Open AccessPostscript to Richard Jeffrey’s “Conditioning, Kinematics, and Exchangeability”
Author(s) -
Carl Wagner
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
philosophy of science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.04
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1539-767X
pISSN - 0031-8248
DOI - 10.1017/psa.2022.1
Subject(s) - kinematics , context (archaeology) , confusion , exposition (narrative) , relevance (law) , generality , computer science , conditioning , commutative property , epistemology , mathematical economics , mathematics , philosophy , psychology , law , statistics , discrete mathematics , history , political science , psychoanalysis , art , physics , literature , archaeology , classical mechanics , psychotherapist
Richard Jeffrey’s Conditioning, Kinematics, and Exchangeability is one of the foundational documents of probability kinematics. However, the section entitled Successive Updating contains a subtle error involving updating by so-called relevance quotients in order to ensure the commutativity of successive probability kinematical revisions. Upon becoming aware of this error Jeffrey formulated the appropriate remedy, but never discussed the issue in print. To head off any confusion, it seems worthwhile to alert readers of Jeffrey’s paper to the aforementioned error, and to document his remedy, placing it in the context of both earlier and subsequent work on commuting probability kinematical revisions.