The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Nitsche - Die Dimensionen der Wahrscheinlichkeit und die Evidenz der Ungewissheit
N. takes for his text a sentence which R. v. Meinong wrote (Gött. gel. Anz., 1890, Nv. 2, S. 56 if.) about "The Principles of Probability-Calculation" (Die Principien der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung), a work of Johannes v. Kries : "The physical phenomenon of supposing expresses itself not only in the quantity whose extremes are yes and no, but also in a second dimension, seeing that every supposition has a greater or less degree of certainty." He tries to examine what the expression "evidence of uncertainty" can mean. We know, e.g. that the probability of throwing a number greater than one on a geometrical die is 56; but what would be the probability of throwing a number greater than one on a die which we have before us for the first time, and which only looks like a geometrical die? He takes, also, other examples from v. Kries' book, and finds that we have to distinguish in every judgment with measured degree of probability three kinds of certainty: 1. The certainty of the valuation at equality of a series of judgments, through which all the possible determinations of a given thing-content are, by way of experiment, asserted under a given kind of conditions. 2. The certainty which falls on a given single phenomenon, or on a group of phenomena considered as one, through the valuation at equality of the (different possible) judgments. 3. The certainty of the computation process. In closing, N. examines R. v. Meinong's supposition that the conviction that a given memory image refers to an experienced reality, does not rest on immediate evidence, but on a supposition-evidence.