Séminaire général
Nous aurons le plaisir d'entendre Alexander Franklin (King's College London) qui interviendra sur le sujet suivant : (Some) Weather Probabilities are Ontic & Objective.
Résumé : Probabilities play an essential role in the prediction and explanation of events and thus feature prominently in well-confirmed scientific theories. However, such probabilities are frequently described as subjective, epistemic, or both. This prompts a well-known puzzle: how could scientific posits that predict and explain human-independent events essentially involve agents or knowers? I argue that the puzzle can be resolved by acknowledging that although such probabilities are non-fundamental, they may still be ontic and objective. To this end I describe dynamical mechanisms that are responsible for the convergence of probability distributions for chaotic systems, and apply an account of emergence developed elsewhere. I suggest that this analysis will generalise and claim that, consequently, a great many of the probabilities in science should be characterised in the same terms.
Organisation : Rachel Boddy, Bernardo Marques, Auguste Nahas