The paper presents a new paradox in the sphere of the classical mechanics of infinite systems. The paradox, which implies the existence of an interaction at a distance as well as gravitation, would seem to require an extension of the concept of mechanical explanation. However, it is not clear how such an extension might be carried out.

The paper presents a new paradox in the sphere of the classical mechanics of infinite systems. The paradox, which implies the existence of an interaction at a distance as well as gravitation, would seem to require an extension of the concept of mechanical explanation. However, it is not clear how such an extension might be carried out.

In this paper, I argue that Conway and Kochen’s Free Will Theorem (1,2) to the conclusion that quantum mechanics and relativity entail freedom for the particles, does not change the situation in favor of a libertarian position as they would like. In fact, the theorem more or less implicitly assumes that people are free, and thus it begs the question. Moreover, it does not prove neither that if people are free, so are particles, nor that the property people possess when (...) they are said to be free is the same as the one particles possess when they are claimed to be free. I then analyze the Free State Theorem (2), which generalizes the Free Will Theorem without the assumption that people are free, and I show that it does not prove anything about free will, since the notion of freedom for particles is either inconsistent, or it does not concern our common understanding of freedom. In both cases, the Free Will Theorem and the Free State Theorem do not provide any enlightenment on the constraints physics can pose on free will. (shrink)

These preprints were automatically compiled into a PDF from the collection of papers deposited in PhilSci-Archive in conjunction with the PSA 2018.

We propose a theory of events and causes against the background of branching time. Notions discussed include possibility based on reality, transitions, events, determinacy, contingency, causes and effects. The main idea in defining causal relations is to introduce a certain preconditioning circumstance under which one event follows another. We also briefly compare this theory with some other theories.

The book provides a historical and systematic exposition of the semantic theory of truth formulated by Alfred Tarski in the 1930s. This theory became famous very soon and inspired logicians and philosophers. It has two different, but interconnected aspects: formal-logical and philosophical. The book deals with both, but it is intended mostly as a philosophical monograph. It explains Tarski’s motivation and presents discussions about his ideas as well as points out various applications of the semantic theory of truth to philosophical (...) problems. (shrink)

Your story is there waiting for you, it has been waiting for you there a hundred years, long before you were born and you cannot change a comma of it. Everything you do you have to do. You are the twig, and the water you float on swept you here. You are the leaf, and the breeze you were borne on blew you here. This is your story and you cannot escape it.—Cornell Woolrich, I Married a Dead Man.

Whereas one can conceive of a relational classical mechanics in which absolute space and time do not play a fundamental role, quantum mechanics does not readily admit any such relational formulation.

The celu of the philosophical literature on the hole argument is the 1987 paper by Earman \& Norton ["What Price Space-time Substantivalism? The Hole Story" Br. J. Phil. Sci.]. This paper has a well-known back-story, concerning work by Stachel and Norton on Einstein's thinking in the years 1913-15. Less well-known is a connection between the hole argument and Earman's work on Leibniz in the 1970s and 1980s, which in turn can be traced to an argument first presented in 1975 by (...) Howard Stein. Remarkably, this thread originates with a misattribution: the argument Earman attributes to Stein, which ultimately morphs into the hole argument, was not the argument Stein gave. The present paper explores this episode and presents some reflections on how it bears on the subsequent literature. (shrink)

Advocates and opponents of Humean Supervenience (HS) have neglected a crucial feature of nomic explanation: laws can explain by generating descriptions of possibilities. Dretske and Armstrong have opposed HS by arguing that laws construed as Humean regularities cannot explain, but their arguments fail precisely because they neglect to consider this generating role of laws. Humeans have dismissed the intuitive violations of HS manifested by John Carroll's Mirror Worlds as erroneous, but distinguishing the laws' generating role from the non-Humean notion that (...) laws govern undermines such responses, and renews the force of Carroll's critique of HS. However, it also undermines the assumption that HS is constitutive of Humeanism. The generating role of laws readily motivates a non-reductive Humeanism that violates HS. An account is sketched, and is seen to provide a novel explanation of the governing intuition. (shrink)

