On the Impossibility That Any Academic Will Ever Understand Keynes’s 1931 Assessment of Ramsey’s Work in Probability, When Compared to His Own, Until Part II of the A Treatise on Probabilit y(1921) Has Been Read: Ramsey’s Subjective Theory of Probability (Precise, Exact, Numerical, Linear, Additive, Degree of Belief) Is a Special Case of Keynes’s Logical Theory of Probability (Imprecise, Inexact, Non Numerical, Nonlinear, Non Additive, Degree of Rational Belief)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Emmett Brady
Keyword(s):  
Rational Belief ◽  
Logical Theory ◽  
Degree Of Belief ◽  
Subjective Theory ◽  
Special Case

PRAGMATISM AND PROBABILITY: RE-EXAMINING KEYNES’S THINKING ON PROBABILITY

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-632
Author(s):  
Bradley W. Bateman
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Logical Theory ◽  
Subjective Theory

As we celebrate the centenary of John Maynard Keynes’s Treatise on Probability (1921), we are still faced with unresolved, fundamental questions about his foray into the philosophy of probability. One of these unresolved questions concerns whether Keynes (1931) later changed his mind in response to intense criticism from Frank Ramsey (1922, 1931) and abandoned the logical theory of probability. This essay draws from Cheryl Misak’s recent biography of Frank Ramsey (2020) to argue that Ramsey had an even wider influence on Keynes’s work than has been recognized, and that this influence was not just on his philosophy of probability but also on his economics. Understood in this fuller context, it seems even more clear that Keynes embraced and built upon Ramsey’s subjective theory of probability in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936).

Probability theory and epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Loewer
Keyword(s):  
Probability Theory ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Bayesian Epistemology ◽  
Dutch Book ◽  
Degrees Of Belief ◽  
Rational Person ◽  
Degree Of Belief ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Probabilistic Epistemology ◽  
Instrumental Goal

The primary uses of probability in epistemology are to measure degrees of belief and to formulate conditions for rational belief and rational change of belief. The degree of belief a person has in a proposition A is a measure of their willingness to act on A to obtain satisfaction of their preferences. According to probabilistic epistemology, sometimes called ‘Bayesian epistemology’, an ideally rational person’s degrees of belief satisfy the axioms of probability. For example, their degrees of belief in A and -A must sum to 1. The most important condition on changing degrees of belief given new evidence is called ‘conditionalization’. According to this, upon acquiring evidence E a rational person will change their degree of belief assigned to A to the conditional probability of A given E. Roughly, this rule says that the change should be minimal while accommodating the new evidence. There are arguments, ‘Dutch book arguments’, that are claimed to demonstrate that failure to satisfy these conditions makes a person who acts on their degrees of belief liable to perform actions that necessarily frustrate their preferences. Radical Bayesian epistemologists claim that rationality is completely characterized by these conditions. A more moderate view is that Bayesian conditions should be supplemented by other conditions specifying rational degrees of belief. Support for Bayesian epistemology comes from the fact that various aspects of scientific method can be grounded in satisfaction of Bayesian conditions. Further, it can be shown that there is a close connection between having true belief as an instrumental goal and satisfaction of the Bayesian conditions. Some critics of Bayesian epistemology reject the probabilistic conditions on rationality as unrealistic. They say that people do not have precise degrees of belief and even if they did it would not be possible in general to satisfy the conditions. Some go further and reject the conditions themselves. Others claim that the conditions are much too weak to capture rationality and that in fact almost any reasoning can be characterized so as to satisfy them. The extent to which Bayesian epistemology contributes to traditional epistemological concerns of characterizing knowledge and methods for obtaining knowledge is controversial.

scholarly journals Probability functions, belief functions and infinite regresses

Synthese ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Atkinson ◽  
Jeanne Peijnenburg
Keyword(s):  
Rational Belief ◽  
Belief Functions ◽  
Probability Functions ◽  
Degree Of Belief

Abstract In a recent paper Ronald Meester and Timber Kerkvliet argue by example that infinite epistemic regresses have different solutions depending on whether they are analyzed with probability functions or with belief functions. Meester and Kerkvliet give two examples, each of which aims to show that an analysis based on belief functions yields a different numerical outcome for the agent’s degree of rational belief than one based on probability functions. In the present paper we however show that the outcomes are the same. The only way in which probability functions and belief functions can yield different solutions for the agent’s degree of belief is if they are applied to different examples, i.e. to different situations in which the agent finds himself.

