Abstract
In Pascal’s famous wager, he claims that the seeking non-believer can induce genuine religious belief in herself by joining a religious community and taking part in its rituals. This form of belief regulation is epistemologically puzzling: can we form beliefs in this way, and could such beliefs be rationally held? In the first half of the paper, we explain how the regimen could allow the seeking non-believer to regulate her religious beliefs by intervening on her evidence and epistemic standards. In the second half of the paper, we argue that regulated religious beliefs can be rationally held.
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Notes
All references to Pascal’s Pensées are numbered according to Lafuma’s 1963 arrangement.
Slightly adapted from Hájek (2003, 27–8).
At least, belief is a part of what it is to wager that God exists, we suppose. Pascal himself uses the French verb ‘croire’, that is, ‘to believe’.
‘Regimen’ is Garber’s term (2009).
Adapted from Schoenfield (2014).
This example is inspired by Cook’s example of an aspiring scientist who undertakes to replace his creationist worldview with one based on evolutionary biology (1987).
See Reisner 2018 for an overview of the debate around pragmatic reasons for belief.
Of course, it’s not necessary for us to endorse pragmatic encroachment views of epistemic justification. We mention the topic now for illustrative purposes only. The crucial point is that a subject’s epistemic standards are among the determining factors of her beliefs.
Schroeder (2012) draws a clear distinction between these two types of error.
That being said, we take it that religious belief is compatible with a liberal stance towards each of these important moral issues.
It is worth noting that such communities do in fact exist. A notable example is found in the adherents of Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta, who believe on the basis of sophisticated arguments that the appearance of the external world is an illusion. We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for this point.
This point is due to Hawley’s discussion of the rationality of epistemic partiality in friendship (2014).
The following paragraphs are adapted from Warman (2019).
See Kopec and Titelbaum 2016 for an overview of this debate.
Schoenfield gives this passage as an exemplary case of the intuitive appeal of permissivism in her defence of permissivism as a solution to the problem of irrelevant influences on belief (2014, 196).
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Acknowledgements
David Efird passed away suddenly on the 9th of January, 2020. This paper benefited immeasurably from the thoughtful and instructive criticism of friends and colleagues at the University of York and at the 19th Annual Boston College Graduate Philosophy Conference. The research for this paper was completed as part of a doctoral studentship funded by the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities, award reference AH/L503848/1.
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David Efird passed away on the 9th of January 2020.
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Warman, J., Efird, D. After Pascal’s Wager: on religious belief, regulated and rationally held. Int J Philos Relig 90, 61–78 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-021-09790-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-021-09790-2