Friday, January 18, 2013

Lars Syll — How do we attach probabilities to the world?

There are no such things as free-standing probabilities – simply because probabilities are strictly seen only defined relative to chance set-ups – probabilistic nomological machines like flipping coins or roulette-wheels. And even these machines can be tricky to handle. Although prob(fair coin lands heads|I toss it) = prob(fair coin lands head & I toss it)|prob(fair coin lands heads) may be well-defined, it’s not certain we can use it, since we cannot define the probability that I will toss the coin given the fact that I am not a nomological machine producing coin tosses.
No nomological machine – no probability.
Lars P. Syll's Blog
How do we attach probabilities to the world?
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Similar to transmission mechanism in causal argument. No mechanism and the argument is just handwaving.

1 comment:

Ryan Harris said...
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