Abstract
By Chance I mean physical probability as opposed to degree of belief. Good subjectivists do not believe in Chance, but this does not free them from the obligation to give a theory of chance. Ordinary and scientific discourse is full of chance talk, and if its function is not to be given straightforward naive analysis in terms of reference to real chances, then a more sophisticated analysis is in order. Subjective Bayesians have a pragmatic story to tell which is, by now, well known. Putative beliefs about chance are given a reading in terms of ordinary beliefs about the world. The sort of pragmatic analysis of meaning offered is of general philosophical interest, and invites close study by the philosophical community.
This paper further develops ideas presented in Chapter 5 of my Pragmatics and Empiricism. I am indebted to Robert Stalnaker for forcing me to face the problem of partiality. This research was partially supported by NSF grant SES-8605122.
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Skyrms, B. (1988). Conditional Chance. In: Fetzer, J.H. (eds) Probability and Causality. Synthese Library, vol 192. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3997-4_7
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