Why I Am Not a Boltzmann Brain

2025/01/01 by Sinan Dogramaci, Miriam Schoenfield · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Philosophy #Philosophy and History of Science #Philosophy and Theoretical Science #Physics #Quantum Mechanics and Applications

paper · open access · doi:10.1215/00318108-11591068

published in The Philosophical Review 134(1), 1-33 (Duke University Press)

openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This article gives a Bayesian argument showing that, even if your total empirical evidence confirms that you have zillions of duplicate Boltzmann Brains, that evidence does not confirm that you are a Boltzmann Brain. The article also attempts to explain what goes wrong with several of the sources of the temptation for thinking that such evidence does have skeptical implications.

Citations

• Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?
• Main Trends in Recent Philosophy: Two Dogmas of Empiricism
• The Problem of the Essential Indexical
• Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant
• The Boltzmann Brains Puzzle
• A Bayesian analysis of self-undermining arguments in physics
• Center indifference and skepticism

Cited by

• Boltzmann brains and cognitive instability

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