Chance as a Guide to Life: The Other Principal Principle

LSE Philosophy Professor Richard Bradley's paper 'Chance as Guide to Life: The other Principle Principal' has been published in the latest edition of Journal of Philosophy.

The paper shows that the sense in which chances are authoritative for both our choices and our beliefs is captured by a simple principal: that of two actions having the same choices, one should pick the action that confers higher chances on the better consequences. This principal turns out to imply much of what is agreed between otherwise different theories of rational attitudes to risk and, more broadly, to capture the sense in which rational agents are guided by their estimates of the chances.