A Nightmare for Lewisian Halfers
Abstract
What if Sleeping Beauty has dreams? I give an argument against the halfer position that only uses principles of rationality accepted by Lewisian halfers. While dreaming, Beauty’s credence in heads is 1/2. After being woken up and updating on the evidence that she is woken up today, the credence becomes less than 1/2. For Lewisian halfers, this is a nightmare. If we add two plausible assumptions about Beauty’s dreaming credences, we can derive the thirder solution. I also respond to and improve upon a new type of defence of Lewisian halfing by Schwarz (2025), but argue that it fails as well.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Epistemology
Ethics
and Metaphysics
Philosophy and Theoretical Science
Logic
Reasoning
and Knowledge
Publication details
- Journal / source
- PhilSci-Archive (University of Pittsburgh)
- Publication date
- 17 January 2026
- Language
- EN
- Document type
- Preprint