Re-Engineering Humanity by Brett Frischmann & Evan Selinger

Author:Brett Frischmann & Evan Selinger [Frischmann, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2018-04-29T21:00:00+00:00

Many are familiar with Blaise Pascal’s wager concerning the existence or nonexistence of God. Drawing from this well-known case and the philosopher William James’ general conception of pragmatism and specific perspective on free will, we’d like to introduce another existential gamble.11 It is a wager on the nature of reality that comes down to taking sides on a single question: Is natural determinism true or false? Given the stakes involved, there’s no viable way to avoid the wager.12 Assume you must choose a position and place your bet. While reason won’t help you figure out the truth about the nature of reality,13 it can help you decide which wager to make. The pragmatic decision shapes how we choose to live our lives and how collectively we understand and order our society. But it lacks any evidentiary weight in the ultimate question upon which the wager is being made. Since there’s no truth value to how bets are placed, all you’re doing is deciding whether we’re collectively better off by living our lives and ordering our relations and society generally as if natural determinism is true or false.

Pascal suggested that when faced with such a wager you should choose to bet on the existence of God because of a simple cost-benefit calculation. Simply put, “if you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.” The pragmatic wager is not so clear-cut.14

We have two possibilities, and we must weigh the consequences of choosing to bet on one over the other given the impossibility of knowing the truth. We can sharpen our focus by evaluating the consequences of selecting either option in terms of a two-by-two grid that identifies error costs. We aren’t framing this formally in terms of expected utilities because we’ve assumed that we cannot know or learn what probabilities to assign. For purposes of argument, let’s suppose each is equally likely.15 We label the bottom row as status quo because we currently live our lives and order our affairs as if reality is not naturally determined and free will exists.

Reality / Wager Reality is naturally determined Reality is not naturally determined

Live life and order society as if reality is naturally determined Accurate Error

No free will Illusion of no free will

Live life and order society as if reality is not naturally determined Error Accurate

Status quo: Illusion of free will Status quo: Free will

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