The Metaphysics of Chance

Philosophy Compass 5 (11):938-952 (2010)
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Abstract

This article surveys several interrelated issues in the metaphysics of chance. First, what is the relationship between the probabilities associated with types of trials (for instance, the chance that a twenty‐eight‐year old develops diabetes before age thirty) and the probabilities associated with individual token trials (for instance, the chance that I develop diabetes before age thirty)? Second, which features of the the world fix the chances: are there objective chances at all, and if so, are there non‐chancy facts on which they supervene? Third, can chance be reconciled with determinism, and if so, how?

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Rachael Briggs
Australian National University

Citations of this work

Risky Killing: How Risks Worsen Violations of Objective Rights.Seth Lazar - 2019 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 16 (1):1-26.
A Humean Guide to Spielraum Probabilities.Claus Beisbart - 2016 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 47 (1):189-216.

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References found in this work

Laws and symmetry.Bas C. van Fraassen - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The metaphysics within physics.Tim Maudlin - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays.Frank Plumpton Ramsey - 1925 - London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Edited by R. B. Braithwaite.
A treatise on probability.John Maynard Keynes - 1921 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.
Time and chance.David Z. Albert - 2000 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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