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Credence and self-location

Lewis, Peter J. (2009) Credence and self-location. [Preprint]

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Abstract

All parties to the Sleeping Beauty debate agree that it shows that some cherished principle of rationality has to go. Thirders think that it is Conditionalization and Reflection that must be given up or modified; halfers think that it is the Principal Principle. I offer an analysis of the Sleeping Beauty puzzle that allows us to retain all three principles. In brief, I argue that Sleeping Beauty’s credence in the uncentered proposition that the coin came up heads should be 1/2, but her credence in the centered proposition that the coin came up heads and it is Monday should be 1/3. I trace the source of the earlier mistakes to an unquestioned assumption in the debate, namely that an uncentered proposition is just a special kind of centered proposition. I argue that the falsity of this assumption is the real lesson of the Sleeping Beauty case.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
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Lewis, Peter J.
Keywords: Sleeping Beauty, self-location, centered proposition, thirder, halfer, conditionalization, reflection, Principal Principle, Dutch book
Subjects: General Issues > Decision Theory
Depositing User: Peter J. Lewis
Date Deposited: 27 Jan 2009
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 15:17
Item ID: 4435
Subjects: General Issues > Decision Theory
Date: January 2009
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/4435

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