I argue that a popular view about self-locating evidence implies that there are cases in which agents have surprisingly strong evidence for their own reincarnation. The central case is an ‘Immortal Beauty' scenario, modelled after the well-known Sleeping Beauty puzzle. I argue that if the popular ‘thirder’ solution to the puzzle is correct, then Immortal Beauty should be confident that she's going to be reincarnated. The essay also examines another pro-reincarnation argument due to Michael Huemer (2021). I argue that his (...) argument fails, and that my argument establishes an alternative way in which mere existence can be evidence for reincarnation. I then examine whether my result generalizes. (shrink)

We present a new argument for the claim that in the Sleeping Beauty problem, the probability that the coin comes up heads is 1/3. Our argument depends on a principle for the updating of probabilities that we call ‘generalized conditionalization’, and on a species of generalized conditionalization we call ‘synchronic conditionalization on old information’. We set forth a rationale for the legitimacy of generalized conditionalization, and we explain why our new argument for thirdism is immune to two attacks that Pust (...) (Synthese 160:97–101, 2008) has leveled at other arguments for thirdism. (shrink)

In “Generalized Conditionalization and the Sleeping Beauty Problem,” Anna Mahtani and I offer a new argument for thirdism that relies on what we call “generalized conditionalization.” Generalized conditionalization goes beyond conventional conditionalization in two respects: first, by sometimes deploying a space of synchronic, essentially temporal, candidate-possibilities that are not “prior” possibilities; and second, by allowing for the use of preliminary probabilities that arise by first bracketing, and then conditionalizing upon, “old evidence.” In “Beauty and Conditionalization: Reply to Horgan and Mahtani,” (...) Joel Pust replies to the Horgan/mahtani argument, raising several objections. In my view his objections do not undermine the argument, but they do reveal a need to provide several further elaborations of it—elaborations that I think are independently plausible. In this paper I will address his objections, by providing the elaborations that I think they prompt. (shrink)

To ascertain the rational credences for the epistemic agents in the famous cases of self-locating belief, one should model the processes by which those agents acquire their evidence. This approach, taken by Darren Bradley (Phil. Review 121, 149–177) and Joseph Halpern (Ergo 2, 195–206), is immensely reasonable. Nevertheless, the work of those authors makes it seem as if this approach must lead to such conclusions as the Doomsday argument being correct, and that Sleeping Beauty should be a halfer. I argue (...) that this is due to an implicit existential bias: it is assumed that the first step in those processes is the determination that the agent in question must necessarily exist. It is much more reasonable to model that determination as contingent and a result of other, earlier, steps in the process. This paper offers such alternative models. They imply an endorsement of what has mockingly been called “presumptuous” reasoning, and a massive shift of credences in favor of (1) the existence of a multiverse and (2) the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)