ELFT HÍRADÓ

["Laszlo E. Szabo" <leszabo AT hps.elte.hu>]

Department of HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Eotvos University, Budapest
Pazmany P. setany 1/A Budapest
Phone/Fax: (36-1) 372 2924
Department's Home Page:http://hps.elte.hu

Philosophy of Science Colloquium
Room 6.54 (6th floor) Monday 4:00 PM
____________________________________
 27 May 4:00 PM 6th floor 6.54
 (Language: English)

 Counterfactuals and the Second Law

 Barry Loewer
  Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University

Counterfactuals e.g. "if the match had been struck it would have lit",
are temporally asymmetric -- the future typically coutnerfactually
depends on the past but (typically) not the the past on the future. The 
second law of thermodynamics is also temporally asymmetric. It says, 
roughly, that the entropy of an isolated system (the universe as a 
whole) never decreases. So the idea has occurred to some philosophers 
and physicists including Einstein, Reichenbach, Lewis, Sklar, Horwich 
(among others) that there is a connection between counterfactuals and 
thermodynamics second law, and more generally statistical mechanics. But
none of these spell out what that connection is. Lewis remarks that he 
"does not know how to connect the several asymmetries ...and the famous 
asymmetry of entropy." We will fill in part of the story here.

___________________________________

The 60-minute lecture is followed by a 5-minute break. Then
we held a 30-60-minute discussion.The participants may comment the talks and
initiate discussion on the Internet. The comments should be written in the
language of the presentation.

The organizer of the colloquium:
Laszlo E. Szabo (email: 
leszabo AT hps.elte.hu)

--
Laszlo E. Szabo
Department of Theoretical Physics
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Eotvos University, Budapest
H-1518 Budapest, Pf. 32, Hungary
Phone/Fax: (36-1)372-2924
Home: (36-1) 200-7318
Mobil/SMS: (36) 20-366-1172
http://hps.elte.hu/~leszabo