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What is ‘The Problem of the Direction of Time’?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Craig Callender
Craig Callender*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics
*
†Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, The London School of Economics, Houghton St., London WC2A 2AE, UK.
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Abstract

This paper searches for an explicit expression of the so-called problem of the direction of time. I argue that the traditional version of the problem is an artifact of a mistaken view in the foundations of statistical mechanics, and that to the degree it is a problem, it is really one general to all the special sciences. I then search the residue of the traditional problem for any remaining difficulty particular to time's arrow and find that there is a special puzzle for some types of scientific realist.

Type
Symposium: New Work on Time's Arrow
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 64 , Issue S4: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Dec., 1997 , 1997 , pp. S223 - S234
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1997

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of my former Ph.D. supervisor, Robert Weingard, a great philosopher and friend. I would also like to thank Shelly Goldstein, Huw Price, and the audience at the annual meeting of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science (Sheffield, UK, 1996) for useful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

References

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