Time reversal and the fundamental arrow of time at the crossroads in quantum mechanics

CRISTIAN LÓPEZ

Buenos Aires

Congreso; VIII Conference on Quantum Foundations; 2018

CAECE - CNRS (Francia)

In the debate on the arrow of time in philosophy of physics, there are two broadly-accepted views: (i) the notion of time reversal is informative with respect to grounding a fundamental arrow of time in physics, and (ii) time reversal must be properly represented by an anti-unitary operator in quantum theories. In this presentation, I shall overall claim that the two views conflict with one another and, thereby, they should not be taken conjointly to draw metaphysical conclusions about the nature of time in the quantum realm. In particular, I shall argue that (i) assumes some conditions for the problem of the arrow of time to be philosophically meaningful in terms of time reversal that are at odds with the inner mechanism to justify an anti-unitary time reversal operator in quantum theories (that is, the core of (ii)). To hold both (i) and (ii) leads to trivialize the problem of the arrow of time, andtherefore, one of both views must be discarded. An evaluation of pros and cons in discarding each view will be offered as final remarks.