•  109
    Finding “real‘ time in quantum mechanics”
    In William Lane Craig & Quentin Smith (eds.), Einstein, relativity, and absolute simultaneity, Routledge. pp. 50-72. 2007.
    Many believe that quantum mechanics makes the world hospitable to the tensed theory of time. Quantum mechanics is said to rescue the significance of the present moment, the mutability of the future and possibly even the whoosh of time’s flow. It allegedly does so in two different ways: by making a preferred foliation of spacetime into space and time scientifically respectable, and by wavefunction collapse injecting temporal ‘becoming’ into the world. The aim of this paper is to show that the rea…Read more
  •  4
    The Prodigy That Time Forgot: The Incredible and Untold Story of John von Newton
    In Angelo Bassi, Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka & Nino Zanghì (eds.), Physics and the Nature of Reality: Essays in Memory of Detlef Dürr, Springer. pp. 51-61. 2024.
    By developing an absurd counterfactual history, I show that many objections launched against Bohmian mechanics could also have been made against Newtonian mechanics. This paper introduces readers to Koopman–von Neumann dynamics, an operator-based Hilbert space representation of classical statistical mechanics. Lessons for quantum foundations are drawn by replaying the battles between advocates of standard quantum theory and Bohmian mechanics in a fictional classical history.
  •  146
    The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2011.
    As the study of time has flourished in the physical and human sciences, the philosophy of time has come into its own as a lively and diverse area of academic research. Philosophers investigate not just the metaphysics of time, and our experience and representation of time, but the role of time in ethics and action, and philosophical issues in the sciences of time, especially with regard to quantum mechanics and relativity theory. This Handbook presents twenty-three specially written essays by le…Read more
  •  296
    What Makes Time Special?
    Oxford University Press. 2017.
    As we navigate through life, we model time as flowing, the present as special, and the past as “dead.” This model of time—manifest time—develops in childhood and later thoroughly infiltrates our language, thought, and behavior. It is part of what makes a human life recognizably human. Yet if physics is correct, this model of the world is deeply mistaken. This book is about this conflict between manifest and physical time. The first half dives into the physics and philosophy to establish the conf…Read more
  •  38
    Review symposia
    with Martin Rudwick, Naomi Oreskes, David Oldroyd, David Philip Miller, Alan Chalmers, John Forge, David Turnbull, Peter Slezak, David Bloor, Keith Hutchison, Steven Savitt, and Huw Price
    Metascience 5 (1): 7-85. 1996.
  •  312
    An important obstacle to lawhood in the special sciences is the worry that such laws would require metaphysically extravagant conspiracies among fundamental particles. How, short of conspiracy, is this possible? In this paper we'll review a number of strategies that allow for the projectibility of special science generalizations without positing outlandish conspiracies: non-Humean pluralism, classical MRL theories of laws, and Albert and Loewer's theory. After arguing that none of the above full…Read more
  •  488
    A better best system account of lawhood
    Philosophical Studies 145 (1). 2009.
    Perhaps the most significant contemporary theory of lawhood is the Best System (/MRL) view on which laws are true generalizations that best systematize knowledge. Our question in this paper will be how best to formulate a theory of this kind. We’ll argue that an acceptable MRL should (i) avoid inter-system comparisons of simplicity, strength, and balance, (ii) make lawhood epistemically accessible, and (iii) allow for laws in the special sciences. Attention to these problems will bring into focu…Read more
  •  38
    We propose that scientific representation is a special case of a more general notion of representation, and that the relatively well worked-out and plausible theories of the latter are directly applicable to the scientific special case.
  •  513
    There Is No Special Problem About Scientific Representation
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 21 (1): 67-85. 2006.
    We propose that scientific representation is a special case of a more general notion of representation, and that the relatively well worked-out and plausible theories of the latter are directly applicable to thc scientific special case. Construing scientific representation in this way makes the so-called “problem of scientific representation” look much less interesting than it has seerned to many, and suggests that some of the (hotly contested) debates in the literature are concerned with non-is…Read more
  • The Mysteries of the Entropic Arrow
    with H. Price
    In Craig Callender (ed.), Time, Reality & Experience, Cambridge University Press. 2002.
