Meehan, Alexander and Zhang, Snow (2020) The Borel-Kolmogorov paradox is your paradox too: A puzzle for conditional physical probability. [Preprint]

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Abstract

The Borel-Kolmogorov paradox is often presented as an obscure problem that certain mathematical accounts of conditional probability must face. In this paper, we point out that the paradox arises in the physical sciences, for physical probability or chance. By carefully formulating the paradox in this setting, we show that it is a puzzle for everyone, regardless of one's preferred probability formalism. We propose a treatment which is inspired by the approach that scientists took when confronted with these cases.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Meehan, Alexander alexandermeehan@princeton.edu Zhang, Snow xueyinz@princeton.edu
Additional Information:	Forthcoming in the December 2021, Issue 88(5) of Philosophy of Science, PSA 2020/2021 Proceedings.
Keywords:	Borel-Kolmogorov paradox; conditional probability; chance; null conditioning
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Depositing User:	Alexander Meehan
Date Deposited:	24 Nov 2020 23:57
Last Modified:	24 Nov 2020 23:57
Item ID:	18434
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Date:	23 November 2020
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18434

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