Conglomerability, disintegrability and the comparative principle

Rush T. Stewart*, Michael Nielsen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Our aim here is to present a result that connects some approaches to justifying countable additivity. This result allows us to better understand the force of a recent argument for countable additivity due to Easwaran. We have two main points. First, Easwaran's argument in favour of countable additivity should have little persuasive force on those permissive probabilists who have already made their peace with violations of conglomerability. As our result shows, Easwaran's main premiss-the comparative principle-is strictly stronger than conglomerability (and equivalent to disintegrability). Second, with the connections between the comparative principle and other probabilistic concepts clearly in view, we point out that opponents of countable additivity can still make a case that countable additivity is an arbitrary stopping point between finite and full additivity.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)479-488
Number of pages10
JournalAnalysis (United Kingdom)
Volume81
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2021

Keywords

  • comparative principle
  • Conglomerability
  • countable additivity
  • disintegrability
  • finite additivity

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