Acceptance of Humean Supervenience and thereductive Humean analyses that entail it leadsto a litany of inadequately explained conflictswith our intuitions regarding laws andpossibilities. However, the non-reductiveHumeanism developed here, on which law claimsare understood as normative rather than factstating, can accommodate those intuitions. Rational constraints on such norms provide aset of consistency relations that ground asemantics formulated in terms offactual-normative worlds, solving theFrege-Geach problem of construing unassertedcontexts. This set of factual-normative worldsincludes exactly the intuitive sets ofnomologically possible worlds associated witheach possible (...) set of laws. The extension ofthe semantics to counterfactual and subjunctiveconditionals is sketched. Potential objectionsinvolving subjectivity, mind-dependence, andnon-factuality are discussed. (shrink)

We discuss the foundations of constructive mathematics, including recursive mathematics and intuitionism, in relation to classical mathematics. There are connections with the foundations of physics, due to the way in which the different branches of mathematics reflect reality. Many different axioms and their interrelationship are discussed. We show that there is a fundamental problem in BISH (Bishop’s school of constructive mathematics) with regard to its current definition of ‘continuous function’. This problem is closely related to the definition in BISH of (...) ‘locally compact’. Possible approaches to this problem are discussed. Topology seems to be a key to understanding many issues. We offer several new simplifying axioms, which can form bridges between the various branches of constructive mathematics and classical mathematics (‘reuniting the antipodes’). We give a simplification of basic intuitionistic theory, especially with regard to so-called ‘bar induction’. We then plead for a limited number of axiomatic systems, which differentiate between the various branches of mathematics. Finally, in the appendix we offer BISH an elegant topological definition of ‘locally compact’, which unlike the current definition is equivalent to the usual classical and/or intuitionistic definition in classical and intuitionistic mathematics, respectively. (shrink)

The philosopher of science faces overwhelming disagreement in the literature on the definition, nature, structure, ontology, and content of scientific theories. These disagreements are at least partly responsible for disagreements in many of the debates in the discipline which put weight on the concept scientific theory. I argue that available theories of theories and conceptual analyses of theory are ineffectual options for addressing this difficulty: they do not move debates forward in a significant way. Directing my attention to debates about (...) the properties of particular, named theories, I introduce ‘theory eliminativism’ as a certain type of debate-reformulation. As a methodological tool it has the potential to be a highly effective way to make progress in the face of the noted problem: post-reformulation disagreements about theory cannot compromise the debate, and the questions that really matter can still be asked and answered. In addition the reformulation process demands that philosophers engage with science and the history of science in a more serious way than is usual in order to answer important questions about the justification for targeting a particular set of propositions (say) in a given context. All things considered, we should expect the benefits of a theory-eliminating debate-reformulation to heavily outweigh the costs for a highly significant number of debates of the relevant type. (shrink)

La física durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX experimentó una silenciosa pero profunda revisión de sus fundamentos. A pesar de su importancia para los desarrollos posteriores de la física, los estudios históricos y filosóficos sobre dicho periodo son escasos comparados con aquellos de principios del siglo XX. Este trabajo reconstruye algunos aspectos de la física de este periodo usando dos herramientas conceptuales: espacios controversiales de Oscar Nudler y estilo de razonamiento científico de Ian Hacking. El objetivo es mostrar los (...) elementos que produjeron el desbloqueo conceptual de la controversia sobre el determinismo durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. (shrink)

According to the dominant computational approach in cognitive science, cognitive agents are digital computers; according to the alternative approach, they are dynamical systems. This target article attempts to articulate and support the dynamical hypothesis. The dynamical hypothesis has two major components: the nature hypothesis (cognitive agents are dynamical systems) and the knowledge hypothesis (cognitive agents can be understood dynamically). A wide range of objections to this hypothesis can be rebutted. The conclusion is that cognitive systems may well be dynamical systems, (...) and only sustained empirical research in cognitive science will determine the extent to which that is true. (shrink)

