Lotteries, Knowledge, and Rational Belief
Essays on the Lottery Paradox

The book offers new insights into the lottery paradox, and thereby into how categorical and graded beliefs are formally connected.

Igor Douven (Edited by)

9781108421911, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 February 2021

311 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.556 kg

We talk and think about our beliefs both in a categorical (yes/no) and in a graded way. How do the two kinds of belief hang together? The most straightforward answer is that we believe something categorically if we believe it to a high enough degree. But this seemingly obvious, near-platitudinous claim is known to give rise to a paradox commonly known as the 'lottery paradox' – at least when it is coupled with some further seeming near-platitudes about belief. How to resolve that paradox has been a matter of intense philosophical debate for over fifty years. This volume offers a collection of newly commissioned essays on the subject, all of which provide compelling reasons for rethinking many of the fundamentals of the debate.

Introduction Igor Douven
1. Rational belief and statistical evidence: blame, bias, and the law Dana Nelkin
2. Knowledge attributions and lottery cases: a review and new evidence John Turri
3. The psychological dimension of the lottery paradox Jennifer Nagel
4. Three puzzles about lotteries Julia Staffel
5. Four arguments for denying that lottery beliefs are justified Martin Smith
6. Rethinking the lottery paradox: a dual processing perspective Igor Douven and Shira Elqayam
7. Rational belief in lottery- and preface-situations: impossibility results and possible solutions Gerhard Schurz
8. Stability and the lottery paradox Hannes Leitgeb
9. The lottery, the preface and epistemic rule consequentialism Christoph Kelp and Francesco Praolini
10. Beliefs, probabilities, and their coherent correspondence Kevin Kelly and Hanti Lin
11. The relation between degrees of belief and binary beliefs: a general impossibility theorem Franz Dietrich and Christian List
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: logic [HPL], Philosophy [HP], Humanities [H]