  •  220
    Metaphysics of quantum mechanics
    In Compendium of Quantum Physics, Springer-verlag. pp. 384-389. 2009.
    Quantum mechanics, like any physical theory, comes equipped with many metaphysical assumptions and implications. The line between metaphysics and physics is often blurry, but as a rough guide, one can think of a theory’s metaphysics as those foundational assumptions made in its interpretation that are not usually directly tested in experiment. In classical mechanics some examples of possible metaphysical assumptions are the claims that forces are real, that inertial mass is primitive, and that s…Read more
  •  270
    Time in physics
    In Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan Reference Usa. 2005.
    No one conception of time emerges from a study of physics. As science changes—over time or through varying interpretations at a time—our conception of physical time changes. Each of these changes and resulting theories of time has been the subject of philosophical scrutiny, so there are many philosophical controversies internal to particular physical theories. For instance, the move to special relativity radically transformed our understanding of time, but it also gave rise to debates about the …Read more
  •  172
    Who's Afraid of Maxwell's Demon—and Which One?
    AIP Conference Proceedings 643. 2002.
    In 1866 J.C. Maxwell thought he had discovered a Maxwellian demon—though not under that description, of course [1]. He thought that the temperature of a gas under gravity would vary inversely with the height of the column. From this he saw that it would then be possible to obtain energy for work from a cooling gas, a clear violation of Thompson’s statement of the second law of thermodynamics. This upsetting conclusion made him worry that “there remains as far as I can see a collision between Dyn…Read more
  •  455
    Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics
    In Steven French & Juha Saatsi (eds.), Continuum Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Continuum. pp. 33--54. 2011.
    Philosophy of science appears caught in what Einstein (1933) called the ‘eternal antithesis between the two inseparable components of our knowledge – the empirical and the rational’ (p. 271). It wants to employ metaphysical speculation, but impressed with the methods of the subject it studies, it fears overreaching. Philosophy of science thus tries to walk a fine line between scientifically grounded metaphysics and its more speculative cousins. Here I try to draft some of the contour of this bou…Read more
  •  158
    According to D. Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics, a particle always has a well-defined spatial trajectory. A change in boundary conditions can nonlocally change that trajectory. In this note we point out a striking instance of this phenomenon that is easy to understand qualitatively.
  •  225
    There Is No Puzzle about the Low Entropy Past
    In Christopher Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. pp. 240-255. 2004.
    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.
  •  788
    Philosophy of Space‐Time Physics
    In Peter Machamer & Michael Silberstein (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2002.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Relationism, Substantivalism and Space‐time Conventionalism about Space‐time Black Holes and Singularities Horizons and Uniformity Conclusion.
  •  287
    Thermodynamic asymmetry in time
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006.
    Thermodynamics is the science that describes much of the time asymmetric behavior found in the world. This entry's first task, consequently, is to show how thermodynamics treats temporally ‘directed’ behavior. It then concentrates on the following two questions. (1) What is the origin of the thermodynamic asymmetry in time? In a world possibly governed by time symmetric laws, how should we understand the time asymmetric laws of thermodynamics? (2) Does the thermodynamic time asymmetry explain th…Read more
  •  20
    Screening Out Neurodiversity
    with Jada Wiggleton-Little
    Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 33 (1): 21-54. 2023.
    ABSTRACT:Autistic adults suffer from an alarmingly high and increasing unemployment rate. Many companies use pre-employment personality screening tests. These filters likely have disparate impacts on neurodivergent individuals, exacerbating this social problem. This situation gives rise to a bind. On the one hand, the tests disproportionately harm a vulnerable group in society. On the other, employers think that personality test scores are predictors of job performance and have a right to use pe…Read more
  •  258
    Does quantum mechanics clash with the equivalence principle—and does it matter?
    with Elias Okon
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 1 (1): 133-145. 2011.
    With an eye on developing a quantum theory of gravity, many physicists have recently searched for quantum challenges to the equivalence principle of general relativity. However, as historians and philosophers of science are well aware, the principle of equivalence is not so clear. When clarified, we think quantum tests of the equivalence principle won’t yield much. The problem is that the clash/not-clash is either already evident or guaranteed not to exist. Nonetheless, this work does help teach…Read more
  •  40
    Editor's Report, 2005
    with James W. McAllister, Leonard Angel, Jonathan Bain, Tian Yu Cao, Lisa Dolling, Gerald D. Doppelt, Antony Eagle, Henry Folse, and Mélanie Frappier
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 20 (2): 125-127. 2006.
