Pascal the Philosopher by Hunter Graeme;Pascal Blaise;

Author:Hunter, Graeme;Pascal, Blaise; [Hunter, Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PHI022000, REL051000, LIT004150
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2013-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

An Objection

The wager argument ends here, with the implicit conclusion that the interlocutor should wager for God’s existence. But he still hesitates on two counts. First, he seeks reassurance that Pascal’s argument is not a fallacious one. He wonders in particular whether there might not be an “infinite distance” between what he certainly risks and the infinite good he hopes to gain, such that those two infinities cancel one another and render the bet a bad one, or at least a doubtful one. The details of this murky objection are not important for present concerns. Pascal is able to reassure the interlocutor that the wager to which he is being invited is an overwhelmingly good bet:

jP1 [O]ur proposition has infinite force when the odds of losing or winning are the same, and there is infinity to be won.

If the odds are fifty-fifty and you have to bet, each bet is equally reasonable. But if betting one way promises you immeasurable good at no cost, and the other way promises you nothing, then you must of course bet on the immeasurable good. “That is demonstrative,” Pascal declares.

jP2 And if there is any truth men are capable of grasping, that is it.

What exactly is Pascal claiming to have demonstrated? Neither the truth of Christianity nor the existence of God.84 His argument resembles the ones that used to be called practical syllogisms, whose conclusions were not a proposition for contemplation but an action to be undertaken. Pascal’s syllogism takes the form of an argument about wagering, but, as I have stressed, it exploits the idea of wagering only metaphorically. The argument’s conclusion is not literally that the wagerer should bet on God. Its literal meaning is that everyone should live his life as if God, as conceived by the Catholic tradition, exists. Here is how the practical syllogism runs when the metaphorical role of the wager is removed:

1. Life* is what we will live unless we choose to live otherwise.

Lemma 1: Life* appears to those living it as a mixture of happiness and unhappiness followed by death.

Lemma 2: The value of a completed life* is at best nothing.

2. There are good reasons for believing that there is a life of infinite goodness (life∞) which can be obtained, if we choose to live as if God, as understood by the Catholic Church, exists.

Lemma 3: There are also good reasons for doubting whether there is any such thing as life∞ (or God).

3. A probabilistic model (supported by the mathematical consensus of Pascal’s age) says that where 1 and 2 and the three lemmata obtain, it is reasonable to live as if God existed.

∴ We ought to live as if God existed.

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