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Pascalian Wagering

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Thomas V. Morris
Thomas V. Morris*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556U.S.A.
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Extract

‘Either God is or he is not.’ But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance, a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove either wrong.

In this vivid and memorable passage, Blaise Pascal began to develop the famous argument which has come to be known as ‘Pascal's Wager.’ The Wager is widely regarded as an argument for the rationality of belief in God which completely circumvents all considerations of proof or evidence that there is a God.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 437 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1986

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References

1 Pascal, Blaise Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, A.J. (New York: Penguin Books 1966), 150Google Scholar

2 Pascal, 86, pensée 190; hereafter citations from the Pensées will all be from the edition cited above, and will be given by the pensée numbering therein adopted.

3 Such a claim has been made or implied by many theists in different contexts. Recently, for example, Peter Geach has written: ‘Now for those who believe in an Almightly God, a man's every act is an act either of obeying or of ignoring or of defying that God …’ (‘The Moral Law and the Law of God,’ in Helm, Paul ed. Divine Commands and Morality [Oxford: Oxford University Press 1980]. 173Google Scholar). It is easy to see how ignoring and defying God could be categorized together as acting as if there is no God.

4 One of the best recent explications of this sort of problem is Michael Martin's essay ‘Pascal's Wager as an Argument for Not Believing in God,’ Religious Studies 19 (1983). 57-64.

5 From Hanson, N.R. What I Do Not Believe and Other Essays, ed. Toulmin, Stephen and Woolf, Harry (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1972), 323.Google Scholar I have explored the views of Hanson and Scriven in a paper appearing in Analysis 45.4 entitled ‘Agnosticism,’ from which the present section derives some of its points.

6 Hanson, 310

7 Scriven, Michael Primary Philosophy (New York: McGraw Hill 1966), 103Google Scholar

8 Ibid.

9 The argument is presented in his major paper ‘Reason and Belief in God,’ in Plantinga, A. and Wolterstorff, N. eds. Faith and Rationality (Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press 1983). 27–9.Google Scholar

10 I lay out a different ground for rational doubt here than in ‘Agnosticism.’

11 The Principle of Indifference has recently received impressive defense at the hands of Schlesinger, George N. See his book The Intelligibility of Nature (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press 1985).Google Scholar

12 Penelhum, Terence Religion and Rationality (New York: Random House 1971), 211–19Google Scholar