BILL S: I found the link to STANFORD UNIV.PHILOSOPHY LINK=======
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/=============
Pascal's Wager
First published Sat May 2, 1998; substantive revision Tue Nov 6, 2012
“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 “Pascal's Wager”.
We find in it the extraordinary confluence of several important strands of thought: the justification of theism; probability theory and decision theory, used here for almost the first time in history; pragmatism; voluntarism (the thesis that belief is a matter of the will); and the use of the concept of infinity.
We will begin with some brief stage-setting: some historical background, some of the basics of decision theory, and some of the exegetical problems that the Pensées pose. Then we will follow the text to extract three main arguments.
The bulk of the literature addresses the third of these arguments, as will the bulk of our discussion here.
Some of the more technical and scholarly aspects of our discussion will be relegated to lengthy footnotes, to which there are links for the interested reader.
All quotations are from §233 of Pensées (1910, Trotter translation), the ‘thought’ whose heading is “Infinite—nothing”.
1. Background. The Argument from Super dominance. The Argument from Expectation. The Argument from Generalized Expectations: “Pascal's Wager”
Objections to Pascal's Wager
Bibliography
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. Background
It is important to contrast Pascal's argument with various putative ‘proofs’ of the existence of God that had come before it. Anselm's ontological argument, Aquinas' ‘five ways’, Descartes' ontological and cosmological arguments, and so on, purport to prove that God exists.
BILL: IN MY OPINION, A God WHO EXISTS--ONE WHO DOES IT ALL FOR US--IS NOT ONE THAT I NEED, OR TRUST.
Pascal is apparently unimpressed by such attempted justifications of theism: “Endeavour ... to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God...”
Indeed, he concedes that “we do not know if He is ...”
THIS IS WHY--rather than using the noun, God--I PREFER TO USE THE ACRONYM, G O D--based mostly on the use of metaphors and our personal experience. It is our responsibility, as followers of the Good News proclaimed by Jesus, to be willing to use our WILLpower to do all that is Good, Optimistic & Delightful to others, including enemies.
Pascal's project, then, is radically different: he seeks to provide prudential reasons for believing in God. To put it crudely, we should wager that God exists because it is the best bet.
Ryan 1994 finds precursors to this line of reasoning in the writings of Plato, Arnobius, Lactantius, and others; we might add Ghazali to his list — see Palacios 1920. But what is distinctive is Pascal's explicitly decision theoretic formulation of the reasoning.
In fact, Hacking 1975 describes the Wager as “the first well-understood contribution to decision theory” (viii). Thus, we should pause briefly to review some of the basics of that theory.
In any decision problem, the way the world is, and what an agent does, together determine an outcome for the agent. We may assign utilities to such outcomes, numbers that represent the degree to which the agent values them.
It is typical to present these numbers in a decision matrix, with the columns corresponding to the various relevant states of the world, and the rows corresponding to the various possible actions that the agent can perform. ...............
5. Objections to Pascal's Wager
Premise 1: The Decision MatrixHere the objections are manifold. Most of them can be stated quickly, but we will give special attention to what has generally been regarded as the most important of them, ‘the many Gods objection’ (see also the link to footnote 7).
1. Different matrices for different people. The argument assumes that the same decision matrix applies to everybody. However, perhaps the relevant rewards are different for different people. Perhaps, for example, there is a predestined infinite reward for the Chosen, whatever they do, and finite utility for the rest, as Mackie 1982 suggests. Or maybe the prospect of salvation appeals more to some people than to others, as Swinburne 1969 has noted.
Even granting that a single 2 x 2 matrix applies to everybody, one might dispute the values that enter into it. This brings us to the next two objections.
2. The utility of salvation could not be infinite. One might argue that the very notion of infinite utility is suspect — see for example Jeffrey 1983 and McClennen 1994......
