Emile, yeah, what “”justification” is is certainly a question, but what if we just assume a definition of just war and work from there? Could you not then look at the evidence of the other countries wrongs and so forth and come up with a probability?
FYI, you can reply to a specific comment, rather than just adding a new comment to the post. (Emile won’t have gotten this comment in his inbox.)
But you haven’t answered his concern. To assign probabilities, you need to be able to assign values to the various wrongs done by countries—at least relative values—and there is no agreement about even the relative value of wrongs. Never mind that different people have different ideas about what’s wrong at all, in most cases.
You could come up with a probability (I think the use of ‘prior’ in the OP is incorrect), but if anybody disagrees, they’re much more likely to be questioning your definition of ‘just war’ (or how to interpret various facts in light of that definition) than your use of Bayes’ Theorem.
Emile, yeah, what “”justification” is is certainly a question, but what if we just assume a definition of just war and work from there? Could you not then look at the evidence of the other countries wrongs and so forth and come up with a probability?
FYI, you can reply to a specific comment, rather than just adding a new comment to the post. (Emile won’t have gotten this comment in his inbox.)
But you haven’t answered his concern. To assign probabilities, you need to be able to assign values to the various wrongs done by countries—at least relative values—and there is no agreement about even the relative value of wrongs. Never mind that different people have different ideas about what’s wrong at all, in most cases.
Good point, so I added a second answer.
You could come up with a probability (I think the use of ‘prior’ in the OP is incorrect), but if anybody disagrees, they’re much more likely to be questioning your definition of ‘just war’ (or how to interpret various facts in light of that definition) than your use of Bayes’ Theorem.