There Is No Puzzle about the Low Entropy Past

In Christopher Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science. Blackwell. pp. 240-255 (2004)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Suppose that God or a demon informs you of the following future fact: despite recent cosmological evidence, the universe is indeed closed and it will have a ‘final’ instant of time; moreover, at that final moment, all 49 of the world’s Imperial Faberge eggs will be in your bedroom bureau’s sock drawer. You’re absolutely certain that this information is true. All of your other dealings with supernatural powers have demonstrated that they are a trustworthy lot.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The past hypothesis meets gravity.Craig Callender - 2010 - In Gerhard Ernst & Andreas Hüttemann (eds.), Time, chance and reduction: philosophical aspects of statistical mechanics. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 34-58.
Does a Low-Entropy Constraint Prevent Us from Influencing the Past.Mathias Frisch - 2010 - In Gerhard Ernst & Andreas Hüttemann (eds.), Time, chance and reduction: philosophical aspects of statistical mechanics. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 13--33.
The entropy theory of counterfactuals.Douglas N. Kutach - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (1):82-104.
Entropy, Disorder, and Traces.Ayhan Sol - 2007 - The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 12:149-153.
Is entropy relevant to the asymmetry between retrodiction and prediction?Martin Barrett & Elliott Sober - 1992 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (2):141-160.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
253 (#76,907)

6 months
76 (#56,440)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Craig Callender
University of California, San Diego

Citations of this work

Quantum states for primitive ontologists: A case study.Gordon Belot - 2012 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 2 (1):67-83.
Laws of Nature as Constraints.Emily Adlam - 2022 - Foundations of Physics 52 (1):1-41.
Calling for Explanation.Dan Baras - 2022 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

View all 34 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

The emperor’s new mind.Roger Penrose - 1989 - Oxford University Press.
The direction of time.Hans Reichenbach - 1956 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Maria Reichenbach.
Humean Supervenience Debugged.David Lewis - 1994 - Mind 103 (412):473--490.
New Work For a Theory of Universals.David Lewis - 1983 - In D. H. Mellor & Alex Oliver (eds.), Properties. Oxford University Press.

View all 16 references / Add more references