A Primer on Determinism

I. Introduction.- II. Defining Determinism.- 1. Classical Determinism: the Vision and the Context.- 2. What Determinism is Not: Cause and Effect.- 3. Predictability: Laplace’s Demon.- 4. Predictability: Popper’s Demon.- 5. Russell’s Definition.- 6. What Determinism Is.- 7. Fear and Loathing.- 8. Democracy and Symmetry.- 9. Non-Laplacian Varieties of Determinism.- 10. Che Sarà Sarà.- 11. Deterministic Theories.- 12. Conclusion.- III. Determinism in Classical Physics.- 1. Classical Worlds.- 2. The Apparent Failure of Determinism in Leibnizian Physics.- 3. Leibniz’s Response.- 4. Newtonian Space-time.- 5. Newtonian Particle Mechanics.- 6. Determinism at Bay.- 7. Determinism at Sea.- 8. Life Rafts.- 9. Infinite Billiards.- 10. Heat.- 11. Walling Out.- 12. Old Heat.- 13. Don’t Fence Me In.- 14. Classical Electromagnetism.- 15. Shock(ing) Waves.- 16. Viscous fluids.- 17. Conclusion.- IV. Determinism in Special Relativistic Physics.- 1. Special Relativistic Worlds.- 2. Domains of Dependence.- 3. The Relativistic Formulation of Laplacian Determinism.- 4. Laplacian Determinism — At Last!.- 5. Higher Dimensions and Weak Solutions; Huygens’ Principle.- 6. Domains of Prediction.- 7. Particle Motion: Retarded and Advanced Action-at-a-distance.- 8. Instantaneous Action-at-a-distance.- 9. Tachyons.- 10. Conclusion.- V. Determinism and Laws of Nature.- 1. Hume’s Definitions of ‘Cause’.- 2. The Naive Regularity Account.- 3. The Empiricist Constraints.- 4. Mill, Ramsey, and Lewis.- 5. Deductive Systematization: a Closer Look.- 6. Laws as Universal and Eternal Truths.- 7. Defeasibility and Degrees of Lawfulness.- 8. Challenges to the Regularity Account of Laws.- 9. Dispositions: the Garden Variety Type.- 10. Tooley’s Case.- 11. Nomic Necessity.- 12. Laws asContingent Relations Among Universais.- 13. Conclusion.- VI. Determinism, Mechanism, and Effective Computability.- 1. Turing Machines.- 2. Determinism and Effective Computability: First Try.- 3. Grzegorczyk Computability.- 4. Determinism and Effective Computability: Ordinary Differential Equations.- 5. Determinism and Effective Computability: Partial Differential Equations.- 6. Extended Computability.- 7. Generalized Computability.- 8. Objections; Church’s Thesis Revisited.- 9. Conclusion.- VII. Determinism and Time Symmetries.- 1. The Received View.- 2. Time Translation Invariance.- 3. Recurrence: Conditional and Unconditional.- 4. Time Reversal Invariance.- 5. Time Reversal Invariance and Futuristic and Historical Determinism.- 6. Determinism Plus Time Translation Invariance Imply Periodicity.- 7. Mill, Russell, Feigl, and Nagel: Vindicated?.- 8. Mill, Russell, Feigl, and Nagel: Refuted?.- 9. Russell and Feigl: Defended.- 10. Mill, Russell, Feigl, and Nagel: Modified and Qualified.- 11. Preview: General Relativity and Time Symmetries.- VIII. Determinism, Randomness, and Chaos.- 1. Defining Randomness.- 2. Randomness, Disorder, and Computational Complexity.- 3. Biased Coins.- 4. Utter Chaos.- 5. Determinism and Performance Randomness.- 6. Physical Probabilities: Frequencies or Propensities?.- IX. Determinism, Instability, and Apparent Randomness.- 1. Stability and Instability for Fields.- 2. Classical Dynamical Systems.- 3. Macro-randomness: What We Want.- 4. Macro-randomness: Can We Have What We Want?.- 5. Instability in Classical Particle Systems.- 6. Strange Attractors.- 7. Conclusion.- X. Determinism in General Relativistic Physics.- 1. General Relativistic Worlds.- 2. Time Slices.- 3. Partitioning by Time Slices.- 4. Causality Conditions.- 5. The Status ofCausality Conditions.- 6. Cauchy Surfaces.- 7. The Cauchy Initial Value Problem.- 8. The Significance of the Cauchy Initial Value Problem.- 9. Laplacian Determinism in the Medium and the Small.- 10. Singularities.- 11. Cosmic Censorship.- 12. Prediction.- 13. Geometrodynamics.- 14. The Characteristic Initial Value Problem.- 15. Conclusion.- XI. Determinism in Quantum Physics.- 1. Quantum Mechanics as More Deterministic than Classical Mechanics.- 2. The Quantum State: a Closer Look.- 3. The Projection Postulate.- 4. The Incompleteness of Quantum Mechanics: Joint Probabilities.- 5. The Theorems of Gleason and Kochen-Specker.- 6. Bell’s Theorem.- 7. Realism and the Incompleteness of Quantum Mechanics.- 8. The Problem of Measurement.- 9. The Insolubility of the Measurement Problem.- 10. Determinism and Quantum Mechanics.- 11. Indeterminism, Randomness, and Stochasticity.- 12. Conclusion.- XII. Determinism and Free Will.- 1. Moral and Legal Responsibility and the Compatibilist Position.- 2. Tropisms.- 3. Indeterministic Actions and the Possibility of a Science of Human Behavior.- 4. Conclusion.- Final Exam.- Index of Names.