Abstract
Abstract John Maynard Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability is the seminal text for the logical interpretation of probability. According to his analysis, probabilities are evidential relations between a hypothesis and some evidence, just like the relations of deductive logic. While some philosophers had suggested similar ideas prior to Keynes, it was not until his Treatise that the logical interpretation of probability was advocated in a clear, systematic and rigorous way. I trace Keynes’s influence in the philosophy of probability through a heterogeneous sample of thinkers who adopted his interpretation. This sample consists of Frederick C. Benenson, Roy Harrod, Donald C. Williams, Henry E. Kyburg and David Stove. The ideas of Keynes prove to be adaptable to their diverse theories of probability. My discussion indicates both the robustness of Keynes’s probability theory and the importance of its influence on the philosophers whom I describe. I also discuss the Problem of the Priors. I argue that none of those I discuss have obviously improved on Keynes’s theory with respect to this issue.
Highlights
In A Treatise on Probability, John Maynard Keynes (1921) provided the first systematic, subtle and self-conscious theory of what philosophers call ‘logical probability’
This thesis is that probability is an evidential relation holding between an ordered pair of sets of statements
Most contemporary philosophers of probability are pluralists: they adopt different interpretations for different probability statements. They might adopt frequentist interpretations of the use of ‘probability’ in scientific theories but another interpretation for appraising theories’ evidential support. For both the uses of ‘probability’ in scientific theories and these theories’ appraisals, we should typically interpret the term as referring to an evidential relation between a hypothesis and what Benenson called ‘total statistical evidence’
Summary
In A Treatise on Probability, John Maynard Keynes (1921) provided the first systematic, subtle and self-conscious theory of what philosophers call ‘logical probability’. I shall focus on a single thesis by Keynes and trace its influence. This thesis is that probability is an evidential relation holding between an ordered pair of sets of statements. Modern logicians generally define an ‘argument’ to be an ordered pair of sets of statements.1 Another way of understanding Keynes’s thesis is that probability is a feature of arguments. (1) Keynes’s relationism influenced an intellectually diverse group of philosophers of probability. This variety indicates the robustness of relationism. I shall begin by explaining relationism, before discussing its influence among a variety of philosophers. My sample was chosen using criteria of (a) influence from Keynes, (b) the differences among the philosophers and (c) the extent to which they have not been discussed by historians. My sample is not exhaustive, but it will establish my theses
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