Abstract

Abstract. We discuss some of the choices that arise when one tries to make the idea of physical determinism more precise. Broadly speaking, ‘ontological ’ notions of determinism are parameterized by one’s choice of mathematical ideology, whilst ‘epistemological ’ notions of determinism are parameterized by the choice of an appropriate notion of computability. We present some simple examples to show that these choices can indeed make a difference to whether a given physical theory is ‘deterministic’ or not. Keywords: Laplace’s demon, physical determinism, philosophy of mathematics, notions of computability. 1

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