Dana K Nelkin The Lottery Paradox, Knowledge, And Rationality 2000资料.pdfVIP

ThePhilosophical Reuieru, Vol. 109, No. 3 (July 2000) The Lottery Paradox, Knowledge, and Rationality Dana K. Nelkin 1. Introduction Jim buys a ticket in a million-ticket lottery. He knows it is a fair lottery, but, given the odds, he believes he will lose. When the winning ticket is chosen, it is not his. Did he know his ticket would lose? It seems that he did not. After all, if he knew his ticket would lose, why would he have bought it? Further, if he knew his ticket would lose, then, given that his ticket is no different in its chances of winning from any other ticket, it seems that by parity of reason- ing he should also know that every other ticket would lose. But of course he doesnt know that; in fact, he knows that not every ticket will lose. On the other hand, ifJim didnt know his ticket would lose, then can he know any empirical facts at all? If Jim does not know some- thing that has an extremely high probability of being true (.9999) and is in fact true then what can he know? This, in short, is one version of the lottery paradox, a version I call the knowledge version. The proposition that Jim knew that his ticket would lose has undesirable consequences, but so does the contrary proposition that Jim did not know that his ticket would lose. The paradox can be presented more formally as fol- lows: The Knowledge Ve~sionof the Lottery Pa~adox (1) Jim knows that his ticket (tl) will lose. (2) If Jim knows that his ticket (tl) will lose, then he knows I would like to thank the participants in my graduate seminar on ratio- nality given at Florida State University in the spring of 1998for very helpful discussion when I first presented some of my ideas on the lottery paradox. I am also grateful to Tyler Burge, Simon Evnine, and