Re: counterexample to cox
Kevin S. Van Horn (ksvhsoft@xmission.com)
Mon, 24 May 1999 20:57:16 -0600
PAULSNOW@delphi.com wrote:
> There remain serious difficulties within the secondary literature
> about Cox, chiefly that his work came to be misinterpreted as legislation
> for the obligatory use of single-distribution probabilistic belief models.
> The real Cox espoused other views. [...] Trying to comprehend Cox filtered through
> some of his disciples is like studying Aristotle by reading Ayn Rand.
I don't know that Cox's views are really relevant. Ideas must stand or fall on
their own merits, not on whether they conform to some ancestral viewpoint. The
only relevant question is whether Cox's Theorem, or some derivative argument for
"the obligatory use of single-distribution probabilistic belief models," is in
fact a compelling argument for this position. I myself find Jaynes's arguments,
derived from Cox's and Polya's work, to be very convincing.