlike generalisation. According to the other, it is a particular fact about the (...) |
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I criticize Shimony's argument from the Transient Now (Shimony 1993) that the B-series view of time is inadequate but offer a reading of that argument that is more charitable than one offered and rejected by Eilstein (1996). Shimony's argument turns on putative phenomenological features of the Now (singularity and numerical identity) but transience only arises as a logical implication of those features. Transience is thus a second order phenomenon. If these two features are accurate then the B-series cannot provide a (...) |
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Reichenbach explains temporally asymmetric phenomena by appeal to entropy and ‘branch structure’. He explains why the entropic gradients of isolated subsystems are oriented towards the future and not the past, and why we have records of the past and not the future, by appeal to the fact that the universe is currently on a long entropic upgrade with subsystems that branch off and become quasi-isolated. Reichenbach’s approach has been criticised for relying too closely on entropy. The more popular approach nowadays (...) |
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A new version of the ontological argument for the existence of God is outlined and examined. After giving a brief account of some traditional ontological arguments for the existence of God, where their defects are identified, it is explained how this new argument is built upon their foundations and surmounts their defects. In particular, this version uses the resources of impossible worlds to plug the common escape route from standard modal versions of the ontological argument. After outlining the nature of (...) |
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