A Theory of Vague Expectation

在之前由美国国家科学基金会支持的工作中，货车弗拉森教授 研究了科学认识论的可能性 与生物学相容。 他特别关注 贝叶斯模型与传统认识论模型之间的张力 理论的变化和证据的容纳。 他发现了一 可能的和解形式通过理论的先验 对未来（后验）概率分布的期望。 对迄今为止发展起来的观点至关重要的是 通过概率函数，但在某种程度上， 模糊的、定性的和比较性的意见判断， 只承认数字概率作为限制情况。许多 相关的定理很容易从数值精确转置到 模糊的意见，但许多人不这样做。该项目的目的是， 货车弗拉森教授正在研究 不可或缺的子理论

In prior work supported by the NSF, Professor Van Fraassen has examined the possibility of an epistemology for science compatible with empiricism. He focussed special attention on the tension between Bayesian and traditional epistemological models of theory change and accommodation of evidence. He found a possible form of reconciliation through the theory of a priori expectations of future (posterior) probability distributions. Crucial to the view developed to date the modeling of opinion through probability functions, but in a way that allows for vague, qualitative, and comparative judgments of opinion, admitting numerical probabilities only as a limiting case. Many relevant theorems transpose easily from numerically precise to vague opinion, but many do not. The aim of the project which Professor Van Fraassen is now undertaking is to develop this indispensable subtheory.