Determinism Is Ontic, Determinability is Epistemic

Atmanspacher, Harald (2001) Determinism Is Ontic, Determinability is Epistemic.

Abstract

Philosophical discourse traditionally distinguishes between
ontology and epistemology and generally enforces this distinction by
keeping the two subject areas separated. However,
the relationship between the two areas is of central importance to
physics and philosophy of physics. For instance, many
measurement-related problems force us to consider both our
knowledge of the states and observables of a system (epistemic
perspective) and its states and observables independent of such
knowledge (ontic perspective). This applies to quantum systems in particular.

This contribution presents an
example showing the importance of distinguishing between ontic and
epistemic levels of description even for classical systems.
Corresponding conceptions of ontic and epistemic states and their
evolution are introduced and discussed with respect to aspects of
stability and information flow. These aspects show why the
ontic/epistemic distinction is particularly important for systems
exhibiting deterministic chaos. Moreover, this distinction provides
some understanding of the relationships between determinism,
causation, predictability, randomness, and stochasticity.