Probabilistic Proof of an External World

Nicholas DiBella (Stanford University), Nicholas DiBella, Nicholas DiBella

Nicholas DiBella (Stanford) will present "Probabilistic Proof of an External World" at 12:40 in G14 Old Quad.

Abstract: I present a probabilistic argument against skepticism about the external world.  As I will argue, there are many more ways---indeed, infinitely many times more ways---for there to exist an external world than not.  Since the number of ways in which a given proposition can be true has important bearing on how confident I should be in that proposition, I will argue that I should be much more confident that there exists an external world than not.   In particular, I will argue that I should be at least 99.99999% confident that an external world of some sort exists.