In the literature on free will, fatalism, and determinism, a distinction is commonly made between temporally intrinsic (‘hard’) and temporally relational (‘soft’) facts at times; determinism, for instance, is the thesis that the temporally intrinsic state of the world at some given past time, together with the laws, entails a unique future (relative to that time). Further, it is commonly supposed by incompatibilists that only the ‘hard facts’ about the past are fixed and beyond our control, whereas the ‘soft facts’ (...) about the past needn’t be. A substantial literature arose in connection with this distinction, though no consensus emerged as to the proper way to analyze it. It is time, I believe, to revisit these issues. The central claim of this paper is that the attempts to analyze the hard/soft fact distinction got off on fundamentally the wrong track. The crucial feature of soft facts is that they (in some sense) depend on the future. Following recent work on the notion of dependence, however, I argue that the literature on the soft/hard distinction has failed to capture the sense of dependence at stake. This is because such attempts have tried to capture softness in terms of purely modal notions like entailment and necessitation. As I hope to show, however, such notions cannot capture the sort of asymmetrical dependence relevant to soft facthood. Arguing for this claim is the first goal of this paper. My second goal is to gesture towards what an adequate account of soft facthood will really look like. (shrink)

I present an outline of the Omega Point theory, which is a model for an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, evolving, personal God who is both transcendent to spacetime and immanent in it, and who exists necessarily. The model is a falsifiable physical theory, deriving its key concepts not from any religious tradition but from modern physical cosmology and computer science; from scientific materialism rather than revelation. Four testable predictions of the model are given. The theory assumes that thinking is a purely (...) physical process of the brain, and that personality dies with the brain. Nevertheless, I show that the Omega Point theory suggests a future universal resurrection of the dead very similar to the one predicted in the Judeo‐Christian‐Islamic tradition. The notions of “grace” and the “beatific vision” appear naturally in the model. (shrink)

Human freedom is in tension with nomological determinism and with statistical determinism. The goal of this paper is to answer both challenges. Four contributions are made to the free-will debate. First, we propose a classification of scientific theories based on how much freedom they allow. We take into account that indeterminism comes in different degrees and that both the laws and the auxiliary conditions can place constraints. A scientific worldview pulls towards one end of this classification, while libertarianism pulls towards (...) the other end of the spectrum. Second, inspired by Hoefer, we argue that an interval of auxiliary conditions corresponds to a region in phase space, and to a bundle of possible block universes. We thus make room for a form of non-nomological indeterminism. Third, we combine crucial elements from the works of Hoefer and List; we attempt to give a libertarian reading of this combination. On our proposal, throughout spacetime, there is a certain amount of freedom that can be interpreted as the result of agential choices. Fourth, we focus on the principle of alternative possibilities throughout and propose three ways of strengthening it. (shrink)

The consensus among spacetime substantivalists is to respond to Leibniz's classic shift arguments, and their contemporary incarnation in the form of the hole argument, by pruning the allegedly problematic metaphysical possibilities that generate these arguments. Some substantivalists do so by directly appealing to a modal doctrine akin to anti-haecceitism. Other substantivalists do so by appealing to an underlying hyperintensional doctrine that implies some such modal doctrine. My first aim in this paper is to pose a challenge for all extant forms (...) of this consensus position. My second aim is to show what form substantivalism must take in order to uphold the consensus while addressing this challenge. The result is a novel "plenitudinous" substantivalist view, which predicts that certain modal facts about spacetime are vague or indeterminate. I then argue against this view on independent grounds, concluding that substantivalists should reject the consensus position. The paper also discusses the way forward for substantivalists in light of this conclusion. (shrink)

