Pascal's wager

Abstract

Pascal'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.

Pragmatic Arguments for Theism

“…For example, if I offer you a hundred dollars if a coin lands heads, but you have to pay me a dollar if it lands tails, it maximizes expected value for you to take my bet, even though there's a chance you could lose money. Put differently, if you were offered this bet over and over again, you'd make 1 See Jordan (2007) and Duncan (2013) for comparisons between the Jamesian and Pascalian wagers, and Rota (2017) and Hájek (2018) for useful summaries of pragmatic theistic arguments. Also note that the Muslim philosopher and theologian Al-Ghazālī (12 th century/1991) also proposed a version of the wager, and Al-Ghazālī's actually dates earlier than Pascal's. money in the long run (i.e.…”

The Development of Practical Rationality

“…Voters endorse wonky policies even when the only thing they know about the policy is that their political party favors it (Kahan & Braman, 2006). And perhaps most famously, Blaise Pascal argued that people should believe in the divine because there is no cost of being wrong, but, if we are lucky, winning this "epistemic bet" has high utility (i.e., eternal salvation) (e.g., Hacking, 1972;Rota, 2017). Whether one agrees with Pascal's argument (for example, see Saka, 2001), the historical record (Hacking, 1972) and empirical studies (Kahan & Braman, 2006) suggest adults reason in similar ways to Pascal when evidence is equivocal but the utilities are not.…”

The development of practical rationality

“…Voters endorse wonky policies even when the only thing they know about the policy is that their political party favors it (Kahan & Braman, 2006). And perhaps most famously, Blaise Pascal argued that people should believe in the divine because there is no cost of being wrong, but, if we are lucky, winning this "epistemic bet" has high utility (i.e., eternal salvation) (e.g., Hacking, 1972;Rota, 2017). Whether one agrees with Pascal's argument (for example, see Saka, 2001), the historical record (Hacking, 1972) and empirical studies (Kahan & Braman, 2006) suggest adults reason in similar ways to Pascal when evidence is equivocal but the utilities are not.…”