1,558,216 research outputs found
Give the boys a chance! ...
No full textAdvertisement for a grocery delivery service.Full catalog title: Give the boys a chance! : we are open now, at Mrs. Lockett's new building with a nice, new, clean stock of groceries ... respectfully. Place and date of publication suggested by vendor who also states that the home of Oliver Jones's father (also Oliver Jones) still exists in Bastrop
Chance and language
No full textThe paper aims at to gain an effective understanding of the role played by chance and structural constraints in human language activit
Deterministic Chance
No full textI argue that there are non-trivial objective chances (that is, objective chances other than 0 and 1) even in deterministic worlds. The argument is straightforward. I observe that there are probabilistic special scientific laws even in deterministic worlds. These laws project non-trivial probabilities for the events that they concern. And these probabilities play the chance role and so should be regarded as chances as opposed, for example, to epistemic probabilities or credences.
The supposition of non-trivial deterministic chances might seem to land us in contradiction. The fundamental laws of deterministic worlds project trivial probabilities for the very same events that are assigned non-trivial probabilities by the special scientific laws. I argue that any appearance of tension is dissolved by recognition of the level-relativity of chances. There is therefore no obstacle to accepting non-trivial chance-role-playing deterministic probabilities as genuine chances
Causation, Chance and the Rational Significance of Supernatural Evidence
No full textNewcomb problems turn on a tension between two principles of choice: roughly, a principle sensitive to the causal features of the relevant situation, and a principle sensitive only to evidential factors. Two-boxers give priority to causal beliefs, and one-boxers to evidential beliefs. A similar issue can arise when the modality in question is chance, rather than causation. In this case, the conflict is between decision rules based on credences guided solely by chances, and rules based on credences guided by other sorts of probabilistic evidence. Far from excluding cases of the latter kind, Lewis’s Principal Principle explicitly allows for them, in the form of the caveat that credences should only follow beliefs about chances in the absence of "inadmissible evidence". In this paper I begin by exhibiting a tension in Lewis’s views on these two matters. I present a class of decision problems – some of them themselves Newcomb problems – in which Lewis’s view of the relevance of inadmissible evidence seems in tension with his causal decision theory. I offer a diagnosis for this dilemma, and propose a remedy, based on an extension of a proposal due to Ned Hall and others from the case of chance to that of causation. The remedy suggests a new view of the relation between causal decision theory and evidential decision theory, namely, that they stand to each other much a chance stands to credence, as objective and subjective faces of the same practical coin
Chance as a (non)explanation: a cross-cultural examination of folk understanding of chance and coincidence
No full textCausal explanations are a key component of human cognition. While we possess certain causal models of the world that offer satisfactory explanations for a range of phenomena, our cognitive capacities have their limits when dealing with the complexities of the world, leaving the causes of many events elusive. In this paper, I integrate ethnographic and historical evidence to show that, despite our limited understanding of why certain events occur, people throughout human history and across diverse societies have seldom invoked “chance” – a concept that has gained significant importance in contemporary, modern societies – as an explanation. Instead, they frequently propose putative causal relationships or posit intermediary entities such as “luck” to account for why specific events unfold within their particular spatial-temporal contexts. I discuss the psychological, cognitive and cultural evolutionary factors that hinders the development of chance-based explanations, and argue that the conceptualization of chance as something measurable and its subsequent acceptance as a legitimate explanation emerged relatively late in human history, marking a pivotal intellectual shift with profound implications on how we perceive and manage uncertainty in our daily lives
The Third Way on Objective Probability: A Skeptic's Guide to Objective Chance
No full textThe 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”
The Third Way on Objective Probability: A Skeptic's Guide to Objective Chance
No full textThe 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 account is ‘Humean’ in claiming that objective chances supervene on the totality of actual events, but does not imply or presuppose a Humean approach to other metaphysical issues such as laws or causation. Like Lewis (1994) I take the Principal Principle to be the key to understanding objective chance. After describing the main features of Humean objective chance (HOC), I deduce the validity of PP for Humean chances, and end by exploring the limitations of Humean chance
Albert Chance to Bob, September 8, 1944
No full textDear Bob
Your letter of the 30th came today. It was
good to hear from you again, for it had been two months
since the last one. I'm certainly glad you are feeling
more like yourself again. Take it easy while it's so hot.
I mailed you four envelopes this morning, one containing a
letter and a few pictures and the other three containing pictures
only. Hope they reach you in good time. I think I asked
you to smooth the sides ofhte shell on a batch to take out
the dents. Don't touch the bottom. The knife is a British
Commands knife. They are sewn on the side of their leather
boots where they are out of the way, but quickly available.
Wicked looking instrument, isn't it?
Nothing more to say, so good bye.
Sincerely,
Alber
Nonprobabilistic chance?
No full text"Chance" crops up all over philosophy, and in many other areas.
It is often assumed -- without argument -- that chances are probabilities.
I explore the extent to which this assumption is really sanctioned
by what we understand by the concept of chance
REVIEW OF D. H. Mellor, 'The Matter of Chance'
No full textThough almost forty years have elapsed since its first publication, it is a testament to the philosophical acumen of its author that 'The Matter of Chance' contains much that is of continued interest to the philosopher of science. Mellor advances a sophisticated propensity theory of chance, arguing that this theory makes better sense than its rivals (in particular subjectivist, frequentist, logical and classical theories) of ‘what professional usage shows to be thought true of chance’ (p. xi)–in particular ‘that chance is objective, empirical and not relational, and that it applies to the single case’ (ibid.). The book is short and dense, with the serious philosophical content delivered thick and fast. There is little by way of road-mapping or summarising to assist the reader: the introduction is hardly expansive and the concluding paragraph positively perfunctory. The result is that the book is often difficult going, and the reader is made to work hard to ensure correct understanding of the views expressed. On the other hand, the author’s avoidance of unnecessary use of formalism and jargon ensures that the book is still reasonably accessible. In the following, I shall first summarise the key features of Mellor’s propensity theory, and then offer a few critical remarks
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