Inconsistencies in the argument leading to the rule of succession

S. V. Bhave

Statistics & Probability Letters, 1989, vol. 7, issue 5, 435-440

Abstract: While thinkers like Jeffreys (1983) and Swinburne (1973) find Laplace's Rule of succession to be quite acceptable, others like Keynes (1943), Kneale (1952) and Polya (1968) have found the argument leading to it to be inconsistent. Actually, once the argument is put in symbolic logical form, it becomes clear that the derivation of the Rule of Succession is impossible unless certain propositions used in the argument are given numerical values of probabilities inconsistent with the premises, or the difference of the levels (in Tarski's sense) of the languages in which the different propositions are made, is ignored.

Keywords: levels; of; languages; true; in; L; probable; to; degree; p; in; L (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1989
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0167-7152(89)90101-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:stapro:v:7:y:1989:i:5:p:435-440

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Statistics & Probability Letters is currently edited by Somnath Datta and Hira L. Koul

More articles in Statistics & Probability Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().