Laplace's demon tries on Aristotle's cloak

on two approaches to determinism

Tomasz Placek

pp. 11-30

in: Synthese 196 (1), 2019.

Abstract

The paper describes two approaches to determinism: one focuses on the features of global objects, such as possible worlds or models of a theory, whereas the other's concern is the possible behaviour of individual objects. It then gives an outline of an individuals-based analysis of the determinism of theories. Finally, a general relativistic spacetime with non-isometric extensions is described and used to illustrate a conflict between the two approaches: this spacetime is indeterministic by the first approach but deterministic by the second approach.

Cited authors

Aristoteles