Pascal's wager

I'll agree pascals was not writing an abstract mathematical exercise. As I said before, I was reducing it to an abstraction to try to help you see what it is really about and cut out some of the "religious" overtones that often keep people from looking at it clearly.

Have you ever read the actual text (at least the translated one)
You can find it here:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pascal's Pensées, by Blaise Pascal.

The section on the wager does not discuss hell or penalties, just the positive gains of the infinite afterlife.

As one can see from my posts I don't take all of what pascal says literally. I'll also note that its not clear he did either, at least is very clear that he did not put all together into one big argument. The PENSÉES was published from a unordered collection of notes of pascal, not a finished work. Some scholars say he was working to edit them, others are less certain and feel it was some of his internal writing and hence cannot be viewed as a fully formalized construct. So I don't feel the need to consider it in toto. In some parts he makes it clear he is focused on a christian god but in others he has statements like "And all religion is the same; for the Christian religion is very different in the Holy Bible and in the casuists." The section on the wager only mentions christian is in saying who can blame them for not being able to give a reason for their belief.


Pascal himself clearly addressed why one must bet. Before doing that, he acknowledges your apparent reasoning that if it was a normal bet, the initially obvious "rational choice" is not to bet since there is no proof.

But with respect to why you have to bet, that is easy to explain. The bet is essentially what do do with your life, so If you are alive, you have already embarked on the bet. The only question is which way you are betting every day, not knowing if it will be your last day.

The decision analysis does not require proof or evidence, it reasons from the probability and possible outcomes. If you want to say it is an invalid formulation, you need to show how the formulation is wrong, not that there is no proof of the conditions. Since an invalid assertion of an infinite after is covered by probability of the assertions being zero, it does not matter that he does not prove the assertions or provide evidence. If the assertions are wrong, the probability is zero. if you want to assert the assertions are invalid or probabilities are zero, that is your choice, and then the decision matrix outcome is equal for the two choice. That does not make the formulation invalid, it just means you assert, without proof, particular values for the probabilities.

 

I felt the need to resolve my own passion for science, mathematics and logic with religion. To dismiss god because I could not prove the existence was clearly invalid as to dismiss the lack of god because I could not prove it.

I don't know when I started down that path. It was before I had distinct memories (6th grade). Honestly it probably started very early as I challenged my religion teachers/priest and others. I've always challenged authority and teachings I could not logically follow.


I've done a lot of reading, a lot. And I've discussions with people that do freely talk about their religions and religious philosophers. Spending years in NYC made that easy. Students can also keep one sharp.

 

deleted dup post.

 

Ah, very good, thanks.

 

Faulty math.

If I buy a lotto ticket, I can either win, or lose. So, my odds of winning "has to be 50/50?" Wrong. "Miracles, churches and Nature" is evidence of something, but why conclude that it is evidence of a god?

Clearly, you believe that some god exists, however, believing it, does not make it true. I used to believe in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Then I grew up and became more objective. No longer do I believe in the super-natural.

 

If we restrict it to only just gods, then Pascal's wager is simple and looks like:

If you believe, you go to heaven, if there is a just god, and nothing if not.
If you don't believe, you go to heaven, if there is a just god, and nothing if not.

Either way you lose nothing.

[eternal punishment for misdeeds does not alter this.]

 

Not necessarily.. a "just god" could (hopefully would) still expect souls to learn something before they gain internal salvation. If everyone just goes to heaven anyway, then was is the point of living? (Unless living is the point, or unless living is to help us learn.) A "just" god will not eternally punish people for elements beyond their control, but that does not mean it would reward all behavior either. And "just" does not mean that if you ignore all religion you win, maybe if you do well following the local religion you can still win and if you reject it you still loose -- you still made a choice within your control.

So it could easily be "just" to say if you don't learn enough you could be sent back to try again (ala karmic reincarnation in many religions) or in a Christian religion that could be purgatory where souls go to be prepared to enter heaven.. (which could actually be via reincarnation or some other form of remedial training for failed souls).


As an educator, I don't just given everyone As for attendance. That would not be "just" or fair to those that actually strove to learn the material. If you reward all behavior, you encourage bad behavior at the expense of other and discourage any good behavior that takes effort. The need for us to learn on our own is also why it can be reasonable for "god" to not just provide proof of god's existence, what would we learn if it was absolutely proven. If we cannot be expected to learn and work to reason about things we are no better than even simple animals. A plant will stretch to the light, but it does not appear to reason about it.

 

Sorry Daniel, but there is. If everyone in the US, each had this choice to make, if they all chose A, they would get nothing, if they all chose B two of them would have 1/2 BILLION dollars. If we postulate that the 1 Billion dollars is in some sense created, then I definitely want to live in the country where people choose B. That is the rational decision.

