Global Journal of Human Social Science, D: History, Archaeology and Anthroplogy, Volume 23 Issue 6

analysis. (Keynes, CW VII, p. 40.) 'Mock precision' is a debatable judgement and, naturally, does not apply to everything. Formal methods are admired precisely because they eliminate vagueness and imprecision, but they eliminate them only in the theory; theory can never eliminate vagueness inherent in the data or objects of study. A debate on the nature of the objects of study is surely past due, as mathematicians and engineers now have techniques to deal in a more formal way with vagueness (fuzzy logic). In the face of imprecise knowledge, Keynes favoured informal, verbal exposition of economic theory…” (Chick, 1998, p.1864). Contrary to Chick, Keynes NEVER favored an approach using “…informal, verbal exposition of economic theory.” He favored an approach based on his Inexact and imprecise approach to measurement and approximation, which was based on Boolean logic and algebra of which Chick is ignorant. Chick apparently never knew of the fact that Keynes had based his approach on Boole, who had developed “…techniques to deal in a more formal way with vagueness (fuzzy logic)”, in 1854. VI. C onclusions Carabelli, Chick, and Dow are simply ignorant of what Keynes was doing in the TP. We are led inexorably to the same conclusion first reached by Hishiyama in 1969-that the A Treatise on Probability had not been read. The only possible modification that I might consider making to Hishiyama’s 1969 summary is that only very tiny, small pieces of chapters III, IV, VI and XXVI of the TP were examined, in a very poor fashion by economists and philosophers like Ramsey, Good, Misak and Bateman, who were looking for some “new” angle that they could stick in an article that they had submitted for journal publication. After publication, they would become “experts” on Keynes’s logical theory of probability and A Treatise on Probability. My judgment is that Carabelli, Chick, and Dow looked through the TP in a random fashion, much like the approach used of F P Ramsey in 1922 and 1926 which led him to claim that there was an axiom I in the TP that is completely fictional and existed only as a figment of Ramsey’s imagination (Ramsey, 1922, p.3). This would lead them to believe that Keynes had made all types of mistakes, was unclear or ambiguous, or confused: “As I have already noted, these doctrines were not always explicit and expressed in univocal and coherent form. Hence the necessity not only of a close reading of Keynes’s text, but also of a sort of systematic reconstruction of Keynes’s approach to key epistemological topics, together with an attempt to clarify his position within its historical intellectual context.” (Carabelli, 1988, p.23) Carabelli’s “systematic reconstruction” led her to assert that Keynes’s new logic, first noted by Hishiyama, was an ordinary discourse language logic written out in English. This is exactly the WRONG way to read Keynes’s TP. Until Keynes’s technical and analytic structure is grasped and mastered (from Boole), I do not see how it is possible for any historian, philosopher or economist in the rest of the 21st century to have any chance at all of grasping what is actually a masterpiece, which was based on a previous masterpiece by Boole. One is left to read the incomprehensible assertions contained in the work of, for a few examples, the Bateman’s, Blackburn’s, Davis’s, Clarke’s, Gerrard’s, Misak’s, and Winslow’s. ALL of this work is based on the illusions, delusions, and hallucinations of F P Ramsey about some supposed Axiom I that never existed in reality. Again see Ramsey, 1922, p.3. © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue VI Version I 5 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 D Pace Carabelli and Dow, There is No Common Discourse Language Logic in Keynes’s A Treatise on Probability A cknowledgement I want to thank the referees for their detailed comments. R eferences R éférences R eferencias 1. Arthmar, Rogério and Brady, Michael E. (2016). "The Keynes-Knight and the de Finetti- Savage’s approaches to probability: an economic interpretation". History of Economic Ideas, XXIV (1), 105-124. 2. Arthmar, Rogério and Brady, Michael E. (2018). On the Subjective Theory of Probability: The Keynes – Townshend exchanges of 1937 and 1938. History of Economic Thought and Policy, 18-2, pp.55-74. 3. Bateman, B. (1987). Keynes’s changing conception of probability. Economics and Philosophy, 3, (March), pp.97-119. 4. Bateman, B. (1989).” Human Logic” and Keynes’s Economics: A Comment. Eastern Economic Journal, 15, no. 1(Jan.-Mar.), pp.63-67. 5. Bateman, B. (1990). Keynes, Induction, and econometrics. History of Political Economy, 22, no. 2, pp.359-380. 6. Bateman, B. (1992). Response from Bradley Bateman. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 6, Number 4, (Fall), pp. 206–209. 7. Bateman, B. (2016). Review of Frank Ramsey (1903- 1930): A Sister’s Memoir. History of Political Economy, pp.181-183. 8. Bateman, B. (2021). Pragmatism and Probability: Re-examining Keynes’s thinking on probability. Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Volume 43, Issue 4, (December), pp. 619 – 632. 9. Blackburn, S. (2021). Review of Misak’s Frank P. Ramsey. Mind, Vol.130, no.520, (October), pp.1367- 1375. 10. Boole, George. 1854. An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probability. New York: Dover Publications, [1958].