The lottery paradox, knowledge, and rationality

Philosophical Review 109 (3):373-409 (2000)
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Abstract

Jim buys a ticket in a million-ticket lottery. He knows it is a fair lottery, but, given the odds, he believes he will lose. When the winning ticket is chosen, it is not his. Did he know his ticket would lose? It seems that he did not. After all, if he knew his ticket would lose, why would he have bought it? Further, if he knew his ticket would lose, then, given that his ticket is no different in its chances of winning from any other ticket, it seems that by parity of reasoning he should also know that every other ticket would lose. But of course he doesn’t know that; in fact, he knows that not every ticket will lose.

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Dana Kay Nelkin
University of California, San Diego

Citations of this work

Belief, Credence, and Evidence.Elizabeth Jackson - 2020 - Synthese 197 (11):5073-5092.
Between Probability and Certainty: What Justifies Belief.Martin Smith - 2016 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Belief, credence, and norms.Lara Buchak - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 169 (2):1-27.
Stop Making Sense? On a Puzzle about Rationality.Littlejohn Clayton - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research:257-272.

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References found in this work

Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
The structure of empirical knowledge.Laurence BonJour - 1985 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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