See: Yudkowsky - Bayes' Theorem for more on this type of decision making.

Of course, none of this makes Pascal's wager a reasonable proposition. The problem lies not in the two choices given, but in the ones not given. As stated, the answer is clearly to believe. But it is a false dichotomy, so the choice is meaningless.

 

You seem to have missed my point about misdeeds still sending one to hell. Deeds might still determine what happens to you.

A just god would not be basing eternal salvation on belief. Especially one based on NO evidence. And around which, many people proclaim counter-factual data to support their preferred choice.

***

p.s. And to be quite frank, I see NOTHING WRONG with everyone going to heaven. And the point of living is to LIVE. If you think there is no point to living if there is no heaven, you must lead a very sad life indeed. Go enjoy the day!

p.p.s. You are really ok with a 1 day old baby not going to heaven because it didn't "learn something"? Definitely in the 'unjust' category in my view.

 

But does that make you correct? Guess we are back at square one.

 

Blaise Pascal's life and inquiries go so far beyond his Wager, that to not stop for a while
and consider the man and the wide range of his thoughts is not simply disengenuous, it
approaches a self-imposed intellectual poverty.

It turns out that in his intellectual battles at the jagged boundary between reason and
faith, he developed a deep understanding of the nature of the human condition. His
work anticipated Albert Camus, and separately Existentialism, by some 300 years.

While not an indepth look at Pascals beliefs, this listing of some 300 quotes -- "sound
bites" if you will, and easily taken out of their original context -- are worthy of time
and reflection. Some quotes will be favored by theists, others by reasonists. Some are
purely humanist.

Blaise Pascal Quotes (Author of Pensées)

In closing, I find it fascinating that while Pascal was Catholic, he believed in a variant of
that faith called Jansenism, which was ultimately declared heretical by the church.

It was a very complicated situation:

The heresy of Jansenism, meaning here its denial of Catholic doctrine, is that it denies
the role of free will in the acceptance and use of grace. Jansenism asserts that God's
role in the infusion of grace is such that it cannot be resisted and does not require
human assent. The Catholic teaching is that "God's free initiative demands man's free
response" —that is, the gift of grace requires human assent...

Jansenism's supporters suffered a decisive defeat when Innocent X issued the bull, Cum
occasione, on May 31, 1653. The bull condemned the following five propositions:

• that there are some commands of God which just men cannot keep,
  no matter how hard they wish and strive;
• that it is impossible for fallen man to resist sovereign grace;
• that it is possible for human beings who lack free will to merit;
• that the Semipelagians were correct to teach that prevenient grace
  was necessary for all interior acts, including for faith, but were incorrect
  to teach that fallen man is free to accept or resist prevenient grace; and
• that it is Semipelagian to say that Christ died for all.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jansenism]Jansenism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

(Pelagianism and Semipalagianism were also heretical beliefs.)

It seems to me that if you had the mind to, you could argue that the
god in Pascal's Wager, was not a properly imagined/constituted god!

 

Nope. Pascal's wager makes the same amount of sense if the only reward is a candy bar.

If you believe in it, and the great pumpkin exists you get a candy bar.
If you don't believe, you get nothing, and lose nothing.

Anybody think the obvious thing isn't to believe?

The real question is should you be standing in this pumpkin patch.

 

Sorry I saw the comment about eternal punishment for deeds as outside the decision. If you want to interpret it as deeds vs beliefs then I would agree, as nothing in the logic provides sufficient reason to classify belief as more important than deeds. In some religions it is, in fact the deeds, that dominate.

I agree the point of living is to live.. and I do enjoy every day I don't subscribe to the tenants that one must suffer to gain salvation, but I also don't believe in exploiting others to improve my living.


Babies and the whole "original sin" is definitely a questionable concept in my view. To me that is just a group trying to sell their "power" to enroll more subjects.

If there are only 2 choices, eternal heaven or eternal hell, then yes a baby going to hell would be unjust as they did nothing wrong. Since they've done nothing wrong, it advance is deed based, they could advance. But I also can see no reason to limit it to those choices and I could see them getting another chance.

 

I'll take that to mean you don't understand limits and infinity.

Finite reward for finite gain is much easier to analyze.
How much is your time worth and how much fun wil you have in the patch vs the cost of a candy bar, what probability you assign to the great pumpkin existing. Insert you numbers in a decision matrix, the answer is clear. If you don't know the probability of the great pumpkin you can at least determine a range of probabilities for which the reward is greater than the risk.

In Pascal's wager the issue is that the infinite reward is greater than any finite risk, except if p is exactly 0.

As I've said already, there is nothing wrong with you saying the probability of god or an infinite afterlife is 0. I cannot prove the probability is > 0, no more than you can prove p ==0.

