| Ontological cost OpposingArgument1 #115263 Huw Price notes that anthropic reasoning that appeals to some form of multiverse cosmology requires us to posit that much more exists than we are ordinarily aware of - that it has a huge 'ontological cost' - and that we should therefore look for less costly explanations. |
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+Citations (1)
- CitationsAdd new citationList by: CiterankMapLink[1] Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point (book)
Author: Huw Price - Professor of Philosophy and Director, Center for Time, University of Sydney
Cited by: Peter Baldwin 4:41 AM 12 August 2011 GMT
Citerank: (3) 100641The Arrow of Time?A map exploring some issues concerning the nature of time that lie at the boundary of physics and philosophy. The map follows up a talk to the Blackheath Philosophy Forum on 2 April 2011 by Huw Price, Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Time at Sydney University.7F1CEB7, 105217Assumption of molecular chaosThe H-theorem is invalidated by its reliance on a time-asymmetric assumption: the Stosszahlansatz ("assumption of molecular chaos"). This is the assumption that probabilities of velocities of colliding particles are independent.13EF597B, 105364Neutral Kaon exceptionThe behavior of a particle called the neutral Kaon provides an exception to the generalization that physical processes are time-symmetric AND this asymmetry may account for the time-asymmetry expressed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.109FDEF6
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| Excerpt / Summary "As in Boltzmann's time, the idea is an interesting one, but has to face up to some severe difficulties. The firsts is thatit depends on there being a genuine multiplicity of actual "bits" of a much larger universe, of which our bit is simply some small corner. It is no use relying on other merely possible worlds, since that leaves us without an explanation for why ours turned out to be the actual world. (If it hadn't turn out this way, we wouldn't have been around to think about it, but this doesn't explain why it did turn out this way.) So the anthropic solution is exceedingly costly in ontological terms - that is, in terms of what it requires that there be in the world. In effect, it requires that there be vastly more "out there" than we are ordinarily aware of - even as long-range astronomers!
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The second main difficulty for the anthropic strategy is that as Penrose himself emphasizes, There may well be much less costly ways to generate a sufficient entropy gradient to support life."
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