Pascal’s Wager is one of the most famous thought experiments in history. Conjured by the 17th century polymath Blaise Pascal, on the surface it provides a neat solution to all the troubling questions about God that were springing up as the period known as the Enlightenment led to a revolution in European thought. ... Pascal’s problem came ...
Blaise Pascal was a man with a lot on his mind. He was a writer, a mathematician, a scientist, a philosopher – in short, a thinker. So it’s appropriate that his best-known work is titled Pensées (“Thoughts”).. And of the Pensées, his best-known thought is something called Pascal’s Wager.It’s among the most famous Christian arguments of all time.
There have been so many problems that have been identified with Pascal’s wager that it seems ridiculous to use it as an argument at all anymore, but people still do it often, so here we are. For…
The problem with the third premise is that Pascal’s wager presupposes a certain rationality based on the utility of the outcome of the bet. Betting on God’s existence is considered rational because it offers an infinite gain while risking only an insignificant loss or the loss of temporary pleasures that Pascal calls “ poisonous .”
Blaise Pascal is one of the most famous, mathematicians, philosophers and theologians in the Western Canon. Following a period of mystical experiences in 1654, Pascal dedicated himself to spiritual contemplation. In this period, he wrote his most famous work, Pensées. Within Pensées, Pascal proposed his most famous argument, which is now commonly known as Pascal’s Wager.Pascal’s Wager is ...
My criticism does not focus on Pascal as a historical figure, but on the belief that his wager would still be relevant today. Reducing the scope of the Pascal's wager The Wager is reserved for people who admit a priori the following hypotheses: • the human soul is immortal; • deities observe us and judge, reward or punish us;
“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. ... More recently, Colyvan, Cox, and Steele 2010 discuss Pascal’s Wager-like problems for certain deontological moral theories, in which violations of duties are assigned negative infinite utility ...
The Problem of Infinite Rewards. Pascal's Wager relies heavily on the notion of infinite rewards and punishments—specifically, the promise of eternal happiness for believers and eternal damnation for non-believers. This framework introduces another issue: if we accept the logic of infinite rewards, it follows that any proposition promising an ...
With strategic decision-making being admitted, Pascal’s wager has turned into a trust game (Evans & Krueger, 2009). Trust requires decisions under uncertainty, not risk (Krueger et al., 2025).
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) has been criticized—appropriately, it seems to me—for trivializing a decision about ultimate reality by likening it to a wager, as though it were a Las Vegas bet. However, this nearly 400-year-old devisement does at least provide a vehicle within the context of a more enlightened Adventism for respectful friends to ...
Notes to Pascal's Wager. 1. Those interested in the reconstruction over the years of the text itself should consult Lafuma 1954. 2. ... This brings us to yet another problem for Pascal's third premise. To be sure, the expectation of wagering for God is infinite, if we accept Pascal's earlier assumptions; but so too is the variance. ...
Salvaging Pascal’s Wager Elizabeth Jackson Australian National University and Ryerson University Andrew Rogers ... (1991): 309–17; Jeff Jordan, “Pascal’s Wager and the Problem of Infinite Utilities,” Faith and Philosophy 10 (1993): 49–59; Jeff Jordan, “Pascal’s Wager
The Precursor to Pascal’s Wager. In 1654, Pascal was trying to solve a mathematical gambling problem to help out his friend Antoine Gombaud, Chevalier de Méré.On de Méré’s suggestion ...
Pascal’s Wager I. Pascal’s Argument Today I will defend Pascal’s wager against its two most prominent objections. More specifically, I will argue: ... problem: As we saw last meeting, the existence of pragmatic reasons for belief is controversial. 2. Instead interpret “wager for God” to mean “try one’s best to get oneself to ...
See also Herzberg 2011 for a valid reformulation of Pascal’s Wager with hyperreal utilities. Another approach, more faithful to Pascal’s theology, eschews premise 1’s numerical utilities altogether, opting instead for comparative judgments of value, and making suitable adjustments elsewhere in the argument. For example, Rota 2016 offers a ...
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 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 ...
