Workshop on Counterfactuals and determinism

Idea & Motivation

This week’s session of the Research Seminar in Decision and Action Theory is replaced by a special mini-workshop on Friday 6 December, on “Counterfactuals and determinism”, featuring Richard Holton (Cambridge) and Barry Loewer (Rutgers). This mini-workshop is jointly organized with the Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics Chairs.

Speakers

• Richard Holton (Cambridge)
  
• Barry Loewer (Rutgers)
  

 

Time	Speaker	Title
15:15-16:30	Richard Holton (Cambridge)	The Web of Determinism
16:30-16:45	Coffee break
16:45-18:00	Barry Loewer (Rutgers)	A Conditional Probability Account of Counterfactuals

 

Abstracts

Barry Loewer: A Conditional Probability Account of Counterfactuals

Ever since Robert Stalnaker’s and David Lewis’ work on counterfactual conditionals in the 1960s their truth conditions have been understood as involving a similarity relation on possible worlds. This approach has encountered major difficulties. Recently a number of authors including Hajek, Fernandes, Leitgeb and myself have proposed a different approach based on conditional objective probabilities. In this paper I propose a new account based on objective probabilities deriving from statistical mechanics.

 

Registration

No registration is needed, but we will confirm the room ahead of the workshop.