Probability: A Philosophical Perspective, Part II
In my last essay on probability I highlighted two ways probability can be interpreted. First it can be a measure of uncertainty in a deterministic world. Second it can be viewed as an accurate model of a genuinely ‘non-deterministic world’. This essay will critique both of them, and their implications for God, Scepticism, Science and more.
Um, remind me what this is all about again?
Here’s a brief recap.
A deterministic model might be a system governed by classical mechanics, perhaps a dice roll, but we model it with a non-deterministic model of the world (probability) where the probabilities measure our degree of uncertainty. The non-deterministic model is where there is genuine randomness at play, i.e. multiple observed realities are actually possible. The non deterministic model is essentially the rationale behind the current mathematical foundations of probability.
The Deterministic Model
The deterministic model has conceptual flaws. Identifying uncertainty with a number is not a well-defined concept. The process by which we create such as model is to observe many outcomes and hypothesise a distribution. As mentioned last time, in a deterministic world this model creates astonishingly poor predictions for each…
