Questions tagged [probability]
The probability tag has no usage guidance.
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Isn't the notion that everything will occur in an infinite timeline an example of the gambler's fallacy?
I've seen a few different formulations of this, but the most famous is "monkeys on a typewriter" - that if you put a team of monkeys on a typewriter, given infinite time, they will eventually produce ...
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Question about conditionalization and probability
I am working on a problem set and I am not sure if I am heading in the right direction.
The scenario: "Suppose three identical boxes are presented to you, and you are told that one box contains two ...
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Is this general argument against immortality valid?
I found the following argument here (although the paper is about a different topic):
A General Argument Against Immortality:
The method of Theory Confirmation can be applied to the question of ...
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Inductive reasoning and probability: probability of the conclusion versus probability of the supporting relation?
It is often admitted that inductive reasoning has something to do with probability.
While in a ( valid) deduction the premises necessarily imply the conclusion, in an inductive reasoning the premises ...
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Prove the following facts about Conditionalization
Prove that when an agent conditionalizes on new evidence, her credence in a proposition that entails the evidence cannot decrease. That is, when H entails E, it must be the case that cr2(H) is greater ...
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Deterministic or stochastic universe?
Just a little bit before my graduation from computer science, I attended a course about computational intelligence, and my professor then challenged us to debate on whether the world/universe follows ...
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Bayes and unknown probabilites: is this reasoning from the failure of explanation a fallacy?
Bayesian probability is an interpretation of the concept of
probability, in which, instead of frequency or propensity of some
phenomenon, probability is interpreted as reasonable expectation
...
user38026
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What is the justification for the claim that observing something that is both a raven and black increases the likelihood that all ravens are black?
Suppose that I have access to a machine that allows me to input a positive integer (perhaps up to ten decimal digits) and the machine will -- depending only on the input -- output a statement.
If the ...
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Is there a system where it is impossible to tell the fundamental type of probability?
Premise: What does it mean to take Planck's constant to 0? When someone takes Planck's constant to 0 then they do not effective just substitute Planck's constant with 0. The actual procedure is to ...
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What is the procentual probability that we live in the objective reality independent of our consciousness rather than in some virtual reality?
I am aware than it is impossible to prove anything in real life. Therefore we can't prove that the picture of the reality we are percieving through our senses is a subjective picture of an objective ...
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Uncertainty and evidence
Under uncertainty, precise probability cannot be assigned, see my other question: How valid is assignment of probabilities when evidence is totally lacking, as in Pascal's Wager? In this case, either ...
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Humean supervenience and Quine
I am wondering if Quine would adopt the Lewis' Humean supervenience theory to make sense of probability. Quine is a subjectivist about probability (even though regarding probability in QM he thinks ...
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Two questions on the principle of indifference
(Sorry if it is not within the format of the site to ask two questions like this, please tell me if I should break it up into two separate questions)
The principle of indifference states that ...
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How does one argue for the rationality of assigning subjective probabilities in the context of Pascal’s Wager?
As a follow up from this discussion on a previous question I asked, I’m wondering how defenders of Pascal’s Wager/“strong” atheists who hold that the probability of God’s existence is zero justify ...
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How valid is assignment of probabilites when evidence is totally lacking, as in Pascal's Wager?
The SEP article discussing Pascal's Wager states,
Premise 1 presupposes that you should have a probability for God’s existence in the first place. However, perhaps you could rationally fail to ...
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What is conditional probability? [closed]
I need help understanding conditional probability. I was reading an answer here which talks about conditional probability. But, frankly I do not know what it is.
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Why do people argue in favor of IQs, while then encouraging people (of any IQ) to use hard work to obtain the same successes?
At the same time people will say (science included) that IQ is a very important thing -- while at the same time saying that people with lower IQs can do things that people with higher IQs can -- while ...
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David Lewis and probability
I have read a general overview on David Lewis in order to have an idea of his philosophical perspective and in particular about humean supervenience. I am wondering how Lewis considers probability in ...
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If time is emergent, how can time exist in a Christian heaven?
Many physicists say that time is an emergent property from quantum phenomenon, such as entanglement.
Many Christians theologians also posit that time will exist in heaven, forever.
Let's say that ...
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Is the event of death deterministic?
It's 5 months since I lost my dad in a factory accident. His manner of death is obviously the biggest tragedy of my life, but now when I contemplate about it, the Physics of the event seem so unlikely....
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Does it mean that argument from ignorance can be non-fallacious?
Particular type of "argument from ignorance" is "absence of evidence is evidence of absence."
I have proof that it's in fact true.
Does it mean that argument from ignorance can be right?
If not - ...
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How could Occam's razor possibly be used metaphysically?
Occam's razor, or the law of parsimony, states that the simplest explanation for any given data is most likely the correct one.
Some have attempted to use Occam's razor in a metaphysical sense, to ...
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Is it possible to enumerate metaphysical hypotheses?
Recently, I had an argument with someone who stated that the chance of experiencing nothing after death is extremely low. Their reasoning was that one can think of many more metaphysical realities in ...
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Does our knowledge increase or decrease when we assign 0.5 probability to our belief, after being presented with new evidence?
Suppose there was a girl who wanted to check if she was pregnant. She was relatively confident that she is NOT because contraceptives that she and her boyfriend used are very reliable. Also the ...
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Is there any correlation between Quine’s underdetermination and bayesian issues of old evidence and new theories?
Bayesianism has some faults some of which involve the problem of old evidence and the issue of new theories. Are these two problems linked to Quine’s underdetermination? Or are they contrasting it? ...
