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An Empirical Critique of Two Versions of the Doomsday Argument – Gott's Line and Leslie's Wedge

An Empirical Critique of Two Versions of the Doomsday Argument – Gott's Line and Leslie's Wedge I discuss two versions of the doomsday argument. According to ``Gott's Line'',the fact that the human race has existed for 200,000 years licences the predictionthat it will last between 5100 and 7.8 million more years. According to ``Leslie'sWedge'', the fact that I currently exist is evidence that increases the plausibilityof the hypothesis that the human race will come to an end sooner rather than later.Both arguments rest on substantive assumptions about the sampling process thatunderlies our observations. These sampling assumptions have testable consequences,and so the sampling assumptions themselves must be regarded as empirical claims.The result of testing some of these consequences is that both doomsday argumentsare empirically disconfirmed. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Synthese Springer Journals

An Empirical Critique of Two Versions of the Doomsday Argument – Gott's Line and Leslie's Wedge

Synthese , Volume 135 (3) – Oct 11, 2004

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References (28)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Subject
Philosophy; Philosophy of Science; Epistemology; Logic; Philosophy of Language; Metaphysics
ISSN
0039-7857
eISSN
1573-0964
DOI
10.1023/A:1023545820214
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

I discuss two versions of the doomsday argument. According to ``Gott's Line'',the fact that the human race has existed for 200,000 years licences the predictionthat it will last between 5100 and 7.8 million more years. According to ``Leslie'sWedge'', the fact that I currently exist is evidence that increases the plausibilityof the hypothesis that the human race will come to an end sooner rather than later.Both arguments rest on substantive assumptions about the sampling process thatunderlies our observations. These sampling assumptions have testable consequences,and so the sampling assumptions themselves must be regarded as empirical claims.The result of testing some of these consequences is that both doomsday argumentsare empirically disconfirmed.

Journal

SyntheseSpringer Journals

Published: Oct 11, 2004

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