Probability in deterministic physics

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 106, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 89-108

  Ismael, J T ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 65849494849     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/jphil2009106214     Document Type: Article

References (12)

1. Pierre Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1814), F.W. Truscott and F.L. Emory, trans. (New York: Kessinger, 2007), p. 4.
2. Barry Loewer, expressing but not endorsing this reasoning, has written: "If the laws are deterministic then the initial conditions of the universe together with the laws entail all facts - at least all facts expressible in the vocabulary of the theory. But if that is so there is no further fact for a probability statement to be about"-"Determinism and Chance," in Studies in the History of Modern Physics, XXXII, 4 (2001): 609-20, on p. 609.
3. Karl Popper, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1985).
4. Loewer, "Determinism and Chance,"
5. and "David Lewis' Humean Theory of Objective Chance," Philosophy of Science lxxi, 5 (2004): 1115-25.
6. Albert, Time and Chance (Cambridge: Harvard, 2000).
7. Sober, "Evolutionary Theory and the Reality of Macroprobabilities, " in Ellery Eells and James Fetzer, eds., Probability in Science (Chicago: Open Court, forthcoming).
8. Employing subjective probabilities in this capacity makes relative likelihood assessments a subjective matter and renders it all but void as an objective basis for choice between theories. If the measure is included in the scope of the theory as part of its content, the Law of Likelihood can provide a theory-independent measure of degree of fit with the evidence. See my "Likelihood Reasoning and Theory Choice" (manuscript).
9. This is an application of the Principle of Total Evidence, usually credited to Rudolph Carnap, Meaning and Necessity (New York: Clarke, 1947).
10. Derived from Bas van Frasssen, Laws and Symmetry (New York: Oxford, 1989).
11. Von Mises, Probability, Statistics and Truth (New York: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 80-81.
12. and Lewis, "Humean Supervenience Debugged," Mind, cm, 412 (1994): 473-90.