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An Objectivist’s Guide to Objective Chance

McCoy, C.D. (2017) An Objectivist’s Guide to Objective Chance. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Several philosophers have developed accounts to dissolve the apparent conflict between deterministic laws of nature and objective chances. These philosophers advocate the compatibility of determinism and chance. I argue that determinism and chance are incompatible and criticize the various notions of “deterministic chance” supplied by the compatibilists. Many of the compatibilists are strongly motivated by scientific theories where objective probabilities are combined with deterministic laws, the most salient of which is classical statistical mechanics. I show that, properly interpreted, statistical mechanics is either an indeterministic theory or else its probabilities are not chances, just as incompatibilism demands


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
McCoy, C.D.casey.mccoy@ed.ac.uk0000-0002-7921-4911
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Depositing User: Dr. Casey McCoy
Date Deposited: 29 Jun 2017 14:26
Last Modified: 29 Jun 2017 14:26
Item ID: 13166
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Date: 17 May 2017
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/13166

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