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Sleeping Beauty’s Credences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jessi Cisewski ,
Joseph B. Kadane ,
Mark J. Schervish ,
Teddy Seidenfeld  and
Rafael Stern
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Abstract

The Sleeping Beauty problem has spawned a debate between “thirders” and “halfers” who draw conflicting conclusions about Sleeping Beauty's credence that a coin lands heads. Our analysis is based on a probability model for what Sleeping Beauty knows at each time during the experiment. We show that conflicting conclusions result from different modeling assumptions that each group makes. Our analysis uses a standard “Bayesian” account of rational belief with conditioning. No special handling is used for self-locating beliefs or centered propositions. We also explore what fair prices Sleeping Beauty computes for gambles that she might be offered during the experiment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 324 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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