🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <330@mtnmath.UUCP>, paul@mtnmath.UUCP (Paul Budnik)
writes:

>> ... The strange thing, of
>> course, is that his model forces us to give up such common sense about
>> probabilities as "P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B)".
>
>Of course you can prove just about anything you want to if you are allowed
>to redefine basic mathematical terms.

Pitowsky claims that probability is *not* basic mathematics, but is
ultimately empirical. He makes the comparison with Euclidean geometry;
such "facts" as the parallel postulate may seem to be basic
mathematics, but there exist geometries in which it fails. It is an
empirical question as to whether Euclidean or non-Euclidean geometry
is most useful in describing the real world.

Pitowsky is proposing a nonclassical probability theory. It includes
classical probability theory as a special case, just as non-Euclidean
geometry includes Euclidean geometry as a special case.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY