Speaker: David Builes

Many philosophers have been attracted to a restricted version of the principle of indifference in the case of self-locating belief. Roughly speaking, this principle states that, within any given possible world, one should be indifferent between different hypotheses concerning who one is within that possible world, so long as those hypotheses are compatible with one’s evidence. My first goal is to defend a more precise version of this principle. After responding to several existing criticisms of such a principle, I argue that existing formulations of the principle are crucially ambiguous, and I go on to defend a particular disambiguation of the principle. According to the disambiguation I defend, how one should apply this restricted principle of indifference sensitively depends on one's background metaphysical beliefs. My second goal is to apply this disambiguated principle to classical skeptical problems in epistemology. In particular, I will argue that certain metaphysical theories threaten to lead us to inductive skepticism and external world skepticism.

Please note that these seminars are open to the public and in person only.