<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Many philosophers of physics take the failure of the laws of physics to be invariant under the time reversal transformation to give us good reason to think that spacetime is temporally anisotropic, yet the details of this inference are rarely made explicit. I discuss two reasonable ways of filling in the details of this inference, the first of which utilizes a symmetry principle proposed by John Earman and the second of which utilizes Harvey Brown’s account of spacetime. I contend that neither of the resulting arguments is sound.</p></abstract>

Many philosophers of physics take the failure of the laws of physics to be invariant under the time reversal transformation to give us good reason to think that spacetime is temporally anisotropic, yet the details of this inference are rarely made explicit. I discuss two reasonable ways of filling in the details of this inference, the first of which utilizes a symmetry principle proposed by John Earman and the second of which utilizes Harvey Brown’s account of spacetime. I contend that neither of the resulting arguments is sound.

Do Time-Asymmetric Laws call for Time-Asymmetric Spacetime Structure?

Disputatio

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Do Time-Asymmetric Laws call for Time-Asymmetric Spacetime Structure?"}

Many philosophers of physics take the failure of the laws of physics to be invariant under the time reversal transformation to give us good reason to think...

Do Time-Asymmetric Laws call for Time-Asymmetric Spacetime Structure?

Publié en ligne: 31 déc. 2018

Pages: 75 - 98

Reçu: 30 juil. 2016

Accepté: 07 févr. 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2017-0028

Mots clés
Philosophy of physics, spacetime metaphysics, direction of time, symmetries, laws of nature

© 2017 Daniel Peterson, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Do Time-Asymmetric Laws call for Time-Asymmetric Spacetime Structure?

Publié en ligne: 31 déc. 2018

Pages: 75 - 98

Reçu: 30 juil. 2016

Accepté: 07 févr. 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2017-0028

Mots clésPhilosophy of physics, spacetime metaphysics, direction of time, symmetries, laws of nature

© 2017 Daniel Peterson, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mots clés
Philosophy of physics, spacetime metaphysics, direction of time, symmetries, laws of nature