Jaynes’ perspective on the historical behaviour of biased coins would make no mention of probability—unless he was talking about the history of the expectations of some observer with partial information about the situation. Do you see anything wrong with that?
I see nothing wrong with that. Similarly, if someone mentions only the atoms in my body, and never mentions me, there is nothing wrong with that. However, I am also there.
What I have pointed out is that seemingly unproblematic statements can indeed be made of the sort that I described. That Jaynes himself makes no such statements says nothing one way or another about this. There are different possible responses, including:
1) It might be shown that certain classes of factual statements about history, including the one I gave, are in fact in some sense relative, may incorporate a tacit perspective and therefore may be in that sense subjective. An example of such a statement might be a statement that an object is “at rest” rather than “in motion”. This statement tacitly presupposes a frame of reference, and so is in that sense not fully objective.
2) It might be shown that there was something wrong about the sort of statement that I gave as an example.
Jaynes’ perspective on the historical behaviour of biased coins would make no mention of probability—unless he was talking about the history of the expectations of some observer with partial information about the situation. Do you see anything wrong with that?
I see nothing wrong with that. Similarly, if someone mentions only the atoms in my body, and never mentions me, there is nothing wrong with that. However, I am also there.
What I have pointed out is that seemingly unproblematic statements can indeed be made of the sort that I described. That Jaynes himself makes no such statements says nothing one way or another about this. There are different possible responses, including:
1) It might be shown that certain classes of factual statements about history, including the one I gave, are in fact in some sense relative, may incorporate a tacit perspective and therefore may be in that sense subjective. An example of such a statement might be a statement that an object is “at rest” rather than “in motion”. This statement tacitly presupposes a frame of reference, and so is in that sense not fully objective.
2) It might be shown that there was something wrong about the sort of statement that I gave as an example.