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 language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 415-428 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Erkenntnis |
Volume | 61 |
Issue number | 2-3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2004 |
Keywords
- EPISTEMIC CLOSURE
- KNOWLEDGE
- PROBABILITY
- ASSERTION
- PARADOX