Philosophy of Probability > Chance and Objective Probability > Humeanism and Nonhumeanism about Chance
Humeanism and Nonhumeanism about Chance
Edited by Toby Handfield (Monash University)
About this topic
Summary | The chance facts appear to outrun what actually happens, and to involve constraints on what could happen, or on what will probably happen. Humeanism is – roughly – the thought that all such facts can be reduced to facts about what does in fact happen. The most influential characterisation of the view is David Lewis's thesis of Humean supervenience: that all matters of contingent fact supervene on the distribution of qualitative properties in space-time. In the case of chance, Lewis suggested that chanciness reduces to actual, occurrent patterns in the world. So for instance, according to a Humean, a coin's being fair reduces to some sort of fact about the actual ways in which that coin (or similar coins) fall. Non-Humeans complain that a Humean analysis of chance does not do justice to the modal character of chances. In addition to this central concern, there is a particularly acute objection raised against Humeanism: the so called "Bug". Chances, according to a Humean, are both grounded in patterns of actual events but also provide chances for events which would falsify those same chance facts. Consequently, it appears that we need to believe that such deviant futures have some chance of occurring, but also have no chance of occurring. Working out a bridge between chance-facts and what we should believe that avoids this contradiction is a central feature of the contemporary Humean project. Because non-Humeans are frequently propensity theorists, and because Humeans are frequently frequentists, these PhilPapers categories are also relevant. |
Key works | The doctrine of Humean supervenience is put forth in Lewis 1986. Lewis's Humean account of chance is first proposed in Lewis 1980, and then refined in Lewis 1994. (See also Oppy 2000 and Loewer 1996.) Important non-Humean contributions are Bigelow et al 1993 and Black 1998. Other recent works of note include Briggs 2009, Hall 2004, and Ismael 2008. |
Introductions | Chapter 7 of Handfield 2012 provides a critical evaluation of Humean accounts of chance, without discussion of the "Bug". Two recommended articles for an introduction to the bug are Bigelow et al 1993 and Briggs 2009. |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Chance and Determinism (207)
- Chance and Objective Probability, Misc (254)
- Frequentism (54)
- Logical Probability (71)
- Probabilistic Laws (54)
- Propensities (120)
- Chance-Credence Principles (143)
- Propensities (120)
- Frequentism (54)
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Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Gualtiero Piccinini Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Lynne Tirrell Aness Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |