McGee notably provided a putative counterexample to Modus Ponens. McGee’s puzzle is based on a scenario involving three candidates running for president in the 1980 United States elections. We will present a slightly modified version of McGee’s election scenario, in which the probability of one of the candidates (i.e., Ronald Reagan) winning is reduced to a conveniently low value. As we will see, two ways out of the puzzle, suggested by Fulda and Paoli respectively, do not survive this minor change in the scenario. In addition, we will point to the fact that our modified election scenario also gives rise to a lottery-style paradox.
In this paper, we will present and discuss one of the puzzles notably put forward by McGee (1985). This puzzle is based on an election scenario involving three candidates running for United States president in 1980, namely Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and John Anderson.
We will carefully reconstruct the line of argument followed by McGee himself, according to which the puzzle should be interpreted as a counterexample to the principle of Modus Ponens. In doing so, special attention will be given to the key assumptions needed to reach…
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