A Pascalian/Pragmatic Argument for Philosophy of Religion

Quoting Empedocles

If the stakes of a belief are high, you should take arguments regarding that belief seriously.

But the stakes of the belief are a function of whether or not one believes. A belief has to already be genuinely plausible and not just logically possible.

Reply to Empedocles One can raise the stakes of any proposition, simply by appending to it a stake-raising clause. For any proposition A there is a proposition A* = A & C, where C = (costly consequences for not believing A). So the consequence of your position is that you have to take seriously infinitely many propositions, not just those concerning the existence of god and his proper worship.

You could object that A* is spurious, but your argument does not say anything about the content and the quality of the propositions that you say should be taken seriously; the only reason you give for taking them seriously C.

Jack Sparrow: Clergyman, on the off chance that this does not go well for me, I would like it noted here and now that I am fully prepared to believe in whatever I must, so that I may be welcomed into that place where all the 'goody-goodies' get to go. Savvy?

Philip (Missionary): We have a word for that, Jack. You can convert.

Jack Sparrow: I was thinking more of an as-needed basis.

While the OP seems to support Jack Sparrow's opinion, I think the missionary's position is what religion sells.

Quoting Empedocles

If the stakes of a belief are high, you should take arguments regarding that belief seriously.
The stakes of belief in the existence of God are about as high as they could be (i.e. you could spend eternity in heaven or hell).
Therefore, we should take arguments for the existence of God seriously. (1,2 MP)

The problem is that if there is a Heaven and/or Hell, and one could spend an eternity in either, we have no idea just what would lead to spending an eternity in either (or rather, we have no good reason to believe that we have any idea just what would lead to either). Maybe God is such that He only rewards non-believers with Heaven, because He values skepticism and critical thought in the face of a lack of evidence.

Reply to Terrapin Station Your claim seems to be something like this:
"Even if the stakes are high, we have no way of knowing what will happen/what the consequences will be"
And I'm taking that to be an objection to my premise 1. I guess what I would say to that is it seems premature to conclude we have no way of knowing the consequences. It still seems to me that the stakes are high enough to warrant really exploring arguments for and against God's existence, and even if we've done our best and haven't discovered the answer, it seems we can't just conclude we're incapable of knowing it (we just haven't discovered it yet). When you say we have no idea what would lead to our ending up in heaven or hell, i can't really agree until I've explored all the ways I think I might be able to know what God values. Does that make sense?

Reply to SophistiCat I think you're right. Maybe if I qualified premise 1 to say something like, "If the stakes of a belief are high and credible, then you should take arguments regarding that belief seriously" then it might work? I think it's pretty intuitive that stakes play an important role in how highly we prioritize something (e.g. I am more nervous for a piano recital than a practice session, I run faster if I'm being chased by a bear, I work harder when my boss is around, etc...), so I'm hesitant to throw that idea out.

"The smart man bets on God" little to lose, much to gain or so some summarize Pascal's wager.
In fact religious belief does play a valuable role in many lives in terms of providing a higher purpose or larger meaning to their lives. Many argue religion is an overall negative in human affairs but I don't think one could support that without controversy. I think it does matter how one conceives of the nature of God, of God's desire for the world and how God acts in the world and that is where philosophy of religion plays a role in providing us with different conceptions and models and discussing their implications and coherence with other ways we have come to view the world.

Quoting Empedocles

I think you're right. Maybe if I qualified premise 1 to say something like, "If the stakes of a belief are high and credible, then you should take arguments regarding that belief seriously" then it might work? I think it's pretty intuitive that stakes play an important role in how highly we prioritize something (e.g. I am more nervous for a piano recital than a practice session, I run faster if I'm being chased by a bear, I work harder when my boss is around, etc...), so I'm hesitant to throw that idea out.

Yes, making the threat credible would help, but that means that the claim no longer justifies itself, which is what constitutes the principal appeal of popular invocations of Pascal's Wager; you still have to all the usual epistemological work of justifying the credibility of your claim.

At most, high stakes can serve as a lever, a force multiplier: If you present a convincing case for your claim, then I would be obliged to take it seriously and act on it. Which is what the original Pascal's Wager seeks to do, in my opinion.

Quoting Empedocles

"Even if the stakes are high, we have no way of knowing what will happen/what the consequences will be"
And I'm taking that to be an objection to my premise 1. I guess what I would say to that is it seems premature to conclude we have no way of knowing the consequences. It still seems to me that the stakes are high enough to warrant really exploring arguments for and against God's existence, and even if we've done our best and haven't discovered the answer, it seems we can't just conclude we're incapable of knowing it (we just haven't discovered it yet). When you say we have no idea what would lead to our ending up in heaven or hell, i can't really agree until I've explored all the ways I think I might be able to know what God values. Does that make sense?

Sure that makes sense, but how would you even begin doing the epistemic work necessary? Where would you start for discovering what would get you into heaven versus hell?

(I don't think there's any way to start, a fortiori because I think that religion is so much nonsense, but what you're saying makes sense. We'd just need to do that work first, and where would we start?)

