Probabilistic Metaphysics

Abstract

The demise of deterministic theories and the rise of indeterministic theories clearly qualifies as the most striking feature of the history of science since Newton, just as the demise of teleological explanations and the rise of mechanistic explanations dominates the history of science before Newton’s time. In spite of the increasing prominence of probabilistic conceptions in physics, in chemistry and in biology, for example, the comprehensive reconciliation of mechanistic explanations with indeterministic theories has not gone smoothly, especially by virtue of a traditional tendency to associate “causation” with determinism and “indeterminism” with non-causation. From this point of view, the very idea ofindeterministic causation seems to be conceptually anomalous if not semantically inconsistent. Indeterminism, however, should not be viewed as the absence of causation but as the presence of causal processes of non-deterministic kinds, where an absence of causation can be called “non-causation”.