Abstracts


The following papers have been accepted for presentation at AAP 2013. If you've just submitted an abstract, it may take a few days to appear.

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Name: Assistant Professor Brad Weslake
Institution: University of Rochester
Title: Statistical Mechanical Imperialism
Abstract: I argue against the claim, advanced by David Albert and Barry Loewer, that all non-fundamental laws can be derived from those required to underwrite the second law of thermodynamics. My argument generalises in two ways. First, I identify a dilemma for any theory according to which the non-fundamental laws are just those generalisations that are probable, conditional on some description of the state of the world at a time. Second, I argue that the explanatory power of non-fundamental laws supports a form of non-reductionism with respect to the fundamental laws.
Keywords: laws, reduction, statistical mechanics, probability, explanation