Taking Physical Probability Seriously

Abstract

Arthur W. Burks has been prominent among those who have taken seriously the inadequacies of narrowly empiricist construals of causal relations and who have gone on to propose an alternative approach based upon the idea of causal necessity. At the same time, Burks has expressed dissatisfaction with another important component of various empiricist views, the frequency interpretation of physical probability — i.e., the kind of probability that figures in physical laws —, and has advocated a dispositional analysis of physical probability statements.1 I find myself in agreement with Burks’ positions thus abstractly described, but I would like to explore here a disagreement over the kind of dispositional analysis to be given of physical probability statements. (I have a corresponding disagreement with Burks over the kind of necessitarian analysis to be given of causation, but will not explore that here.) In taking issue with Burks on the question of physical probability, I will also be taking issue with a range of views recently discussed by Brian Skyrms, David Lewis, and others who, like Burks, have investigated analyzing physical probability in terms of epistemic probability.2