Chance and Determinism Edited by Antony Eagle (Oxford University, Exeter College, Oxford)

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  • Frank Arntzenius (1997). Transition Chances and Causation. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (2):149–168.
    The general claims of this paper are as follows. As a result of chaotic dynamics we can usually not know what the deterministic causes of events are. There will, however, be invariant forwards transition chances from earlier types of events, which we typically call the causes, to later types of events, which we typically call the effects. There will be no invariant backwards transition chances between these types of events. This asymmetry has the same origin and explanation as the arrow (...)
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  • Robert N. Brandon & Scott Carson (1996). The Indeterministic Character of Evolutionary Theory: No "No Hidden Variables Proof" but No Room for Determinism Either. Philosophy of Science 63 (3):315-337.
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  • Jeremy Butterfield (1987). Probability and Disturbing Measurement. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 61:211--243.
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  • Peter Clark (1987). Determinism and Probability in Physics. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 61:185--210.
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  • Antony Eagle (forthcoming). Deterministic Chance. Noûs.
    I sketch a new constraint on chance, which connects chance ascriptions closely with ascriptions of ability, and more specifically with 'can'-claims. This connection between chance and ability has some claim to be a platitude; moreover, it exposes the debate over deterministic chance to the extensive literature on (in)compatibilism about free will. The upshot is that a prima facie case for the tenability of deterministic chance can be made. But the main thrust of the paper is to draw attention to the (...)
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  • Antony Eagle (2005). Randomness is Unpredictability. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56:749--90.
    The concept of randomness has been unjustly neglected in recent philosophical literature, and when philosophers have thought about it, they have usually acquiesced in views about the concept that are fundamentally flawed. After indicating the ways in which these accounts are flawed, I propose that randomness is to be understood as a special case of the epistemic concept of the unpredictability of a process. This proposal arguably captures the intuitive desiderata for the concept of randomness; at least it should suggest (...)
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  • James H. Fetzer (1983). Probability and Objectivity in Deterministic and Indeterministic Situations. Synthese 57 (3):367--86.
    This paper pursues the question, To what extent does the propensity approach to probability contribute to plausible solutions to various anomalies which occur in quantum mechanics? The position I shall defend is that of the three interpretations — the frequency, the subjective, and the propensity — only the third accommodates the possibility, in principle, of providing a realistic interpretation of ontic indeterminism. If these considerations are correct, then they lend support to Popper's contention that the propensity construction tends to remove (...)
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  • Roman Frigg (2008). Chance in Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics. Philosophy of Science 75 (5).
    In two recent papers Barry Loewer ( 2001 , 2004 ) has suggested to interpret probabilities in statistical mechanics as chances in David Lewis’s ( 1994 ) sense. I first give a precise formulation of this proposal, then raise two fundamental objections, and finally conclude that these can be overcome only at the price of interpreting these probabilities epistemically. †To contact the author, please write to: Roman Frigg, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, (...)
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  • Roman Frigg & Carl Hoefer (forthcoming). Determinism and Chance From a Humean Perspective. In Thomas Uebel, Stephan Hartmann, Wenceslao Gonzalez, Marcel Weber, Dennis Dieks & Friedrich Stadler (eds.), The Present Situation in the Philosophy of Science. Springer.
    On the face of it ‘deterministic chance’ is an oxymoron: either an event is chancy or deterministic, but not both. Nevertheless, the world is rife with events that seem to be exactly that: chancy and deterministic at once. Simple gambling devices like coins and dice are cases in point. On the one hand they are governed by deterministic laws – the laws of classical mechanics – and hence given the initial condition of, say, a coin toss it is determined whether (...)
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  • Bruce Glymour (2001). Selection, Indeterminism, and Evolutionary Theory. Philosophy of Science 68 (4):518-535.
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  • Luke Glynn (2010). Deterministic Chance. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (1).
    I argue that there are non-trivial objective chances (that is, objective chances other than 0 and 1) even in deterministic worlds. The argument is straightforward. I observe that there are probabilistic special scientific laws even in deterministic worlds. These laws project non-trivial probabilities for the events that they concern. And these probabilities play the chance role and so should be regarded as chances as opposed, for example, to epistemic probabilities or credences. The supposition of non-trivial deterministic chances might seem to (...)
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  • Leslie Graves, Barbara L. Horan & Alex Rosenberg (1999). Is Indeterminism the Source of the Statistical Character of Evolutionary Theory? Philosophy of Science 66 (1):140-157.
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  • Hilary Greaves (2004). Understanding Deutsch's Probability in a Deterministic Universe. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35:423-456.
    Difficulties over probability have often been considered fatal to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Here I argue that the Everettian can have everything she needs from `probability' without recourse to indeterminism, ignorance, primitive identity over time or subjective uncertainty: all she needs is a particular *rationality principle*. The decision-theoretic approach recently developed by Deutsch and Wallace claims to provide just such a principle. But, according to Wallace, decision theory is itself applicable only if the correct attitude to a future (...)
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  • Alan Hajek, Chance.
