tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post110948040068072997..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Lottery and Fallibility ParadoxesRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1129760646027288992005-10-19T18:24:00.000-04:002005-10-19T18:24:00.000-04:00"The lottery paradox begins by imagining a fair lo..."The lottery paradox begins by imagining a fair lottery with a thousand tickets in it. Each ticket is so unlikely to win that we are justified in believing that it will lose. So we can infer that no ticket will win. Yet we know that some ticket will win."<BR/><BR/>This argument isn't logical, because it doesn't account for the difference between the an individual's beliefs and the chances of ANY one in 1000 people winning the lottery; Two completely different things. I think it's just a case of bad reasoning to beleive with absolute certainty that you won't win. When it says "we can infer that no ticket will win", it should explain WHY!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1109535927248637812005-02-27T15:25:00.000-05:002005-02-27T15:25:00.000-05:00Rather, I know I'm fallible - that I have some fal...<I>Rather, I know I'm fallible - that I have some false beliefs.</I>Is it possible to believe that you have false beliefs? Call the belief that you have at least one false belief B. If it turned out that all of your other beliefs were true, then B would be false, but then it would be true that you have a false belief. That liar's paradox is following you around again, and this time it's dressed up to look vaguely like a disjunction version of a Gettier case (since your evidence is for the first half of "one of my other beliefs is false, or B is false," but it's the second half that keeps B from being determinately false).<br /><br />As far as your questions go, one potential problem with the degrees of sureity approach is that it seems to make belief secondary to probability in cases where you can calculate probabilities. If you can calculate the probability of X, p(X), then whether you believe X seems to depend only on the quantity p(X) and some cutoff standard (which may vary from case to case) for how high p needs to be for it to count as a belief. Whether this is a problem depends on how well it fits with the rest of your views on belief and knowledge.Blarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17654557196171228300noreply@blogger.com