Background independence begins life as an informal property that a physical theory might have, often glossed as 'doesn't posit a fixed spacetime background'. Interest in trying to offer a precise account of background independence has been sparked by the pronouncements of several theorists working on quantum gravity that background independence embodies in some sense an essential discovery of the General Theory of Relativity, and a feature we should strive to carry forward to future physical theories. This paper has two goals. (...) The first is to investigate what a world must be like in order to be truly described by a background independent theory given extant accounts of background independence. The second is to argue that there are no non-empirical reasons to be more confident in theories that satisfy extant accounts of background independence than in theories that don't. The paper concludes by drawing a general moral about a way in which focussing primarily on mathematical formulations of our physical theories can adversely affect debates in the metaphysics of physics. (shrink)

This paper reviews four attempts throughout the history of quantum mechanics to explicitly employ dispositional notions in order to solve the quantum paradoxes, namely: Margenau's latencies, Heisenberg's potentialities, Maxwell's propensitons, and the recent selective propensities interpretation of quantum mechanics. Difficulties and challenges are raised for all of them, and it is concluded that the selective propensities approach nicely encompasses the virtues of its predecessors. Finally, some strategies are discussed for reading similar dispositional notions into two other well-known interpretations of quantum (...) mechanics, namely the GRW interpretation and Bohmian mechanics. (shrink)

The recent discovery of an indeterministic system in classical mechanics, the Norton dome, has shown that answering the question whether classical mechanics is deterministic can be a complicated matter. In this paper I show that indeterministic systems similar to the Norton dome were already known in the nineteenth century: I discuss four nineteenth century authors who wrote about such systems, namely Poisson, Duhamel, Boussinesq and Bertrand. However, I argue that their discussion of such systems was very different from the contemporary (...) discussion about the Norton dome, because physicists in the nineteenth century conceived of determinism in essentially different ways: whereas in the contemporary literature on determinism in classical physics, determinism is usually taken to be a property of the equations of physics, in the nineteenth century determinism was primarily taken to be a presupposition of theories in physics, and as such it was not necessarily affected by the possible existence of systems such as the Norton dome. (shrink)

Why are causal generalizations in the higher-level sciences “inexact”? That is, why do they have apparent exceptions? This paper offers one explanation: many causal generalizations cite as their antecedent—the \(F\) in \(Fs\,\, {\textit{are}}\,\, G\) —a property that is not causally relevant to the consequent, but which is rather “entangled” with a causally relevant property. Entanglement is a relation that may exist for many reasons, and that allows of exceptions. Causal generalizations that specify entangled but causally irrelevant antecedents therefore tolerate exceptions.

It is widely held that the size of a probability makes no difference to the quality of a probabilistic explanation. I argue that explanatory practice in statistical physics belies this claim. The claim has gained currency only because of an impoverished conception of probabilistic processes and an unwarranted assumption that all probabilistic explanations have a single form.

Ernst Mach is the only person whom Einstein included on both the list of physicists he considered his true precursors, and the list of the philosophers who had most affected him. Einstein scholars have been less generous in their estimation of Mach's contributions to Einstein's work, and even amongst the more generous of them, Mach's great achievements in physics are seldom mentioned in this context. This is odd, considering Mach was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics three times. In (...) this paper, I examine some of Mach's work in physics that bears conceptually on Einstein's 1905 paper on Special Relativity ("On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies"). Mach was the first to give the correct explanation of the Doppler Effect, and he presented it in a way that Einstein echoes in his 1905 paper: laying out two apparently contradictory principles and showing how both can be retained. It is also notable that Mach's explanation was explicit about not relying on the existence of a medium of transmission for the propagation of light waves. In his work on supersonic shock waves, Mach invokes the constancy of the velocity of sound (i.e., its independence of the motion of the sound source) , just as he had invoked the constancy of the velocity of light in his work on the Doppler Effect for Light. I examine the analogies between light and sound that were drawn upon by Einstein and Mach, as well as one analogy that Einstein could have, but did not make: Cherenkov radiation, or "singing electrons", i.e., cases in which the sound of light in the medium of transmission is exceeded, which results in an optical analogue of supersonic shock waves. (shrink)