    Much is asked of the concept of chance. It has been thought to play various roles, some in tension with or even incompatible with others. Chance has been characterized negatively, as the absence of causation; yet also positively—the ancient Greek τυχη´ reifies it—as a cause of events that are not governed by laws of nature, or as a feature of the laws themselves. Chance events have been understood epistemically as those whose causes are unknown; yet also objectively as a distinct (...)
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  • Geoffrey Hellman (1978). Randomness and Reality. In Peter D. Asquith & Ian Hacking (eds.), PSA 1978. University of Chicago Press.
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  • Carl Hoefer, Causal Determinism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Carl Hoefer (2007). The Third Way on Objective Probability: A Sceptic's Guide to Objective Chance. Mind 116 (463):549--96.
    The goal of this paper is to sketch and defend a new interpretation or 'theory' of objective chance, one that lets us be sure such chances exist and shows how they can play the roles we traditionally grant them. The account is 'Humean' in claiming that objective chances supervene on the totality of actual events, but does not imply or presuppose a Humean approach to other metaphysical issues such as laws or causation. Like Lewis (1994) I take the Principal Principle (...)
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  • Carl Hoefer, Causality and Determinism: Tension, or Outright Conflict?
    In the philosophical tradition, the notions of determinism and causality are strongly linked: it is assumed that in a world of deterministic laws, causality may be said to reign supreme; and in any world where the causality is strong enough, determinism must hold. I will show that these alleged linkages are based on mistakes, and in fact get things almost completely wrong. In a deterministic world that is anything like ours, there is no room for genuine causation. Though there may (...)
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  • Barbara L. Horan (1994). The Statistical Character of Evolutionary Theory. Philosophy of Science 61 (1):76-95.
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  • Paul W. Humphreys (1978). Is 'Physical Randomness' Just Indeterminism in Disguise? In Peter D. Asquith & Ian Hacking (eds.), PSA 1978. University of Chicago Press.
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  • J. T. Ismael (2009). Probability in Deterministic Physics. Journal of Philosophy 106 (2).
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  • Jenann Ismael, Quantum Probability: Chance.
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  • Jenann Ismael (2003). How to Combine Chance and Determinism: Thinking About the Future in an Everett Universe. Philosophy of Science 70 (4):776-790.
    I propose, in the context of Everett interpretations of quantum mechanics, a way of understanding how there can be genuine uncertainty about the future notwithstanding that the universe is governed by known, deterministic dynamical laws, and notwithstanding that there is no ignorance about initial conditions, nor anything in the universe whose evolution is not itself governed by the known dynamical laws. The proposal allows us to draw some lessons about the relationship between chance and determinism, and to dispel one source (...)
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  • H. Krips (1989). Irreducible Probabilities and Indeterminism. Journal of Philosophical Logic 18 (2).
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  • Marc Lange (2006). How to Account for the Relation Between Chancy Facts and Deterministic Laws. Mind 115 (460):917--946.
    Suppose that unobtanium-346 is a rare radioactive isotope. Consider: (1) Every Un346 atom, at its creation, decays within 7 microseconds (µs). (50%) Every Un346 atom, at its creation, has a 50% chance of decaying within 7µs. (1) and (50%) can be true together, but (1) and (50%) cannot together be laws of nature. Indeed, (50%)'s mere (non-vacuous) truth logically precludes (1)'s lawhood. A satisfactory analysis of chance and lawhood should nicely account for this relation. I shall argue first that David (...)
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  • Marc Lange (2006). Do Chances Receive Equal Treatment Under the Laws? Or: Must Chances Be Probabilities? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2).
    I offer an argument regarding chances that appears to yield a dilemma: either the chances at time t must be determined by the natural laws and the history through t of instantiations of categorical properties, or the function ch(•) assigning chances need not satisfy the axioms of probability. The dilemma's first horn might seem like a remnant of determinism. On the other hand, this horn might be inspired by our best scientific theories. In addition, it is entailed by the familiar (...)
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  • B. Loewer (2001). Determinism and Chance. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B 32 (4):609-620.
    It is generally thought that objective chances for particular events different from 1 and 0 and determinism are incompatible. However, there are important scientific theories whose laws are deterministic but which also assign non-trivial probabilities to events. The most important of these is statistical mechanics whose probabilities are essential to the explanations of thermodynamic phenomena. These probabilities are often construed as 'ignorance' probabilities representing our lack of knowledge concerning the microstate. I argue that this construal is incompatible with the role (...)
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  • Barry Loewer (2004). David Lewis's Humean Theory of Objective Chance. Philosophy of Science 71 (5):1115--25.
    The most important theories in fundamental physics, quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, posit objective probabilities or chances. As important as chance is there is little agreement about what it is. The usual “interpretations of probability” give very different accounts of chance and there is disagreement concerning which, if any, is capable of accounting for its role in physics. David Lewis has contributed enormously to improving this situation. In his classic paper “A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance” he described a framework (...)
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  • Roberta L. Millstein (2003). How Not to Argue for the Indeterminism of Evolution: A Look at Two Recent Attempts to Settle the Issue. In Andreas Hüttemann (ed.), Determinism in Physics and Biology. Mentis.
