Jossi Berkovitz (Toronto): “De Finetti’s Instrumentalist Philosophy of Probability”

Abstract: De Finetti is one of the founding fathers of the subjective school of probability, where probabilities are coherent degrees of belief. De Finetti held that probabilities are inherently subjective and he argued that none of the objective interpretations of probability makes sense. While his theory has been influential in science and philosophy, it has encountered various objections. We argue that these objections overlook central aspects of de Finetti’s philosophy of probability and are largely unfounded. We propose a new interpretation of de Finetti’s theory that highlights these aspects and explains how they are an integral part of de Finetti’s instrumentalist philosophy of probability. We conclude by drawing an analogy between misconceptions about de Finetti’s philosophy of probability and common misconceptions about instrumentalism.

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