Lotteries and Contexts

Peter Baumann

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    4 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    There are many ordinary propositions we think we know. Almost every ordinary proposition entails some "lottery proposition" which we think we do not know but to which we assign a high probability of being true (for instance: "I will never be a multi-millionaire" entails "I will not win this lottery"). How is this possible - given that some closure principle is true? This problem, also known as "the Lottery puzzle", has recently provoked a lot of discussion. In this paper I discuss one of the most promising answers to the problem: Stewart Cohen's contextualist solution, which is based on ideas about the salience of chances of error. After presenting some objections to it I sketch an alternative solution which is still contextualist in spirit.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)415-428
    Number of pages13
    JournalErkenntnis
    Volume61
    Issue number2-3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Nov 2004

    Keywords

    • EPISTEMIC CLOSURE
    • KNOWLEDGE
    • PROBABILITY
    • ASSERTION
    • PARADOX

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