Tim Maudlin

Tim Maudlin
Born 23 April 1958
Washington, D.C.
Alma mater University of Pittsburgh
Yale University
Era Contemporary philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Analytic philosophy
Mathematicism
Institutions New York University
Main interests
 Philosophy of science, philosophy of physics
Notable ideas
 Mathematicism

Tim William Eric Maudlin (born April 23, 1958) is an American philosopher of science who has done influential work on the metaphysical foundations of physics and logic.

Education and career

Maudlin graduated from Sidwell Friends School, Washington, D.C. Later he studied physics and philosophy at Yale University, and history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he received his Ph.D. in 1986. He taught for more than two decades at Rutgers University, before joining the Department of Philosophy at New York University in 2010.

Maudlin has also been a visiting professor at Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the "Foundational Questions Institute", of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship.[1][2] He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2015.

Tim Maudlin is married to Vishnya Maudlin; they have two children: Clio and Maxwell.

Philosophical work

In his first book, Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity (1994), Maudlin explains Bell's Theorem and the tension between violations of Bell's inequality and relativity.

In Truth and Paradox: Solving the Riddles (2004), the author presents a new resolution to the "Liar Paradox" (for example, enclosing the sentence: "This sentence is false") and other semantic paradoxes that requires a modification of classical logic.

In The Metaphysics Within Physics (2007) the central idea is that «metaphysics, in so far as it is concerned with the natural world, can do no better than to reflect on physics».[3]

Metaphysics is ontology. Ontology is the most generic study of what exists. Evidence for what exists, at least in the physical world, is provided solely by empirical research. Hence the proper object of most metaphysics is the careful analysis of our best scientific theories (and especially of fundamental physical theories) with the goal of determining what they imply about the constitution of the physical world.[4]

Maudlin delves into fundamental topics of cosmology arguing that laws of nature ought to be taken as primitive, that is not reduced to something else, and in favor of the thesis that the passage and direction of time are fundamental. This theory essentially define a clear direction of the arrow of time and underlies therefore an asymmetric time, contradicting the quantum mechanics idea of time's symmetry and other theories that deny the existence of time, as championed by physicist Julian Barbour.[5]

I believe that it is a fundamental, irreducible fact about the spatio-temporal structure of the world that time passes. [...] The passage of time is an intrinsic asymmetry in the temporal structure of the world, an asymmetry that has no spatial counterpart.[...] Still, going from Mars to Earth is not the same as going from Earth to Mars. The difference, if you will, is how these sequences of states are oriented with respect to the passage of time. [...] The belief that time passes, in this sense, has no bearing on the question of the 'reality' of the past or of the future. I believe that the past is real: there are facts about what happened in the past that are independent of the present state of the world and independent of all knowledge or beliefs about the past. I similarly believe that there is (i.e. will be) a single unique future. I know what it would be to believe that the past is unreal (i.e. nothing ever happened, everything was just created ex nihilo) and to believe that the future is unreal (i.e. all will end, I will not exist tomorrow, I have no future). I do not believe these things, and would act very differently if I did. Insofar as belief in the reality of the past and the future constitutes a belief in a 'block universe', I believe in a block universe. But I also believe that time passes, and see no contradiction or tension between these views.[6]

Moreover he defends the superiority of his view over rival proposals of David Lewis and Bas Van Fraassen, among others. Lewis analyzed natural laws as those generalizations that figure in all theoretical systematizations of empirical truths that best combine strength and simplicity. Maudlin objects that this analysis rides roughshod over the intuition that some such generalizations could fail to be laws in worlds that we should follow scientists in deeming physically possible. Van Fraassen argued that laws of nature are of no philosophical significance, and may be eliminated in favor of models in a satisfactory analysis of science. Maudlin counters that this deprives one of the resources to say how cutting down its class of models can enhance a theory's explanatory power, a phenomenon that is readily accounted for when one takes a theory's model class as well as its explanatory power to derive from its constituent laws» (Richard Healey, University of Arizona).[7]

In his latest book Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time (2012) the author «introduces nonphysicists to the core philosophical issues surrounding the nature and structure of space and time, and is also [a] resource for physicists interested in the conceptual foundations of space-time theory. [His] broad historical overview examines Aristotelian and Newtonian accounts of space and time, and traces how Galileo's conceptions of relativity and space-time led to Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Maudlin explains special relativity using a geometrical approach, emphasizing intrinsic space-time structure rather than coordinate systems or reference frames».[8]

His present major project is New Foundations for Physical Geometry, which develops a new mathematical analysis of the geometrical properties of spaces, which are usually discussed in topology. The main difference is that whereas standard topology analyzes the geometry of a space in terms of its open sets, Maudlin's theory analyzes it in terms of the continuous lines in the space.

