Wallace, David (2023) The local quantum vacuum as the Past Hypothesis. [Preprint]
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Abstract
The `Past Hypothesis', as advocated by David Albert and Barry Loewer, is the hypothesis that the world came into being in whatever particular low-entropy highly-condensed big-bang sort of macrocondition it is that the normal inferential procedures of cosmology will eventually present to us. I consider some hypotheseses about that that macrocondition is likely to be given what cosmology has already presented to us, and explore the consequences of these hypotheses for the broader (`Mentaculus') project of grounding physics and the special sciences in the Past Hypothesis. My main conclusion is that current cosmology suggests a unique, pure quantum state (the local quantum vacuum, or `Bunch-Davies vacuum') for the initial state of the Universe, in which case statistical-mechanical probabilities emerge from quantum probabilities without any need for an intervening statistical postulate.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | Past Hypothesis Cosmology Statistical Mechanics Mentaculus | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Cosmology Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Field Theory Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Depositing User: | Professor David Wallace | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 03 Oct 2023 22:27 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 03 Oct 2023 22:27 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 22619 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Cosmology Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Field Theory Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Date: | October 2023 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22619 |
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