Pascal’s wager, originally proposed by Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), takes a more pragmatic approach. Pascal thought that evidence cannot settle the question of whether God exists, so he proposes that you should bet, or wager, on God because of what’s at stake: you have lots to gain and not much to lose. ... Epistemology, or Theory of ...
Pascal’s Wager about God. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) offers a pragmatic reason for believing in God: even under the assumption that God’s existence is unlikely, the potential benefits of believing are so vast as to make betting on theism rational. The super-dominance form of the argument conveys the basic Pascalian idea, the expectations argument refines it, and the dominating expectations ...
Pascal’s approach to the latter question is that he thinks that we can answer it without first answering the former question. Blaise Pascal was a 17th century French philosopher, theologian, and mathematician; he made foundational contributions to, among other areas, the early development of the theory of probability.
2 The wager and decision theory. Pascal was one of the first thinkers to systematically investigate what we now call ‘decision theory’, and elements of his thought on this topic clearly guide his presentation of the wager. ... This is a plausible principle, and one which is employed in some versions of Pascal’s wager. 3 Three versions of ...
1 Pascal’s Wager and the Origins of Decision Theory: Decision-Making by Real Decision-Makers; 2 The Wager and Pascal’s Theology; 3 Pascal’s Wager and the Ethics for Inquiry about God; 4 Pascal and His Wager in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries; 5 The Wager and William James; Part II Assessment; Part III Extensions; Bibliography; Index
Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states there could be an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence in the future that would punish anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to incentivize said advancement. [1] [2] It originated in a 2010 post at discussion board LessWrong, a rationalist community ...
“Pascal's Wager” is the name given to an argument due to Blaise Pascal for believing, or for at least taking steps to believe, in God. ... Edward, 1994. “Pascal's Wager and Finite Decision Theory”, in Jordan 1994b, 115–137. Monton, Bradley, 2011. “Mixed Strategies Can't Evade Pascal's Wager”, Analysis, 71: 642–645. Morris ...
Did you know that Blaise Pascal’s most important contribution to the theory of probability is the notion of expectation value? Briefly, the expected value of any given wager is the value of the prize multiplied by the probability of winning the prize. The earliest, and perhaps the most ingenious, illustration of this idea appears in…
The payoff expectation for the theistic wager is pE + (1 – p)(-l) = (pE + pl – l).Since p and l are finite, the last two terms are negligible, leaving a payoff of pE.For the atheist, the payoff is qE if q is greater than zero, or -l if q is zero. When q is zero, the theistic wager is infinitely superior in expectation value; otherwise, it is superior by the ratio p/q.
Pascal’s Wager is one of the great classic arguments for belief in God, and one of the most famous arguments in all of philosophy. Other theological arguments — ontological, cosmological, and teleological — aim to establish that God’s existence is necessary or probable. Pascal’s Wager is instead a prudential or “pragmatic ...
The rational choice is the decision that computes to give the highest expected value. Pascal’s wager is often cited as the earliest example of a math-based approach to decision theory. In real life, of course, people don’t always make their decisions simply by performing such calculations.
Bartha and DesRoches 2017 respond, with an appeal to relative utility theory. Stone 2007 argues that a version of Pascal’s Wager applies to sustaining patients who are in a persistent vegetative state; see Varelius 2013 for a dissenting view. Pascal’s Wager is a watershed in the philosophy of religion.
Pascal’s Wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth century philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623–1662 CE). It states that all people bet with their lives that God exists. Pascal says that a rational person actually should live as though God exists. If God does not actually exist, any person will have only a little loss in how they live their ...
Notes to Pascal's Wager. 1. Those interested in the reconstruction over the years of the text itself should consult Lafuma 1954. 2. ... In the basic version of decision theory that we have presented, states are assumed to be independent of actions. Evidential decision theory generalizes this. It replaces in its expectation calculation for a ...
Study Pascal's wager. Learn about Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French philosopher, and read about Pascal's wager, an argument for why belief in...
At the same time, Pascal’s wager is also a good example of the serious limitations of expected utility theory. The issue I see is with building a rational model of the typical human being.
“Pascal's Wager” is the name given to an argument due to Blaise Pascal for believing, or for at least taking steps to believe, in God. The name is somewhat misleading, for in a single paragraph of his Pensées, Pascal apparently presents at least three such arguments, each of which might be called a ‘wager’ — it is only the final of these that is traditionally referred to as ...
