Philosophical Lectures on Probability

Philosophical Lectures on Probability contains the transcription of a series of lectures held by Bruno de Finetti (one of the fathers of subjective Bayesianism) and collected by the editor Alberto Mura at the Institute for Advanced Mathematics in Rome in

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SYNTHESE LIBRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Editor-in-Chief:

VINCENT F. HENDRICKS, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark JOHN SYMONS, University of Texas at El Paso, U.S.A.

Honorary Editor:

JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University, U.S.A.

Editors: DIRK VAN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University of Groningen, The Netherlands TEDDY SEIDENFELD, Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A. PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California, U.S.A. ´ JAN WOLENSKI, Jagiellonian University, Krak´ow, Poland

VOLUME 340

Bruno de Finetti

PHILOSOPHICAL LECTURES ON PROBABILITY COLLECTED, EDITED, AND ANNOTATED BY Alberto Mura University of Sassari, Italy

With an Introductory Essay by Maria Carla Galavotti

Translated by Hykel Hosni

123

Author

Editor Alberto Mura Universit`a degli Studi di Sassari Dipto. di Teorie e ricerche dei sistemi culturali Piazza Conte di Moriana, 8 07100 Sassari Italy [email protected]

Bruno de Finetti†

This translation was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Program for the Investment in the Future (ZIP) of the German Government through a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, as well as the Italian universities of Pisa and Sassari.

ISBN: 978-1-4020-8201-6

e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-8202-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007943065 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

c 

Printed on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springer.com

Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Editor’s Notice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii De Finetti’s Philosophy of Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv 1 Introductory Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Against the Axiomatic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Subjectivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Defining Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Proper Scoring Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 3 4 4

2 Decisions and Proper Scoring Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why Proper Scoring Rules Are Proper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Probabili