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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2000 51(4):807-835; doi:10.1093/bjps/51.4.807
© 2000 by British Society for the Philosophy of Science
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Varieties of Propensity

Donald Gillies1

1 Department of Philosophy, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK. Email: donald.gillies@kcl.ac.uk

The propensity interpretation of probability was introduced by Popper ([1957]), but has subsequently been developed in different ways by quite a number of philosophers of science. This paper does not attempt a complete survey, but discusses a number of different versions of the theory, thereby giving some idea of the varieties of propensity. Propensity theories are classified into (i) long-run and (ii) single-case. The paper argues for a long-run version of the propensity theory, but this is contrasted with two single-case propensity theories, one due to Miller and the later Popper, and the other to Fetzer. The three approaches are compared by examining how they deal with a key problem for the propensity approach, namely the relationship between propensity and causality and Humphreys' paradox.


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