ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the most familiar use of the term “probable”—what is sometimes called its epistemic use and two relational uses of this epistemic concept: the logical probability relation and the applied probability relation. In contemporary literature on the theory of knowledge, there appears to be considerable disagreement, if not confusion, about the way in which the concept of probability is to be applied to the beliefs, or to the possible beliefs, of any particular person or subject. Formal probability statements are necessary truths. But the need to refer to one’s total evidence concerns only probability statements. Some writers are interested in applying the probability relation to the set of beliefs that a person happens to have. But the theory of knowledge is concerned with applying the relation to the person’s total evidence and not with what it is that the person may happen to believe.
