One hears increasingly from philosophers that statistical inference is a technical study that is well in control by statisticians and should be left to them; and one hears, increasingly, from mathematical statisticians that all this talk about interpretations of probability is so much philosophical frosting that is utterly irrelevant to the serious business of producing mathematical statistics. "The more interpretations of probability there are, the wider the scope of applications of our purely mathematical theories." The point of this paper is (...) to present, in detail, a situation in which an individual with given degrees of belief, given evidence, and given values, will have three different and contrary courses of action recommended to him, each according to one of the three most popular interpretations of probability. (shrink)

One hears increasingly from philosophers that statistical inference is a technical study that is well in control by statisticians and should be left to them; and one hears, increasingly, from mathematical statisticians that all this talk about interpretations of probability is so much philosophical frosting that is utterly irrelevant to the serious business of producing mathematical statistics. “The more interpretations of probability there are, the wider the scope of applications of our purely mathematical theories.” The point of this paper is (...) to present, in detail, a situation in which an individual withgivendegrees of belief,givenevidence, andgivenvalues, will have three differentand contrarycourses of action recommended to him, each according to one of the three most popular interpretations of probability. (shrink)

This collection represents the best recent work on the subject and includes essays by Clark Glymour, James H. Fetzer, and Wesley C. Salmon.

Coping with uncertainty is a necessary part of ordinary life and is crucial to an understanding of how the mind works. For example, it is a vital element in developing artificial intelligence that will not be undermined by its own rigidities. There have been many approaches to the problem of uncertain inference, ranging from probability to inductive logic to nonmonotonic logic. Thisbook seeks to provide a clear exposition of these approaches within a unified framework. The principal market for the book (...) will be students and professionals in philosophy, computer science, and AI. Among the special features of the book are a chapter on evidential probability, which has not received a basic exposition before; chapters on nonmonotonic reasoning and theory replacement, matters rarely addressed in standard philosophical texts; and chapters on Mill's methods and statistical inference that cover material sorely lacking in the usual treatments of AI and computer science. (shrink)

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “a Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” The alleged evidence has mounted that ordinary folk are prone to inconsistency, and particularly that they are prone to inconsistency when it comes to probabilistic judgments. I write “alleged,” because it is open to question whether the experiments that provide this evidence are well designed—in particular whether Quine’s principle of logistical charity has been followed. I also do so because (...) in some cases of probability judgments the untutored intuitions of ordinary people seem to be at least as good as, and perhaps better than, the intuitions of those who run the experiments. (shrink)

If someone comes to my house, saying, "Here is a bone; I hope Obrecht likes it," I might answer with a deductive argument: "You may rest assured on that score. Obrecht is a dog, and all dogs like bones; therefore Obrecht will like it." We may formalize this argument as follows: Let G be the bone, O be Obrecht, D be the class of dogs, B be the class of bones, and, finally, let L be the class of ordered pairs (...) such that x likes y. The premises are then: x ∈ D ⋅ y ∈ B ⋅ ⊃ ∈ L) G ∈ B O ∈ D. (shrink)

In dit boek neemt de Tsjechisch-Nederlandse geleerde Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670) een centrale plaats in. Met zijn filosofie en onderwijsleer wilde hij de menselijkheid in de samenleving bevorderen. Hij kwam ervoor op dat mensen met verschillende levensbeschouwelijke visies konden samenwerken om dit doel te helpen realiseren. Ook komen rozenkruisers en vrijmetselaars aan de orde, die reeds in de zestiende en zeventiende eeuw van zich lieten horen. Anders dan de kerken deden, manifesteerden zij een onafhankelijkheid van denken en een streven naar (...) meer menselijkheid in de cultuur.0In hun denken en spreken spelen ook de ideeën van Comenius een rol, direct of indirect, kritisch ondervragend of opbouwend, maar altijd inspirerend. (shrink)

In this work Henry Kyburg presents his views on a wide range of philosophical problems associated with the study and practice of science and mathematics. The main structure of the book consists of a presentation of Kyburg's notions of epistemic probability and its use in the scientific enterprise i.e., the effort to modify previously adopted beliefs in the light of experience. Intended for cognitive scientists and people in artificial intelligence as well as for technically oriented philosophers, the book (...) also provides a general overview of the philosophy of science for the non-philosopher by one of the leading authorities in the field. (shrink)

