In history, physics, and ordinary life, we often explain a pattern of
correlations between distant events in terms of some linking event in their
common past. This kind of explanation is strongly time-asymmetric, for we
take for granted that there are no irreducibly "teleological" correlations,
needing to be explained in terms of some linking event in their common
future.
What sort of fact about the world is it that it obeys this time-asymmetric
"No Teleology Principle"? A natural hypothessis is that it is tied to the
time-asymmetry of thermodynamics--i.e., that the thermodynamic asymmetry
provides the objective feature of our world, in virtue of which the No
Teleology Principle is true. However, it turns out that some intuitively
plausible applications of the No Teleology Principle in microphysics are
not compatible with this hypothesis. This suggests that either (i) the
hypothesis is mistaken, and there is a further objective time-asymmetry in
the physical world, in addition to that of thermodynamics; or (ii) these
applications of the No Teleology Principle in microphysics are misguided.
I'll argue that (i) runs counter to the apparent T-symmetry of the laws of
physics, and that (ii) seems to offer considerable benefits in quantum
mechanics. We thus have two reasons for taking seriously the possibility
that the No Teleology Principle is an unreliable intuition in microphysics.
The paper covers similar ground to Chapter 5 of my book Time's Arrow and
Archimedes' Point (OUP, 1996), but the arguments have improved, and I
respond to some objections.
Last updated: Thursday, 15-Oct-1998 16:58:22 CEST