What is the relationship of physical and empirical possibility?

Abstract

I argue that physical and nomic possibility, traditionally understood, do not align with Norton’s (2022) concepts of empirical, hypothetical, or counterfactual possibility. Instead, physical and nomic possibility are special cases of Norton’s broadly construed concept of logical possibility. I illustrate my claims by showing how certain examples of physical possibility – such as the existence of a completely empty world, initial value
indeterminism, time travel, and what I call radical freedom of acting otherwise - are evaluated differently under Norton’s account. I achieve this by generalizing Norton’s empirical, hypothetical, and counterfactual possibilities into a unified concept of conditional inductive possibility.