Probabilities

One central issue in philosophy of probability concerns the interpretation of the very notion of probability. The fruitful tradition of modern Bayesian subjectivists seeks to ground the concept of probability in a normative theory of rational decision-making. The upshot is a representation theorem, by which the agent's preferences over actions are represented by derived subjective probabilities and utilities. As the development of Bayesian subjectivism becomes increasingly involved, the corresponding representation theorem has gained considerable complexity and has itself become a subject of philosophical scrutiny. This dissertation studies systematically various aspects of Bayesian decision theory, especially its foundational role in Bayesian subjective interpretation of probability. The first two chapters provide a detailed review of classical theories that are paradigmatic of such an approach with an emphasis on the works of Leonard J. Savage. As a technical interlude, Chapter III focuses on the additivity condition of the probabilities derived in Savage's theory of personal probability, where it is pointed out that Savage's arguments for not requiring probability measures deriv