Is There a Credence in Probability?

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In the probability literature, there's usually a separation between two ways of thinking about probability. One is probability just in terms of degrees of credence; another is some feature of the world. These are not unrelated to each other because when the world has a certain feature, that it's the probability of the coin landing heads is a half, then this needs a little qualification. But basically, that tells you what rational credence, what rational degree of belief you should have in the next flip of the coin. Now, I don't think there are objective probabilities like that for things like scientific theories, like theories about dark matter. So I do think this notion of credence about theories is applying

The founders of statistical mechanics in the 19th century faced an uphill battle to convince their fellow physicists that the laws of thermodynamics could be derived from the random motions of microscopic atoms. This insight turns out to be even more important than they realized: the emergence of patterns characterizing our macroscopic world relies crucially on the increase of entropy over time. Barry Loewer has (in collaboration with David Albert) been developing a theory of the Mentaculus — the probability map of the world — that connects microscopic physics to time, causation, and other familiar features of our experience.

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Barry Loewer received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University. He is currently distinguished professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. His research focuses on the foundations of physics and the metaphysics of laws and chance.

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