Revenge of the Lockeans

It’s plausible that you cannot know, or be justified in believing that your lottery ticket is a loser solely on the basis of the odds involved. I argue that extant views which deliver this result fall prey to a revenge problem. They entail that if you believe that your ticket is a winner on the basis of the astronomically low odds of it being a winner, your belief would be just as justified as in the case where you believe that it is a loser. This seems absurd. I examine two ways of escaping the revenge problem. The first solution aims to vindicate the intuition that one is more justified in believing that one’s ticket is a loser than that it is a winner. I argue that the axiological assumptions required for this solution are unmotivated and implausible. The second solution is error-theoretic in nature. It concedes that one would be equally justified in believing that one’s ticket is a loser or a winner, but maintains that the former belief manifests greater epistemic value. The fact that it is epistemically better to believe that one’s ticket is a loser, rather than a winner, explains the relevant intuitions.