Abstract
The Principal Principle (PP) says that,for any proposition A, given any admissible evidenceand the proposition that the chance of A is x%,one's conditional credence in A should be x%. HumeanSupervenience (HS) claims that, among possible worldslike ours, no two differ without differing inthe spacetime-point-by-spacetime-point arrangement oflocal properties. David Lewis (1986b, 1994a)has argued that PP contradicts HS, and thevalidity of his argument has been endorsed byBigelow et al. (1993),Thau (1994),Hall (1994),Strevens (1995),Ismael (1996),Hoefer (1997), and Black (1998).Against this consensus, I argue thatPP might not contradict HS: Lewis'sargument is invalid, and every attempt – withina broad class of attempts – toamend the argument fails.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Bigelow, John: 1988, The Reality of Numbers: A Physicalist's Philosophy of Mathematics, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Bigelow, John, John Collins, and Robert Pargetter: 1993, 'The Big Bad Bug: What are the Humean's Chances?', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44, 443-462.
Black, Robert: 1998, 'Chance, Credence, and the Principal Principle', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49, 371-385.
Carroll, John: 1994, Laws of Nature, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Gaifman, Haim: 1988, 'A Theory of Higher Order Probabilities', in B. Skyrms and W. Harper (eds.), Causation, Chance, and Credence, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 191-219.
Hall, Ned: 1994, 'Correcting the Guide to Objective Chance', Mind 103, 505-517.
Halpin, John: 1994, 'Legitimizing Chance: The Best-System Approach to Probabilistic Laws in Physical Theory', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72, 317-338.
Halpin, John: 1998, 'Lewis, Thau, and Hall on Chance and the Best-System Account of Law', Philosophy of Science 65, 349-360.
Halpin, John: 1999, 'Nomic Necessity and Empiricism', Noûs 33, 630-643.
Haslanger, Sally: 1994, 'Humean Supervenience and Enduring Things', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72, 339-359.
Hoefer, Carl: 1997, 'On Lewis's Objective Chance: “Humean Supervenience Debugged”', Mind 106, 321-334.
Ismael, Jenann: 1996, 'What Chances Could Not Be', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47, 79-91.
Kim, Jaegwon: 1984, 'Concepts of Supervenience', reprinted in Kim 1993, pp. 53-78.
Kim, Jaegwon: 1987, '“Strong” and “Global” Supervenience Revisited', reprinted in Kim 1993, pp. 79-91.
Kim, Jaegwon: 1993, Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Kitcher, Philip: 1984, The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge, Oxford University Press, New York.
Kripke, Saul: 1980, Naming and Necessity, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Lewis, David: 1980, 'A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance', reprinted with postscripts in Lewis 1986b, pp. 83-132.
Lewis, David: 1983, 'New Work for a Theory of Universals', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61, 343-377.
Lewis, David: 1986a, On the Plurality of Worlds, Blackwell, New York.
Lewis, David: 1986b, Philosophical Papers: Volume II, Oxford University Press, New York.
Lewis, David: 1994a, 'Humean Supervenience Debugged', Mind 103, 473-490.
Lewis, David: 1994b, 'Reduction of Mind', reprinted in Lewis 1999b.
Lewis, David: 1999a, 'Zimmerman and the Spinning Sphere', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77, 209-212.
Lewis, David: 1999b, Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Loewer, Barry: 1996, 'Humean Supervenience', Philosophical Topics 24, 101-127.
Loewer, Barry: 2000, 'David Lewis' Humean Theory of Objective Chance', unpublished.
Oppy, Graham: 2000, 'Humean Supervenience?', Philosophical Studies 101, 77-105.
Roberts, John: 2001, 'Undermining Undermined: Why Humean Supervenience Never Needed to be Debugged (Even if it's a Necessary Truth)', Philosophy of Science 68 (Proceedings), S98-S108.
Robinson, Denis: 1989, 'Matter, Motion, and Humean Supervenience', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67, 394-409.
Rosenberg, Alex: 1992, 'Causation, Probability and the Monarchy', American Philosophical Quarterly 29, 305-318.
Singh, Simon: 1997, Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem, Walker and Company, New York.
Skyrms, Brian: 1980, 'Higher Order Degrees of Belief', in D. Mellor (ed.), Prospects for Pragmatism: Essays in Memory of F. P. Ramsey, Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 109-137.
Spohn, Wolfgang: 1999, 'Lewis' Principal Principle is a Special Case of van Fraassen's Reflection Principle', Unpublished translation of 'Lewis' Principal Principle ist ein Spezialfall von van Fraassens Reflexion Principle', in J. Nida-Rümelin (ed.), Rationalität, Realismus, Revision. Proceedings des 3. Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie, de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 164-173.
Strevens, Michael: 1995, 'A Closer Look at the “New” Principle, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46, 545-561.
Sturgeon, Scott: 1998, 'Humean Chance: Five Questions for David Lewis', Erkenntnis 49, 321-335.
Thau, Michael: 1994, 'Undermining and Admissibility', Mind 103, 491-503.
van Fraassen, Bas: 1989, Laws and Symmetry, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Vranas, Peter: 2002, 'Have Your Cake and Eat it Too: The Old Principal Principle reconciled with the New', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, forthcoming.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vranas, P.B.M. Who's Afraid of Undermining?. Erkenntnis 57, 151–174 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020986112495
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020986112495