PhilSci Archive

The Third Way on Objective Probability: A Skeptic's Guide to Objective Chance

Hoefer, Carl (2005) The Third Way on Objective Probability: A Skeptic's Guide to Objective Chance. UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

WarningThere is a more recent version of this item available.
[img]
Preview
PDF
Thirdway-new.9-05.2.pdf

Download (574kB)

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to sketch and defend a new interpretation or theory of objective chance, one that lets us be sure such chances exist and shows how they can play the roles we traditionally grant them. The subtitle obviously emulates the title of Lewis seminal 1980 paper A Subjectivist s Guide to Objective Chance while indicating an important difference in perspective. The view developed below shares two major tenets with Lewis last (1994) account of objective chance: (1) The Principal Principle tells us most of what we know about objective chance; (2) Objective chances are not primitive modal facts, propensities, or powers, but rather facts entailed by the overall pattern of events and processes in the actual world. But it differs from Lewis’ account in most other respects. Another subtitle I considered was A Humean Guide ... But while the account of chance below is compatible with any stripe of Humeanism (Lewis , Hume s, and others ), it presupposes no general Humean philosophy. Only a skeptical attitude about probability itself is presupposed (as in point (2) above); what we should say about causality, laws, modality and so on is left a separate question. Still, I will label the account to be developed “Humean objective chance”.


Export/Citation: EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL
Social Networking:
Share |

Item Type: Other
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Hoefer, Carl
Additional Information: Manuscript currently under review at a journal
Keywords: Probability, Chance, Humeanism, David Lewis, undermining, credence, subjective probability, objective probability, objective chance
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
General Issues > Laws of Nature
General Issues > Reductionism/Holism
General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism
Depositing User: Carl Hoefer
Date Deposited: 26 Oct 2005
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 15:13
Item ID: 2497
Public Domain: No
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
General Issues > Laws of Nature
General Issues > Reductionism/Holism
General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism
Date: 2005
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/2497

Available Versions of this Item

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item