The Epistemology and Auto-Epistemology of Temporal Self-Location and Forgetfulness

Abstract

This paper deals with the epistemology and auto-epistemology of temporal self-location and forgetfulness in probabilistic terms. After explicitly stating the underlying algebraic or propositional framework, it proposes two rules of probability change through our inner sense of time and generally describes how conditionalization works with respect to indexical information. It suggests a rule for rearranging beliefs after forgetting (and other unfavorable epistemic changes). After rehearsing standard auto-epistemology in terms of the reflection principle and its consequences, it moreover studies the auto-epistemology of those non-standard epistemological changes. Thus, it generalizes the reflection principle to the indexical case and to an even more general version that is free from the informal restrictions that are commonly assumed. All these principles are illustrated with various examples: the prisoner, the new riddle of induction, Sleeping Beauty, and finally Shangri-La.