What Statistics Can Do to Help Us Understand Why Causes Precede Effects?

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The fundamental feature of causation that we all know is that causes precede effects. But how can statistical mechanics help us understand why causes come before effects? Lewis thought he had an answer to that question in a paper called Times Arrow and Counterfactual Dependents. It's one of the great papers of 20th century philosophy, even though it's full of for my money errors. Here's where the idea came in, which has only become sort of accepted now.

The founders of statistical mechanics in the 19th century faced an uphill battle to convince their fellow physicists that the laws of thermodynamics could be derived from the random motions of microscopic atoms. This insight turns out to be even more important than they realized: the emergence of patterns characterizing our macroscopic world relies crucially on the increase of entropy over time. Barry Loewer has (in collaboration with David Albert) been developing a theory of the Mentaculus — the probability map of the world — that connects microscopic physics to time, causation, and other familiar features of our experience.

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Barry Loewer received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University. He is currently distinguished professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. His research focuses on the foundations of physics and the metaphysics of laws and chance.

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