The causal Markov condition (CMC) plays an important role in much recent work on the problem of causal inference from statistical data. It is commonly thought that the CMC is a more problematic assumption for genuinely indeterministic systems than for deterministic ones. In this essay, I critically examine this proposition. I show how the usual motivation for the CMC—that it is true of any acyclic, deterministic causal system in which the exogenous variables are independent—can be extended to the indeterministic case. (...) In light of this result, I consider several arguments for supposing indeterminism a particularly hostile environment for the CMC, but conclude that none are persuasive. Introduction Functional models and directed graphs The causal Markov theorem The causal Markov theorem and genuine indeterminism Are the exogenous variables independent? EPR Conclusion. (shrink)

Progress may be made in resolving the tension between free will and determinism by analysis of the necessary conditions of freedom. It is of the essence that these conditions include causal and deterministic regularities. Furthermore, the human expression of free will is informed by understanding some of those regularities, and increments in that understanding have served to enhance freedom. When the possible character of a deterministic system based on physical theory is considered, it is judged that, far from implying the (...) elimination of human freedom, such a theory might simply set parameters for it; indeed knowledge of that system could again prove to be in some respects liberating. On the other hand, it is of the essence that the overarching biological framework is not a deterministic system and it foregrounds the behavioural flexibility of humans in being able to choose within a range of options and react to chance occurrences. Furthermore, an issue for determinism flows from the way in which randomness (e.g. using a true random number generator) and chance events could and do enter human life. Once the implications of that issue are fully understood, other elements fit comfortably together in our understanding of freely undertaken action: the contribution of reasons and causes; the fact that reasons are never sufficient to account for outcomes; the rationale for the attribution of praise and blame. (shrink)

Open futurism is the indeterministic position according to which the future is ‘open’, i.e., there is now no fact of the matter as to what future contingent events will actually obtain. Many open futurists hold a branching conception of time, in which a variety of possible futures exist. This paper introduces two challenges to branching-time open futurism, which are similar in spirit to a challenge posed by Fine to tense realism. The paper argues that, to address the new challenges, open (...) futurists must adopt an objective, non-perspectival notion of actuality and subscribe to an A-theoretic, dynamic conception of reality. Moreover, given a natural understanding of “actual future”, it is perfectly sensible for open futurists to hold that a unique, objectively actual future exists, contrary to a common assumption in the current debate. The paper also contends that recognising the existence of a unique actual future helps open futurists to avoid potential misconceptions. (shrink)

A system whose expected state changes with time cannot have both a forward-directed translationally invariant probabilistic law and a backward-directed translationally invariant law. When faced with this choice, science seems to favor the former. An asymmetry between cause and effect may help to explain why temporally oriented laws are usually forward-directed.

“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence” is a slogan that is popular among scientists and nonscientists alike. This article assesses its truth by using a probabilistic tool, the Law of Likelihood. Qualitative questions (“Is E evidence about H ?”) and quantitative questions (“How much evidence does E provide about H ?”) are both considered. The article discusses the example of fossil intermediates. If finding a fossil that is phenotypically intermediate between two extant species provides evidence that those species have (...) a common ancestor, does failing to find such a fossil constitute evidence that there was no common ancestor? Or should the failure merely be chalked up to the imperfection of the fossil record? The transitivity of the evidence relation in simple causal chains provides a broader context, which leads to discussion of the fine-tuning argument, the anthropic principle, and observation selection effects. (shrink)

. The question of whether or not our universe is deterministic remains of interest to both scientists and theologians. In this essay I argue that this question can be solved only by metaphysical decision and that no scientific evidence for either determinism or indeterminism will ever be conclusive. No finite being, no matter how powerful its cognitive abilities, will ever be able to establish the deterministic nature of the universe. The only being that would be capable of doing so would (...) be one that is at once transcendent and immanent. Such a being is compatible with the God of the Christian tradition, which yields that a deterministic worldview is compatible with a deterministic worldview. A more important point is that because science is never able to establish the determinism of our universe, it can never definitely rule out divine action except on metaphysical grounds. (shrink)

No one denies that time and space are different; and it is easy to catalog differences between them. I can point my finger toward the west, but I can’t point my finger toward the future. If I choose, I can now move to the left, but I cannot now choose to move toward the past. And (as D. C. Williams points out) for many of us, our attitudes toward time differ from our attitudes toward space. We want to maximize our (...) temporal extent and minimize our spatial extent: we want to live as long as possible but we want to be thin.1 But these differences are not very deep, and don’t get at the essence of the difference between time and space. That’s what I want to understand: I want to know what makes time different from space. I want to know which difference is the fundamental difference between them. (shrink)

Earman and Roberts (2005) argue that a standard definition of “empiricism about laws of nature” is inadequate, and propose an alternative definition they think is better. But their argument against the standard definition fails, and their alternative is defective.

Benardete presents a version of Zeno's dichotomy in which an infinite sequence of gods each intends to raise a barrier iff a traveller reaches the position where they intend to raise their barrier. In this paper, I demonstrate the abstract form of the Benardete Dichotomy. I show that the diagnosis based on that form can do philosophical work not done by earlier papers rejecting Priest's version of the Benardete Dichotomy, and that the diagnosis extends to a paradox not normally classified (...) as a dichotomy. I show how the form is exploited to generate paradox. Introduction The form of the Benardete dichotomy 2.1 The unsatisfiable pair diagnosis Applying the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis 3.1 Perez Laraudogoitia 3.2 Hawthorne 3.3 Angel 3.4 Yablo and Sorensen Exploiting the form. (shrink)

This paper challenges two orthodox theses: (a) that computational processes must be algorithmic; and (b) that all computed functions must be Turing-computable. Section 2 advances the claim that the works in computability theory, including Turing's analysis of the effective computable functions, do not substantiate the two theses. It is then shown (Section 3) that we can describe a system that computes a number-theoretic function which is not Turing-computable. The argument against the first thesis proceeds in two stages. It is first (...) shown (Section 4) that whether a process is algorithmic depends on the way we describe the process. It is then argued (Section 5) that systems compute even if their processes are not described as algorithmic. The paper concludes with a suggestion for a semantic approach to computation. (shrink)

Causal necessity typically receives only oblique attention. Causal relations, laws of nature, counterfactual conditionals, or dispositions are usually the immediate subject(s) of interest. All of these, however, have a common feature. In some way, they involve the causal modality, some form of natural or physical necessity. In this paper, causal necessity is discussed with the purpose of determining whether a completely general empiricist theory can account for the causal in terms of the noncausal. Based on an examination of causal relations, (...) laws of nature, counterfactual conditionals, and dispositions, it is argued that no reductive program devoid of essentialist commitments can account for all the phenomena that involve causal necessity. Hence, neo-Humean empiricism fails to provide a framework adequate for understanding causal necessity. (shrink)

We describe a possible physical device that computes a function that cannot be computed by a Turing machine. The device is physical in the sense that it is compatible with General Relativity. We discuss some objections, focusing on those which deny that the device is either a computer or computes a function that is not Turing computable. Finally, we argue that the existence of the device does not refute the Church–Turing thesis, but nevertheless may be a counterexample to Gandy's thesis.

INTRODUCTION I. CETERIS PARIBUS LAWS An alleged law of nature—like Newton's law of gravitation—is said to be a ceteris paribus law if it does not hold under ...

I discuss an argument for the monistic idea that the cosmos is the one and only fundamental thing, drawing on the idea that the cosmos is the one and only thing that evolves by the fundamental laws.

