Morgenbesser’s Intuition, Infinitely Many Coins, and Substitution
Jingyi WangAbstract
While an indeterministic coin was in the air, you declined to bet that it would land heads. The coin landed heads. Morgenbesser intuited that if you had bet heads, you would have won. Goodsell (2022) argues, through a thought experiment involving infinitely many coins, that Morgenbesser’s intuition is mistaken. Crucially, he assumes the Substitution principle, according to which necessarily equivalent propositions have the same counterfactual consequences. I argue that Goodsell’s argument proves too much, by analysing a closely related thought experiment. My conclusion is two-fold. Goodsell’s original thought experiment fails to put pressure on Morgenbesser’s intuition. Yet my thought experiment, inspired by his, may succeed in proving Substitution false.