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54Determinism, Physical Possibility, and Laws of NatureFoundations of Physics 50 (6): 568-581. 2020.We call attention to different formulations of how physical laws relate to what is physically possible in the philosophical literature, and argue that it may be the case that determinism fails under one formulation but reigns under the other. Whether this is so depends on our view on the nature of laws, and may also depend on the inter-theoretical relationships among our best physical theories, or so shall we argue.
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464A dynamical systems approach to causationSynthese 198 (7): 6065-6087. 2019.Our approach aims at accounting for causal claims in terms of how the physical states of the underlying dynamical system evolve with time. Causal claims assert connections between two sets of physicals states—their truth depends on whether the two sets in question are genuinely connected by time evolution such that physical states from one set evolve with time into the states of the other set. We demonstrate the virtues of our approach by showing how it is able to account for typical causes, cau…Read more
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36Is it the Principal Principle that implies the Principle of Indifference?In Gábor Hofer-Szabó & Leszek Wroński (eds.), Making it Formally Explicit: Probability, Causality and Indeterminism, Springer International Publishing. 2017.Hawthorne, Landes, Wallmann and Williamson argue that the Principal Principle implies a version of the Principle of Indifference. We show that what the Authors take to be the Principle of Indifference can be obtained without invoking anything which would seem to be related to the Principal Principle. In the Appendix we also discuss several Conditions proposed in the same paper.
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Causal Completeness of Probability Theories-results and Open ProblemsIn Phyllis McKay Illari, Federica Russo & Jon Williamson (eds.), Causality in the Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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19We argue that the truth of determinism is not an interpretation-free fact and we systematically overview relevant interpretational choices that are less known in the philosophical literature. After bypassing the well known interpretational problem that arises in quantum mechanics we identify three further questions about the representational role of the mathematical structures employed by physical theories. Finally we point out that even if we settle all representational issues the received view…Read more
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36Maxwell and the normal distribution: A colored story of probability, independence, and tendency toward equilibriumStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 57 53-65. 2017.We investigate Maxwell's attempt to justify the mathematical assumptions behind his 1860 Proposition IV according to which the velocity components of colliding particles follow the normal distribution. Contrary to the commonly held view we find that his molecular collision model plays a crucial role in reaching this conclusion, and that his model assumptions also permit inference to equalization of mean kinetic energies, which is what he intended to prove in his discredited and widely ignored Pr…Read more
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127When can statistical theories be causally closed?Foundations of Physics 34 (9): 1285-1303. 2002.The notion of common cause closedness of a classical, Kolmogorovian probability space with respect to a causal independence relation between the random events is defined, and propositions are presented that characterize common cause closedness for specific probability spaces. It is proved in particular that no probability space with a finite number of random events can contain common causes of all the correlations it predicts; however, it is demonstrated that probability spaces even with a finit…Read more
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21Jeffrey conditioning is said to provide a more general method of assimilating uncertain evidence than Bayesian conditioning. We show that Jeffrey learning is merely a particular type of Bayesian learning if we accept either of the following two observations: – Learning comprises both probability kinematics and proposition kinematics. – What can be updated is not the same as what can do the updating; the set of the latter is richer than the set of the former. We address the problem of commutativi…Read more