Everettian Confirmation and Sleeping Beauty

Alastair Wilson

doi:10.1093/bjps/axt018

Everettian Confirmation and Sleeping Beauty

Alastair Wilson

Philosophy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

208 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Darren Bradley has recently appealed to observation selection effects to argue that conditionalization presents no special problem for Everettian quantum mechanics, and to defend the ‘halfer’ answer to the puzzle of Sleeping Beauty. I assess Bradley’s arguments and conclude that while he is right about confirmation in Everettian quantum mechanics, he is wrong about Sleeping Beauty. This result is doubly good news for Everettians: they can endorse Bayesian confirmation theory without qualification, but they are not thereby compelled to adopt the unpopular ‘halfer’ answer in Sleeping Beauty. These considerations suggest that objective chance is playing an important and under-appreciated role in Sleeping Beauty.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	573-598
Number of pages	26
Journal	The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Volume	65
Issue number	3
Early online date	30 Aug 2013
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axt018
Publication status	Published - 3 Sept 2014

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Wilson_Everettian_Confirmation
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science following peer review. The version of record [Alastair Wilson. Everettian Confirmation and Sleeping Beauty. Br J Philos Sci (2014) 65 (3): 573-598 first published online August 30, 2013 doi:10.1093/bjps/axt018] is available online at: http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/content/65/3/573.full.pdf+html
Accepted author manuscript, 705 KBLicence: None: All rights reserved

http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/content/65/3/573.full.pdf+html

Cite this

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Everettian Confirmation and Sleeping Beauty

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