Quoting SophistiCat

Yes, making the threat credible would help, but that means that the claim no longer justifies itself

Could clarify what you mean here? I don't think I'm following

Reply to Empedocles The way a Wager-like argument is commonly used (again, it is arguable whether Pascal himself meant it that way), the argument seeks to sidestep the burden of justifying its ontological claim; the cost/benefit analysis, as stated in the argument, is supposed to be doing all the heavy lifting. That is the main selling point of the argument. But we have concluded, at least for your version, that the burden of providing a convincing argument for the existence of God cannot be avoided.

I always thought the most powerful thing about Pascal's wager was as an argument against agnosticism.

His proposition that we are already embarked on the journey and we must play. The coin will stop spinning and we all must chose heads or tails, not playing is not an option.

Quoting Rank Amateur

I always thought the most powerful thing about Pascal's wager was as an argument against agnosticism.

His proposition that we are already embarked on the journey and we must play. The coin will stop spinning and we all must chose heads or tails, not playing is not an option.

I never thought about it that way before. It nicely alludes to agnosticism being a variation of atheism rather than the neutral position its often touted as being, which I agree with. If your answer is “I do not know” then you are in the same position as the atheist on whether or not you have an active belief in god.

Quoting Empedocles

If I qualified premise 1 to say something like, "If the stakes of a belief are high and credible, then you should take arguments regarding that belief seriously" then it might work?

Quoting SophistiCat

That is the main selling point of the argument. But we have concluded, at least for your version, that the burden of providing a convincing argument for the existence of God cannot be avoided.

It seems that Empedocles might be able to hold on to the qualification of the stakes being both high and credible without providing a convincing proof for God, but rather by simply establishing even the slightest possibility for God. If we define God as the greatest possible being, the stakes of that being existing are high merely by the nature of God. However, to make the argument credible, Empedocles needs only to prove that there is even the slightest possibility that this being exists (which I think is a very easy task). To illustrate this with a scenario:
You are slacking off at your job, and your boss has threatened that if he catches you slacking off again, he's going to fire you. The stakes of you slacking off are high by the nature of the situation, but if your boss is out of town those stakes are not credible. But let's say that you hear a rumor around the office that your boss is going to be back earlier than expected to check on your performance. Regardless of whether that argument is convincing or not, the slight chance that your boss will be back provides enough credibility to the stakes that you would not slack off, because there now exists even the slightest chance that your boss may be back early. In this scenario, it does not seem that the argument for credibility has to be in any way convincing, merely possible.

Reply to Ben Hancock You are simply reprising the original argument of the OP, which I've already addressed in my first response.

Reply to Ben Hancock pascal's first proposition is objectively true, and is independent of assigning any probability, it is, either God is, or God is not, and we can't know as a matter of fact which is true. That is an objectively true proposition.

Your point is not an argument against this proposition, it is a rationalization for choosing one of the options.

[Deleted comment, as it's duplicative.]

Reply to SophistiCat I think I understand what you're saying. I wonder if I should change my argument to be something like this:

1. The higher the stakes of something happening are, the lower our initial probability of it happening needs to be to warrant looking into the matter. (For example, if there's a 10% chance there's a bee in my room, I won't go looking for a bee, but if there's an 80% chance there's a bee in my room I'll probably go hunting for it. Alternatively, if there's a bomb threat that the police think is 5% likely to be true, they should definitely look into it, and if I think there's a 1% chance of me getting dysentary from drinking from a puddle, I won't drink from it. Even though the probabilites of the bomb really being there or of me getting dysentary are low, we should take the threats seriously since the stakes are so high).
2. The existence of God is a matter of the highest stakes, because it could mean you live in heaven or hell for eternity.
3. Therefore, your initial perceived probability of God existing can be very low and still warrant researching and appraising arguments for and against the existence of God.

In other words, only if you think the possibilty of God existing is a vanishingly small probability (.00000000001%) should you not bother researching and appraising arguments for and against the existence of God.

I'm not sure if that makes as much sense written out as it does in my head, let me know if I should clarify any of it. I'm basically still seeking to show that the stakes of believing God does or does not exist are high, and that's why we should do philosophy of religion, unless the probability of God existing is very very low.

What do you think of that? And, if you agree with me, don't you think many more people should be doing philosophy of religion? Because it seems to me that very few people believe the probability that God exists is vanishingly small, but very few people do philosophy of religion.

Quoting Empedocles

I'm not sure if that makes as much sense written out as it does in my head, let me know if I should clarify any of it.

No, I think it's fine. High stakes serve as a lever, and infinitely high stakes, as Pascal argued, should overwhelm any doubt you might have when considering further action. However, in Pascal's mind there were only two live possibilities: God of the Catholic religion (or at least something like it) - or atheism. But is this so?

Forget about religion for a moment and consider a more general proposition:

P: At some future time T one of two things will happen: either you will be rewarded with inconceivably great rewards R or punished with inconceivably great punishments U. Which it will be depends on whether you choose a particular course C (undertaking some actions and/or assuming some mental attitudes).

