What Is a Macroscopic State?

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Lewis: We don't need to change the laws of physics, we just need to find a specific microscopic situation in our macroscopic situation where the specifics would have gone differently. And that gives rise to a very deep important question, which isn't dealt with enough by people who think about statistical mechanics - what exactly is a macroscopic state? Lewis: I know what to say if I stick to thermodynamics and I know some more to say about it but here's what I think about it as a philosopher at the beginning. The other person I've talked to a lot, and maybe he's written about this, is Carlo, Carlo Raveli. He was my second ever podcast

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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