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
10. But when we turn to ordinary logic we may find
_universal_ propositions spoken of as modal. This must mostly
be the case with those which are termed necessary or impossible,
but it may also be the case with the probable. We
may meet with the form 'All X is probably Y.' Adopting
the same explanation here as has been throughout adopted in
analogous cases, we must say that what is meant by the
modality of such a proposition is the proportional number of
times in which the universal proposition would be correctly
made. And in this there is, so far, no difficulty. The only
difference is that whereas the justification of the former, viz.
the particular or individual kind of modal, was obtainable
within the limits of the universal proposition which included
it, the justification of the modality of a universal proposition
has to be sought in a group or succession of other propositions.
The proposition has to be referred to some group of
similar ones and we have to consider the proportion of cases
in which it will be true. But this distinction is not at all
fundamental.
It is quite true that universal propositions from their
nature are much less likely than individual ones to be justified,
in practice, by such appeal. But, as has been already
frequently pointed out, we are not concerned with the way
in which our propositions are practically obtained, nor with
the way in which men might find it most natural to test
them; but with that ultimate justification to which we appeal
in the last resort, and which has been abundantly shown
to be of a statistical character. When, therefore, we say that
'it is probable that all X is Y,' what we mean is, that in
more than half the cases we come across we should be right
in so judging, and in less than half the cases we should be
wrong.
11. It is at this step that the possible ambiguity is
encountered. When we talk of the chance that All X is Y,
we contemplate or imply the complementary chance that it is
not so. Now this latter alternative is not free from ambiguity.
It might happen, for instance, in the cases of failure,
that no X is Y, or it might happen that some X, only, is not Y;
for both of these suppositions contradict the original proposition,
and are therefore instances of its failure. In practice,
no doubt, we should have various recognized rules and
inductions to fall back upon in order to decide between these
alternatives, though, of course, the appeal to them would be
in strictness extralogical. But the mere existence of such an
ambiguity, and the fact that it can only be cleared up by
appeal to the subject-matter, are in themselves no real
difficulty in the application of the conception of modality to
universal propositions as well as to individual ones.
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