Synchronic Bayesian updating and the Sleeping Beauty problem: Reply to Pust

Terry Horgan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

I maintain, in defending "thirdism," that Sleeping Beauty should do Bayesian updating after assigning the "preliminary probability" 1/4 to the statement S: "Today is Tuesday and the coin flip is heads." (This preliminary probability obtains relative to a specific proper subset I of her available information.) Pust objects that her preliminary probability for S is really zero, because she could not be in an epistemic situation in which S is true. I reply that the impossibility of being in such an epistemic situation is irrelevant, because relative to I, statement S nonetheless has degree of evidential support 1/4.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)155-159
Number of pages5
JournalSynthese
Volume160
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2008

Keywords

  • Bayesian updating
  • Credence
  • Epistemic probability
  • Preliminary probability
  • Probability
  • Sleeping Beauty
  • Synchronic Bayesian updating

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Philosophy
  • General Social Sciences

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