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Grounding Probabilities from Below

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

What is at issue between the propensity and the long run frequency schools of thought about objective probability? Recent debate, although vigorous, has contributed little to our understanding of natural law or statistical inference. Yet there is at least one real question, none other than the much maligned topic of emergentism. Although this invokes a number of metaphysical views, such as the unity of science, emergentism primarily poses a question of matter of fact. Is it the case that every stable frequency, correctly represented by a mathematical probability, is ‘grounded from below’ by probabilities that apply to individuals? That is, does the frequency distribution in the population derive from probabalistic facts about the individuals that compose it? Or are there some stable frequencies that pertain to populations, but do not derive from probabalistic facts about members of the population?

At least two approaches to these questions have been developed.

Type
Part IV. Statistics, Probability and Likelihood
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 110 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

Research supported by National Science Foundation Grant SOC 7906928

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