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Probabilistic, indeterministic and random in QM
This is a question about terminology used in QM since I need to clarify this aspect. Is “probabilistic” a synonym of “indeterministic”? And in case they are not synonyms, what do they exactly mean? ...
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Probability calculus and Quantum Mechanics [closed]
I am not an expert and probably this question highlights this. Anyway, is the probability calculus used in Quantum Mechanics? Does the concept of probability adopted in Quantum Mechanics satisfy the ...
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Distributions of outcomes in Quantum Mechanics
I have read an answer here about the probabilistic nature of QM and I am curious about why QM is able to predict only distributions of outcomes of an experiment. To be clearer, is QM’s inability of ...
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Why Quantum Mechanics states that nature is probabilistic? [duplicate]
I am new here and I am studying the philosophical implications of Quantum Mechanics. I read somewhere that QM and determinism are mutually exclusive and that QM involve a number of philosophers to ...
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Under what definitions of truth and knowledge (especially Bayesian) are 'definitely knowing' and 'certain' different
Under what definitions of truth and knowledge are 'definitely knowing' and 'certain' different? Apologies if too much of a semantic question, but I think we should agree that we can have a sense of ...
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About the advantages of the propensity perspective on probability
I am wandering what are the advantages of the propensity perspective on probability. Why would it be better to explain probability in physics? Except for the fact that it solves various problems of ...
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Can we infer the rarity of sapience in the universe by looking at the rarity of the universe itself?
This is similar to the anthropic principle, where we can make certain claims by looking at the conclusion: our existence.
We can see that our universe is huge and therefore rare. A smaller universe ...
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Finding desirabilities and probabilities in Jeffrey's Logic of Decision
I'm trying to solve problem 16 (Ch. 5) of Jeffrey's Logic of Decision.
The problem says:
Suppose that A and B are pairwise incompatible propositions, and
suppose that the preference ranking is as ...
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What's the difference between XY=F and XY=0 in Jeffrey's Logic of Decision?
I'm stuck solving problem 14 in Chapter 5 of Jeffrey's Logic of Decision.
The first part of the problem says:
Show that in presence of prob is nonnegative (prob X≥0) and prob
is normalized (T=1)...
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What is the relation between the propensity interpretation of probability and probability in physics?
I would like to know what physicists think about the propensity viewpoint.If this latter one is in line with physics and especially Quantum Mechanics. Otherwise, what is the most coherent ...
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If our world is mathematical، Does not this increase the probability of being complex as well?
Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis, posits that reality is a mathematical structure.
This mathematical nature of the universe, Tegmark argues, has important consequences for the way ...
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Would Popper have argued that a coin toss is indeterministic?
I know that Popper was an adovcate of the propensity theory of probability, i.e. probabilities are understood as properties of sets of generating conditions. Furthermore I (think) I have read that ...
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Philosophical way to look at classical interpretation of probability
I was thinking about the classical interpretation of probability. They make the assumption that determinism obtains in the natural world. Hence, probability is epistemic. Can I see that as a form of ...
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Is there a name for the fallacy: 1/100 chance == 100 times guaranteed success?
Let's say someone is playing a computer game in which the chance for some item to drop is 1 out of 100 each time he kills a monster.
The player concludes that if he kills 100 monsters then it is ...
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Question about the "catch-all" hypothesis as a response to the "bad lot" objection
In response to van Fraassen's "bad lot" objection, I have seen in multiple papers (and in the response of Lipton, from what I remember) refer to the idea of the use of a 'catch-all' hypothesis which ...
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What is frequentism?
I am studying for an exam and I ran into frequentism. Honestly, I don't understand anything about that. Is frequentism related to probability only? Why are probabilities understood as frequencies? I ...
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What is Quine's perspective on probability?
I am curious about what Quine's perspective on probability may be and if we can say that the quinean viewpoint on modality can be considered similar to his viewpoint on probability.
Is probability ...
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Is it problematic to use indeterministic models for deterministic processes
The title basically says it all. My question is whether it is problematic that deterministic processes such as coin tosses are modelled as indeterministic random processes by Frequentist statisticians....
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Why cannot the following theory be refuted by logic but is rejected because of lack of empirical support?
The following statements are taken from a book:
The man in the street, and also the philosopher K. Marbe, believe that after a run of seventeen heads tail becomes more probable. This argument has ...
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Combining causal and identity relations
Suppose I have the causal relation C causes E, and the symmetric identity relation E is (E1 ^ E2 ^ E3), which have the following probability functions: E = bC and E = E1 * E2 * E3 where E, C, E1, E2 ...
user34796
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Drawing from a box that contains all the Natural numbers
This question is basically about the fact that there exists no uniform distribution over the set of all Natural numbers.
Imagine a situation in which we would draw from an urn that contains one ball ...
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Observing a zero probability event
I am not a philosopher. Just curious. From a philosophical point of view, if one observes an event with zero probability, does this immediately lead to a contradiction? For example, if you have a ...
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Probabilty of a coin head on nth toss after a few coind head tosses? [closed]
Suppose, you have been flipping a fair coin and got coin head 5 times in a row. Now, what is the probability of getting 6th?
On the one hand, it is said that probability is 1/2. On the other hand, ...
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Questioning determinism (example)
Questioning the world's deterministic behaviour, I shall present an example which seems to defy any certainty about the recurrence of events and is (obviously) a result of faulty logic, but I would ...
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Please explain Good's solution to why we should make new observations
IJ Good's paper (1967) gives a solution to Ayer's problem on why we should make new observations.
I'm trying to follow the steps in his solution.
His assumptions are that:
There are r mutually ...
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