Salvaging Pascal’s Wager

Philosophia Christi 21 (1):59-84 (2019)
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Abstract

Many think that Pascal’s Wager is a hopeless failure. A primary reason for this is because a number of challenging objections have been raised to the wager, including the “many gods” objection and the “mixed strategy” objection. We argue that both objections are formal, but not substantive, problems for the wager, and that they both fail for the same reason. We then respond to additional objections to the wager. We show how a version of Pascalian reasoning succeeds, giving us a reason to pay special attention to the infinite consequences of our actions.

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Elizabeth Jackson
Toronto Metropolitan University

Citations of this work

Pascalian Expectations and Explorations.Alan Hajek & Elizabeth Jackson - forthcoming - In Roger Ariew & Yuval Avnur (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Pascal. Wiley-Blackwell.
Wagering Against Divine Hiddenness.Elizabeth Jackson - 2016 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8 (4):85-108.
Pascal, Pascalberg, and friends.Samuel Lebens - 2020 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87 (1):109-130.

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References found in this work

Transformative Experience.Laurie Paul - 2014 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Belief, Credence, and Pragmatic Encroachment.Jacob Ross & Mark Schroeder - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2):259-288.
Deciding to believe.Bernard Williams - 1973 - In Problems of the Self. Cambridge [Eng.]: Cambridge University Press. pp. 136--51.

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