Explaining Time's Direction

Abstract

The characteristics of the tenseless theory of time do not account for the direction of time that we experience at a global or local level. There have been several attempts by scientists, and philosophers, to account for what underpins time’s direction. But all of these accounts fail to give a full account of time’s direction, most commonly in accounting for the direction of time at a local level. I put forward that Lewis’s asymmetry of counterfactual dependence, when adapted to be underpinned by the asymmetry of quasi-miracles, accounts for time’s direction, at both a global and local level. Lewis introduced quasi-miracles to solve a different problem in his asymmetry of counterfactual dependence. But, I believe that by recognising the extraordinariness of certain events helps to explain why the explanation of some local events occurring appears to be time’s reversal, when in fact the event is just following the laws of nature. I further argue that this account for time’s direction should be combined with the Past Hypothesis, which gives us a new understanding of what should be considered a fundamental law of nature, so that we do not require lots of extraordinary events to account for the way our world is.