Chance, determinism, and unsettledness

Philosophical Studies 176 (3):781-802 (2019)
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Abstract

A previously unrecognised argument against deterministic chance is introduced. The argument rests on the twin ideas that determined outcomes are settled, while chancy outcomes are unsettled, thus making cases of determined but chancy outcomes impossible. Closer attention to tacit assumptions about settledness makes available some principled lines of resistance to the argument for compatibilists about chance and determinism. Yet the costs of maintaining compatibilism may be higher with respect to this argument than with respect to existing incompatibilist arguments.

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Antony Eagle
University of Adelaide

Citations of this work

Interpretations of probability.Alan Hájek - 2007 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Open Questions and Epistemic Necessity.Brett Sherman - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273):819-840.
Context Sensitivity and Chance.Quinn Harr - 2020 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (4):562-581.

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References found in this work

Humean Supervenience Debugged.David Lewis - 1994 - Mind 103 (412):473--490.
Objective Becoming.Bradford Skow - 2015 - Oxford: Oxford University Press UK.
A Theory of Metaphysical Indeterminacy.Elizabeth Barnes & J. Robert G. Williams - 2011 - In Karen Bennett & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 6. Oxford University Press UK. pp. 103-148.

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