Principle of Insufficient Reason
Alternate name
Definition
A principle that was first enunciated by Jakob Bernoulli which states that if we are ignorant of the ways an event can occur (and therefore have no reason to believe that one way will occur preferentially compared to another), the event will occur equally likely in any way. Keynes referred to the principle as the principle of indifference, formulating it as "if there is no known reason for predicating of our subject one rather than another of several alternatives, then relatively to such knowledge the assertions of each of these alternatives have an equal probability." Keynes strenuously opposed the principle and devoted an entire chapter of his book in an attempt to refute it.
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