Governing Without A Fundamental Direction of Time: Minimal Primitivism about Laws of Nature

TL;DR

This paper introduces a minimal primitivism about laws of nature that does not require laws to be dynamical or time-directed, allowing for a broader range of fundamental laws constrained by physical possibilities.

Contribution

It proposes a novel primitivist account of laws that avoids assumptions about the fundamental direction of time and does not reduce laws to universals or powers.

Findings

Captures governing as constraining without time direction assumptions

Accommodates various candidate fundamental laws including least action and Einstein's equations

Allows non-Humean theories to freely consider diverse fundamental laws

Abstract

The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans, who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter, and non-Humeans, who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction of time in the universe. In this paper, we propose a minimal primitivism about laws of nature (MinP) according to which there is no such requirement. On our view, laws govern by constraining the physical possibilities. Our view captures the essence of the governing view without taking on extraneous commitments about the direction of time or dynamic production. Moreover, as a version of primitivism, our view requires no reduction / analysis of laws in terms of universals, powers, or dispositions. Our view accommodates several potential candidates for fundamental laws, including the principle of least action, the Past Hypothesis, the Einstein equation of general relativity, and even controversial examples found in the Wheeler-Feynman theory of electrodynamics and retrocausal theories of quantum mechanics. By understanding governing as constraining, non-Humeans who accept MinP have the same freedom to contemplate a wide variety of candidate fundamental laws as Humeans do.