How probable is an infinite sequence of heads?

Analysis 67 (3):173-180 (2007)
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Abstract

Isn't probability 1 certainty? If the probability is objective, so is the certainty: whatever has chance 1 of occurring is certain to occur. Equivalently, whatever has chance 0 of occurring is certain not to occur. If the probability is subjective, so is the certainty: if you give credence 1 to an event, you are certain that it will occur. Equivalently, if you give credence 0 to an event, you are certain that it will not occur. And so on for other kinds of probability, such as evidential probability. The formal analogue of this picture is the regularity constraint: a probability distribution over sets of possibilities is regular just in case it assigns probability 0 only to the null set, and therefore probability 1 only to the set of all possibilities.

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Timothy Williamson
University of Oxford

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References found in this work

Philosophical papers.David Kellogg Lewis - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Infinitesimal chances and the laws of nature.Adam Elga - 2004 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1):67 – 76.
Learning the Impossible.Vann McGee - 1994 - In Ellery Eells & Brian Skyrms (eds.), Probability and Conditionals: Belief Revision and Rational Decision. Cambridge University Press. pp. 179-199.
Two autonomous axiom systems for the calculus of probabilities.Karl R. Popper - 1955 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 6 (21):51-57.
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science | Vol 73, No 3.Karl R. Popper - 1955 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 6 (24):351-351.

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