The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Principled Chances
Abstract
There are at least three core principles that define the chance role: (1) the Principal Principle, (2) the Basic Chance Principle, and (3) the Humean Principle. These principles seem mutually incompatible. At least, no extant account of chance meets more than one of them. I offer an account of chance which meets all three: L*‐chance. So the good news is that L*‐chance meets (1)–(3). The bad news is that L*‐chance turns out unlawful and unstable. But perhaps this is not such bad news: L*‐chance turns out to at least approximate plausible additional core principles concerning lawfulness and stability. And perhaps there is better news: one may treat ‘chance’ as vague, in a way that allows every core principle of chance to be met. 1 Introduction 2 Chance principles 3 Chance principals 4 Principled chance? 5 Unprincipled chance? 6 Principled chances
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Citations
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 25
- Robert Black, 2001, defending Necessitarianism, concedes that the PP shall have to be taken as `a primitive principle of reason' ([1998]
- Such, moreover, would violate the BCP. Let w be a world with infinitely many coin flips, exhibiting a .5 limiting relative frequency of heads
- Actually, Armstrong himself is committed to violations of the BCP in virtue of his denial of uninstantiated universals (Armstrong [1997], pp.38-43). Suppose that N:5 (F, G), that F occurs just once, and that G occurs just that once. By the BCP there must be a comparable world w0in which F occurs and G does not. But Armstrong cannot allow this because G will be uninstantiated at w0, and so N:5 (F, G) cannot exist at w0. Since this problem involves (i) a fairly exotic case, and (ii) optional features of Armstrong's metaphysics, I will not pursue this complaint further.
- Armstrong D., What is a Law of Nature?
- Armstrong D., A World of States of Affairs
- Bigelow J., 1993, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 44, 443, 10.1093/bjps/44.3.443 · DOI · Paper page
- Black R., 1998, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49, 371, 10.1093/bjps/49.3.371 · DOI
- Hall N., 1994, Mind, 103, 504, 10.1093/mind/103.412.505 · DOI
- Hiddleston E., `Humean Supervenience, Chance, and Magic', presented at Metaphysical Mayhem VI
- Hoefer C., 1997, Mind, 106, 321, 10.1093/mind/106.422.321 · DOI
- Ismael J., 1996, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 47, 79, 10.1093/bjps/47.1.79 · DOI · Paper page
- For Lewis, causation requires probability-raising `by a large factor' ([1986], pp.176-177; Lewis's new influence theory ([2000], p. 182) is silent here), which is a further aspect of vagueness. What is interesting about this aspect of vagueness is that it would more or less wash out the minor differences between L-chance and L*-chance in assessing causality. So,for Lewis, treating `chance' as vague might not engender any further vagueness in causality.
- Lewis D., Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, 2, 263
- Lewis D., Philosophical Papers, 2
- Lewis D., Ontology, Causality, and Mind: Essays on the Philosophy of D. M. Armstrong, 23
- Lewis D., 1994, Mind, 103, 473, 10.1093/mind/103.412.473 · DOI · Paper page
- Lewis D., 2000, The Journal of Philosophy, 98, 182, 10.2307/2678389 · DOI
- Loewer B., 2001, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 32, 609, 10.1016/S1355-2198(01)00028-4 · DOI · Paper page
- Shoemaker S., Time and Cause
- Skyrms B., Causal Necessity
- Skyrms B., Pragmatics and Empiricism
- Thau M., 1994, Mind, 103, 491, 10.1093/mind/103.412.491 · DOI
- van Fraassen B., Laws and Symmetry, 10.1093/0198248601.001.0001 · DOI · Paper page
- Vranas P., `Who's Afraid of Undermining? Why the Principal Principle need not Contradict Humean Supervenience', presented at Philosophy of Science Association 16
- Williamson T., Vagueness, 10.4324/9780203014264 · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Humean Reductionism about Laws of Nature
Hall, N. (2015) · A Companion to David Lewis · doi:10.1002/9781118398593.ch17 · Cited by 170
Metadata
- Authors
- Schaffer, J.
- Corresponding author
- Schaffer, Jonathan
- ORCID
- Schaffer, Jonathan
- Venue
- The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2003-03-01
- Volume
- 54
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 27-41
- ISSN
- 0007-0882 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-3537
- OpenAlex
- W4247040838
- Cited by
- 29
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 1 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 13.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Literary, Cultural, Historical Analysis
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy of Biology and Scientific Explanation
- Keywords
- chance, Principal Principle, legality, stability, vagueness, inductive probability
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
