Patrick Suppes: Scientific Philosopher pp 109-133 | Cite as
Upper and Lower Probability
Abstract
Patrick Suppes’s vigorous defense of the centrality of probability and of the irreducibility of randomness or chance phenomena, especially in the province of quantum mechanical phenomena, his interests in axiomatization, and the viewpoints he developed through his fundamental work on measurement theory have encouraged and enabled him to study the interpretations and formal structure of probability and to deviate from conventional probability as axiomatized by Kolmogorov. With Mario Zanotti he has pursued the concept of upper and lower or interval-valued probability initially through a measurement-theoretic algebraic viewpoint on subjective probability and subsequently through its use in meeting the challenges to probability posed by quantum mechanics. We note our parallel initial efforts to develop a concept of upper and lower probability that can be used to represent comparative probability relations and our subsequent efforts to broaden the scope of probabilistic reasoning about empirical phenomena by modeling time-invariant, nondeterministic phenomena whose long-run time averages are either divergent or have behavior about which we are ignorant.
Keywords
Quantum Mechanic Lower Probability Subjective Probability Hide Variable Belief FunctionPreview
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