You say that because of the stakes being so high, you ought to take P very seriously indeed. But because of its general form, P amounts not to one proposition, but to an infinitely large family of propositions, which can be obtained by varying C (we could also vary T, R and U, but for the purposes of practical decision-making that won't make much of a difference, provided that T is sufficiently far in the future). So what are you to do? How would you go around studying all of those propositions?

What's worse (or better, depending on how you look at it) is that for any possible course C you could consider its opposite, i.e. not undertaking any of those commitments implied by C - and that will constitute another possible course C'. If you are neutral to both of these mutually exclusive alternatives (and why wouldn't you be?), then they exactly cancel each other out, leaving you at a standstill.

So you see, there is no a priori argument for doing something, e.g. investigating religious teachings, based only on possible consequences. You still need to evaluate the relative merits of the available options and narrow your choice to a few live options - or else you will be confronted by countless mutually exclusive and mutually countering possibilities.

Quoting SophistiCat

God of the Catholic religion (or at least something like it) - or atheism. But is this so?

not quite correct - better said God ( of the Catholic religion) is, or is not. This is an undeniable true premise - it in-compasses every possibility.

Quoting Rank Amateur

not quite correct - better said God ( of the Catholic religion) is, or is not. This is an undeniable true premise - it in-compasses every possibility.

That would be quite a useless and unnecessary premise, since it is a trivial tautology. And my point was exactly that Pascal was not considering every possibility. If he was, his argument could not get off the ground - for reasons that I just explained.

Pascal begins that pansee by reminding the reader that he already provided arguments for (Catholic) God earlier, and the argument that follows is aimed at those who view those earlier arguments favorably, but still have some doubts, or just don't take the implications seriously enough.

And when it comes to the wager, he only considers two live possibilities: an afterlife as envisioned in Catholic teachings, or no afterlife at all.

Quoting SophistiCat

That would be quite a useless and unnecessary premise, since it is a trivial tautology

Could well be, but that is what it is, with the addition of, and we can not know which is true.

Quoting SophistiCat

P: At some future time T one of two things will happen: either you will be rewarded with inconceivably great rewards R or punished with inconceivably great punishments U.

In Pascal's wager there are 4 possibilities.

God is, and you believe - infinite happiness
God is, and you do not believe - infinite un-happiness
God is not, and you believe - finite ignorance
God is not, and you do not believe - finite knowledge

Reply to Rank Amateur Pascal claims that you have everything to gain if God is and nothing to lose if God is not. So it is clear that he considers a very specific God: one whose favor can be gained by being a good Catholic, and one very specific alternative: one in which nothing interesting happens after you die.

Quoting Empedocles

The stakes of belief in the existence of God are about as high as they could be (i.e. you could spend eternity in heaven or hell).

The notion of a loving god that permits eternal damnation is absurd. Accepting your wager involves accepting an absurdity.

Reply to SophistiCat agree - as mine above - Pascal's alternative was dichotomous - God as he understood God, existed or it did not.

Reply to SophistiCat to be clear I am not defending Pascal's wager - I believe in skeptical theism, and as such, I am doubtful that we can say anything at all with any degree of certainty about the nature of God.

The only part of Pascal's wager that I find useful - is as an objection to Agnosticism. Pascal says the game has already begun, and we must bet - not playing is not an option.

Life is happening - and at some point it will end - and at the very very end of the day it will either end with a black hole (something natural) or something super- natural. In Pascal terms - the coin is spinning - not calling heads or tails is not an option.

Quoting Rank Amateur

Life is happening - and at some point it will end - and at the very very end of the day it will either end with a black hole (something natural) or something super- natural. In Pascal terms - the coin is spinning - not calling heads or tails is not an option.

Yes, that is exactly the faulty argument that I have been addressing in this thread.

Reply to SophistiCat I see what you mean. I think you’re right that Pascal’s wager only works when you’ve done the work to limit live options to only a few, and that does line up with what Pascal was saying. I guess the difference here is that Pascal needs to do the work of limiting the number of religions one considers valid options, whereas I would need to limit what? The number of high stakes subjects to study? Does my wager- which concludes only that one should study philosophy of religion, not believe in God- really have infinite live options? And if not, does my argument work then?

Quoting SophistiCat

You say that because of the stakes being so high, you ought to take P very seriously indeed. But because of its general form, P amounts not to one proposition, but to an infinitely large family of propositions, which can be obtained by varying C (we could also vary T, R and U, but for the purposes of practical decision-making that won't make much of a difference, provided that T is sufficiently far in the future). So what are you to do? How would you go around studying all of those propositions?

I have read this quite a few times, but I don't see the logic that takes it to an infinite large family of propositions. I am quite sure that the failure to understand is all on me. Can you expand or explain it in some way the intellectually challenged like myself might get it.

Quoting Empedocles

Does my wager- which concludes only that one should study philosophy of religion, not believe in God- really have infinite live options?

I understand your argument as being premised on the general principle that one should take seriously any claim that attaches high stakes to your future conduct. But this general principle is unworkable, because if we were to follow it consistently, we would be doing nothing other than investigate every conceivable claim of that sort - and we would still fail at this task, because there are just too many such claims. So you cannot base your argument on just that principle; you need something else.