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If there is true indeterminacy in the world, does this imply that each state of affairs is contingent? I am assuming that by contingent, we mean that things could have happened otherwise.

Conceptually, it is not hard to imagine a series of events that are metaphysically necessary and yet may occur without any cause and thus without determination.

Does this imagination imply that you can have an indeterministic series of events that are still necessary? If so, does this still violate the principle of sufficient reason?

Graham Oppy states that a necessary thing can have an explanation for its existence: the explanation being that it is necessary. As such, can the explanation for why an indeterministic series of events exists be that it is necessary?

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  • It does not imply that every event is contingent. There could be fated events that shall happen regardless of which contingent path is taken in between them (as Greeks believed), or events imposed by God, such as the first and the second coming of the Savior (as Christians believe). As long as not every event is necessary, full-blown PSR is false, an "explanation" of contingent events is not a sufficient reason for their actualized specifics. Indeterminism is out of place here because determinism is not the only way of necessitation.
    – Conifold
    Commented Nov 10, 2023 at 11:10
  • @Conifold Thanks for your comment, once again. You stated that it does not imply that every event is contingent. But can every event still be necessary with determinism still being false? And is this equivalent to the kind of fatalism you described but for every event and not just a subset?
    – user62907
    Commented Nov 10, 2023 at 11:15
  • Conceptually, it is not hard to imagine a series of events that are metaphysically necessary and yet may occur without any cause and thus without determination. - like what?
    – TKoL
    Commented Jan 10 at 11:44
  • Determinism requires a cause that is contingent upon a prior effect. Indetermination means you can will an event without a prior cause or event that supplants your will and is not contigent upon that event.
    – 8Mad0Manc8
    Commented Sep 6 at 18:32

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If we start from modal indeterminacy itself, we will have second-order possibilities available, in which at least second-order contingency can then be found. To wit, suppose a modal variable Xψ, where ψ is some fact(oid) and X is either ◊, ~◊, ◊~, or ~◊~. If X is underdetermined by other fact(oid)s, then we seem to mean to say that it is possible for X to be assigned any of the four ◊-values given in general. So we seem to have:

  1. ◊◊ψ
  2. ◊~◊ψ
  3. ◊◊~ψ
  4. ◊~◊~ψ

(3) means that ψ is possibly contingent. Now, in the usual modal logic, the iteration of the operators is more or less superfluous, e.g. "possibly possible" = "there is some possible world according to which in some possible world it is the case that..." which seems to collapse to just "there is some possible world where it is the case that..." and so on. On the other hand, if the second-order possibility is nontrivial, then let us compose (1) through (4) so as to write something like:

  1. ◊(◊ψ ∨ ~◊ψ ∨ ◊~ψ ∨ ~◊~ψ)

... and interpret this as meaning it is second-order contingent (because possible) that X comes out to one of the specific values. Is second-order contingency good enough for present purposes, then?

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In a probabilistic world nothing is completely determined by prior causes. Each cause determines only the probability distribution of the effect.

For each cause there is an infinite number of possible effects and the highest probability is near the average value of the probability distribution.

Nothing occurs without a cause, but causes never determine their effects with absolute accuracy.

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    If you include the random value generation in the list of "causes", then you still have future states completely caused by past causes, where the past causes "determine" their effects with absolute accuracy.
    – TKoL
    Commented Dec 11, 2023 at 9:38
  • I mean, let's say you have some quantum dice, and you've arranged some situation where if that dice rolls a 4, X happens, and if it rolls any other number, Y happens -- if you include all prior causes up until that dice roll, then you still can't determine if X or Y happens perfectly, BUT if you also include the result of the dice roll itself in the "list of prior causes", that kind of changes the language you use about it. Even though the dice roll wasn't determined, it itself was a cause for the next state, and a cause which, when considered, guaranteed the following state.
    – TKoL
    Commented Dec 11, 2023 at 9:41
  • @TKoL Randomness is not in the cause. Randomness is the inaccuracy of the effect. Dice roll was caused by the player's throwing move. The result is random, because the player could not decide the result.
    – Pertti Ruismäki
    Commented Dec 11, 2023 at 9:41
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    Says who? Why is randomness not in the cause? Randomness is, in fact, the very cause of the inaccuracy of the effect - the effect can't be accurately predicted before hand "beCAUSE" of the randomness.
    – TKoL
    Commented Dec 11, 2023 at 9:45
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    Okay, guess we just have different semantic understandings of what it means for something to be a "cause". If a source of randomness has the ability to affect the future -- I mean, to me that's the beginning and end of what it means to be a 'cause'. Perhaps you disagree there, and that's okay.
    – TKoL
    Commented Dec 11, 2023 at 14:57

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