Typicality Reasoning in Probability, Physics, and Metaphysics

Typicality Reasoning in Probability, Physics, and Metaphysics
Author: Dustin Lazarovici
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2023-12-18
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3031334485

This book provides a comprehensive investigation into the concept of typicality and its significance for physics and the philosophy of science. It identifies typicality as a fundamental way of reasoning, central to how natural laws explain and are tested against phenomena. The book discusses various applications of typicality to foundational questions in physics and beyond.These include: a unified interpretation of objective probabilities in classical mechanics and quantum mechanics a detailed discussion of Boltzmann's statistical mechanics, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics a novel account of the asymmetry of causation and the arrow of time Finally, the book turns to the question: "What are laws of nature"? It argues that typicality extends to a powerful way of reasoning in metaphysics that can and should inform our commitments about the fundamental ontology of the world. On this basis, it develops an argument against the Humean best system account, according to which laws of nature are merely an efficient summary of contingent regularities.

Laws of Nature and Chances

Laws of Nature and Chances
Author: Barry Loewer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2024-07-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0198907710

Barry Loewer presents a novel account of the metaphysics of law of nature, chances, fundamental ontology, and the space-time arena they occupy. He calls this the Package Deal Account. This aims to answer Stephen Hawking's question "What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?" Loewer's account stands on the shoulders of David Lewis's Humean Best Systems Account of laws and chances, but rejects Lewis' Humean ontology of natural properties, and instead lets the criteria that physicists employ for evaluating candidate fundamental theories of everything, together with reality, determine the universe's fundamental ontology. The Package Deal Account thus advances the project of naturalizing metaphysics. Loewer discusses the history of the concept of laws of nature, current philosophical accounts of the metaphysics of laws, and arguments for and against each of these. He then shows how the Package Deal Account overcomes objections to each, and how, unlike Lewis's Humean account and its non-Humean rivals, it is able to accommodate recent developments in physics, including proposals for theories of quantum gravity that reject the fundamentality of space-time. Loewer provides in addition an account of the laws and chances that occur in non-fundamental special sciences and how they are related to those of fundamental physics.

Probabilities in Physics

Probabilities in Physics
Author: Claus Beisbart
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2011-09-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191618209

Many results of modern physics—those of quantum mechanics, for instance—come in a probabilistic guise. But what do probabilistic statements in physics mean? Are probabilities matters of objective fact and part of the furniture of the world, as objectivists think? Or do they only express ignorance or belief, as Bayesians suggest? And how are probabilistic hypotheses justified and supported by empirical evidence? Finally, what does the probabilistic nature of physics imply for our understanding of the world? This volume is the first to provide a philosophical appraisal of probabilities in all of physics. Its main aim is to make sense of probabilistic statements as they occur in the various physical theories and models and to provide a plausible epistemology and metaphysics of probabilities. The essays collected here consider statistical physics, probabilistic modelling, and quantum mechanics, and critically assess the merits and disadvantages of objectivist and subjectivist views of probabilities in these fields. In particular, the Bayesian and Humean views of probabilities and the varieties of Boltzmann's typicality approach are examined. The contributions on quantum mechanics discuss the special character of quantum correlations, the justification of the famous Born Rule, and the role of probabilities in a quantum field theoretic framework. Finally, the connections between probabilities and foundational issues in physics are explored. The Reversibility Paradox, the notion of entropy, and the ontology of quantum mechanics are discussed. Other essays consider Humean supervenience and the question whether the physical world is deterministic.

Reasoning about Luck

Reasoning about Luck
Author: Vinay Ambegaokar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1996-07-13
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780521447379

This book introduces the reader to statistical reasoning and its use in physics. It is based on a course taught to non-science majors at Cornell, and differs from other treatments by its wide-ranging use of quantitative methods, which are built up in a constructive way and assume only that the reader can add, subtract, multiply and divide with confidence. The author begins with a self-contained introduction to the everyday uses of probability, including the quantitative assessment of statistical information. Following a chapter on useful mathematical concepts, he develops the basic ideas of mechanical motion, the molecular theory of gases, entropy as a measure of molecular agitation, limitations on the conversion of heat to work, the physics of the direction of time, chaos, and the role of probability in quantum mechanics. To aid self-instruction, there are solved problems at the end of each chapter.

Creating Modern Probability

Creating Modern Probability
Author: Jan von Plato
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1998-01-12
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780521597357

In this book the author charts the history and development of modern probability theory.

A Philosophical Guide to Chance

A Philosophical Guide to Chance
Author: Toby Handfield
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2012-04-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1107080010

It is a commonplace that scientific inquiry makes extensive use of probabilities, many of which seem to be objective chances, describing features of reality that are independent of our minds. Such chances appear to have a number of paradoxical or puzzling features: they appear to be mind-independent facts, but they are intimately connected with rational psychology; they display a temporal asymmetry, but they are supposed to be grounded in physical laws that are time-symmetric; and chances are used to explain and predict frequencies of events, although they cannot be reduced to those frequencies. This book offers an accessible and non-technical introduction to these and other puzzles. Toby Handfield engages with traditional metaphysics and philosophy of science, drawing upon recent work in the foundations of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics to provide a novel account of objective probability that is empirically informed without requiring specialist scientific knowledge.

Nomic Probability and the Foundations of Induction

Nomic Probability and the Foundations of Induction
Author: John L. Pollock
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 1990-02-22
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0195345215

In this book Pollock deals with the subject of probabilistic reasoning, making general philosophical sense of objective probabilities and exploring their relationship to the problem of induction. He argues that probability is fundamental not only to physical science, but to induction, epistemology, the philosophy of science and much of the reasoning relevant to artificial intelligence. Pollock's main claim is that the fundamental notion of probability is nomic--that is, it involves the notion of natural law, valid across possible worlds. The various epistemic and statistical conceptions of probability, he demonstrates, are derived from this nomic notion. He goes on to provide a theory of statistical induction, an account of computational principles allowing some probabilities to be derived from others, an account of acceptance rules, and a theory of direct inference.

Probabilities, Causes and Propensities in Physics

Probabilities, Causes and Propensities in Physics
Author: Mauricio Suárez
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2010-12-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781402099038

This volume defends a novel approach to the philosophy of physics: it is the first book devoted to a comparative study of probability, causality, and propensity, and their various interrelations, within the context of contemporary physics -- particularly quantum and statistical physics. The philosophical debates and distinctions are firmly grounded upon examples from actual physics, thus exemplifying a robustly empiricist approach. The essays, by both prominent scholars in the field and promising young researchers, constitute a pioneer effort in bringing out the connections between probabilistic, causal and dispositional aspects of the quantum domain. The book will appeal to specialists in philosophy and foundations of physics, philosophy of science in general, metaphysics, ontology of physics theories, and philosophy of probability.