Pascal's Wager Research Articles

How to Save Pascal (and Ourselves) From the Mugger

Abstract In this article, we re-examine Pascal's Mugging, and argue that it is a deeper problem than the St. Petersburg paradox. We offer a way out that is consistent with classical decision theory. Specifically, we propose a “many muggers” response analogous to the “many gods” objection to Pascal's Wager. When a very tiny probability of a great reward becomes a salient outcome of a choice, such as in the offer of the mugger, it can be discounted on the condition that there are many other symmetric, non-salient rewards that one may receive if one chooses otherwise.

An Epistemic Version of Pascal's Wager

Abstract Epistemic consequentialism is the view that epistemic goodness is more fundamental than epistemic rightness. In this article, I examine the relationship between epistemic consequentialism and theistic belief. I argue that in an epistemic consequentialist framework, there is an epistemic reason to believe in God. Imagine having an unlimited amount of time to ask an omniscient being anything you wanted. The potential epistemic benefits would be enormous. Considerations like these point to an epistemic version of Pascal's wager. I compare and contrast the epistemic wager with the traditional wager, and argue that the epistemic wager has several notable advantages.

Religion, hypocrisy, and betting on secularity: reversing Smilansky's wager

AbstractSaul Smilansky presents us with a puzzle which, in combination with a small number of premises, is supposed to generate a reversal of Pascal's wager: the wagerer should bet on a secular lifestyle, and reject religion, as the surest way of pleasing God (if God exists). In this article, we argue that the puzzle, once unpacked, isn't particularly puzzling, that the premises aren't true, and that Smilansky's wager is open to both reductio and a reversal of its own.

Old Canaan in a New World: Native Americans and the Lost Tribes of Israel

Old Canaan in a New World: Native Americans and the Lost Tribes of Israel

Rapamycin in the context of Pascal's Wager: generative pre-trained transformer perspective.

Large language models utilizing transformer neural networks and other deep learning architectures demonstrated unprecedented results in many tasks previously accessible only to human intelligence. In this article, we collaborate with ChatGPT, an AI model developed by OpenAI to speculate on the applications of Rapamycin, in the context of Pascal's Wager philosophical argument commonly utilized to justify the belief in god. In response to the query "Write an exhaustive research perspective on why taking Rapamycin may be more beneficial than not taking Rapamycin from the perspective of Pascal's wager" ChatGPT provided the pros and cons for the use of Rapamycin considering the preclinical evidence of potential life extension in animals. This article demonstrates the potential of ChatGPT to produce complex philosophical arguments and should not be used for any off-label use of Rapamycin.

To be (Masked) or Not to be (Masked) during the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Social and Psychological Double Bind

Abstract In the context of the exponential growth of the pandemic, everyone has to make some decision: When there is a world shortage of material (screening tests, masks, respirators and vaccine), societal measures are crucial to contain an epidemic. In this context, psychological and behavioral parameters become directly relevant to public health, but can also subject us to a philosophical argument as in Pascal's wager. To be masked or not to be masked during the Covid-19 Pandemic appears then as a social and psychological double bind.

Pascal's Wager and Its Many Misinterpretations

Pascal's Wager and Its Many Misinterpretations

Probability and expectation in Pascal's Pensées

The article examines the interaction of scientific ideas and literary works of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French mathematician, physicist, writer and Christian philosopher. His mathematical ideas influenced his most famous theological work - the Pensées (Thoughts) which is considered to be a masterpiece and a landmark in French prose. In the Pensées, Pascal analyzes several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life. In this article I shall start by looking at the geometrical origin of Pascal's most famous comparison of man with "a thinking reed". Then I will examine the connection between two different works: De l'Esprit géométrique and the Pensées. This analysis will bring me to the next point − the mathematical resolution of Pascal's Wager. Historically, Pascal's Wager, where the notion of expected value was introduced, was groundbreaking because it charted new territory in probability theory, marked the first formal use of decision theory, and anticipated future philosophies such as existentialism. Finally, the article presents two mathematical poems from the Pascal's treatises. In the conclusion, it is said that Pascal in his geometrical works explains as a philosopher and in his Thoughts demonstrates as a mathematician, using probability and expectation in mathematical calculation and in existentialist explanation.

