UNCERTAINTY, COHERENCE, EMERGENCE

In a previous paper (Uncertainty and the Role of the Observer, co-authored with G. Minati and A. Trotta, Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the Italian Systems Society in publication by Springer), we focused on the deep epistemological contribution of the Italian mathematician Bruno de Finetti (1906 - 1985), from a systemic point of view. He considered the probability of an event nothing but the degree of believe of the observer in its occurrence, relating this degree of believe to the information available, in that moment, to the observer. He pointed out how, when considering probability, we need to focus on the role of the observer expressing the degree of believe and how S/He can construct a system of coherent probabilities. The purpose of this paper is to show how this subjective conception of probability is based on assuming a systemic framework, even in cases of conditional events. Regarding this, we underline how the fundamental conceptual and methodological tool is the well-known Bayes Theorem. With reference to this theorem, we will be introducing examples to show how its usage is not only crucial in generating probabilities suitable for the emergence of a system of coherent evaluations, but even able to explain some paradoxical aspects.