8 - The Wager as Decision under Ignorance: Decision-Theoretic Responses to the Many-Gods Objection

Summary

In chapter 8, Lawrence Pasternack challenges many of the most common strategies used to defend the Wager against the Many Gods Objection. He worries that these strategies either compromise the status of the Wager as a decision under ignorance or carry over beyond the “cooked-up” hypotheses and “philosopher’s fictions,” which are their intended targets, to atheism as well. As such, Pasternack wonders whether the standard rebuttals to the Many Gods Objection broadly undermine the Wager, for they may have the unintended consequence of not only blocking “cooked-up” hypotheses and “philosopher’s fictions,” but also removing atheism from the decision matrix. Pasternack then suggests an alternative approach which more adequately preserves the Wager as a decision under ignorance. Rather than following the most common strategies against the Many Gods Objection, which draw upon considerations independent of the Wager, Pasternack moves through a series of characteristics already built into the Wager’s decision-theoretic structure, showing how they can be leveraged against an array of “cooked-up” hypotheses and “philosopher’s fictions.”