Timothy Williamson’s coin-flipping argument: refuted prior to publication

Howson, Colin (2019) Timothy Williamson’s coin-flipping argument: refuted prior to publication. Erkenntnis. pp. 1-9. ISSN 0165-0106

Text (TimothyWilliamsonCoinFlipping) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (623kB)

Abstract

In a well-known paper, Timothy Williamson (Analysis 67:173–180, 2007) claimed to prove with a coin-flipping example that infinitesimal-valued probabilities cannot save the principle of Regularity, because on pain of inconsistency the event ‘all tosses land heads’ must be assigned probability 0, whether the probability function is hyperreal-valued or not. A premise of Williamson’s argument is that two infinitary events in that example must be assigned the same probability because they are isomorphic. It was argued by Howson (Eur J Philos Sci 7:97–100, 2017) that the claim of isomorphism fails, but a more radical objection to Williamson’s argument is that it had been, in effect, refuted long before it was published.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2019 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
Divisions:	Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) Q Science > Q Science (General)
Date Deposited:	11 Apr 2019 12:57
Last Modified:	11 Sep 2025 09:53
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/100445

Actions (login required)

View Item