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Full Idea
I think we are right to explain chance events, yet we are right also to deny that we can ever explain why a chance process yields one outcome rather than another. We cannot explain why one event happened rather than the other.
Gist of Idea
We can explain a chance event, but can never show why some other outcome did not occur
Source
David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], VI)
Book Ref
Lewis,David: 'Philosophical Papers Vol.2' [OUP 1986], p.230
A Reaction
This misses out an investigation which slowly reveals that a 'chance' event wasn't so chancey after all. Failure to explain confirms chance, so the judgement of chance shouldn't block attempts to explain.
| 13106 | Maybe there is no pure chance; a man's choices cause his chance meetings [Aristotle] |
| 13108 | Chance is a coincidental cause among events involving purpose and choice [Aristotle] |
| 13110 | Intrinsic cause is prior to coincidence, so nature and intelligence are primary causes, chance secondary [Aristotle] |
| 2215 | There is no such thing as chance [Hume] |
| 14804 | Is chance just unknown laws? But the laws operate the same, whatever chance occurs [Peirce] |
| 19252 | Objective chance is the property of a distribution [Peirce] |
| 23900 | Chance is compatible with necessity, and the two occur together [Weil] |
| 15560 | We can explain a chance event, but can never show why some other outcome did not occur [Lewis] |
| 20146 | 'Luck' is the unpredictable and inexplicable intersection of causal chains [Kekes] |
| 19671 | The idea of chance relies on unalterable physical laws [Meillassoux] |