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    Pascal's equiprobability argument does not speak to those... — Carmelics
    Home/Natural Theology
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    Pascal's equiprobability argument does not speak to those in his audience who do not assign probability 1/2 to God's existence.

    Natural Theology
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Pascal's Wager in the Pensées explicitly invokes a coin-toss analogy, grounding its formal structure in a 50/50 prior over God's existence.
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    • 2.Arguments are valid only relative to the premises they assume; an argument assuming equiprobability is formally inapplicable to agents holding asymmetric priors.
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    • 3.Bayesian decision theory, as developed by Savage and Jeffrey, requires that expected utility calculations respect the agent's actual credence function, not a stipulated one.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Ian Hacking's canonical analysis of the Wager identifies equiprobability as a load-bearing assumption, not a rhetorical flourish, making it structurally essential.
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    • 2.An agent assigning probability 0.01 to God's existence faces a different dominance or expectation calculation than one assigning 0.5, yielding potentially different rational prescriptions.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Some members of Pascal's audience assign a probability other than 1/2 to God's existence.
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    • 2.An argument premised on equiprobability only applies to agents who accept that assignment.
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    Topics

    Natural Theology

    Related

    An agent assigning probability 0.01 to God's existence faces a different dominan...An argument premised on equiprobability only applies to agents who accept that a...Arguments are valid only relative to the premises they assume; an argument assum...Bayesian decision theory, as developed by Savage and Jeffrey, requires that expe...
    +3 moreShow less
    Ian Hacking's canonical analysis of the Wager identifies equiprobability as a lo...Pascal's Wager in the Pensées explicitly invokes a coin-toss analogy, grounding ...Some members of Pascal's audience assign a probability other than 1/2 to God's e...

    Similar

    Some members of Pascal's audience assign a probability other than 1/2 ...85%Pascal's Wager presupposes that one should have a probability for God'...83%The probability of God's existence should be assigned 1/2 (equal weigh...80%The argument can be read as assuming no probability is assigned to God...79%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: pascal-wager
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    Morris 1994 is sympathetic to (1), while Hacking 1972 finds it “a monstrous premiss” (189). One way to defend it is via the classical interpretation of probability, according to which all possibilities are given equal weight. The interpretation seems attractive for various gambling games, which by design involve an evidential symmetry with respect to their outcomes; and Pascal even likens God’s existence to a coin toss, evidentially speaking. However, unless more is said, the interpretation yiel
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit