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Sleeping Beauty: Why Everyone Should Be a Thirder

Ackermans, Lennart B. (2024) Sleeping Beauty: Why Everyone Should Be a Thirder. [Preprint]

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Abstract

The last two decades have seen a heated debate between "halfers" and "thirders": those who believe Sleeping Beauty’s credence in a coin landing heads is 1/2 and those who believe it is 1/3 – as well as quite some alternative positions. This paper attempts to settle the debate in favour of thirdism. I present a new argument for thirdism which cannot be resisted using any of the previously used halfer strategies. My argument uses an analogy in which Sleeping Beauty has a lucid dream on each day. To arrive at thirdism, she uses an unproblematic type of Bayesian conditionalisation, the principle of indifference, and the principal principle. I argue that all of these reasoning steps should be uncontroversial. Finally, I argue that all published defences of halfism are untenable.

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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Ackermans, Lennart B.philosophy@ackermans.ch0000-0003-0071-2270
Keywords: Bayesian conditionalisation, epistemology, Sleeping Beauty, self-locating evidence
Subjects: General Issues > Decision Theory
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Depositing User: Lennart Ackermans
Date Deposited: 24 Mar 2024 20:32
Last Modified: 24 Mar 2024 20:32
Item ID: 23227
Subjects: General Issues > Decision Theory
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Date: 28 March 2024
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23227

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