Carl Hoefer (Barcelona) - How a priori should the chances be in Statistical Mechanics?

Talk given by Carl Hoefer (Barcelona) at the Rutgers Conference on the Philosophy of Probability on Oct 25, 2019.



In my talk I will compare and contrast the Humean approach to SM chances advocated in Frigg & Hoefer (2013) and Hoefer (2019) with the alternative approaches of Myrvold (2012), Loewer & Albert (in diverse publications), and Hemmo & Shenker (2012). While all these approaches agree in maintaining that the probabilities of SM can be both objective (in at least some significant sense) and compatible with underlying determinism, they disagree on what actually determines the values of the probabilities. I will defend the need to blend both “a priori” and empircal/actual-fact elements in the recipe that determines the probabilities, and to do so in a way that gives the latter element a strong role.

This conference was funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and by the Rutgers Philosophy Department.

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