López Cristian
Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Found Phys. 2022;52(5):112. doi: 10.1007/s10701-022-00632-3. Epub 2022 Oct 6.
Two views on the direction of time can be distinguished-primitivism and non-primitivism. According to the former, time's direction is an in-built, fundamental property of the physical world. According to the latter, time's direction is a derivative property of a fundamentally directionless reality. In the literature, non-primitivism has been widely supported since most (if not all) our fundamental dynamical laws are time-reversal invariant. In this paper, I offer a way out to the primitivist. I argue that we do have good grounds to support a primitive direction of time in the quantum realm. The rationale depends on exploiting the metaphysical and dynamical underdetermination of quantum theories to make a case in favor of primitivism. In particular, primitivism can be grounded in spontaneous collapse theories (e.g., GRW and CSL). The specific sense in which these theories capture a primitive direction of time is that, when the ontology of the theory is seriously taken into account, it does not remain invariant under time reversal. In taking GRW with a matter-density field (GRWm), I will argue that primitivism about the direction of time can be defended in the quantum case.
关于时间方向可以区分出两种观点——原初论和非原初论。根据前者，时间的方向是物理世界内在的、基本的属性。根据后者，时间的方向是一个从根本上无方向的实在的派生属性。在文献中，非原初论得到了广泛支持，因为我们大多数（如果不是全部）的基本动力学定律都是时间反演不变的。在本文中，我为原初论者提供了一条出路。我认为我们确实有充分的理由支持量子领域中时间的原初方向。其基本原理依赖于利用量子理论在形而上学和动力学上的不确定性来支持原初论。特别是，原初论可以基于自发坍缩理论（例如，GRW和CSL）。这些理论捕捉到时间原初方向的具体意义在于，当认真考虑该理论的本体论时，它在时间反演下并不保持不变。以具有物质密度场的GRW（GRWm）为例，我将论证在量子情形下关于时间方向的原初论是可以得到辩护的。
