Richard Bevan BRAITHWAITE (1900–1990), English philosopher. - Lot 7

Richard Bevan BRAITHWAITE (1900–1990), English philosopher. Typewritten manuscript with a few handwritten corrections; Editorial Foreword; 9 pages and a quarter, folio size; in English. Preface to an essay on Keynes’s *Treatise on Probability*, published in 1921. Keynes began working on this treatise as early as 1906; it is the most important work on the logical foundations of probability. F.P. Ramsey, in a 1926 article, offered a constructive critique of it, and Keynes responded with a publication (1931) in which he stated that he was willing to concede that probability is concerned not with objective relations between propositions but with degrees of belief: “probability is concerned not with objective relations between propositions but with degrees of belief.” Ramsey believed that induction did not require justification, and was unable to convince Keynes otherwise. Braithwaite concludes that the debate on the status of induction remains open: “The debate on the status of induction, opened by Hume and given a new turn in Keynes’s *Treatise*, continues.”