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On the Designated Student and Related Induction Paradoxes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Dale Jacquette
Dale Jacquette*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University, The University Park, PA16802-5201, USA
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Extract

Roy A. Sorensen has advanced an ingenious variation of the prediction or surprise event paradox, which he calls the designated student paradox. Sorensen reduces the temporal dimension of the problem by eliminating reference to future occasions on which an announced surprise event might occur, and substituting a surprise location to which epistemic agents have progressively limited spatial-perceptual access, in order to sidestep what he regards as inessential solutions to the standard formulation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 583 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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References

1 Sorensen, Roy A. ‘Recalcitrant Variations of the Prediction Paradox,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 60 (1982), 357CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid.

3 Wright, Crispin and Sudbury, Aiden ‘The Paradox of the Unexpected Examination,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 55 (1977) 41-58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The temporal retention principle, which is formulated only to be sacrificed as intuitively implausible, states that whatever is reasonable for an epistemic agent to believe at a particular time is also reasonable for the agent to believe thereafter.

4 Sorensen, ‘Conditional Blindspots and the Knowledge Squeeze: A Solution to the Prediction Paradox,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984) 126-35

5 Sorensen, ‘Recalcitrant Variations of the Prediction Paradox,’ 360-2

6 Sorensen’s current formulation of the unified solution to Prediction and Designated Student Paradoxes, which differs in important ways from his original treatment in ‘Conditional Blindspots and the Knowledge Squeeze,’ is given in his Blindspots (Oxford: Clarendon 1988), 328-43. I have criticized Sorensen’s approach in my review of Blindspots in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 3 (1989) 218-23.

7 Sorensen, ‘Conditional Blindspots and the Knowledge Squeeze,’ 126

8 I offer a detailed presentation of this argument in my’ A Deflationary Resolution of the Surprise Event Paradox,’ Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 41 (1992) 335-49.

9 Olin, Doris ‘The Prediction Paradox: Resolving Recalcitrant Variations,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1986), 184CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Olin, ‘The Prediction Paradox Resolved,’ Philosophical Studies 44 (1983) 225-34.

10 Quine, W.V. ‘On a So-Called Paradox,’ Mind 62 (1953), 66Google Scholar

11 See my ‘A Deflationary Resolution of the Surprise Event Paradox,’ esp. 342-9.

12 Note that Quine above regards the assimilation of the paradox victim’s reasoning with reductio ad absurdum as mistaken. Charles Chihara, ‘Olin, Quine, and the Surprise Examination,’ Philosophical Studies 47 (1985) 191-9.

13 Criticisms of Quine’s solution as inadequate (not just unnecessary) are given by Ayer, A.J. ‘On a Supposed Antinomy,’ Mind 82 (1973) 125-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Janaway, Christopher ‘Knowing About Surprises: A Supposed Antinomy Revisited,’ Mind 98 (1989) 391-409CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 392-6; Kaplan, David and Montague, Richard ‘A Paradox Regained,’ Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 1 (1960) 79-90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, San Francisco, CA, March 25-28, 1993.