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    The Wager would not get off the ground even if rationalit... — Carmelics
    Home/Natural Theology
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The Wager would not get off the ground even if rationality merely permits, rather than requires, refraining from assigning a probability 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.Agents who permissibly withhold probability assignments face genuine decision-theoretic indeterminacy, not merely incomplete information.
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    • 2.Under indeterminacy, no expected utility calculation is well-defined, so the Wager's infinite expected utility argument produces no action-guiding output.
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    • 3.A wager that generates no determinate recommendation fails on its own decision-theoretic terms, regardless of whether abstention is required or merely permitted.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Levi's epistemology of belief establishes that rational agents may maintain credal committees—sets of permissible probability functions—rather than point-valued credences.
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    • 2.When a credal committee includes both zero and nonzero probabilities for God's existence, the expected utility of wagering is undefined across that committee.
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    • 3.The Wager requires a dominated-options argument to get started, but dominance reasoning collapses when the probability space itself is permissibly unresolved.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Pascal's Wager presupposes that one should have a probability for God's existence.
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    • 2.Rationality may permit agents to leave their probability for God's existence undefined.
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    • 3.If an agent permissibly refrains from assigning a probability to God's existence, the Wager cannot compel that agent.
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    Topics

    Natural Theology

    Related

    A wager that generates no determinate recommendation fails on its own decision-t...Agents who permissibly withhold probability assignments face genuine decision-th...If an agent permissibly refrains from assigning a probability to God's existence...Levi's epistemology of belief establishes that rational agents may maintain cred...
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    Pascal's Wager presupposes that one should have a probability for God's existenc...Rationality may permit agents to leave their probability for God's existence und...The Wager requires a dominated-options argument to get started, but dominance re...Under indeterminacy, no expected utility calculation is well-defined, so the Wag...When a credal committee includes both zero and nonzero probabilities for God's e...

    Similar

    The Wager would not get off the ground if rationality requires refrain...99%Pascal's Wager presupposes that one should have a probability for God'...82%Following Pascal's Wager may require renouncing theoretical rationalit...80%If an agent permissibly refrains from assigning a probability to God's...78%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: pascal-wager
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    1. Undefined probability for God’s existence. Premise 1 presupposes that you should have a probability for God’s existence in the first place. However, perhaps you could rationally fail to assign it a probability—your probability that God exists could remain undefined. We cannot enter here into the thorny issues concerning the attribution of probabilities to agents. But there is some support for this response even in Pascal’s own text, again at the pivotal claim that “[r]eason can decide nothing
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

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