Determinism and chance
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B 32 (4):609-620 (2001)
| Abstract | 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 of probability in explanation and laws. This is the 'paradox of deterministic probabilities'. After surveying the usual list of accounts of objective chance and finding them inadequate I argue that an account of chance sketched by David Lewis can be modified to solve the paradox of deterministic probabilities and provide an adequate account of the probabilities in deterministic theories like statistical mechanics. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,865 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesToby Handfield (2012). A Philosophical Guide to Chance: Physical Probability. Cambridge University Press.
Jenann Ismael (2011). A Modest Proposal About Chance. Journal of Philosophy 108 (8):416-442.
Roberta L. Millstein (2003). Interpretations of Probability in Evolutionary Theory. Philosophy of Science 70 (5):1317-1328.
Jan Von Plato (1982). Probability and Determinism. Philosophy of Science 49 (1):51-66.
Jonathan Schaffer (2007). Deterministic Chance? British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (2):113 - 140.
Eric Winsberg (2008). Laws, Chances, and Statistical Mechanics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (4):872.
Barry Loewer (2004). David Lewis's Humean Theory of Objective Chance. Philosophy of Science 71 (5):1115--25.
Roman Frigg & Carl Hoefer (2010). Determinism and Chance From a Humean Perspective. In Friedrich Stadler, Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao González, Hartmann J., Uebel Stephan, Weber Thomas & Marcel (eds.), The Present Situation in the Philosophy of Science. Springer.
Luke Glynn (2010). Deterministic Chance. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (1):51–80.
Aidan Lyon (2010). Deterministic Probability: Neither Chance nor Credence. Synthese 182 (3):413-432.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads102 ( #6,118 of 556,803 )Recent downloads (6 months)7 ( #11,112 of 556,803 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
