yncxhz 发表于 2009-8-27 00:11 
概率中的随机性是来源于事物的本质,还是来源于人类对事物认知的欠缺?如果是前者概率应该是真实存在的,如果是后者,概率迟早会消亡。
呵呵,愚以为yncxhz 思考地深刻。恐怕楼主在提出“概率这一基本概念”的问题时,其义并非简单指“概率的定义是什么”本身。而迄今为止的讨论,个人感觉,仿佛已开始渐趋“概率”意义的核心。
其中有一点仿佛是需要澄清的,即倒底何谓“随机”?倾听楼上几位的发言,感觉是将随机定义为“不可预见性”。个人认为,恐怕并非如此简单。一个人,纵然相信因果决定论,其仍可承认未来的不可预见性。而作为随机论的信仰者,则其重点在于,不承认“因果律”,至少是在微观领域(当然,对一个对某些事物相信存在因果律而对另一些事物则相信随机的人而言,这一边界定于何处仿佛也不那么容易)。正如yncxhz 所言,如承认随机论,则概率的存在似乎是必要的;但如相信因果决定论,那么,概率的命运即足可令人担忧了,呵呵。
不过,无论概率在数学的意义上其命运最终如何,其与统计在经济学上的命运恐怕更加不容乐观。个人同意的看法是,将数学方法引入经济学本身即是个错误,就如Mises所言,“数理经济学是死路一条”。
最后,引用Rothbard《What Is the Proper Way to Study Man?》一文中的一段,希望对楼主的问题的解答有所帮助(不会翻译,又无中文版,只能将就看吧,呵呵)。
Probability, Statistics, and TruthRichard von Mises's great classic,
Probability, Statistics, and Truth, effected a revolution in the nature of probability theory during the 1920s and 1930s. "Classical" probability theory considered numerical probability to be derived from "equal ignorance" about the potential events being considered: thus, the probability of obtaining a "three-spot" upon the throw of a die was considered to be "one-sixth" because there are six possibilities and we do not know if one possibility is stronger than another. Mises (the brother of Ludwig von Mises), demonstrated the contradictions of this approach, insisting both that the probability is
not one-sixth if the die happens to be loaded, and that the only way to find out if a die is loaded is by tossing it a large number of times. Thus was born the "frequency theory" of numerical probability, based on knowledge and not on ignorance. The frequency theory implies that to say the probability of a die showing "three" is "one-sixth" means that, if a die is thrown a great many times, the number of occasions on which "three" is obtained will approach one out of every six throws. But this means that numerical and mathematical probability theory cannot really apply to each single case, but only to the proportion of randomly-selected homogeneous events, as in tossing a coin or throwing a die. This fact is much more true of the unique, nonrandom events of ordinary human (and entrepreneurial) action. It becomes evident from Richard von Mises's fundamental work that mathematical probability theory can never be applicable to economics, or to any other study of human action.
At the present time, when mathematical probability theory is very heavily used in economics and sociology, the translation of the third German edition of Richard von Mises's work is particularly welcome. For Mises here refutes various modern criticisms of his theory and demolishes the attempts of such philosophers as Carnap and Reichenbach to establish a mathematical theory for individual cases, as contrasted to large homogeneous classes, of human actions.