Projecting Chances: A Humean Vindication and Justification of the Principal Principle

Philosophy of Science 72 (1):241-261 (2005)
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Abstract

Faced with the paradox of undermining futures, Humeans have resigned themselves to accounts of chance that severely conflict with our intuitions. However, such resignation is premature: The problem is Humean supervenience (HS), not Humeanism. This paper develops a projectivist Humeanism on which chance claims are understood as normative, rather than fact stating. Rationality constraints on the cotenability of norms and factual claims ground a factual-normative worlds semantics that, in addition to solving the Frege-Geach problem, delivers the intuitive set of possibilia for each chance law. Hence, the account does not entail HS, and the paradox does not arise. A confirmation theory is developed, and the 'principal principle' is justified.

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Barry Ward
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Citations of this work

Bigger, Badder Bugs.Benjamin A. Levinstein & Jack Spencer - 2025 - Mind 134 (533):134-170.
Naturalism, Functionalism and Chance: Not a Best Fit for the Humean.Alison Fernandes - 2023 - In Christian Loew, Siegfried Jaag & Michael Townsen Hicks (eds.), Humean Laws for Human Agents. Oxford: Oxford UP.
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References found in this work

Essays on Quasi-Realism.Simon Blackburn - 1997 - Philosophical Quarterly 47 (186):96-99.
Introduction.D. Lewis - 1986 - Philosophical Papers 2.
Pragmatics and Empiricism.Brian Skyrms - 1986 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (4):514-516.
Opinions and chances.Simon Blackburn - 1980 - In David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Prospects for Pragmatism: Essays in Memory of F P Ramsey. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 175--96.

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