Bibliography

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Books

  • Philosophy of Physics, Volume 1: "Space and Time". Princeton University Press, 2012
  • The Metaphysics Within Physics. Oxford University Press, 2007
  • Truth and Paradox: Solving the Riddles. Oxford University Press, 2004
  • Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity: Metaphysical Intimations of Modern Physics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994; Second Edition, 2002; Third Edition, 2011

Papers and book chapters

  • “Three Roads to Objective Probability”, in Probabilities in Physics, edited by Claus Beisbart and Stephan Hartmann, Oxford University Press, pp. 293–322 (2011)
  • Preface to Quantum Physics Without Quantum Philosophy by Detfel Dürr, Sheldon Golstein and Nino Zanghi, forthcoming from Springer Verlag
  • “The Nature of the Quantum State”, forthcoming in The Wavefunction, edited by Alyssa Ney and David Albert, Oxford University Press
  • “On the Albertian Demon”, forthcoming in a book commenting on David Albert’s Time and Chance, edited by Barry Loewer, Brad Weslake and Eric Winsberg, Harvard University Press
  • “Time and the Geometry of the Universe”, in The Future of the Philosophy of Time, edited by Adrian Bardon, Routledge, pp. 188–216 (2012)
  • Interview in Philosophy of Physics: 5 +1 Questions, edited by Juan Ferret and John Symons, Automatic Press, pp. 105–111
  • “The Geometry of Space-Time”, The Aristotelian Society, Supplementary volume LXXXIV, pp. 63–78 (2010)
  • “Can the World Be Only Wavefunction?” in Many Worlds?, edited by Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent, Simon Saunders and David Wallace, Oxford University Press 2010, pp. 121–143
  • “What Bell Proved: A Reply to Blaylock”, American Journal of Physics 78, vol.1, 121-125 (January 2010)
  • “Space, Absolute and Relational”, Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, edited by Robin LePoidevin,Routledge: London, 2009, pp. 420–429
  • “Grading, Sorting and the Sorites”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XXXII (“Truth and Its Deformities”) 2008, pp. 141–168
  • “Reducing Revenge to Discomfort” in Revenge of the Liar, edited by J. C. Beall, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 184–196
  • “Completeness, Supervenience and Ontology” in The Quantum Universe, a special edition of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General, Phys. A: Math. Theor. 40 (2007) 3151-3171
  • “What Could Be Objective About Probabilities?”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38, 275-91, (June 2007)
  • “Non-Local Correlations” in Quantum Theory: Some Ways the Trick Might be Done, Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity, ed. Quentin Smith and William Lane Craig, Routledge (2007) pp. 186–209
  • “The Message of the Quantum?”, with M. Daumer, D. Dürr, S. Goldstein, R. Tumulka, and N. Zanghì, in Quantum Mechanics: Are there Quantum Jumps? and On the Present Status of Quantum Mechanics, edited by A. Bassi, D. Dürr, T. Weber and N. Zanghì, AIP Conference Proceedings 844, 129-132 (American Institute of Physics, 2006), quant-ph/0604173
  • Abstract of Truth and Paradox with replies to comments by Hartry Field, Anil Gupta, and Nuel Belnap, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research November 2006, 696-704 and 728-739
  • “Time Travel and Modern Physics” (With Frank Arntzenius), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu), republished in Time, Reality and Experience, edited by C. Callender, Cambridge University Press, 2002
  • "Computation and Consciousness", Journal of Philosophy 86, pp. 407–432[9]

Book reviews

Year Review article Work(s) reviewed
2008 Maudlin, Tim (February 2008). "[Untitled review]". Journal of Statistical Physics. 130 (4): 823–825.
  • Ruelle, David (2007). The mathematician’s brain. Princeton University Press.
2018 Maudlin, Tim (June 1, 2018). "The defeat of reason". Boston Review.
  • Becker, Adam. What is real? The unfinished quest for the meaning of quantum physics. Basic Books.
  • Morris, Errol. The ashtray : (Or the man who denied reality). University of Chicago Press.
  • — Truth and Realism, edited by P. Greenough and M. Lynch, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, June 18, 2007
  • — Rob Clifton "Quantum Entanglements", edited by J. Butterfield and H. Halvorsen, Mind 115, number 460, pp. 1111–1120 (October 2006)
  • — David Bohm and Basil Hiley's "The Undivided Universe", Philosophical Books 36, pp. 281–83 (October 1995)
  • — James Cushing's "Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Interpretation", American Journal of Physics 63, pp. 1155–56 (December 1995)
  • — Lawrence Sklar's "Physics and Chance and Philosophy of Physics", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46, pp. 145–49 (March 1995)
  • — Nancy Cartwright's "Nature's Capacities and their Measurement", Journal of Philosophy XC, pp. 599–603 (November 1993)
  • — David Armstrong's "A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility", Philosophy of Science 59, pp. 716–718 (December 1992)
  • — Deborah Modrak's "Aristotle: The Power of Perception", The Philosophical Review, XCIX, no. 2, pp. 305–309

References

  1. ↑ Dept. NYU Philosophy Access 2012/11/21
  2. ↑ Guggenheim Foundation Archived 2013-01-04 at the Wayback Machine. Access 2012/11/28
  3. ↑ Notre Dame University Reviews Access 2012/11/21
  4. ↑ Maudlin, Tim, The Metaphysics Within Physics. Oxford University Press. Oxford, 2007 ISBN 978-0-19-921821-9, p. 104
  5. ↑ YouTube: A Mock Debate on Time with Julian Barbour and Tim Maudlin Access 2012/11/22
  6. ↑ The Metaphysics Within Physics, pp. 107-109
  7. ↑ Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Access 2012/11/17
  8. ↑ Princeton University Press review Access 2012/11/21
  9. ↑ Text of the article in finney.org Access 2012/11/29
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