Abstract

In my recent article on these pages I argued that members of the Austrian School of economics have adopted and defended a faulty definition of probability. I argued that the definition of probability necessarily depends upon the nature of the world in which we live. I claimed that if the nature of the world is such that every event and phenomenon which occurs has a cause of some sort, then probability must be defined subjectively; that is, “as a measure of our uncertainty about the likelihood of occurrence of some event or phenomenon, based upon evidence that need not derive solely from past frequencies of ‘collectives’ or ‘classes.’” I further claimed that the nature of the world is indeed such that all events and phenomena have prior causes, and that this fact compels us to adopt a subjective definition of probability.David Howden has recently published what he claims is a refutation of my argument in his article “Single Trial Probability Applications: Can Subjectivity Evade Frequency Limitations” . Unfortunately, Mr. Howden appears to not have understood my argument, and his purported refutation of my subjective definition consequently amounts to nothing more than a concatenation of confused and fallacious ideas that are completely irrelevant to my argument. David Howden has thus failed in his attempt to vindicate Richard von Mises’s definition of probability