Correcting Some Historical Oversights and Lacunas in the History of Decision Science Regarding the Contributions of George Boole (1854), John Maynard Keynes (1908, 1921), and Theodore Hailperin (1986) Made by the Proponents of the 'Modern' Multiple Priors/Choquet Expected Utility Approaches to Non Additive Probability

Abstract

This paper examines the historical oversights contained in one of P Wakker’s articles on Uncertainty that is contained in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (2008).The same error is incorporated in all of his other articles and books written on this topic, so it is representative of his understanding of the current history of decision making.The conclusion reached in this reexamination of the historical record is that Wakker, like all other economists and decision theorists, is totally and completely unaware of the major decision theory innovations made by George Boole,J M Keynes, and Theodore Hailperin in the 19th and 20th Centuries.It is also demonstrated that Adam Smith was a proponent of interval estimates who recognized the very limited applicability of the calculus of probabilities