On the Shocking Ignorance of Economists of G. Boole’s Logical Theory of Probability in His 1854 the Laws of Thought: Keynes’s Logical Theory of Probability in the 1921 a Treatise on Probability Is Built Entirely on Boole

Abstract

Keynes’s logical theory of probability was NOT the first explicit and detailed approach to logical probability. George Boole was the first academic to provide an explicit, systematic and detailed logical probability approach in history. Keynes’s own logical theory was built on both the work of Boole and the work of William E. Johnson.

This paper will deal with the fact that there are no economists in either the 20th or 21st centuries who have the slightest inkling about how Keynes built his logical theory of probability and who were the scholars whom Keynes built his approach to logical probability on. For instance, M Friedman thought that Keynes was a subjectivist. This is a common error made on the part of orthodox economists.

However, an even greater lacuna occurs among heterodox economists,who are completely ignorant of the role of Boole.