The Lottery Paradox Generalized?

In a recent article, Douven and Williamson offer both (i) a rebuttal of various recent suggested sufficient conditions for rational acceptability and (ii) an alleged ‘generalisation’ of this rebuttal, which, they claim, tells against a much broader class of potential suggestions. However, not only is the result mentioned in (ii) not a generalisation of the findings referred to in (i), but in contrast to the latter, it fails to have the probative force advertised. Their paper does however, if unwittingly, offer a precise characterisation of an important class of rationally unacceptable propositions—the class of lottery propositions for equiprobable lotteries. This provides the means to construct a genuinely lottery-paradox-proof alternative to the suggestions criticised in (i).

Publication year:2010