Chance and Temporal Asymmetry
Chance and Temporal Asymmetry by Alastair Wilson
English | 4 Sept. 2014 | ISBN: 019967342X | 320 Pages | PDF | 2.36 MB
English | 4 Sept. 2014 | ISBN: 019967342X | 320 Pages | PDF | 2.36 MB
Chance and Temporal Asymmetry presents a collection of cutting-edge research papers in the metaphysics of science, tackling the perplexing philosophical problems raised by recent progress in the physics and metaphysics of chance and time. How do the probabilities found in fundamental physics and the probabilities of the special sciences relate to one another? Can a constraint on the initial conditions of the universe underwrite the second law of thermodynamics? How does contemporary quantum theory reframe debates over the nature of chance? What grounds do we have for believing in a fundamental direction to time? And how do all these questions connect up?
The aim of the volume is both to survey and summarize recent debates about chance and temporal asymmetry and to push them forward. Familiar approaches are subjected to searching new critiques, and bold new proposals are made concerning (inter alia) the semantics of chance-attributions, the justification of the Principal Principle connecting chance and degree of belief, and the source of the temporal asymmetry of human experience.