Dissimilitude

Some philosophers maintain that if determinism holds in our world, then there are no objective chances in our world. And often the word ‘chance’ here is taken to be synonymous with 'probability', so these philosophers maintain that there are no non-trivial objective probabilities for events in our world. (The caveat “non-trivial” is added here because on some accounts all future events that actually happen have probability, conditional on past history, equal to 1, and future events that do not happen have probability equal to zero. Non-trivial probabilities are

probabilities strictly between zero and one.) Conversely, it is often held, if there are laws of nature that are irreducibly probabilistic, determinism must be false. (Some philosophers would go on to add that such irreducibly probabilistic laws are the basis of whatever genuine objective chances obtain in our world.)