Matthew Coates

It has been questioned why Wittgenstein wrote a significant amount on the foundations of probability in the Tractatus. In this article, I answer this question by claiming that the primary aim of Wittgenstein’s account was to criticize a Keynesian theory of probability and to provide multiple pieces of evidence to support this criticism. This claim then answers why Wittgenstein wrote such a significant amount on probability. He wrote it because it was salient at the time. While Wittgenstein was at Cambridge University, there was significant discussion of probability by his philosophical interlocutors, particularly Keynes but also Russell, Moore, and others. Wittgenstein thought he had the answers to the problems that were being discussed and set them out in the Tractatus.

There has been increased attention on how scientific communities should respond to spurious dissent. One proposed method is to hide such dissent by preventing its publication. To investigate this, I computationally model the epistemic effects of hiding dissenting evidence on scientific communities. I find that it is typically epistemically harmful to hide dissent, even when there exists an agent purposefully producing biased dissent. However, hiding dissent also allows for quicker correct epistemic consensus among scientists. Quicker consensus may be important when policy decisions must be made quickly, such as during a pandemic, suggesting times when hiding dissent may be useful.