To unify all the language and make things explicit: if you have n atoms, then there are 2^n possible states of the world (truth assignments to the atoms). Then, if you have a personal probability for each of the 2^n states (“complete joint distribution”, “complete table”), you can check consistency by summing them and seeing that you get 1. This is O(n) in the size of the table.
The question at stake seems to be something like this: does the agent legitimately have access to her (exponentially large) complete joint distribution? Or does she only have access to personal probabilities for a small number of statements (for example, a few conjunctions of atoms)? In the second case, there may be no complete joint distribution corresponding to her personal probabilities (if she’s inconsistent), exactly one (if the joint distribution is completely specified, possibly implicitly via independence assumptions that uniquely determine it), or infinitely many.
Oh, thanks, you’re completely right.
To unify all the language and make things explicit: if you have n atoms, then there are 2^n possible states of the world (truth assignments to the atoms). Then, if you have a personal probability for each of the 2^n states (“complete joint distribution”, “complete table”), you can check consistency by summing them and seeing that you get 1. This is O(n) in the size of the table.
The question at stake seems to be something like this: does the agent legitimately have access to her (exponentially large) complete joint distribution? Or does she only have access to personal probabilities for a small number of statements (for example, a few conjunctions of atoms)? In the second case, there may be no complete joint distribution corresponding to her personal probabilities (if she’s inconsistent), exactly one (if the joint distribution is completely specified, possibly implicitly via independence assumptions that uniquely determine it), or infinitely many.