Abstract
The most familiar philosophical conception of objective chance renders determinism incompatible with non-trivial chances. This conception - associated in particular with the work of David Lewis - is not a good fit with our use of the word chance and its cognates in ordinary discourse. In this paper we show how a generalized framework for chance can reconcile determinism with non-trivial chances, and provide for a more charitable interpretation of ordinary chance-talk. According to our proposal, variation in an admissible evidence base generates a spectrum of different chance functions. Successive coarse-grainings of the evidence base generates a partial ordering of chance functions, with finer trumping coarser if known. We suggest that chance-attributions in ordinary discourse express different chance functions in different contexts, and we sketch a potential contextual mechanism for making particular chance functions salient. The mechanism involves the idea that admissible evidence is available evidence: propositions that could be known. A consequence is that attributions of objective chances inherit the relatively familiar context-sensitivity associated with the modal could . We show how this context-dependency undermines certain arguments for the incompatibility of chance with determinism.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Chance and Temporal Asymmetry |
Editors | Alastair Wilson |
Place of Publication | Oxford UK |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 19 - 44 |
Number of pages | 26 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780199673421 |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |