A Better Way of Framing Williamson’s Coin-Tossing Argument, but It Still Does Not Work

Philosophy of Science 86 (2):366-374 (2019)
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Abstract

Timothy Williamson claimed to prove with a coin-tossing example that hyperreal probabilities cannot save the principle of regularity. A premise of his argument is that two specified infinitary events must be assigned the same probability because, he claims, they are isomorphic. But as has been pointed out, they are not isomorphic. A way of framing Williamson’s argument that does not make it depend on the isomorphism claim is in terms of shifts in Bernoulli processes, the usual mathematical model of sequential coin tossing. But even so framed, the argument still fails.

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Colin Howson
Last affiliation: London School of Economics

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References found in this work

Regularity and Hyperreal Credences.Kenny Easwaran - 2014 - Philosophical Review 123 (1):1-41.
Infinitesimal Probabilities.Vieri Benci, Leon Horsten & Sylvia Wenmackers - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (2):509-552.
Probability, Regularity, and Cardinality.Alexander R. Pruss - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (2):231-240.

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