Concepts of randomness

Journal of Philosophical Logic 1 (3/4):395 - 414 (1972)
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Abstract

I. INTRODUCTION The notion of randomness has always been rather perplexing. Altho it is frequently used in natural and social science, both technically a informally, it seems to have been somewhat neglected by philosophers o science ever since the discussion of the foundations of the so-called fre- quency theory of probability, in which it was assigned a basic role, faded. Yet this discussion is of such significance that any attempt clarifying the notion of randomness will have to relate to it. After a fe preliminary remarks on some of the problems and puzzles of randomne I shall, therefore, expound and discuss a concept of random distribution of a property in classes and sequences, defined in terms of relative f quencies and their limits. Because of certain shortcomings of this conce it appears advisable to turn to probabilities, in terms of which a qu different concept, viz., that of random conjunction of properties, can rea ily be defined as stochastic independence. This concept still has featu clashing with the ordinary sense of 'randomness' which become ma fest in cases where certain probabilities assume extreme values. However when we take measures defined in information theory as measuring the degree of randomness, to which purpose they lend themselves parti larly well, we find that these seemingly troublesome cases are rath harmless. A by-product of the discussion of measures of randomnes the concept of primitive randomness. The conclusion points out som further problems.

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The Problem of the Reference Class.Peter Kirschenmann - 1975 - Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 4 (5):289-299.

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References found in this work

The Logic of Scientific Discovery.K. Popper - 1959 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 10 (37):55-57.
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits.Bertrand Russell - 1948 - London and New York: Routledge.
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits.Bertrand Russell - 1948 - New York, USA: Simon and Schuster.
[Introduction].O. H. Mitchell & J. Venn - 1884 - Mind 9 (34):321-322.
Probability and Scientific Inference.G. Spencer Brown - 1958 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 9 (35):251-255.

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