My take: in the absence of real physical indeterminism (which I doubt exists), “possible” is basically an epistemic term meaning “my model does not rule this out.”
You may doubt that real physical indeterminism exists; others do not. The problem is that communication hinges on shared meanings, so if you change your meanings to reflect beliefs you have and others don’t, confusion may ensue.
True; however, even granting physical indeterminism, in most cases we can say that what possibility there is is epistemic. For example, whether katydee wins her fencing match probably does not depend closely on the result of some quantum event. (Although there is an interesting resonance between the probability she assigns to winning, and her actual likelihood of winning—but that’s a whole other kettle of worms.)
You may doubt that real physical indeterminism exists; others do not. The problem is that communication hinges on shared meanings, so if you change your meanings to reflect beliefs you have and others don’t, confusion may ensue.
True; however, even granting physical indeterminism, in most cases we can say that what possibility there is is epistemic. For example, whether katydee wins her fencing match probably does not depend closely on the result of some quantum event. (Although there is an interesting resonance between the probability she assigns to winning, and her actual likelihood of winning—but that’s a whole other kettle of worms.)
Or it might be better to use two different words. In fact, (courtesy of Popper IRC), we have “propensity” for objective probabilitty.
That is a well-chosen word.