stretch

Hi Neilium

I bet you'd like Rescher's book, too. There are some links on the Secular Web that deal with Rescher's book ... imho, probably a good idea to read a book first, and then the critiques ... but doing things in the other order works too ...

stretch

Hi Bloop,

I'm not sure I follow everything you're saying.

The first part I think says that if you have no idea what action/actions leads to heaven or hell (should God, heaven and hell all exist), then there's no way of making any choice as to an appropriate action. I would agree with you on that.

Personally I don't even know if you can consider belief to be an action. I suppose in some sense you can choose to do things that might cultivate a belief, but actually believing doesn't seem to be purely an act of the will. You can choose whether or not you can say you believe, you can choose to pretend to believe, but can you choose to believe? I dunno.

The part that puzzles me in your post is your reference to whether or not it has to be after death ... are you talking about the consequences of the decision regarding whether or not to act?

If so, can there be infinite disutility associated with anything that only has consequences during a finite life? I don't claim to have an answer ... just throwing out a question.

Sue Sponte

Well said. This aptly states the main fallacy of Pascal's wager, in my view. A belief that is predicated not on actual acceptance of the truth, but rather to simply avoid a negative consequence of not holding the belief, is really no belief at all. What Pascal failed to explain is, assuming a supreme being exists, wouldn't that being be more than capable of seeing through such a tactic? If so, it is a losing wager, merely a human contrivance that would infuriate, rather than dupe, an all-knowing supreme being. My understanding of most theistic belief sets is that hedging one's bets is most definitely not sufficient to appease the depicted supreme being.

stretch

Hi Sue,

uh ....
How do you get those conclusions from the wager? From elsewher in the Pensées from which the wager has been extracted and restated by otheres? Or are your conclusions coming from somewhere else?

It seems that you are saying that the implied God here will be infuriated by 'false' belief in itself. And that this will not appease it. These implications (that God will be infuriated and requires appeasement for 'belief' based on fear of punishment) must be coming from elsewhere, because they conflict with the implications of the wager.


My understanding of most theistic belief sets is a bit different from yours, but that is neither here nor there in terms of what is or is not implied by the wager as proposed by Pascal.

Bloop

Stretch:

I will try to explore my thoughts around this a little and type up a response.

Sue Sponte

I'm not making any conclusions with respect to what "the implied god" will or won't do, but rather pointing out a possibility that isn't accounted for by the wager. Because there are possible negative outcomes even if the wager is taken, then the conclusion reached does not necessarily follow.

In other words, the wager assumes that "god" would not see through it and would deem it sufficient to gain acceptance into heaven. That is all I'm saying.

Bloop

This is the classic ”infinitely many ideas about God” critique of the wager. The infinite possibilities of what a god or the other wants you to do at any given moment to win a trip to heaven sort of nullifies the wager. A tie/draw split among an infinite number of beliefs that can be wagered on.

From your link above:
My mind kind of went off the deep end at this point and I came up with an even broader wager. This one dealt with actions based on beliefs of a really twisted sort which resulted in the California-into-the-ocean-post. You corrected it by pointing out that infinite utility was needed to tie this sort of wager with the other pascalian wagers derived from the Many Gods objection. So the broadest possible wager looks something like this:

Any action performed at any time can lead to any negative infinite utility for the agent. As long as you don’t arbitrarily decide that the probability is zero for these, and how can you, considering Pascal’s “Reason can decide nothing here” statement. We don’t even have to have an idea about what the infinitely negative utility is! “Hell” as described by various religious denominations is only one idea.

Pascal had the idea of cultivating belief according to the article. By acting in accordance with what you would do if you really did believe, true belief would then follow in the process. Something like that. I’d say that you cannot simply choose to believe but I’m open to suggestions. Though I’d give you a thousand bucks if you can will yourself into really believing that the black jeans that I’m wearing is actually a pink skirt.

I think () i mean that an action could send you straight to, not Christian hell then, but more generally into the “process of experiencing this infinitely negative utility” whatever it may be. The punishment would be instant and not halted until after the end of your life here on earth.

I don’t have an answer either. Maybe the experience has to be drawn out over an infinite amount of time to really class in with Hell and other such concepts. This is sure getting weirder by the minute

stretch

Hi Bloop,

I think that Pascal's wager falls apart from many angles. So I'm not really trying to defend it ... just having fun with the many ideas that spring forth from pondering it


As for the pink skirt, I have just as much reason for believing that you're wearing a pink skirt as black jeans. So what the heck, I'll go with the pink skirt! Canadian dollars will do just fine

Bloop

I realize that you don't support it. I also realize that you realize that I realize that you don't support it but are having some fun following some thoughttrains to odd destinations. I also realize that you realize that I am doing likewise. Right?

So did that last post of mine make any sense?

I feel like the International Agency of Controling Philosophical Sophistry is about to knock on my door any day now.

What if I wash my jeans then send them over and you tell me if they look like a pink skirt to you? (backpedaling...)

stretch

Hi Bloop,

Yeah, I thought your last post made lots of sense. And yup, this is fun.

But, I also think that in order to make decisions in this world, for practical purposes we need to act as if there were zero probabilities on a lot of things.

So far, every time I haven't juggled 5 balls (which is every moment of my life), California hasn't fallen off into the ocean.

And if California does fall into the ocean, I will have no reason to correlate that with the fact that I completely suck at juggling. I have no reason to revise my current subjective assessment that these things are completely uncorrelated.

oh ... I almost forgot .. what black jeans? that's a pink skirt. can't you tell the difference?