The Explanatory Asymmetry Between Explanation and Prediction

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I'm a complete subjectivist about probability. I think the probability is always about what we know. And so if you tell me someone out there could in principle have a complete list of everything that happens in the future and if I could get a whole of that, that would count to me as a deterministic law. Aha. Not a very useful one, but if that were somehow made accessible to me, I mean in practice it isn't. So that's fine.

Is metaphysics like physics, but cooler? Or is it a relic of an outdated, pre-empirical way of thinking about the world? Closer to the former than the latter. Rather than building specific quantitative theories about the world, metaphysics aims to get a handle on the basic logical structures that help us think about it. I talk with philosopher Katie Elliott on how metaphysics helps us think about questions like counterfactuals, possible worlds, time travel, mathematical equivalence, and whether everything happens for a reason.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/24/244-katie-elliott-on-metaphysics-chance-and-time/

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Katrina (Katie) Elliott received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. After being an assistant professor of philosophy at UCLA, she is now on the faculty at Brandeis. Her research covers topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of science, including explanation, chances, and the logic of time travel.

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