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Full Idea
Suppose you find in a hotel room a pack of cards in exactly standard order. Not surprising - maybe it's a new deck, or someone arranged them. Not so. They got that way by being fairly shuffled. The explanation would make the explanandum more surprising.
Gist of Idea
If the well-ordering of a pack of cards was by shuffling, the explanation would make it more surprising
Source
David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.7)
Book Ref
Lewis,David: 'On the Plurality of Worlds' [Blackwell 2001], p.133
A Reaction
[compressed] A lovely Lewisian example, that instantly makes big trouble for the (implausible) view that a cause is something which increases the likelihood of a thing.
| 13056 | Statistical explanation needs relevance, not high probability [Salmon] |
| 13057 | Think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies [Salmon] |
| 13060 | Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? [Salmon] |
| 16274 | If the well-ordering of a pack of cards was by shuffling, the explanation would make it more surprising [Lewis] |
| 16840 | To maximise probability, don't go beyond your data [Lipton] |
| 6756 | Probabilistic-statistical explanations don't entail the explanandum, but makes it more likely [Bird] |
| 6760 | An operation might reduce the probability of death, yet explain a death [Bird] |