4.6 Article

Lotteries, knowledge, and inconsistent belief: why you know your ticket will lose

Journal

SYNTHESE
Volume 198, Issue 8, Pages 7891-7921

Publisher

SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11229-020-02555-w

Keywords

Lottery paradox; Rational inconsistency; Fallible knowledge; Veritic luck; Probabilistic inferences

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The article discusses the paradox of fair lotteries, examining whether one is justified in believing their ticket will lose and whether they know it will lose. The author defends a position that one is justified in believing and knows their ticket will lose. Four different versions of the lottery paradox are discussed and a unified resolution is offered for each.
Suppose that I hold a ticket in a fair lottery and that I believe that my ticket will lose [L] on the basis of its extremely high probability of losing. What is the appropriate epistemic appraisal of me and my belief that L? Am I justified in believing that L? Do I know that L? While there is disagreement among epistemologists over whether or not I am justified in believing that L, there is widespread agreement that I do not know that L. I defend the two-pronged view that I am justified in believing that my ticket will lose and that I know that it will lose. Along the way, I discuss four different but related versions of the lottery paradox-The Paradox for Rationality, The Paradox for Knowledge, The Paradox for Fallibilism, and The Paradox for Epistemic Closure-and offer a unified resolution of each of them.

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