Ken Levy

Baumann on the Monty Hall problem and single-case probabilities

Peter Baumann uses the Monty Hall game to demonstrate that probabilities cannot be meaningfully applied to individual games. Baumann draws from this first conclusion a second: in a single game, it is not necessarily rational to switch from the door that I have initially chosen to the door that Monty Hall did not open. After challenging Baumann’s particular arguments for these conclusions, I argue that there is a deeper problem with his position: it rests on the false assumption that what justifies the switching strategy is its leading me to win a greater percentage of the time. In fact, what justifies the switching strategy is not any statistical result over the long run but rather the “causal structure” intrinsic to each individual game itself. Finally, I argue that an argument by Hilary Putnam will not help to save Baumann’s second conclusion above.

Trying to Make Sense of Criminal Attempts

Prof Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov’s A Philosophy of Criminal Attempts: The Subjective Approach is a novel, insightful and ambitious theory of attempts. While Prof Donnelly-Lazarov covers many different issues, her three principal aims are to explain what exactly an attempt is, to situate attempts in action theory and to resolve some significant conceptual problems with criminal attempts. I will first present Prof Donnelly-Lazarov’s treatment of these very difficult issues and then offer a constructive critique.