I interpret pascal's wager just a little different than many scholars do, and definitely different than many "naysayers" do. I has been argued that his work suggests that a rational being must assign a probability > 0. I don't see that as a statement in his work. I believe his work clearly states this when he writes

I interpret Pascals work in this regard as stating rational being cannot prove p=0 or p=1. However, one can reason that for p>0 the risk/reward is infinitely better if one believes/commits to god, then it is only rational, if you have any doubts, to learn to believe/commit.

If you have no doubts on existence (p=1.0) or non-existence (p=0), then the logic of wager is irrelevant as you have already decided on p and the decision matrix provides a definitive answer. The "wager" only make sense if you don't know p.



The whole point of the analysis, is for people that have doubts, i.e. p unknown, who may be struggling with the decision of should I pursue belief/commitment or just ignore it. It is a call to examine one's belief's and learn, which I believe is clear when he writes

If you have no doubts, then enjoy your enlightenment. Me, I'm still trying to find my way, with so much more to learn.

 

Yes Pascal has done/written many amazing things. He was a child prodgy and had his first published mathematical work at 16. Do you know that as a teenager he invented and build the first publicly used (and patented) automated calculating machines?

I think its important to remember that unlike his formal works, the wager and all of the PENSÉES were unpublished works stuck together after his death. There is little agreement on what he wrote when or the intended order. The wager is only among those notes. Looking at how he lived one can imagine the wager having been penned at many different points in time so "the god" in the wager could have been an early concept where he was still struggling to reconcile his own internal beliefs, or lager possibly after his brush with death and reported religion visions, or it could have been penned much later when he move to almost exclusive religions orientation as could have been an attempt at an argument to help persuade others to follow. I've not see any good scholarly work that puts it in a definitive timeline.

 

Why yes, I do.
I posted that info to this thread on 3/24, some 15 days ago: post #235.

I have been familiar with this as well, again since at least 3/24.

It is not clear how Pascal lived day to day. But it is clear that if you held a position
contrary to his, and he took it to mind to address the divergence, your life at least would
not be pleasant;

"… Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary
work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the
letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like
Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau…

"… One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism]Skepticism[/ame] and [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism]Stoicism[/ame], personalized by [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montaigne]Montaigne[/ame] on one hand, and
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus]Epictetus[/ame] on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion
that he would embrace God."
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal]Blaise Pascal[/ame]


It seems like he had no qualms about using his exceptional mental powers to bully
opponents into submission. He couldn't have done it with physical strength as he
was sickly throughout his life, and very frequently bedridden.

Ah well! It wouldn't do to expect perfection in any mortal man, even a philosopher...

N.B: The four links in the paragraph begining, " '… One of the Apologie's main
strategies" are active links intentionally. There is much for consideration and
even personal implementation, should you be adverse to subscribing to either a
wholly theist, or atheist this-world or possible other-world perspective.

But a caution is in order; On this forum, just like in life, if you walk down the
middle of the road, you're likely to be hit by cars going both ways.

 

Sorry.. did not connect the two. Though there was a photo there, no mention of him doing it as a teenager!

His attacks in the Provincial letters were against particular sects of the church for being lax, not really attaching individuals. Individuals, up to the Pope, were include but it was mostly an attack on the very weak and loosely applied case-based reasoning parts of the church were using.


Also note the Apologie's is just another term for the Pensées the collection of unpublished writing that were put together after his death. Many scholars on the issue urge caution in interpreting them too literally especially when put together and crossing as its unclear if he intended all of it to be use literally or if some might have be used as elements to argue against, for satire as he did in the letters provincial. To suggest the Pensées had a strategy is to grossly overstate the actual case. If there was a strategy is is more likely from the various friends that edited the work to suit their own purpose.

Oh, and your quote of him about the evidence and foundation was about
what he called "demonstrations", which is really his philosophy about today we call mathematical proofs. This was early in his career and a critical part of his development of probability theory. One can define evidence and the probability of it being true, even if you don't know the actual probability.

 

You are gravely mistaken. I have a degree in Mathematics, and we can discuss infinities in all their flavors anytime you like.

My point is that you don't NEED infinite rewards. ANY reward will do. They all share the same result with Pascal's wager, and they all suffer from the same flaw.

The wager only makes sense if you don't know p(unjust god). As I have shown, with a just god there is no dilemma.

 

Since no one can know whether Odin exists, we can phrase it as a wager, If you die in battle and Odin exists, you get an infinity of Valhalla (and a flying horse ride with a Valkyrie). If you die some other way than in battle, you lose (whether Odin exists or not). Therefore, infinite feasting, mead, and so on, exceeds any finite terrestial gain from not engaging in battle at every opportunity.