Objective probability, or objective chance, is the probability of some event occurring in the future independent of what anyone thinks. This paper presents and defends a theory of objective chance. I develop an informal analysis of objective chance, taking the common sense picture underlying our talk about the likelihood of future events as our starting point. A formal semantics is introduced, and I argue that the theory presented satisfies certain criteria of adequacy for a theory of probability.

Analyses of singular causation often make use of the idea that a cause increases the probability of its effect. Of particular salience in such accounts are the values of the probability function of the effect, conditional on the presence and absence of the putative cause, analysed around the times of the events in question: causes are characterized by the effect’s probability function being greater when conditionalized upon them. Put this way, it becomes clearer that the ‘behaviour’ of probability functions in (...) small intervals about the times in question ought to be of concern. In this article, I make an extended case that causal theorists employing the ‘probability raising’ idea should pay attention to the continuity question. Specifically, if the probability functions are ‘jumping about’ in ways typical of discontinuous functions, then the stability of the relevant probability increase is called into question. The rub, however, is that sweeping requirements for either continuity or discontinuity are problematic and, as I argue, this constitutes a ‘continuity bind’. Hence more subtle considerations and constraints are needed, two of which I consider: utilizing discontinuous first derivatives of continuous probability functions, and abandoning point probability for imprecise probability. _1_ Introduction _2_ Probability Trajectories and Continuity _2.1_ Probability trajectories _2.2_ Causation as discontinuous jumps _2.3_ Against systematic discontinuity _3_ Broader Discontinuity Concerns _4_ The Continuity Bind _4.1_ Retaining continuity with discontinuous first derivatives _4.2_ Imprecise probability trajectories _5_ Concluding Remarks Appendix. (shrink)

My purpose here is to elaborate the reasons I maintain that Salmon has not been completely successful in reporting the history of work on explanation. The most important limitation of his account is that it does not emphasize the critical necessity to embrace a suitable conception of probability in the development of the theory of probabilistic explanation.

Philip Kitcher and Wesley C. Salmon have edited an important anthology of new papers on scientific explanation, a central problem—possibly the central problem—in the theory of science. Their collection begins with a comprehensive essay by Salmon that attempts to trace the development of work on this issue from Hempel and Oppenheim to the present. The University of Minnesota Press has published this article as a separate volume, which it is promoting as “a definitive introduction” to this area of inquiry. Apart (...) from its preface and indices, the Salmon volume is identical with the original essay. (shrink)

I argue that any broadly dispositional analysis of probability will either fail to give an adequate explication of probability, or else will fail to provide an explication that can be gainfully employed elsewhere (for instance, in empirical science or in the regulation of credence). The diversity and number of arguments suggests that there is little prospect of any successful analysis along these lines.

To clarify and illuminate the place of probability in science Ellery Eells and James H. Fetzer have brought together some of the most distinguished philosophers ...

This article explores the connection between objective chance and the randomness of a sequence of outcomes. Discussion is focussed around the claim that something happens by chance iff it is random. This claim is subject to many objections. Attempts to save it by providing alternative theories of chance and randomness, involving indeterminism, unpredictability, and reductionism about chance, are canvassed. The article is largely expository, with particular attention being paid to the details of algorithmic randomness, a topic relatively unfamiliar to philosophers.