Calling for explanation: the case of the thermodynamic past state
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(2020) 10:36
PAPER IN GENERAL PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Calling for explanation: the case of the thermodynamic past state Dan Baras 1
& Orly
Shenker 2
Received: 9 September 2019 / Accepted: 18 June 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Philosophers of physics have long debated whether the Past State of low entropy of our universe calls for explanation. What is meant by “calls for explanation”? In this article we analyze this notion, distinguishing between several possible meanings that may be attached to it. Taking the debate around the Past State as a case study, we show how our analysis of what “calling for explanation” might mean can contribute to clarifying the debate and perhaps to settling it, thus demonstrating the fruitfulness of this analysis. Applying our analysis, we show that two main opponents in this debate, Huw Price and Craig Callender, are, for the most part, talking past each other rather than disagreeing, as they employ different notions of “calling for explanation”. We then proceed to show how answering the different questions that arise out of the different meanings of “calling for explanation” can result in clarifying the problems at hand and thus, hopefully, to solving them. Keywords Past hypothesis . Calling for explanation . Craig Callender . Huw Price
1 Introduction What facts call for explanation? While the notion of explanation itself has been studied for many years and is still a central topic of interest and research (Woodward 2014), the The authors contributed equally to this work.
* Dan Baras [email protected] Orly Shenker [email protected]
1
The Martin Buber Society of Fellows, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, 9190501 Jerusalem, Israel
2
Edelstein Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmund J. Safra Campus, 9190401 Jerusalem, Israel
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question of which facts call for explanation and what it means for facts to call for explanation—whatever we take “explanation” to mean—has been studied less (Baras 2019, n.d.; White 2005). In this paper we address this question, but instead of exploring in the abstract which facts call for explanation and what that implies, we study a case where this point is under debate. This case study will also illustrate how clarifying what calls for explanation in a particular case can help disentangle philosophical as well as scientific debates, thus contributing to making progress in them. The debate we shall address concerns a question at the foundations of statistical mechanics: is the so-called “Past State” posited in the so-called “Past Hypothesis” (both presented in the next section) in need of explanation? Two of the main proponents of each side of the debate, Huw Price and Craig Callender, have conveniently presented their views on the question of whether the Past State calls for explanation in a pair of papers (Price 2002; Callender 2004a) and repeat their arguments in a second pair of p
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