ENGLISH

Nomic Probability and the Foundations of Induction

By John L. Pollock

Book information

Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Year
1990
ISBN
019506013X, 9780195060133
LCC
QA273 .P774 1990
Open Library ID
OL2208747M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
25 MB (26406868 bytes)
Pages
360\360
Scanned
yes
Time added
2011-08-31 04:54:40

Description

In this book Pollock deals with the subject of probabilistic reasoning, making general philosophical sense of objective probabilities and exploring their relationship to the problem of induction. He argues that probability is fundamental not only to physical science, but to induction, epistemology, the philosophy of science and much of the reasoning relevant to artificial intelligence. Pollock's main claim is that the fundamental notion of probability is nomic--that is, it involves the notion of natural law, valid across possible worlds. The various epistemic and statistical conceptions of probability, he demonstrates, are derived from this nomic notion. He goes on to provide a theory of statistical induction, an account of computational principles allowing some probabilities to be derived from others, an account of acceptance rules, and a theory of direct inference.

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