  •  821
    Realist Ennui and the Base Rate Fallacy
    Philosophy of Science 71 (3): 320-338. 2004.
    The no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much-discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent `wholesale' arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilisti…Read more
  •  447
    Why quantize gravity (or any other field for that matter)?
    Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2001 (3). 2001.
    The quantum gravity program seeks a theory that handles quantum matter fields and gravity consistently. But is such a theory really required and must it involve quantizing the gravitational field? We give reasons for a positive answer to the first question, but dispute a widespread contention that it is inconsistent for the gravitational field to be classical while matter is quantum. In particular, we show how a popular argument (Eppley and Hannah 1997) falls short of a no-go theorem, and discus…Read more
  •  32
    Why Quantize Gravity (or Any Other Field for That Matter)?
    Philosophy of Science 68 (S3). 2001.
    The quantum gravity program seeks a theory that handles quantum matter fields and gravity consistently. But is such a theory really required and must it involve quantizing the gravitational field? We give reasons for a positive answer to the first question, but dispute a widespread contention that it is inconsistent for the gravitational field to be classical while matter is quantum. In particular, we show how a popular argument falls short of a no-go theorem, and discuss possible counterexample…Read more
  •  22
    Book Review Arguments of Time (review)
    Philosophy of Science 72 (3): 486-488. 2005.
  •  86
    No Time for Time from No-Time
    Philosophy of Science 88 (5): 1172-1184. 2021.
    Programs in quantum gravity often claim that time emerges from fundamentally timeless physics. In the semiclassical time program time arises only after approximations are taken. Here we ask what justifies taking these approximations and show that time seems to sneak in when answering this question. This raises the worry that the approach is either unjustified or circular in deriving time from no–time.
  •  25
    XII: Is Time ‘Handed’ In a Quantum World?
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (3): 247-269. 2000.
    In a classical mechanical world, the fundamental laws of nature are reversible. The laws of nature treat the past and future as mirror images of each other. Temporally asymmetric phenomena are ultimately said to arise from initial conditions. But are the laws of nature also reversible in a quantum world? This paper argues that they are not, that time in a quantum world prefers a particular 'hand' or ordering. I argue, first, that the probabilistic algorithm used in the theory picks out a preferr…Read more
  •  138
    The past hypothesis meets gravity
    In Andreas Hüttemann & Gerhard Ernst (eds.), Time, Chance and Reduction, Cambridge University Press. pp. 34-58. 2010.
    The Past Hypothesis is the claim that the Boltzmann entropy of the universe was extremely low when the universe began. Can we make sense of this claim when *classical* gravitation is included in the system? I first show that the standard rationale for not worrying about gravity is too quick. If the paper does nothing else, my hope is that it gets the problems induced by gravity the attention they deserve in the foundations of physics. I then try to make plausible a very weak claim: that there is…Read more
  •  86
    XII: Is time 'handed' in a quantum world?
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (3). 2000.
    In a classical mechanical world, the fundamental laws of nature are reversible. The laws of nature treat the past and future as mirror images of each other. Temporally asymmetric phenomena are ultimately said to arise from initial conditions. But are the laws of nature also reversible in a quantum world? This paper argues that they are not, that time in a quantum world prefers a particular 'hand' or ordering. I argue, first, that the probabilistic algorithm used in the theory picks out a preferr…Read more
  •  202
    The view from no-when (review)
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1). 1998.
    In Philip K. Dick’s Counter-Clock World the direction of time flips in 1986, putting the Earth into what its inhabitants call the ‘Hogarth Phase’. Named after the scientist who predicted that ‘time’s arrow' would change direction, the Hogarth Phase is a period in which entropy decreases instead of increases. During this time the dead call from their graves to be excavated, people clean their lungs by ‘smoking’ stubs that grow into mature cigarettes, coffee separates from cream, and so on. Althou…Read more