The Logic of Chance, 3rd edition: An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, With Especial Reference to Its Logical Bearings and Its Application to Moral and Social Science and to StatisticsVenn, John
Philosophy
The Logic of Chance, 3rd edition: An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, With Especial Reference to Its Logical Bearings and Its Application to Moral and Social Science and to Statistics
Venn, John
Chance; Logic, Symbolic and mathematical; Probabilities; Science -- Methodology
25. In the above remarks it will be observed that we
have been giving what is to be regarded as a justification of
his belief from the point of view of the individual agent himself.
If we suppose the existence of an enlarged fellow-feeling,
the applicability of such a justification becomes still more
extensive. We can assign a very intelligible sense to the
assertion that it is 999 to 1 that I shall not get a prize in a
lottery, even if this be stated in the form that my belief in
my so doing is represented by the fraction 1/1000th of certainty.
Properly it means that in a very large number of throws I
should gain once in 1000 times. If we include other contingencies
of the same kind, as described in the last section,
each individual may be supposed to reach to something like
this experience within the limits of his own life. He could
not do it in this particular line of conduct alone, but he could
do it in this line combined with others. Now introduce the
possibility of each man feeling that the gain of others offers
some analogy to his own gains, which we may conceive his
doing except in the case of the gains of those against whom
he is directly competing, and the above justification becomes
still more extensively applicable.
The following would be a fair illustration to test this
view. I know that I must die on some day of the week, and
there are but seven days. My belief, therefore, that I shall
die on a Sunday is one-seventh. Here the contingent event
is clearly one that does not admit of repetition; and yet
would not the belief of every man have the value assigned it
by the formula? It would appear that the same principle
will be found to be at work here as in the former examples.
It is quite true that I have only the opportunity of dying
once myself, but I am a member of a class in which deaths
occur with frequency, and I form my opinion upon evidence
drawn from that class. If, for example, I had insured my
life for £1000, I should feel a certain propriety in demanding
£7000 in case the office declared that it would only pay in
the event of my dying on a Sunday. _I_, indeed, for my own
private part, might not find the arrangement an equitable
one; but mankind at large, in case they acted on such a
principle, might fairly commute their aggregate gains in such
a way, whilst to the Insurance Office it would not make any
difference at all.
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