Timeline for If Pascal's wager can be applied to belief in anything, then what is the fallacy in Pascal's wager?
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15 events
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| Jul 24, 2017 at 20:40 | comment | added | Conifold | I believe the dispute is merely verbal. Premises 1,2 look like the law of excluded middle, but what is used is much stronger: either there is the Christian God or the world is faith indifferent (Epicurean gods are fine). Then you are right that the argument goes through. This explains the charges of false dichotomy and question-begging. The objectors simply wish to reject such a premise, but the phrasing makes it look like they have to reject classical logic to do it. | |
| Jul 20, 2017 at 18:51 | comment | added | Nanhee Byrnes PhD | Given that present scholars working on the subject (the IEP article mentioned above) cannot vindicate the fallacy in Pascal's argument, I will end my response here. | |
| Jul 20, 2017 at 18:16 | comment | added | Conifold | Historically, Pascal's Wager appeared in the context of believers and agnostics/skeptics rather than atheists, and I added a passage to show that he himself did not intend it as a logical argument. But that converted into an argument it begs the question (even in its original context) is not particularly controversial, see e.g. IEP article. Ironically, this day and age shopping for faith is a thing. | |
| Jul 20, 2017 at 17:37 | comment | added | industry7 | " The core assumption is that Pascal is not trying to persuade a Buddhist, but an atheist brought up in the Christian paradigm (so the atheist knows Christian doctrines) to believe in the Christian God." I was raised "in the Christian paradigm", but I still knew about plenty of other religions. I mean, other religions are talked about extensively in the Christian Bible, so it's unrealistic to pretend that other (non-Christian) religions don't exist and aren't relevant to the discussion... | |
| Jul 20, 2017 at 14:27 | comment | added | Nanhee Byrnes PhD | @Conifold: The core assumption is that Pascal is not trying to persuade a Buddhist, but an atheist brought up in the Christian paradigm (so the atheist knows Christian doctrines) to believe in the Christian God. Thus, the only available actions are the bifurcation (Pascal 2). Surely, the atheist is not going out of his way to shop for different gods! (similar to Kant's situation: marry this woman or never marry). If the atheist rejects Pascal's argument, he must be rejecting Pascal 3 or the Bayesian method. Thus, Pascal's argument can be rejected for unsoundness, but not for the fallacy. | |
| Jul 20, 2017 at 0:30 | comment | added | Conifold | Pascal is of course entitled to assume the Christian paradigm, but his wager is presumably addressed to those who doubt or even reject it. If so he is not entitled to a payoff table "based on the Christian paradigm", or he is begging the question. And without it his payoff table does not obtain. | |
| Jul 19, 2017 at 21:01 | comment | added | Joshua | @MarcH. The lack of options is fundamental, and I warn you that the direct counterexample as to why this must be so is dangerous to know. | |
| Jul 19, 2017 at 19:26 | comment | added | Nanhee Byrnes PhD | @Marc H. You cannot reject all other women to love one woman. All other women simply do not matter for your love of that one woman. | |
| Jul 19, 2017 at 18:36 | comment | added | Marc H. | Oh yea, I agree. "One can't believe in multiple god conceptions at the same time" would've been better. My formulation wasn't correct. I'd also agree that for Pascal's intention the argument works. But if other god conceptions aren't rejected beforehand then either it doesn't work or, as supercat points out, becomes hopelessly complicated. | |
| Jul 19, 2017 at 14:29 | comment | added | supercat | I think Pascal's logic would hold if the payoff table were correct, but the existence of other gods could change the potential payoffs for believing/disbelieving in a non-existent Christian god from -1/+1 to -infinity/+infinity. | |
| Jul 19, 2017 at 13:44 | comment | added | Nanhee Byrnes PhD | gnasher729: Haha. Marc H: Some might question your claim that a man can love multiple women, but not multiple gods. Greeks and Romans believed in poly-gods:, and they loved them all! Pascal did not question whether he should believe in God or Buddha or Confucius. He questioned whether he should or should not believe in the God. | |
| Jul 19, 2017 at 8:22 | comment | added | Marc H. | The lack of other options makes sense iff we only consider belief in the particular god at question. But as a non-believer we don't. The issue is that the analogy doesn't completely show that. I could love multiple women, whereas believing in multiple gods is contradictory. For the questions about whether one should love a particular woman we don't have to reject all the other possibilites. I would agree what it's not fallacious in terms of validity. But not soundness. | |
| Jul 19, 2017 at 8:11 | comment | added | gnasher729 | Slight change: God loathes those who believe on him just based on Bayesian decision theory, and sends them straight to hell. Where are you now? | |
| Jul 19, 2017 at 6:16 | history | edited | Nanhee Byrnes PhD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 19, 2017 at 6:02 | history | answered | Nanhee Byrnes PhD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |