Several authors have argued that non-extreme probabilities used in special sciences such as chemistry and biology can be objective chances, even if the true microphysical description of the world is deterministic. This article examines an influential version of this argument and shows that it depends on a particular methodology for defining the relationship between coarse-grained and fine-grained events. An alternative methodology for coarse-graining is proposed. This alternative methodology blocks this argument for the existence of emergent chances, and makes better sense (...) of two well-known subjects of philosophical discussion: the Miners Puzzle and Simpson’s Paradox. (shrink)

The laws of nature have come a long way since the time of Newton: quantum mechanics and relativity have given us good reasons to take seriously the possibility of laws which may be non-local, atemporal, ‘all-at-once,’ retrocausal, or in some other way not well-suited to the standard dynamical time evolution paradigm. Laws of this kind can be accommodated within a Humean approach to lawhood, but many extant non-Humean approaches face significant challenges when we try to apply them to laws outside (...) the time evolution picture. Thus for proponents of non-Humean approaches to lawhood there is a clear need for a novel non-Humean account which is capable of accommodating these sorts of laws. In this paper we propose such an account, characterizing lawhood in terms of constraints, which are understood as a form of modal structure. We demonstrate that our proposed realist account can indeed accommodate a large variety of laws outside the time evolution paradigm, and describe some possible applications to important philosophical problems. (shrink)

Scientists and philosophers frequently speak about levels of description, levels of explanation, and ontological levels. This paper presents a framework for studying levels. I give a general definition of a system of levels and discuss several applications, some of which refer to descriptive or explanatory levels while others refer to ontological levels. I illustrate the usefulness of this framework by bringing it to bear on some familiar philosophical questions. Is there a hierarchy of levels, with a fundamental level at the (...) bottom? And what does the answer to this question imply for physicalism, the thesis that everything supervenes on the physical? Are there emergent higher-level properties? Are higher-level descriptions reducible to lower-level ones? Can the relationship between normative and non-normative domains be viewed as one involving levels? And might a levelled framework shed light on the relationship between third-personal and first-personal phenomena? (shrink)

Christian List has recently defended what he refers to as a compatibilist-libertarian theory of free will. He attempts to satisfy the libertarian requirement for alternative possibilities without assuming the falsity of physical determinism. To do so, List relies on a multi-level modal theory that he developed with Marcus Pivato. In this theory, List and Pivato demonstrate the compatibility of physical determinism and agential indeterminism. The success of compatibilist-libertarianism essentially hinges upon whether or not List and Pivato’s theory is truly consistent (...) with a non-hypothetical conception of possibility. In this paper, I argue that, despite his attempt to distance himself from a standard compatibilist conception of possibility, List remains committed to such a hypothetical conception. I also argue that List’s theory of agential causation is implausible given his modal interpretation of agency. Therefore, I conclude that compatibilist-libertarianism is an implausible theory of free will. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to determine the optimal level of granularity for the variables used in probabilistic causal models. These causal models are useful for generating explanations in a number of scientific contexts. In Chapter 1, I argue that there is rarely a unique level of granularity at which a given phenomenon can be causally explained, thereby rejecting various causal exclusion arguments. In Chapter 2, I consider several recent proposals for measuring the explanatory power of causal explanations, and show that these (...) measures fail to track the comparative depth of explanations given at different levels of granularity. In Chapter 3, I offer a pragmatic account of how to partition the measure space of a causal variable so as to optimally explain its effect. My account uses the decision-theoretic notion of value of information, and indexes the relative depth of an explanation to a particular agent faced with a particular decision problem. Chapter 4 applies this same decisiontheoretic framework to answer the epistemic question of how to discover constitutive relationships in nature. In Chapter 5, I describe the formal details of the relationship between random variables that are meant to be coarse-grained and fine-grained representations of the same type of phenomenon. I use this formal framework to rebut a popular argument for the view that special science probabilities can be objective chances. Chapter 6 discusses challenges related to the causal interpretation of Bayes nets that use imprecise rather than precise probabilities. (shrink)