Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

215 | Barry Loewer on Physics, Counterfactuals, and the Macroworld

Oct 24, 2022

Barry Loewer, a distinguished philosopher at Rutgers University and co-founder of DeepMind, delves into the fascinating interplay between physics and philosophy. He explores the historical challenges of linking thermodynamics to microscopic behavior and discusses his theory of the Mentaculus, mapping probabilities across time. Loewer unpacks counterfactuals and causation, addressing their philosophical implications, while questioning the nature of physical laws and the relationship between entropy and time. Their conversation ultimately bridges profound scientific concepts with deep philosophical inquiries.

01:34:29

Episode guests

Barry Loewer

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Episode notes

Intro

5min

Exploring the Interconnections Between Statistical Mechanics and Philosophy

2min

Unpacking Counterfactuals and Causation

26min

Exploring Humean vs Anti-Humean Perspectives in Physics

1min

Exploring the Nature of Physical Laws

11min

Causation, Entropy, and the Nature of Time

22min

Exploring Time and Free Will

25min

Emergent Phenomena and Mathematical Representations in Hilbert Space

2min

Exploring Probability Structures and Philosophical Progress

2min

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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