Two Kindred Neo-Kantian Philosophies of Science: Pap’s The A Priori in Physical Theory and Cassirer’s Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics

The main thesis of this paper is that Pap’s The Functional A Priori in Physical Theory and Cassirer’s Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics may be conceived as two kindred accounts of a late Neo-Kantian philosophy of science. They elucidate and clarify each other mutually by elaborating conceptual possibilities and pointing out affinities of neo-Kantian ideas with other currents of 20th century’s philosophy of science, namely, pragmatism, conventionalism, and logical empiricism. Taking into account these facts, it seems not too far fetched to conjecture that under more favorable circumstances Pap could have served as a mediator between the “analytic” and “continental” tradition thereby overcoming the dogmatic dualism of these two philosophical currents that has characterized philosophy in the second half the 20th century.

Philosophical foundations of statistical research

Every researcher desires to uncover the truth about the object of the undertaken study. When conducting statistical research, however, scientists frequently give no deeper thought as to their motivation underlying the choice of the particular purpose and scope of the study, or the choice of analytical tools. The aim of this paper is to provide a reflection on the philosophical foundations of statistical research. The three basic understandings of the term ‘statistics’ are outlined, followed by a synthetic overview of the understanding of the concept of truth in the key branches of philosophy, with particular attention devoted to the understanding of truth in probabilistic terms. Subsequently, a short discussion is presented on the philosophical bases of statistics, touching upon such topics as determinism and indeterminism, chance and chaos, deductive and inductive reasoning, randomness and uncertainty, and the impact of the information revolution on the development of statistical methods, especially in the context of socio-economic research. The article concludes with the formulation of key questions regarding the future development of statistics.

Necessity and Determinism in Robert Grosseteste’s De libero arbitrio

In this paper, the theory of necessity proposed by Robert Grosseteste is presented. After showing the wide range of various kinds of determination discussed by him (connected with: (1) one’s knowledge about the future, (2) predestination, (3) fate, (4) grace, (5) sin and temptation), a different context of Grosseteste’s use of the notion of necessity is analyzed (within logical and metaphysical approaches). At the heart of his theory lie: the definition of necessity, which is that something lacks the capacity (posse) for its opposite, and the distinction between two perspectives within which we can consider necessity: (1) the one according to which the truthfulness of a dictum determines that it cannot be the opposite, (2) a pre- or atemporal one, as if something had not yet begun. On these grounds, Robert explains that God’s omniscience is compatible with contingency, including human free decisions. Robert’s theory is still relevant and useful in contemporary debates, as it can provide strong arguments and enrich discussions, thanks to the twoperspectives approach, which generates nine kinds of positions on the spectrum of determinism and indeterminism.

Choice, Will, and Freedom

Løgstrup gives a phenomenological account of the will, which holds that to will something is not to have a freedom of choice but rather to already have chosen, meaning that the will is always already engaged. The idea of a free will thus rests on a misconception of the concept of the will. This leads Løgstrup to discuss Kant’s conception of the good will, and he considers the discussion between Luther and Erasmus, where Løgstrup sides with Luther: human beings do not have a free will to choose the good, but rather the human will is bound to the self and therefore a will to do evil. Løgstrup examines the concept of will found in Descartes’s fourth meditation, before he turns to a discussion of the concept of will in Kierkegaard and the notion of ‘freedom of existence’. Finally is the problem of determinism and indeterminism.

Physicalism and moral responsibility: presentation of derivative consequence argument

In this paper, the author introduces the derivative consequence argument, which aims to demonstrate that moral responsibility is impossible in the world where physicalism and the strong realism about the laws of nature are both true. The basic intuition of the argument is that if the laws of nature determine the events, then nobody can be responsible for those events, because nobody is responsible for the laws of nature. This intuitive idea is formalized in the categories of derivative causation and motion. This argument is compatible with determinism and indeterminism, and all types of physicalism

Libertarian Volition and the Problem of Luck

The most important difference between contemporary compatibilist and libertarian theories is not the difference in their positions regarding the truth of the thesis of physical determinism, but their different approaches to the causal role of agents. According to libertarians, volitional acts performed by agents constitute a specific type of causes, which are not themselves caused by other causes. In this respect, event-causal libertarianism is similar to the agent-causal libertarianism, because it insists that in performing a volitional act an agent can choose one of the alternative outcomes without being caused to do so by anything else, where ‘anything else’ includes all the facts about the past and the present. Since event-causal libertarians maintain that volitional acts and the causal role of agents can be explained naturalistically, they must solve the problem of luck, i.e., they must explain how an agent is able to control her choices, given that she can choose one way or another without there being any difference in her state immediately preceding the moment of choice. This problem arises not from the indeterminism per se, but from the way it is coupled with the causal role of agents.In section one, I consider the historical development of compatibilist views on physical determinism and indeterminism. In section two, I present an overview of conditional analyses of alternative possibilities. In section three, I analyze the reasons why libertarians reject any type of conditional analysis, and show that intuitive objections against physical determinism, which portrait it as an obstacle to freedom, are untenable. In section four, I consider the consequence argument and show how it is related to the libertarian condition of sourcehood. In the final section, I analyze the problem of luck and show that it inevitably arises for any version of libertarianism. I demonstrate that indeterminism is a problem for libertarians, although they need it. And it is not a problem for compatibilists, who, while they do not need it, can incorporate it in their theories without facing the problem of luck.

