Richard Price, miracles and the origins of Bayesian decision theory

Geoffrey Poitras

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2013, vol. 20, issue 1, 29-57

Abstract: Following a brief overview of the contributions that Richard Price (1723 to 1791) made to the history of economic thought and related subjects, this paper examines the earliest known contribution to Bayesian decision theory: the reply that Price made to David Hume's skeptical argument against Christian miracles. Contrary to conventional presentations, this paper demonstrates that essential issues in the debate with Hume need to be properly situated within the broader philosophical and theological debates of those times. Price's primary application of Bayes's theorem to Hume's argument against miracles is also shown to be distinct from the conventional Bayesian approach to the interpretation of testimony. The ‘rational intuition’ used to motivate Price's prior distribution is compared with modern intuitionism and substantive differences are identified.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2011.565356

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