Truth and probability

Ramsey E. Ramsey

Frank P. Ramsey

pp. 21-45

in: Horacio Arló-Costa, Vincent F. Hendricks, Johan van Benthem (eds), Readings in formal epistemology, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

This chapter is a reprint of Frank P. Ramsey's seminal paper "Truth and Probability" written in 1926 and first published posthumous in the 1931 The Foundations of Mathematics and other Logical Essays, ed. R.B. Braithwaite, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.The paper lays the foundations for the modern theory of subjective probability. Ramsey argues that degrees of beliefs may be measured by the acceptability of odds on bets, and provides a set of decision theoretic axioms, which jointly imply the laws of probability.