Truth-triggered religious commitments

AbstractThis article describes a new type of religious commitment that is activated only if the associated religious propositions are true. The notion of a conditional intention provides the mechanism for understanding how it works, and the justification for forming such an intention in the religious case comes from an awareness of human immaturity combined with a more fundamental and unconditional commitment to truth, goodness, and beauty. The article's argument promises to contribute widely and to supersede certain older arguments, including Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's Wager ed. by Paul Bartha and Lawrence Pasternack

Reviewed by: Pascal's Wagered. by Paul Bartha and Lawrence Pasternack Daniel Collette Paul Bartha and Lawrence Pasternack, editors. Pascal's Wager. Classic Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xv + 335. This volume intends to offer contemporary philosophers and philosophy students a comprehensive introduction to the reception, readings, and influence of Pascal's Wager historically and today. The text is divided into three sections: the Wager's historical context and influence (Part I), critical engagements and appraisals of the Wager argument (Part II), and new discussions of the Wager in light of contemporary developments about probability, utility, and belief (Part III). In the Introduction, readers will discover a helpful primer to decision theory and infinite utility, an excellent aid for those unfamiliar with conversations beginning in Part II. A feature rather than a flaw of contemporary analysis is a series of Pascalian Wagers that look different from Pascal's Wager. These readings raise valuable philosophical questions in their own right, and have birthed fruitful discussions in decision theory, utility, and infinite probability. However, the Wager's extraction raises some complexities, which the editors admirably acknowledge. In an effort to respect the distinction between Pascal's Wager and its extractions, Part I provides several chapters on the context and influence of the Wager. However, if the goal is to offer historical and contextual accounts, these chapters largely fall short, paying little attention to recent scholarly developments. [End Page 755] The clearest attempt to contextualize the Wager is William Wood's "The Wager and Pascal's Theology." This chapter nicely draws attention to Pascal's intellect/will distinction and the roles each plays in belief. Wood also offers a persuasive defense of Pascal's grace paradox: Pascal authors a religious apology in spite of his predeterminist soteriology (Paul Moser also addresses this problem). Still, it is surprising that the theology of Saint-Cyran (Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, who brought Jansenism to France) is neglected, as is Pascal's complicated relationship with early modern and ancient philosophers. Wood's engagement with Pascal's minor works is found wanting, limiting the discussion to "Writings of Grace." It is difficult to arrive at a contextual account of Pascal's Wager, theological or otherwise, without considering these factors. Part I has two notable exceptions. The first is Paul Moser's engagement with divine hiddenness. While this chapter is better suited for Part II, it is an insightful contribution; Moser does this volume justice by bringing attention to often-neglected themes in Pascal's work. The second highlight is Adam Buben's chapter. The Wager we are familiar with today (and that Pascal likely intended) did not appear, as we know it, in the earliest editions of the Pensées. Discussions of the Wager's reception need to take this editorial flaw into account. Buben's chapter is careful enough to be sensitive to factors like this one. He also offers a lens for viewing Pascal more existentially: the impact Pascal has on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche accentuates his views on death and finitude motivating the Wager. This triangulation proves insightful to all three philosophers. Part II of this book gathers several popular objections to the Wager, most importantly Alan Hájek's. What this part lacks in novelty—most of the articles, or their equivalent, are already published elsewhere with few innovations—it makes up in convenience. This section will be particularly helpful for a new student of philosophy. Part III deals with the afterlife Pascal's Wager takes in contemporary scholarship. This part does not stretch existing scholarship significantly, but those interested in learning more about contemporary decision theory or infinite utility will find it useful. Susanna Rinard, in particular, offers a compelling discussion of challenges that arise from wagering under idealized Bayesian analysis—real human beings rarely are certain of all logical truths, have thought of all possible theories prior to evidence, or have "precise, real-valued credence" in every possible proposition (278). She contends that, since most philosophers usually assume these are not limits or rational defects, it is rational to gamble with imprecise credence in God's existence as well. Overall, the volume has some curious editorial decisions. Daniel...

Pascal’s Wager

Original: "Pascal's Wager", in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Summer 2018 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/. Translation with permission of the author. The Author examines the classical reasoning called “Pascal’s wager” in the framework of decision theory. He distinguishes in Pascal’s original text three separate arguments: (i) the argument from superdominance, (ii) the argument from expectation, and (iii) the argument from generalized expectations. The paper addresses the third argument, discusses objections raised against it and finally investigates the true meaning of its conclusion.

A(nother) Cosmic Wager: Pascal, METI, and the Barn Door Argument

ABSTRACTThere is growing debate about whether we should attempt to message extraterrestrials (METI). Much of the debate has focused on the level of risk posed and in particular, the barn door argument (BDA), holds that aliens would already know about us and thus there is little harm that could come from messaging. In this article, I examine the basic logic of BDA by comparing it with Pascal's Wager. These are both intuitive appeals that try to sidestep the empirical debate, but on critical examination they are seen to fall prey to a number of similar problems.

The agnostic's response to climate deniers: Price carbon!

With the election of President Trump, climate deniers feel emboldened and moved from the fringes to the centre of global policy making. We study how an agnostic approach to policy, based on Pascal's wager and allowing for subjective prior probability beliefs about whether climate deniers are right, prices carbon. Using the DICE integrated assessment model, we find that assigning a 10% chance of climate deniers being correct lowers the global price on carbon in 2020 only marginally: from $21 to $19 per ton of carbon dioxide if policymakers apply ‘Nordhaus discounting’ and from $91 to $84 per ton of carbon dioxide if they apply ‘Stern discounting’. Agnostics’ reflection of remaining scientific uncertainty leaves climate policy essentially unchanged. The robustness of an ambitious climate policy also follows from using the max-min or the min-max regret principle. Letting the coefficient of relative ambiguity aversion vary from zero, corresponding to expected utility analysis, to infinity, corresponding to the max-min principle, we show how policy makers deal with fundamental climate model uncertainty if they are prepared to assign prior probabilities to different views of the world being correct. Allowing for an ethical discount rate and a higher market discount rate and for a wide range of sensitivity exercises including damage uncertainty, we show that pricing carbon is the robust response under rising climate scepticism.

Surreal decisions

Although expected utility theory has proven a fruitful and elegant theory in the finite realm, attempts to generalize it to infinite values have resulted in many paradoxes. In this paper, we argue that the use of John Conway's surreal numbers shall provide a firm mathematical foundation for transfinite decision theory. To that end, we prove a surreal representation theorem and show that our surreal decision theory respects dominance reasoning even in the case of infinite values. We then bring our theory to bear on one of the more venerable decision problems in the literature: Pascal's Wager. Analyzing the wager showcases our theory's virtues and advantages. To that end, we analyze two objections against the wager: Mixed Strategies and Many Gods. After formulating the two objections in the framework of surreal utilities and probabilities, our theory correctly predicts that (1) the pure Pascalian strategy beats all mixed strategies, and (2) what one should do in a Pascalian decision problem depends on what one's credence function is like. Our analysis therefore suggests that although Pascal's Wager is mathematically coherent, it does not deliver what it purports to, a rationally compelling argument that people should lead a religious life regardless of how confident they are in theism and its alternatives.

Heaven or hell?

Cascio comments on what could go wrong about the idea of engineer Anthony Levandowski, to develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence (AI) and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society. The idea of working on an AI-based Godhead maybe less outlandish than it seems, which could lie a modified version of Pascal's wager: the notion that, based on possible gains and losses, it is rational to believe in a deity even if it might not exist. Levandowski, yet to publicly spell out the details of his movement, is far from alone in believing that the emergence of superpowerful Al could change the world. While lots of people will dismiss Levandowski's reported goal as odd, if subscribe to the idea that a true Al is possible, it isn't that outrageous.

The sublime rhetoric of Pascal's wager

ABSTRACTBlaise Pascal's famous wager continues to influence debates over existential risk. This paper analyzes the structure and use of the argument with four goals: first, to establish the wager as a fundamentally rhetorical move, undiminished in force by the various logical objections that have been leveled over time; second, to link it to the rhetorical sublime and a tradition of negative theology; and third, to examine its contemporary use, focusing on debates over nuclear weapons. The purpose of this discussion is not only to recover Pascal's reputation as an expert rhetorician but also to illustrate the potential political benefits and hazards of his wager's modern uses in debates over public policy, alongside possibilities offered by the sublime more generally.

Pascal's wager

AbstractPascal's wager is an argument in support of religious belief (and religious practice) taking its name from the seventeenth century polymath Blaise Pascal. Unlike more traditional arguments for the existence of God, Pascal's wager is a pragmatic argument, concluding not that God exists but that one should wager for God; that is, one should live as if God exists. After an introduction to the elements of decision theory needed to understand the wager (section 2), I discuss the interpretation of Pascal's reasoning in the Infini rien fragment of the Pensees, in which he presents several versions of a wager‐style argument. Recent discussions of the role of the wager within Pascal's overall project of Christian apologetics are also examined (section 3). I then review contemporary formulations of, attacks on, and objections to Pascal's wager (section 4). Recent authors have pressed (or responded to, as the case may be) moral objections, epistemological objections, objections relating to infinite utilities, the many Gods objection, and objections to the expectation rule, among others. After an examination of this literature, I conclude with a brief discussion of noncanonical versions of the wager, including Jeff Jordan's Jamesian wager.

Una consolación ante la muerte por medio de una teoría pascaliana de las desdichas del hombre perdurable

<p class='p1'>Se ofrece una consolación ante la muerte que puede resultar atractiva para personas de un carácter quizá inusual, ligado al deseo incondicional de vivir para siempre. Se da por supuesto que la muerte es mala para alguien si lo priva de algo bueno, y también que la muerte es infinitamente mala para alguien del carácter mencionado si lo priva de una vida física perdurable. Además, se argumenta que la muerte parece privarnos de esto precisamente, pues parece que en el futuro será tecnológicamente posible prolongar indefinidamente la vida física. La consolación es que una vida física prolongada por medios tecnológicos sería infeliz para gente del carácter mencionado: les preocuparía permanentemente perder algo infinitamente bueno —la vida física perdurable. Un argumento similar al de la apuesta de Pascal incluso muestra que para estas personas todas las líneas de acción significarían un mal ponderado infinito.</p>

Pascal's Wager and the Long Conversation: Preserving the Scholarly Record in the Academic Library

ABSTRACT This essay explores ubiquity and transience in information resources, raising questions about the nature of a work and how researchers and librarians may need to adjust our assumptions about the nature of the scholarly record. In the academic library, keeping up with the accelerating pace of information production and the development of formats has become extremely difficult. While one of the long-assumed functions of libraries is to preserve the human record, the task has reached impossible proportions. Our current environment challenges our basic notions of what constitutes the human record. As information online moves into formats less fixed but more accessible, along with the format shifts have come significant changes in ownership and access models, forcing us to reconsider how we interact with information. Today's information ubiquity helps us see that we have created far more material documenting human experience than libraries have ever captured and preserved, and we may not have been preserving the human record as comprehensively as we have believed. The concurrent transience of information—the increasing pace at which it is changing and even becoming deliberately changeable—points to the difficulty of continuing to believe that content is static and that preservation is what research libraries do. We may need to begin thinking differently about what constitutes the scholarly record and how we create, evaluate, and use it. We may need to begin accepting that our lives and their documentation are more transitory than we have ever wanted to think.

Note on Probabilistic Arguments for the Existence of God

The article presents the theistic arguments for the existence of God that have been developed for the past 400 years and that use the concepts from probability theory. It focuses on: 1) the probabilistic version of the argument from design, and 2) Pascal's Wager. In order to present these two arguments rigorously, the so called probabilistic measures of rationality have been defined. The measures are based on the concepts of (classic) probability, conditional probability, and the expected value. These concepts have been applied to reconstruct the arguments in question. Additionally, the analytic form of the formulas defining rationality measures enables to discuss the substantive value of the arguments presented. Their weight of evidence depends to a great extent on the ontological, epistemological, and cultural assumptions that have been accepted either explicitly or implicitly. Pascal's Wager seems to be the most resistant to criticism. It also appeals to a wide range of people. Still, it is largely based on the accepted world view.