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- Huw Price (2006). Recent Work on the Arrow of Radiation☆. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B 37 (3):498-527.In many physical systems, coupling forces provide a way of carrying the energy stored in adjacent harmonic oscillators from place to place, in the form of waves. The wave equations governing such phenomena are time-symmetric: they permit the opposite processes, in which energy arrives at a point in the form of incoming concentric waves, to be lost to some external system. But these processes seem rare in nature. What explains this temporal asymmetry, and how is it related to the thermodynamic asymmetry? This paper attempts to clarify these old issues, in the light of recent contributions. After brief introductory remarks (§1), the paper is in three main parts. §2 examines the so-called ‘Sommerfeld Radiation Condition’, arguing that its link to the observed asymmetry is much less direct than commonly supposed. §3 begins with Zeh's proposal to make the Sommerfeld condition an ingredient in an explanation of the observed asymmetry, and makes explicit a useful distinction between two ways in which the thermodynamic asymmetry might connect to the radiation asymmetry. §4 reviews a proposal I have defended in earlier work about the relation of the radiative asymmetry to that of thermodynamics, and defends it against recent objections by Zeh and Frisch. I also distinguish it from a recent proposal due to North. I agree with North that the observed asymmetry of radiation stems from the low entropy history, but argue that she mis-characterises the asymmetry, and hence misses a crucial element in a proper account of the role of the low entropy past.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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One of the most striking features of causation is that causes typically precede their effects – the causal arrow is strongly aligned with the temporal arrow. Why should this be so? We offer an opinionated guide to this problem, and to the solutions currently on offer. We conclude that the most promising strategy is to begin with the de facto asymmetry of human deliberation, characterised in epistemic terms, and to build out from there. More than any rival, this subjectivist approach promises to demystify the asymmetry, temporal orientation, and deliberative relevance of causal judgements.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... After some preliminary clarifications, arguments for the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination, such as they are, are shown to be unsound. An argument against the supposed asymmetry is then constructed and defended against objections. This is followed by explanations of why the intuition of asymmetry is nonetheless so entrenched, and of how the asymmetric ontological priority of the physical over the non-physical can be understood without the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination.
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| | Other links: cogprints.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Recent discussions of consequentialism have drawn our attention to the so-called “self-other” asymmetry. Various cases presented by Michael Slote and Michael Stocker are alleged to demonstrate a fundamental asymmetry between our obligations to others and ourselves.1 Moreover, these cases are taken to constitute a difficulty for consequentialism, and for the various versions of utilitarianism in particular. I agree that there is a fundamental asymmetry between our obligations to ourselves and to others, and that this fact is inconsistent with the letter of traditional utilitarianisms. However, I do not think this represents a deep shortcoming of the spirit behind utilitarianism. In this paper I will argue that the self-other asymmetry can be accommodated in a broadly utilitarian framework. First, in section one, I characterize moral “asymmetry” in general. Then, in section two, I argue that the cases presented by Slote and Stocker do indeed represent a genuine self-other asymmetry. In part, this involves criticism of an attempt to accommodate the asymmetry within a preferentist framework. Finally, I will present my own solution to the problem of self and other.
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| | Other links: tedsider.org jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Mathias Frisch provides the first sustained philosophical discussion of conceptual problems in classical particle-field theories. Part of the book focuses on the problem of a satisfactory equation of motion for charged particles interacting with electromagnetic fields. As Frisch shows, the standard equation of motion results in a mathematically inconsistent theory, yet there is no fully consistent and conceptually unproblematic alternative theory. Frisch describes in detail how the search for a fundamental equation of motion is partly driven by pragmatic considerations (like simplicity and mathematical tractability) that can override the aim for full consistency. The book also offers a comprehensive review and criticism of both the physical and philosophical literature on the temporal asymmetry exhibited by electromagnetic radiation fields, including Einstein's discussion of the asymmetry and Wheeler and Feynman's influential absorber theory of radiation. Frisch argues that attempts to derive the asymmetry from thermodynamic or cosmological considerations fail and proposes that we should understand the asymmetry as due to a fundamental causal constraint. The book's overarching philosophical thesis is that standard philosophical accounts that strictly identify scientific theories with a mathematical formalism and a mapping function specifying the theory's ontology are inadequate, since they permit neither inconsistent yet genuinely successful theories nor thick causal notions to be part of fundamental physics.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... 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: one that teaches us something about the connection between the asymmetry of overdetermination and the asymmetry of entropy.
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| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... For more than a century, physics has known of a puzzling conflict between the T- asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena and the T-symmetry of the underlying microphysics on which these phenomena depend. This paper provides a guide to the current status of this puzzle, distinguishing the central issue from various issues with which it may be confused. It is shown that there are two competing conceptions of what is needed to resolve the puzzle of the thermodynamic asymmetry, which differ with respect to the number of distinct T-asymmetries they take to be manifest in the physical world. On the preferable one-asymmetry conception, the remaining puzzle concerns the ordered distribution of matter in the early universe. The puzzle of the thermodynamic arrow thus becomes a puzzle for cosmology.
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| | Other links: sydney.edu.au | Scholar | More options ... Or better: time asymmetry in thermodynamics. Better still: time asymmetry in thermodynamic phenomena. “Time in thermodynamics” misleadingly suggests that thermodynamics will tell us about the fundamental nature of time. But we don’t think that thermodynamics is a fundamental theory. It is a theory of macroscopic behavior, often called a “phenomenological science.” And to the extent that physics can tell us about the fundamental features of the world, including such things as the nature of time, we generally think that only fundamental physics can. On its own, a science like thermodynamics won’t be able to tell us about time per se. But the theory will have much to say about everyday processes that occur in time; and in particular, the apparent asymmetry of those processes. The pressing question of time in the context of thermodynamics is about the asymmetry of things in time, not the asymmetry of time, to paraphrase Price ( , ). I use the title anyway, to underscore what is, to my mind, the centrality of thermodynamics to any discussion of the nature of time and our experience in it. The two issues—the temporal features of processes in time, and the intrinsic structure of time itself—are related. Indeed, it is in part this relation that makes the question of time asymmetry in thermodynamics so interesting. This, plus the fact that thermodynamics describes a surprisingly wide range of our ordinary experience. We’ll return to this. First, we need to get the question of time asymmetry in thermodynamics out on the table.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In this paper I propose a reasonably sharp formulation of the temporal asymmetry of radiation. I criticize accounts that propose to derive the asymmetry from a low-entropy assumption characterizing the state of the early universe and argue that these accounts fail, since they presuppose the very asymmetry they are intended to derive. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| | Other links: linkinghub.elsevier.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I criticize two accounts of the temporal asymmetry of electromagnetic radiation - that of Huw Price, whose account centrally involves a reinterpretation of Wheeler and Feynman's infinite absorber theory, and that of Dieter Zeh. I then offer some reasons for thinking that the purported puzzle of the arrow of radiation does not present a genuine puzzle in need of a solution.
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| | Other links: bjps.oupjournals.org jstor.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I discuss the nature of the puzzle about the time‐asymmetry of radiation and argue that its most common formulation is flawed. As a result, many proposed solutions fail to solve the real problem. I discuss a recent proposal of Mathias Frisch as an example of the tendency to address the wrong problem. I go on to suggest that the asymmetry of radiation, like the asymmetry of thermodynamics, results from the initial state of the universe.
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| | Other links: philsci-archive.pitt.edu journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Huw Price, Recent work on the arrow of radiation☆
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