Lost memories and useless coins

revisiting the absentminded driver

Wolfgang Schwarz

pp. 3011-3036

in: Magdalena Balcerak Jackson (ed), The roles of experience in a priori knowledge, Synthese 192 (9), 2015.

Abstract

The puzzle of the absentminded driver combines an unstable decision problem with a version of the Sleeping Beauty problem. Its analysis depends on the choice between “halfing” and “thirding” as well as that between “evidential” and “causal” decision theory. I show that all four combinations lead to interestingly different solutions, and draw some general lessons about the formulation of causal decision theory, the interpretation of mixed strategies and the connection between rational credence and objective chance.