Could you use Bayes Theorem to figure out whether or not a given war is just?
If so, I was wondering how one would go about estimating the prior probability that a war is just.
From my understanding of Bayesian reasoning, you'd just put a prior of 0.5; you're not supposed to do any reasoning or look at any evidence in order to determine your prior. You then use all the other evidence (have other wars been just? has the invading country allowed free access to evidence or does it act as if it's been hiding things? does it profit from the war? etc.) to update your probability.
So your use of "prior" seems technically incorrect here (though I'd be glad to be corrected if I'm wrong!)
Prior probability is what you can infer from what you know before considering a given piece of data.
If your overall information is I, and new data is D, then P(H|I) is your prior probability and P(H|DI) posterior probability for hypothesis H.
No one says you have to put exactly 0.5 as prior (this would be especially absurd for absurd-sounding hypotheses like "the lady next door is a witch, she did it".)
Could you use Bayes Theorem to figure out whether or not a given war is just?
If so, I was wondering how one would go about estimating the prior probability that a war is just.
Thanks for any help you can offer.