The Indeterministic World

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I think that that's roughly true, although I haven't stated it perfectly. It does seem consistent to me with the idea that you can go into the past as a time traveler in a single world universe and the things that you know have to happen in your future now are going to happen. You can't prevent them, but there's other things you don't know where you would act exactly as if you have free will about doing this or that. Do you think there's a difference? So suppose God was building two different worlds. The first world that God is building, you can know the initial conditions and the laws and use that information,. Or not you, but some super mind,

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 Or is it a relic of an outdated, pre-empirical way of thinking about the world?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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