Lottery judgments: A philosophical and experimental study

Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of two surveys that investigate subjects’ judgments about what can be known or justifiably believed about lottery out- comes on the basis of statistical evidence, testimonial evidence, and ‘mixed’ evidence, while considering possible anchoring and priming effects. We dis- cuss these results in light of seven distinct hypotheses that capture various claims made by philosophers about lay people’s lottery judgments. We con- clude by summarizing the main findings, pointing to future research, and comparing our findings to recent studies by Turri and Friedman (2014) and Friedman and Turri (2015).