  The origin of the phenomenological deterministic laws that approximately
govern the quasiclassical domain of familiar experience is considered in the
context of the quantum mechanics of closed systems such as the universe as a
whole. We investigate the requirements for coarse grainings to yield decoherent
sets of histories that are quasiclassical, i.e. such that the individual
histories obey, with high probability, effective classical equations of motion
interrupted continually by small fluctuations and occasionally by large ones.
We discuss these requirements generally but study them specifically for coarse
grainings of the type that follows a distinguished subset of a complete set of
variables while ignoring the rest. More coarse graining is needed to achieve
decoherence than would be suggested by naive arguments based on the uncertainty
principle. Even coarser graining is required in the distinguished variables for
them to have the necessary inertia to approach classical predictability in the
presence of the noise consisting of the fluctuations that typical mechanisms of
decoherence produce. We describe the derivation of phenomenological equations
of motion explicitly for a particular class of models. Probabilities of the
correlations in time that define equations of motion are explicitly considered.
Fully non-linear cases are studied. Methods are exhibited for finding the form
of the phenomenological equations of motion even when these are only distantly
related to those of the fundamental action. The demonstration of the connection
between quantum-mechanical causality and causalty in classical phenomenological
equations of motion is generalized. The connections among decoherence, noise,
dissipation, and the amount of coarse graining necessary to achieve classical
predictability are investigated quantitatively.
