Scott Sturgeon

David Lewis's approach to objective chance is doubly distinctive. On the one hand, Lewis uses an epistemic principle to disclose the nature of chance. One the other, Lewis conjoins realism about chance with a reductive Humean metaphysics. I aim to undermine both aspects of his view. Specifically, I argue that reductive Humeanism fails across the board, and I use my discussion of chance to explain why. I also argue Lewis's "best-systems" approach to chance fails his own criteria for a metaphysics of chance. (edited)

Consider the frame S believes that—. Fill it with a conditional, say If you eat an Apple, you'll drink a Coke. what makes the result true? More generally, what facts are marked by instances of S believes ? In a sense the answer is obious: beliefs are so marked. Yet that bromide leads directly to competing schools of thought. And the reason is simple. Common-sense thinks of belief two ways. Sometimes it sees it as a three-part affair. When so viewed either you believe, disbelieve, or suspend judgment. This take on belief is coarse-grained . It says belief has three flavours: acceptance, rejection, neither. But it's not the only way common-sense thinks of belief. Sometimes it's more subtle: ‘How strong is your faith?’ can be apposite between believers. That signals an important fact. Ordinary practice also treats belief as a fine-grained affair. It speaks of levels of confidence. It admits degrees of belief . It contains a fine-grained take as well. There are two ways belief is seen in everyday life. One is coarse-grained. The other is fine-grained

Robert Stalnaker has recently argued that a pair of natural thoughts are incompatible. One of them is the view that items of non-indexical factual knowledge rule out possibilities. The other is the view that knowing what sensuous experience is like involves non-indexical knowledge of its phenomenal character. I argue against Stalnaker’s take on things, elucidating along the way how our knowledge of what experience is like fits together with the natural idea that items of non-indexical factual knowledge rule out possibilities