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The Scope of Bayesian Reasoning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Henry Kyburg Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester

Extract

There is one sense in which Bayes’ theorem, and its use in statistics and in scientific inference, is clearly uncontroversial. It is an authentic, certified, theorem of the probability calculus, and even the founders of classical statistical inference, Fisher, Neyman and Pearson, were explicit about seeing no difficulty in the use of Bayes’ theorem when the conditions for its application were satisfied. For example, Fisher writes, “When there really is exact knowledge a priori Bayes’ method is available” (1971, p. 194).

Type
Part V: Bayesian Philosophy of Science
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

Acknowledgment for support of research is due to the National Science Foundation.

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