Morgenbesser’s Coin
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21408979 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yael Loewenstein (0000-0002-9512-0237, University of Houston, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 317-328 |
| Publication date | 2021-07-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0045-5091 • E-ISSN: 1911-0820 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/can.2021.32 |
| OpenAlex | W4206319633 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
Before a fair, indeterministic coin is tossed, Lucky, who is causally isolated from the coin-tossing mechanism, declines to bet on heads. The coin lands heads. The consensus is that the following counterfactual is true: (M:) If Lucky had bet heads, he would have won the bet. It is also widely believed that to rule (M) true, any plausible semantics for counterfactuals must invoke causal independence. But if that’s so, the hope of giving a reductive analysis of causation in terms of counterfactuals is undermined. Here I argue that there is compelling reason to question the assumption that (M) is true
Causation · Coin flipping · Counterfactual conditional · Counterfactual thinking · Epistemology · Independence (probability theory) · Mathematical economics · Possible world · Statistics · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science
| Highly cited | No |
|---|