Spontaneous Collapse Theories and Temporal Primitivism about Time’s Direction

Abstract

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.