Adlam, Emily (2024) Against Self-Location. [Preprint]
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Abstract
I distinguish between pure self-locating credences and superficially self-locating credences, and argue that there is never any rationally compelling way to assign pure self-locating credences. I first argue that from a practical point of view, pure self-locating credences simply encode our pragmatic goals, and thus pragmatic rationality does not dictate how they must be set. I then use considerations motivated by Bertrand's paradox to argue that the indifference principle and other popular constraints on self-locating credences fail to be a priori principles of epistemic rationality, and I critique some approaches to deriving self-locating credences based on analogies to non-self-locating cases. Finally, I consider the implications of this conclusion for various applications of self-locating probabilities in scientific contexts, arguing that it may undermine certain kinds of reasoning about multiverses, the simulation hypothesis, Boltzmann brains and vast-world scenarios.
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Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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Keywords: | self location; rationality; epistemology; credences | ||||||
Subjects: | General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > Decision Theory General Issues > Evidence |
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Depositing User: | Dr Emily Adlam | ||||||
Date Deposited: | 26 Apr 2024 22:40 | ||||||
Last Modified: | 26 Apr 2024 22:40 | ||||||
Item ID: | 23315 | ||||||
Subjects: | General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > Decision Theory General Issues > Evidence |
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Date: | 23 April 2024 | ||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23315 |
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