Against Self-Location
Fuente:
arXiv
Enregistré dans:
| Auteur principal: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2024
|
| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | |
| Tags: |
Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
|
| _version_ | 1866912018943967232 |
|---|---|
| author | Adlam, Emily |
| author_facet | Adlam, Emily |
| contents | 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, and Boltzmann brains. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_05259 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Against Self-Location Adlam, Emily History and Philosophy of Physics 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, and Boltzmann brains. |
| title | Against Self-Location |
| topic | History and Philosophy of Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.05259 |