The Problem of Counterfactuals

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David Lewis introduced this notion of similar worlds, right? Like, how do you compare one world to another? And I still don't know what that's supposed to mean. So the idea of talking about counterfactuals among philosophers, well, it goes way back. David Hume characterized causation in terms ofcounterfactuals. But there wasn't a really focused discussion of it until Nelson Goodman in the late 40s.

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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