David Shier

The Two‐Envelope Paradox Resolved

In the standard version of the two-envelope paradox I am invited to play a game in which I may select one of two sealed envelopes. I am told (reliably) that both contain money, one twice as much as the other. After making my selection I am given the choice of swapping envelopes or sticking with my original pick. The paradox arises from the following reasoning, which gives the counterintuitive result that, whichever envelope I originally selected, it is in my interest to swap:

How can pictures be propositions

Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory of language holds that one fact can represent another, and that propositions are pictures of states of affairs. What makes a fact into a picture of a given s tate of affairs are the correlations between picture elements and objects and the correlations between relations among picture elements and relations among objects. But a problem sometimes raised is that propositions can’t be pictures, as pictures—unlike propositions—do not say anything. An interpretation (e.g. Anscombe’s) holds that the above-mentioned correlations do make the picture into a proposition. But this neither handles the objection, nor is it Wittgenstein’s view. Further, Wittgenstein’s own account faces serious difficulties in addressing these issues, and the Anscombe-type interpretation obscures this fact.