Indeterminism is a modal notion: branching spacetimes and Earman's pruning.

The paper defends an Aristotelian notion of indeterminism, as rigorously formulated in the framework of branching space-times (BST) of Belnap (), against criticism by Earman's () based on a model-theoretic characterization of indeterminism. It delineates BST branching against the background provided...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Synthese Vol. 187; no. 2; pp. 441 - 470
Main Authors: Placek, Tomasz, Belnap, Nuel
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Jul2012
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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Summary:The paper defends an Aristotelian notion of indeterminism, as rigorously formulated in the framework of branching space-times (BST) of Belnap (), against criticism by Earman's () based on a model-theoretic characterization of indeterminism. It delineates BST branching against the background provided by Earman's () distinction between individual versus ensemble branching. Partly in order to motivate our responses to Earman, it describes a construction of physically motivated BST models, in which histories are isomorphic to Minkowski spacetime. Finally it responds to Earman's criticisms leveled against BST by addressing a topological issue, the question of an actual future, the past/future asymmetry, and some semantical questions.