Seventh Quadrennial Fellows

The classical interpretation of probability together with the Principle of Indifference are formulated in terms of probability measure spaces in which the probability is given by the Haar measure. A notion called Labeling Irrelevance is defined in the category of Haar probability spaces, it is shown that Labeling Irrelevance is violated and Bertrand’s Paradox is interpreted as the very proof of violation of Labeling Invariance. It is shown that Bangu’s attempt [2] to block the emergence of Bertrand’s Paradox by requiring the re-labeling of random events to preserve randomness cannot succeed non-trivially. A non-trivial strategy to preserve Labeling Irrelevance is identified and it is argued that, under the interpretation of Bertrand’s Paradox suggested in the paper, the paradox does not undermine either the Principle of Indifference or the classical interpretation and is in complete harmony with how mathematical probability theory is used in the sciences to model phenomena. It also is argued however that the content of the Principle of Indifference cannot be specified in such a way that it can establish the classical interpretation of probability as descriptively accurate, predictively successful or rational. 1 The main claims Bertrand’s Paradox, published first in [3], is regarded a classical problem in connection with the classical interpretation of probability based on the Principle of Indifference, and it continues to attract interest [17], [22], [2], [20] in spite of alleged resolutions that have been suggested in the large and still growing literature discussing the issue ([12] and [16] are perhaps the most well-known suggestions for