Extreme self-sacrifice beyond fusion: Moral expansiveness and the special case of allyship

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Crimston ◽  
Matthew J. Hornsey
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Biological Markers ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Relevant Dimension ◽  
Special Case

AbstractAs a general theory of extreme self-sacrifice, Whitehouse's article misses one relevant dimension: people's willingness to fight and die in support of entities not bound by biological markers or ancestral kinship (allyship). We discuss research on moral expansiveness, which highlights individuals’ capacity to self-sacrifice for targets that lie outside traditional in-group markers, including racial out-groups, animals, and the natural environment.

Determination of the phase structure of polymerblends by electron microscopy

1978 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 492-493
Author(s):  
Dr. G. Kaemof
Keyword(s):  
Screw Extruder ◽  
Electron Microscopic ◽  
Thin Sections ◽  
Single Screw Extruder ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Twin Screw ◽  
Special Case ◽  
Microscopic Investigations

A mixture of polycarbonate (PC) and styrene-acrylonitrile-copolymer (SAN) represents a very good example for the efficiency of electron microscopic investigations concerning the determination of optimum production procedures for high grade product properties.The following parameters have been varied:components of charge (PC : SAN 50 : 50, 60 : 40, 70 : 30), kind of compounding machine (single screw extruder, twin screw extruder, discontinuous kneader), mass-temperature (lowest and highest possible temperature).The transmission electron microscopic investigations (TEM) were carried out on ultra thin sections, the PC-phase of which was selectively etched by triethylamine.The phase transition (matrix to disperse phase) does not occur - as might be expected - at a PC to SAN ratio of 50 : 50, but at a ratio of 65 : 35. Our results show that the matrix is preferably formed by the components with the lower melting viscosity (in this special case SAN), even at concentrations of less than 50 %.

Test Validation Without Measurement

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 204-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Lacot ◽  
Mohammad H. Afzali ◽  
Stéphane Vautier
Keyword(s):  
Test Data ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Test Validation ◽  
Clinical Tests ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Power Of Test ◽  
Memory Accuracy ◽  
Social Uses ◽  
Special Case

Abstract. Test validation based on usual statistical analyses is paradoxical, as, from a falsificationist perspective, they do not test that test data are ordinal measurements, and, from the ethical perspective, they do not justify the use of test scores. This paper (i) proposes some basic definitions, where measurement is a special case of scientific explanation; starting from the examples of memory accuracy and suicidality as scored by two widely used clinical tests/questionnaires. Moreover, it shows (ii) how to elicit the logic of the observable test events underlying the test scores, and (iii) how the measurability of the target theoretical quantities – memory accuracy and suicidality – can and should be tested at the respondent scale as opposed to the scale of aggregates of respondents. (iv) Criterion-related validity is revisited to stress that invoking the explanative power of test data should draw attention on counterexamples instead of statistical summarization. (v) Finally, it is argued that the justification of the use of test scores in specific settings should be part of the test validation task, because, as tests specialists, psychologists are responsible for proposing their tests for social uses.

Impact of Digitalization on Service Work in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services: An Empirical Study in Tax Consultancies

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 209-222
Author(s):  
Philipp K. Görs ◽  
Henning Hummert ◽  
Anne Traum ◽  
Friedemann W. Nerdinger
Keyword(s):  
Work Engagement ◽  
Service Work ◽  
Psychological Consequences ◽  
Business Services ◽  
Knowledge Intensive Business Services ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Special Case

Digitalization is a megatrend, but there is relatively little knowledge about its consequences for service work in general and specifically in knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). We studied the impact of digitalization on psychological consequences for employees in tax consultancies as a special case of KIBS. We compare two tax consulting jobs with very different job demands, those of tax consultants (TCs) and assistant tax consultants (ATCs). The results show that the extent of digitalization at the workplace level for ATCs correlates significantly positively with their job satisfaction. For TCs, the same variable correlates positively with their work engagement. These positive effects of digitalization are mediated in the case of ATCs by the impact on important job characteristics. In the case of TCs, which already have very good working conditions, the impact is mediated by the positive effect on self-efficacy. Theoretical and practical consequences of these results are discussed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document