Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T16:23:09.834Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Statistical Mechanics and the Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Adam Elga*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
*
Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139; email: [email protected].

Abstract

In “Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow”, David Lewis defends an analysis of counterfactuals intended to yield the asymmetry of counterfactual dependence: that later affairs depend counterfactually on earlier ones, and not the other way around. I argue that careful attention to the dynamical properties of thermodynamically irreversible processes shows that in many ordinary cases, Lewis's analysis fails to yield this asymmetry. Furthermore, the analysis fails in an instructive way: it teaches us something about the connection between the asymmetry of overdetermination and the asymmetry of entropy.

Type
Statistical Mechanics
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Thanks to Ned Hall, Robert Stalnaker, Sarah McGrath, and Anthony Newman, to conference audiences at Princeton University, the University of Western Ontario, and the 2000 meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, to attendees of the M.A.T.T.I. group at MIT, and to David Albert (for a great seminar on the direction of time). Thanks to Norm Margolus, both for helpful discussion and for kind assistance on using the CAM8 computing architecture. Thanks also to the Josephine de Kármán Fellowship Trust for research support.

References

Albert, David Z (1994), “Quantum Mechanics and the Approach to Thermodynamic Equilibrium”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45:669677.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albert, David Z (2001), Time and Chance. Boston: Harvard University Press, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Gibbard, Allan and Harper, William (1978), “Counterfactuals and Two Kinds of Expected Utility”, in Leach, J. J., Hooker, C. A., and McClennen, E. F. (eds.), Foundations and Applications of Decision Theory. Dordrecht: Reidel, 125162.Google Scholar
Huang, Kerson (1963), Statistical Mechanics. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Lewis, David (1973), “Causation”, Journal of Philosophy 70:556567.10.2307/2025310CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David (1981), “Causal Decision Theory”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59:530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David (1986), “Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow”, in Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3266.Google Scholar
Maudlin, Tim (1998), “A Modest Proposal Concerning Laws, Counterfactuals, and Explanations”, manuscript.Google Scholar
Penrose, Roger (1989), The Emperor's New Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Huw (1996), Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point. NewYork: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ramachandran, Murali (1997), “A Counterfactual Analysis of Causation”, Mind 106:263277.10.1093/mind/106.422.263CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklar, Lawrence (1993), Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert (1968), “A Theory of Conditionals”, in Rescher, Nicholas (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 98112.Google Scholar