XII—What’s Wrong with the Consequence Argument: A Compatibilist Libertarian Response

The most prominent argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism is Peter van Inwagen’s consequence argument. I offer a new diagnosis of what is wrong with this argument. Proponents and critics typically accept the way the argument is framed, and only disagree on whether the premisses and rules of inference are true. I suggest that the argument involves a category mistake: it conflates two different levels of description, namely, the physical level at which we describe the world from the perspective of fundamental physics and the agential level at which we describe agents and their actions. My diagnosis is based on an account of free will as a higher-level phenomenon. I call this account ‘compatibilist libertarianism’, for reasons that will become clear. Although the paper addresses a primarily metaphysical question, it uses tools similar to those employed in philosophy-of-science work on determinism and indeterminism, higher-level phenomena, and dynamical systems.

Determinism and indeterminism

Over the centuries, the doctrine of determinism has been understood, and assessed, in different ways. Since the seventeenth century, it has been commonly understood as the doctrine that every event has a cause; or as the predictability, in principle, of the entire future. To assess the truth of determinism, so understood, philosophers have often looked to physical science; they have assumed that their current best physical theory is their best guide to the truth of determinism. It seems that most have believed that classical physics, especially Newton’s physics, is deterministic. And in this century, most have believed that quantum theory is indeterministic. Since quantum theory has superseded classical physics, philosophers have typically come to the tentative conclusion that determinism is false. In fact, these impressions are badly misleading. The above formulations of determinism are unsatisfactory. Once we use a better formulation, we see that there is a large gap between the determinism of a given physical theory, and the bolder, vague idea that motivated the traditional formulations: the idea that the world in itself is deterministic. Admittedly, one can make sense of this idea by adopting a sufficiently bold metaphysics; but it cannot be made sense of just by considering determinism for physical theories. As regards physical theories, the traditional impression is again misleading. Which theories are deterministic turns out to be a subtle and complicated matter, with many open questions. But broadly speaking, it turns out that much of classical physics, even much of Newton’s physics, is indeterministic. Furthermore, the alleged indeterminism of quantum theory is very controversial: it enters, if at all, only in quantum theory’s account of measurement processes, an account which remains the most controversial part of the theory.

Determinism and indeterminism

Over the centuries, the doctrine of determinism has been understood, and assessed, in different ways. Since the seventeenth century, it has been commonly understood as the doctrine that every event has a cause; or as the predictability, in principle, of the entire future. To assess the truth of determinism, so understood, philosophers have often looked to physical science; they have assumed that their current best physical theory is their best guide to the truth of determinism. Most have believed that classical physics, especially Newton’s physics, is deterministic. And in this century, most have believed that quantum theory is indeterministic. Since quantum theory has superseded classical physics, philosophers have typically come to the tentative conclusion that determinism is false. In fact, these impressions are badly misleading, on three counts. First of all, formulations of determinism in terms of causation or predictability are unsatisfactory, since ‘event’, ‘causation’ and ‘prediction’ are vague and controversial notions, and are not used (at least not univocally) in most physical theories. So if we propose to assess determinism by considering physical theories, our formulation of determinism should be more closely tied to such theories. To do this, the key idea is that determinism is a property of a theory. Imagine a theory that ascribes properties to objects of a certain kind, and claims that the sequence through time of any such object’s properties satisfies certain regularities. Then we say that the theory is deterministic if and only if for any two such objects: if their properties match exactly at a given time, then according to the theory, they will match exactly at all future times. Second, this improved formulation reveals that there is a large gap between the determinism of a given physical theory, and the bolder, vague idea that motivated the traditional formulations: the idea that the world as a whole, independent of any single theory, is deterministic. Admittedly, one can make sense of this idea by adopting a sufficiently bold metaphysics: namely, a metaphysics that accepts the idea of a theory of the world as a whole, so that its objects are possible worlds, and determinism becomes the requirement that any two possible worlds described by the theory that match exactly at a given time also match exactly at all future times. But this idea cannot be made sense of using the more cautious strategy of considering determinism as a feature of a given physical theory. Third, according to this more cautious strategy, the traditional consensus is again misleading. Which theories are deterministic turns out to be a subtle and complicated matter, with many questions still open. But broadly speaking, it turns out that much of classical physics, even much of Newton’s physics, is indeterministic. Furthermore, the alleged indeterminism of quantum theory is very controversial: it enters, if at all, only in quantum theory’s account of measurement processes, an account which remains the most controversial part of the theory. These subtleties and controversies mean that physics does not pass to philosophers any simple verdict about determinism. But more positively, they also mean that determinism remains an exciting topic in the philosophy of science.