It is important to realise the fundamental position of probability in
science. At the very best, induction and analogy only give probability.
Every inference worthy of the name is inductive, therefore all inferred
knowledge is at best probable. As to what is meant by probability,
opinions differ. Mr. Keynes takes it as a fundamental logical category:
certain premisses may make a conclusion more or less probable, without
making it certain. For him, probability is a relation between a premiss
and a conclusion. A proposition does not have a definite probability
on its own account; in itself, it is merely true or false. But it has
probabilities of different amounts in regard to different premisses.
When we speak, elliptically, of _the_ probability of a proposition,
we mean its probability in relation to all our relevant knowledge.
A proposition in probability cannot be refuted by mere observation:
improbable things may happen and probable things may fail to happen.
Nor is an estimate of probability relevant to given evidence proved
wrong when further evidence alters the probability.
For this reason the inductive principle cannot be proved or disproved
by experience. We might prove validly that such and such a conclusion
was enormously probable, and yet it might not happen. We might
prove invalidly that it was probable, and yet it might happen.
What happens affects the probability of a proposition, since it is
relevant evidence; but it never alters the probability relative to
the previously available evidence. The whole subject of probability,
therefore, on Mr. Keynes’s theory, is strictly _a priori_ and
independent of experience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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