What happened next in Rip Van Winkle ?Rip Van Winkle acquired a belief the day he fell asleep---July 3, 1766, let's say---the belief that that day was a beautiful day. He maintained this belief under the character "Today [the day of this thought] is beautiful." Then he slept for twenty years and two days, until July 5, 1786, and returned to the city. What happened next? The possibility that struck Kaplan and Evans is that Rip simply updated his belief. July 3 never forms any explicit belief other than "Today [the day of this thought] is a beautiful day." When he wakes up on July 5, the belief is updated, due to his awareness of having slept through the night, and his lack of awareness of having slept for another twenty years, to "Yesterday [the day before the day of this thought ] it was a beautiful day.'' When he falls asleep he loses epsithemic contact with the current day, but he has in mind a character already ready for awakening. So what remains of the original belief other than the false one about the 4th of July? belief cannot be the true belief, so Rip has not lost the belief in question? This seems to be the argument that threatened Kaplan and fascinated Evans even in the case of such a barebones update, there are reserve characters under which Rip can keep his faith. Rip believes, towards evening, as it grows dark, "Today [the day of this thought] was a beautiful day," he has memories of seeing the flowers and feeling the sun, and so on. So the character "That day [the day I remember] is or was a good day" is available to support his belief, when the update attempt goes awry. Even if these memories fade, there is the character: "That day [the day this belief was acquired] is or was a good day." So my opinion is this. When he wakes up on July 5, Rip updates his beliefs based on his view of how the context has changed. His opinion about the context change is wrong, and the new character, "Yesterday [the day before the day of this thought] was nice" is not a way to believe the original content. But this is no reason to say that Rip has lost his original belief.