People have worried for many years — centuries — about how you perform large changes in your body of beliefs. How does the new evidence lead you to replace a geocentric system of planetary motion by a heliocentric system? How do we decide to abandon the principle of the conservation of mass?The general approach that we will try to defend here is that an assumption, presupposition, framework principle, will be rejected or altered when a large enough number of improbabilities must (...) be accepted on be basis of our experience. If I think that all swans are white, and a student claims to have a counterexample, I will assume that he has made some observational error. I will reject his result, and continue to accept the generalization. When a lot of people claim to have seen counterexamples, I will come around: to continue to accept the generalization would require me to accept too many improbabilities. (shrink)

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “a Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” The alleged evidence has mounted that ordinary folk are prone to inconsistency, and particularly that they are prone to inconsistency when it comes to probabilistic judgments. I write “alleged,” because it is open to question whether the experiments that provide this evidence are well designed—in particular whether Quine’s principle of logistical charity has been followed. I also do so because (...) in some cases of probability judgments the untutored intuitions of ordinary people seem to be at least as good as, and perhaps better than, the intuitions of those who run the experiments. (shrink)

These essays are characterized by meticulous argument in the analytical tradition. The book concerns matters of metaphysics in a broad sense: philosophy of mind and the problems of subjectivity; questions concerning nomological and statistical laws of nature; and, as we would expect, chance and induction.

In 'Een handvol filosofen' staan de filosofen centraal die sinds de oprichting van de Vrije Universiteit in 1880 aan deze instelling verbonden zijn geweest. Het gaat hierbij niet alleen om de inhoud van hun werk, maar ook om de personen zelf. Er waren filosofiedocenten die zich met de universiteit identificeerden en zich volledig konden ontplooien. Er waren er echter ook voor wie dit niet gold, die geïsoleerd of in gewetensnood raakten. Veel filosofiestudenten waren actief betrokken bij wat er in hun (...) faculteit gebeurde. Zij namen initiatieven, protesteerden soms tegen de gang van zaken en kozen partij in conflictsituaties. Sinds het eind van de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw verloor de Vrije Universiteit geleidelijk haar christelijk karakter. Tegenwoordig werken alle stafleden vanuit hun eigen motivatie mee aan een hoofdzakelijk seculier geworden universiteit, die ruimte biedt voor religieuze en levensbeschouwelijke diversiteit. (shrink)

Representatives from eight European countries compared the legal, ethical and professional settings within which decision making for neonates takes place. When it comes to limiting treatment there is general agreement across all countries that overly aggressive treatment is to be discouraged. Nevertheless, strong emphasis has been placed on the need for compassionate care even where cure is not possible. Where a child will die irrespective of medical intervention, there is widespread acceptance of the practice of limiting aggressive treatment or alleviating (...) suffering even if death may be hastened as a result. Where the infant could be saved but the future outlook is bleak there is more debate, but only two countries have tested the courts with such cases. When it comes to the active intentional ending of life, the legal position is standard across Europe; it is prohibited. However, recognising those intractable situations where death may be lingering and unpleasant, Dutch paediatricians have reported that they do sometimes assist babies to die with parental consent. Two cases have been tried through the courts and recent official recommendations have set out standards by which such actions may be assessed. (shrink)

There are a number of reasons for being interested in uncertainty, and there are also a number of uncertainty formalisms. These formalisms are not unrelated. It is argued that they can all be reflected as special cases of the approach of taking probabilities to be determined by sets of probability functions defined on an algebra of statements. Thus, interval probabilities should be construed as maximum and minimum probabilities within a set of distributions, Glenn Shafer's belief functions should be construed as (...) lower probabilities, etc. Updating probabilities introduces new considerations, and it is shown that the representation of belief as a set of probabilities conflicts in this regard with the updating procedures advocated by Shafer. The attempt to make subjectivistic probability plausible as a doctrine of rational belief by making it more flowery -- i.e., by adding new dimensions -- does not succeed. But, if one is going to represent beliefs by sets of distributions, those sets of distributions might as well be based in statistical knowledge, as they are in epistemological or evidential probability. (shrink)

The dominant argument for the introduction of propensities or chances as an interpretation of probability depends on the difficulty of accounting for single case probabilities. We argue that in almost all cases, the "single case" application of probability can be accounted for otherwise. "Propensities" are needed only in theoretical contexts, and even there applications of probability need only depend on propensities indirectly.