This article describes abductions as special patterns of inference to the best explanation whose structure determines a particularly promising abductive conjecture and thus serves as an abductive search strategy. A classification of different patterns of abduction is provided which intends to be as complete as possible. An important distinction is that between selective abductions, which choose an optimal candidate from given multitude of possible explanations, and creative abductions, which introduce new theoretical models or concepts. While selective abduction has dominated the (...) literature, creative abductions are rarely discussed, although they are essential in science. The article introduces several kinds of creative abductions, such as theoretical model abduction, common cause abduction and statistical factor analysis, and illustrates them by various real case examples. It is suggested to demarcate scientifically fruitful abductions from purely speculative abductions by the criterion of causal unification. (shrink)

Normic Laws and the Significance of Nonmonotonic Reasoning for Philosophy of Science. Normic laws have the form ‘if A then normally B’. They have been discovered in the explanation debate, but were considered as empirically vacuous (§1). I argue that the prototypical (or ideal) normality of normic laws implies statistical normality (§2), whence normic laws have empirical content. In §3–4 I explain why reasoning from normic laws is nonmonotonic, and why the understanding of the individual case is so important here. (...) After sketching some foundations of nonmonotonic reasoning as developed by AI-researchers (§5), Iargue that normic laws are also the best way to understand ceteris paribus laws (§6). §7 deals with the difference between physical and non-physical disciplines and §9 with the difference between normicity and approximation. In §8 it is shown how nonmonotonic reasoning provides a new understanding of the protection of theories against falsification by auxiliary hypotheses. §10, finally, gives a system- and evolution-theoretical explanation of the deeper reason for the omnipresence of normic laws in practice and science, and forthe connection between ideal and statistical normality. (shrink)

This article suggests a revision of the theory of causal nets. In section 1 we introduce an axiomatization of TCN based on a realistic understanding. It is shown that the causal Markov condition entails three independent principles. In section 2 we analyze indeterministic decay as the major counterexample to one of these principles: screening off by common causes. We call SCC-violating common causes interactive causes. In section 3 we develop a revised version of TCN, called TCN*, which accounts for interactive (...) causes. It is shown that there are interactive causal models that admit of no faithful noninteractive reconstruction. (shrink)

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 Os 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.

It has not been sufficiently considered in philosophical discussions of ceteris paribus (CP) laws that distinct kinds of CP-laws exist in science with rather different meanings. I distinguish between (1.) comparative CP-laws and (2.) exclusive CP-laws. There exist also mixed CP-laws, which contain a comparative and an exclusive CP-clause. Exclusive CP-laws may be either (2.1) definite, (2.2) indefinite or (2.3) normic. While CP-laws of kind (2.1) and (2.2) exhibit deductivistic behaviour, CP-laws of kind (2.3) require a probabilistic or non-monotonic reconstruction. (...) CP-laws of kind (1) may be both deductivistic or probabilistic. All these kinds of CP-laws have empirical content by which they are testable, except CP-laws of kind (2.2) which are almost vacuous. Typically, CP-laws of kind (1) express invariant correlations, CP-laws of kind (2.1) express closed system laws of physical sciences, and CP-laws of kind (2.3) express normic laws of non-physical sciences based on evolution-theoretic stability properties. (shrink)

A famous puzzle called “Grandmother Paradox” is used to argue against the feasibility of traveling backward in time because of the logical and nomological problems such travel involves, and not only because we don’t have the technology to make it reality. The same kind of problems would be encountered in leaping forward in time and then returning to the time of departure. We argue that a similar family of problems also arise in our having foreknowledge of the future without making (...) any time travel. We point to the mysterious consequences of having access to a being, say a machine or a psychic, that can have infallible knowledge of the future and conveys this foreknowledge to human beings truthfully, without any lies or distortions. The cause of these mysterious consequences is the fact that such machines or psychics will raise logical and nomological complications reminiscent of the ones we encounter in time travel scenarios, and that is a strong reason why infallible foretellers cannot exist. We conclude that we can have foreknowledge of the future, in principle, only within certain narrow limits, if at all. (shrink)