Probability Interpretations - Subjectivism

Subjectivism

Subjectivists, also known as Bayesians or followers of epistemic probability, give the notion of probability a subjective status by regarding it as a measure of the 'degree of belief' of the individual assessing the uncertainty of a particular situation. Epistemic or subjective probability is sometimes called credence, as opposed to the term chance for a propensity probability.

Some examples of epistemic probability are to assign a probability to the proposition that a proposed law of physics is true, and to determine how probable it is that a suspect committed a crime, based on the evidence presented.

Gambling odds don't reflect the bookies' belief in a likely winner, so much as the other bettors' belief, because the bettors are actually betting against one another. The odds are set based on how many people have bet on a possible winner, so that even if the high odds players always win, the bookies will always make their percentages anyway.

The use of Bayesian probability raises the philosophical debate as to whether it can contribute valid justifications of belief.

Bayesians point to the work of Ramsey and de Finetti as proving that subjective beliefs must follow the laws of probability if they are to be coherent.

The use of Bayesian probability involves specifying a prior probability. This may be obtained from consideration of whether the required prior probability is greater or lesser than a reference probability associated with an urn model or a thought experiment. The issue is that for a given problem, multiple thought experiments could apply, and choosing one is a matter of judgement: different people may assign different prior probabilities, known as the reference class problem. The "sunrise problem" provides an example.

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