Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science (CLPS) (@clpskuleuven.bsky.social)

In her recent 📄, Sylvia Wenmackers links branching time structures with non-Archimedean probability theory, and in doing so lends modal notions such as 'remote possibilities' and 'appreciable possibilities' a firm theoretical grounding 👇 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #philsci #mathsky #philsky

loading . . .

Remote possibilities in branching time structures - Synthese To analyse contingent propositions, this paper investigates how branching time structures can be combined with probability theory. In particular, it considers assigning infinitesimal probabilities—available in non-Archimedean probability theory—to individual histories. This allows us to introduce the concept of ‘remote possibility’ as a new modal notion between ‘impossibility’ and ‘appreciable possibility’. The proposal is illustrated by applying it to a future contingent and a historical counterfactual concerning an infinite sequence of coin tosses. The latter is a toy model that is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposal to more realistic physical models. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-024-04622-y