  We consider the question of whether thermodynamic macrostates are objective
consequences of dynamics, or subjective reflections of our ignorance of a
physical system. We argue that they are both; more specifically, that the set
of macrostates forms the unique maximal partition of phase space which 1) is
consistent with our observations (a subjective fact about our ability to
observe the system) and 2) obeys a Markov process (an objective fact about the
system's dynamics). We review the ideas of computational mechanics, an
information-theoretic method for finding optimal causal models of stochastic
processes, and argue that macrostates coincide with the ``causal states'' of
computational mechanics. Defining a set of macrostates thus consists of an
inductive process where we start with a given set of observables, and then
refine our partition of phase space until we reach a set of states which
predict their own future, i.e. which are Markovian. Macrostates arrived at in
this way are provably optimal statistical predictors of the future values of
our observables.
