Abstract
How do temporal and eternal beliefs interact? I argue that acquiring a temporal belief should have no effect on eternal beliefs for an important range of cases. Thus, I oppose the popular view that new norms of belief change must be introduced for cases where the only change is the passing of time. I defend this position from the purported counter-examples of the Prisoner and Sleeping Beauty. I distinguish two importantly different ways in which temporal beliefs can be acquired and draw some general conclusions about their impact on eternal beliefs.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arntzenius F. (2002) Reflections on Sleeping Beauty. Analysis 62(273): 53–62
Arntzenius F. (2003) Some problems for conditionalization and reflection. Journal of Philosophy 100: 356–370
Bradley D. J. (2003) Sleeping Beauty: A note on Dorr’s argument for 1/3. Analysis 63: 266–268
Bradley D.J., Leitgeb H. (2006) When betting odds and credences come apart: More worries for Dutch book arguments. Analysis 66(2): 119–127
Bradley, D. J. (2010) “Conditionalization and beliefs De Se” Dialectica.
Bradley, D. J. (forthcoming). Confirmation in a branching world: The Everett interpretation and Sleeping Beauty. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
Briggs (ms). Putting a value on Beauty.
Bostrom H. (2007) Sleeping beauty and self-location: A hybrid model. Synthese 157(1): 59–78
Dorr C. (2002) Sleeping Beauty: In defence of Elga. Analysis 62: 292–296
Dieks D. (2007) Reasoning about the future. Synthese 156: 427–439
Draper K., Pust J. (2008) Diachronic Dutch books and Sleeping Beauty. Synthese 164(2): 282–287
Earman J. (1992) Bayes or bust. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Elga A. (2000) Self-locating belief and the Sleeping Beauty problem. Analysis 60: 143–147
Elga, A. (2004). Defeating Dr. Evil with self-locating belief. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 69(2).
Greaves H., Wallace D. (2006) Justifying conditionalization: Conditionalization maximizes expected epistemic utility. Mind 115(459): 607–632
Halpern, J. (2004). Sleeping Beauty reconsidered: Conditioning and reflection in asynchronous systems. In Proceedings of the Twentieth conference on uncertainty in AI, pp. 226–234.
Hitchcock C. (2004) Beauty and the bets. Synthese 139(3): 405–420
Hoefer C. (2007) The third way on objective probability: A sceptic’s guide to objective chance. Mind 116(463): 549–596
Horgan T. (2004) Sleeping Beauty awakened: New odds at the dawn of the new day. Analysis 64: 10–21
Horgan T. (2007) Synchronic Bayesian updating and the generalized Sleeping Beauty problem. Analysis 67(293): 50–59
Howson C., Urbach P. (1993) Scientific reasoning: The Bayesian approach (2nd ed.). Open Court, Chicago
Jenkins C. (2005) Sleeping Beauty: A wake-up call. Philosophia Mathematica 13(2): 194–201
Kaplan D. (1989) Demonstratives: An essay on the semantics, logic, metaphysics and epistemology of demonstratives and other indexicals. In: Almog J., Perry J., Wettstein H. (eds) Themes from Kaplan. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 481–566
Lewis, D. (1979). Attitudes De dicto and De se’. In D. Lewis (Ed.), Philosophical Papers (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press (1983).
Lewis, D. (1980). A subjectivist’s guide to objective chance. Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability (Vol. 2). Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press.
Lewis D. (1994) Chance and credence: Humean supervenience debugged. Mind 103: 473–490
Lewis D. (2001) Sleeping Beauty: Reply to Elga. Analysis 61: 171–176
Meacham, C. (2008). Sleeping Beauty and the dynamics of De se belief. Philosophical Studies, 138(2), 245–269.
Monton B. (2002) Sleeping Beauty and the forgetful Bayesian. Analysis 62: 47–53
Monton B., Kierland B. (2005) Minimizing inaccuracy for self-locating beliefs. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70(2): 384–395
Perry J. (1979) The problem of the essential indexical. Nous 13: 3–21
Schaffer, J. (ms) The Schmentencite way out: Towards an index-free semantics.
Schwarz (ms) Changing minds in a changing world.
Schervish M. J., Seidenfeld T., Kadane K. B. (2004) Stopping to reflect. Journal of Philosophy 101(6): 315–322
Strevens M. (1995) A closer look at the ‘New Principle’. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46(4): 545–561
Teller T. (1976) Conditionalization, observation, and change of preference. In: Harper William, Hooker C. A. (eds) Foundations of probability theory, statistical inference, and statistical theories of science. D. Reidel, Dordrecht
Titelbaum M. (2008) The relevance of self-locating beliefs. Philosophical Review 117(4): 555–606
Van Fraassen B. C. (1984) Belief and the will. Journal of Philosophy 81: 235–256
Van Fraassen B. C. (1999) A new argument for conditionalization. Topoi 18: 93–96
Weintraub R. (2004) Sleeping Beauty: A simple solution. Analysis 64: 8–10
Weisberg J. (2007) Conditionalization, reflection, and self-knowledge. Philosophical Studies 135: 179–197
White R. (2006) The generalized Sleeping Beauty problem: a challenge for thirders. Analysis 66: 114–119
Williams P. (1980) Bayesian conditionalisation and the principle of minimum information. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 31(2): 131–144
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bradley, D.J. Self-location is no problem for conditionalization. Synthese 182, 393–411 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-010-9748-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-010-9748-9