Philosophical investigations into the nature of chance and causation have typically assumed classical spacetime backgrounds. My dissertation argues that this practice misses important lessons. By tying chance functions to a global time parameter—a structure of classical spacetimes—orthodox theories of chance cannot state important Markov-style principles and fail outright in spacetimes that lack a linear time structure, e.g. due to closed time-like curves. By contrast, the
urchance approach, developed in the dissertation's first half, assumes no such parameter, works in any spacetime geometry, captures the needed independence principles, and resolves the puzzle of chances on closed time-like curves. Two general morals follow: chance isn't as intimately tied to time or causation as is usually thought, and chances can vary even across intrinsically duplicate trials.
On the causation side, counterfactualist reductions are unable to deal with synchronic nomic constraints—law-based, yet non-causal, links between simultaneous events. These constraints occur not only in temporal-loop geometries but also in common-or-garden theories like Maxwellian electrodynamics. To save the counterfactualist approach to causation, its defenders must separate genuinely dynamical counterfactual influences from those produced solely by synchronic constraints.