Elga, Adam (2002) Defeating Dr. Evil with self-locating belief. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Dr. Evil learns that a duplicate of Dr. Evil has been created. Upon learning this, how seriously should he take the hypothesis that he himself <i>is</i> that duplicate? I answer: very seriously. I defend a principle of indifference for self-locating belief which entails that after Dr. Evil learns that a duplicate has been created, he ought to have exactly the same degree of belief that he is Dr. Evil as that he is the duplicate. More generally, the principle shows that there is a sharp distinction between ordinary skeptical hypotheses, and <i>self-locating</i> skeptical hypotheses.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Elga, Adam
Keywords:	self-locating belief, indifference principles, decision theory, de se belief, skepticism
Subjects:	General Issues > Decision Theory
Depositing User:	Adam Elga
Date Deposited:	12 Mar 2003
Last Modified:	07 Oct 2010 15:11
Item ID:	1036
Subjects:	General Issues > Decision Theory
Date:	August 2002
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/1036

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