Propensities in Branching Space-times Theory and in Probabilistic …

Short Description
Belnap’s theory of branching space-times (BST), first developed in [2]. The second of these theories is the probabilistic causal calculus of James …

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Content
Propensities in Branching Space-times Theory
and in Probabilistic Causal Calculus
Mika Oksanen
August 31, 2005
Abstract
In this article I compare two theories of propensities that have been
developed in philosophical logic and discuss the possibility of combining
their basic ideas into a single theory. The first of these theories is the
theory of objective transition probabilities that has been developed by
Tomasz Placek in [7] and by Thomas M¨uller in [5] on the basis of Nuel
Belnap’s theory of branching space-times (BST), first developed in [2].
The second of these theories is the probabilistic causal calculus of James
H. Fetzer and Donald Nute, developed by them together in [4] and by
Fetzer alone in [3] and by Nute alone in [6].
At first sight these theories seem so different that one might well suspect
that they would be incompatible. In Placek’s theory ascriptions of
propensity are of the form p(E(F) = n, where E and F are events and F
is one of the possible outcomes of E. In Fetzer’s and Nute’s theory ascriptions
of propensity are of the form á…