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Beyond Boundary Conditions: General Cosmological Theories

Time-symmetric cosmological theories, in which the initial and final states are arranged to have similar features or are independently fixed, have been quite extensively discussed in the literature. However, a more general and perhaps more useful possibility seems, surprisingly, never to have been considered. Quantum cosmology, like any inherently probabilistic dynamical theory, can be modified by conditioning on the occurrence of a sequence of cosmological events fixed a priori and independently of the hamiltonian and initial state. These more general theories provide a natural class of alternatives which should eventually be useful in quantifying how well the hypothesis that initial conditions suffice is supported by the data.