The Oxford Handbook of Probability and Philosophy
Published on 8. September 2016
Book
Hardback
880 pages
978-0-19-960761-7 (ISBN)
Description
Probability theory is a key tool of the physical, mathematical, and social sciences. It has also been playing an increasingly significant role in philosophy: in epistemology, philosophy of science, ethics, social philosophy, philosophy of religion, and elsewhere. A case can be made that probability is as vital a part of the philosopher's toolkit as logic. Moreover, there is a fruitful two-way street between probability theory and philosophy: the theory informs much
of the work of philosophers, and philosophical inquiry, in turn, has shed considerable light on the theory. This Handbook encapsulates and furthers the influence of philosophy on probability, and of probability on philosophy. Nearly forty articles summarise the state of play and present new insights
in various areas of research at the intersection of these two fields. The articles will be of special interest to practitioners of probability who seek a greater understanding of its mathematical and conceptual foundations, and to philosophers who want to get up to speed on the cutting edge of research in this area. There is plenty here to entice philosophical readers who don't work especially on probability but who want to learn more about it and its applications. Indeed, this volume should
appeal to the intellectually curious generally; after all, there is much here to be curious about. We do not expect all of this volume's audience to have a thorough training in probability theory. And while probability is relevant to the work of many philosophers, they often do not have much of a
background in its formalism. With this in mind, we begin with 'Probability for Everyone-Even Philosophers', a primer on those parts of probability theory that we believe are most important for philosophers to know. The rest of the volume is divided into seven main sections: History; Formalism; Alternatives to Standard Probability Theory; Interpretations and Interpretive Issues; Probabilistic Judgment and Its Applications; Applications of Probability: Science; and Applications of Probability:
Philosophy.
of the work of philosophers, and philosophical inquiry, in turn, has shed considerable light on the theory. This Handbook encapsulates and furthers the influence of philosophy on probability, and of probability on philosophy. Nearly forty articles summarise the state of play and present new insights
in various areas of research at the intersection of these two fields. The articles will be of special interest to practitioners of probability who seek a greater understanding of its mathematical and conceptual foundations, and to philosophers who want to get up to speed on the cutting edge of research in this area. There is plenty here to entice philosophical readers who don't work especially on probability but who want to learn more about it and its applications. Indeed, this volume should
appeal to the intellectually curious generally; after all, there is much here to be curious about. We do not expect all of this volume's audience to have a thorough training in probability theory. And while probability is relevant to the work of many philosophers, they often do not have much of a
background in its formalism. With this in mind, we begin with 'Probability for Everyone-Even Philosophers', a primer on those parts of probability theory that we believe are most important for philosophers to know. The rest of the volume is divided into seven main sections: History; Formalism; Alternatives to Standard Probability Theory; Interpretations and Interpretive Issues; Probabilistic Judgment and Its Applications; Applications of Probability: Science; and Applications of Probability:
Philosophy.
More details
Persons
Alan Hájek is Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University.
; Christopher Hitchcock is J. O. and Juliette Koepfli Professor of Philosophy in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences at California Institute of Technology.
; Christopher Hitchcock is J. O. and Juliette Koepfli Professor of Philosophy in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences at California Institute of Technology.
Content
Alan Hajek and Christopher Hitchcock: Introduction; 1 Alan Hajek and Chris Hitchcock: Probability for Everyone--Even Philosophers; History; 2 James Franklin: Pre-history of Probability; 3 Edith Dudley Sylla: Probability in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Continental Europe from the Perspective of Jacob Bernoulli's Art of Conjecturing; 4 D. R. Bellhouse: Probability and its Application in Britain during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries; 5 Hans Fischer: A Brief History of Probability Theory from 1810 to 1940; 6 John Aldrich: The Origins of Modern Statistics: The English Statistical School; 7 Maria Carla Galavotti: The Origins of Probabilistic Epistemology: Some leading philosophers of probability in the 20th century; Formalism; 8 Aidan Lyon: Kolmogorov's Axiomatization and its Discontents; 9 Kenny Easwaran: Conditional Probability; 10 Richard Neapolitan and Xia Jiang: The Bayesian Network Story; Alternatives to Standard Probability Theory; 11 Terrence Fine: Alternatives to Standard Probability and their Motivation; 12 J. Robert G. Williams: Probability and Non-classical Logic; 13 James Hawthorne: A Logic of Comparative Support: Qualitative Conditional Probability Relations Representable by Popper Functions; 14 Fabio G. Cozman: Imprecise probabilities; Interpretations and Interpretive Issues; 15 Symmetry Arguments in Probability; 16 Adam La Caze: Frequentism in Probability Theory; 17 Lyle Zynda: Subjectivism in Probability Theory; 18 Jan Sprenger: Bayesianism vs. Frequentism in Statistical Inference; 19 Donald Gillies: The Propensity Interpretation of Probability; 20 Wolfgang Schwarz: Best System Approaches to Chance; 21 Antony Eagle: Probability and Randomness; 22 Roman Frigg: Chance and Determinism; Probabilistic Judgment and its Applications; 23 Michael Smithson: Human Understandings of Probability; 24 Stephen C. Hora: Probability Elicitation; 25 Franz Dietrich & Christian List: Probabilistic Opinion Pooling; Applications of Probability: Science; 26 Guido Bacciagaluppi: Quantum Probability; 27 Wayne C. Myrvold: Probabilities in Statistical Mechanics; 28 Roberta L. Millstein: Probability in Biology: The Case of Fitness; Applications of Probability: Philosophy; 29 Matt Kotzen: Probability in Epistemology; 30 Vincenzo Crupi & Katya Tentori: Confirmation Theory; 31 Michael G. Titelbaum: Self-Locating Credences; 32 Hannes Leitgeb: Probability in Logic; 33 David McCarthy: Probability in Ethics; 34 Paul Bartha: Probability and the Philosophy of Religion; 35 Eric Swanson: Probability in Philosophy of Language; 36 Lara Buchak: Decision Theory; 37 Christopher Hitchcock: Probabilistic Causation