2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

PSA Abstracts
logical independence of causal facts. Mellor in particular argues that argues
on the basis of the logical independence of causal facts together with ‘laws of
large numbers’, that causal loops are impossible because they produce
inconsistent sets of frequencies. In this paper I offer an improved version of
his argument, clarifying the relevant independence assumption, but argue
nevertheless that it would be preferable to abandon the improved independence
assumption in the case of causal loops. I offer three arguments for this view.
Armond Duwell University of Pittsburgh
Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation
Quantum teleportation is a recently discovered phenomenon whereby quantum
information can be transferred from some location A to another location B
without physically moving quantum information from A to B. Several
explanations of information transfer in quantum teleportation have surfaced. I
examine four of them. After reviewing some elementary results about
teleportation I argue that only one of the four could be acceptable. I also argue
that there are several different concepts of information employed in these
explanations and as such they have differing explanandums.
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Adam Elga Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Statistical mechanics and the asymmetry of counterfactual dependence
In “Counterfactual dependence and time’s arrow”, D. Lewis defends an analysis
of counterfactuals intended to yield the asymmetry of counterfactual
dependence: that later affairs depend counterfactually on earlier ones, and not
the other way around. I argue that careful attention to the dynamical properties
of thermodynamically irreversible processes shows that in many ordinary cases,
Lewis’s analysis fails to yield this asymmetry. Furthermore, the analysis fails
in an instructive way: one that teaches us something about the connection
between the asymmetry of overdetermination and the asymmetry of entropy.
Christopher Eliot University of Minnesota
A Field Guide to Reduction in Ecology
Philosophical accounts of reductionism have not clearly illustrated cases of
reduction in biology, and, if at all, certainly not in ecology. Philosophers and
biologists have moreover offered a number of arguments aimed at
demonstrating that ecology is not reductive. Both reductionists with respect
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