    I examine recent debates in the philosophy of biology over the determinism or indeterminism of the evolutionary process, focusing on two papers in particular: Glymour 2001 and Stamos 2001. I argue that neither of these papers succeeds in making the case for the indeterminism of the evolutionary process, and suggest that what is needed is a detailed analysis of the causal processes at every level from the quantum mechanical to the evolutionary.
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  • Roberta L. Millstein (2003). Interpretations of Probability in Evolutionary Theory. Philosophy of Science 70 (5):1317-1328.
    Evolutionary theory (ET) is teeming with probabilities. Probabilities exist at all levels: the level of mutation, the level of microevolution, and the level of macroevolution. This uncontroversial claim raises a number of contentious issues. For example, is the evolutionary process (as opposed to the theory) indeterministic, or is it deterministic? Philosophers of biology have taken different sides on this issue. Millstein (1997) has argued that we are not currently able answer this question, and that even scientific realists ought to remain (...)
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  • Kevin Nelson (2009). On Background: Using Two-Argument Chance. Synthese 166 (1).
    I follow Hájek (Synthese 137:273–323, 2003c) by taking objective probability to be a function of two propositional arguments—that is, I take conditional probability as primitive. Writing the objective probability of q given r as P(q, r), I argue that r may be chosen to provide less than a complete and exact description of the world’s history or of its state at any time. It follows that nontrivial objective probabilities are possible in deterministic worlds and about the past. A very simple (...)
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  • Jörg Neunhäuserer, Dynamics, Quantum Mechanics and the Indeterminism of Nature.
    We show that determinism is false assuming a realistic interpretation of quantum
    mechanics and considering the sensitive dynamics of macroscopical physical systems.
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  • John Norton (2008). The Dome: An Unexpectedly Simple Failure of Determinism. Philosophy of Science 75 (5).
    Newton’s equations of motion tell us that a mass at rest at the apex of a dome with the shape specified here can spontaneously move. It has been suggested that this indeterminism should be discounted since it draws on an incomplete rendering of Newtonian physics, or it is “unphysical,” or it employs illicit idealizations. I analyze and reject each of these reasons. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA (...)
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  • Alex Rosenberg (2001). Discussion Note: Indeterminism, Probability, and Randomness in Evolutionary Theory. Philosophy of Science 68 (4):536-544.
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  • Jonathan Schaffer (2007). Deterministic Chance? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (2):113--40.
    Can there be deterministic chance? That is, can there be objective chance values other than 0 or 1, in a deterministic world? I will argue that the answer is no. In a deterministic world, the only function that can play the role of chance is one that outputs just 0s and 1s. The role of chance involves connections from chance to credence, possibility, time, intrinsicness, lawhood, and causation. These connections do not allow for deterministic chance.
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  • Elliott Sober (forthcoming). Evolutionary Theory and the Reality of Macro Probabilities. In James H. Fetzer & Ellery Eells (eds.), Probability in Science. Open Court.
    Evolutionary theory is awash with probabilities. For example, natural selection is said to occur when there is variation in fitness, and fitness is standardly decomposed into two components, viability and fertility, each of which is understood probabilistically. With respect to viability, a fertilized egg is said to have a certain chance of surviving to reproductive age; with respect to fertility, an adult is said to have an expected number of offspring.1 There is more to evolutionary theory than the theory of (...)
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  • David N. Stamos (2001). Quantum Indeterminism and Evolutionary Biology. Philosophy of Science 68 (2):164-184.
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  • László E. Szabó, Objective Probability-Like Things with and Without Objective Indeterminism.
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  • Janneke van Lith (2003). Essay Review: Probability in Classical Statistical Physics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33:143–50.
    Review article of Y.M. Guttmann, <em>The Concept of Probability in Statistical Physics</em>, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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  • Janneke van Lith (2001). Ergodic Theory, Interpretations of Probability and the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32:581--94.
    The traditional use of ergodic theory in the foundations of equilibrium statistical mechanics is that it provides a link between thermodynamic observables and microcanonical probabilities. First of all, the ergodic theorem demonstrates the equality of microcanonical phase averages and infinite time averages (albeit for a special class of systems, and up to a measure zero set of exceptions). Secondly, one argues that actual measurements of thermodynamic quantities yield time averaged quantities, since measurements take a long time. The combination of these (...)
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  • Jan Von Plato (1982). Probability and Determinism. Philosophy of Science 49 (1):51-66.
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  • Matthew Weiner & Nuel Belnap (2006). How Causal Probabilities Might Fit Into Our Objectively Indeterministic World. Synthese 149 (1):1--36.
    We suggest a rigorous theory of how objective single-case transition probabilities fit into our world. The theory combines indeterminism and relativity in the “branching space–times” pattern, and relies on the existing theory of causae causantes (originating causes). Its fundamental suggestion is that (at least in simple cases) the probabilities of all transitions can be computed from the basic probabilities attributed individually to their originating causes. The theory explains when and how one can reasonably infer from the probabilities of one “chance (...)
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