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How to Combine Chance and Determinism: Thinking about the Future in an Everett Universe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jenann Ismael
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Abstract

I propose, in the context of Everett interpretations of quantum mechanics, a way of understanding how there can be genuine uncertainty about the future notwithstanding that the universe is governed by known, deterministic dynamical laws, and notwithstanding that there is no ignorance about initial conditions, nor anything in the universe whose evolution is not itself governed by the known dynamical laws. The proposal allows us to draw some lessons about the relationship between chance and determinism, and to dispel one source of the tendency among Everettians to introduce consciousness as a primitive element into physical description.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 70 , Issue 4 , October 2003 , pp. 776 - 790
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I am very grateful to two anonymous reviewers, and also to Richard Healey, Bas van Fraassen, and David Lewis, who made the paper much better than it is in many close worlds. I would also like to thank Michel Bitbol and an audience at the Centre de Recherches en Epistémologie Appliquée in Paris for their patience and a very helpful discussion.

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