Q&A: Pascal’s Wager
Pascal’s Wager
Question
Hello Rabbi,
1) From your words it seems that there are a few lines of similarity to Pascal’s Wager. That is, you noted that one cannot know with certainty that God exists, but you nevertheless believe in Him based on various logical arguments, which makes it seem a bit like a matter of loss and gain—meaning it is more worthwhile to believe in Him than not to believe—or does the belief come from other considerations? a0
2) Is the idea that truth is objective an assumption? That is, is everything we examine subject to that, or could it be that, for the sake of argument, if we are talking about other dimensions and other realities, then they are not subject to that same truth?
Answer
1. Nothing in the world is certain. But if something is sufficiently plausible, I accept it, unrelated to wagers or expected gain. Not because it pays off, but because it is true.
2. I didn’t understand a word.
Discussion on Answer
Sorry. I don’t understand the question.
To the questioner: it seems you didn’t understand his intention at all. The use of the concept of plausibility does not stem from the fact that the issue is not fully “closed”; rather, it is because this is a subject like most subjects in real life, where there are no proofs as in mathematics that rely only on logic, and so in the end one needs considerations of plausibility. Of course, the statement that something is plausible is still open to different levels of certainty depending on the matter.
It seems to me that I understood something along the lines of what you wrote, except for the issue with mathematics. It is clear to me that life is not one plus one, so that is why plausibility comes in here. That is also why I wrote that the debate still remains as it is, because there are those who will say that it is not plausible because of A, B, C… In the end everyone makes their own choice, of course. At first I thought this was similar to Pascal’s Wager, but the Rabbi explained that the consideration does not stem from profit or utility, but from whether it is plausible enough to be true, and that I understood.
1) So you are basically saying: if it is plausible that something is true, then I accept it as true even if I am not certain of it, even though the degree of confidence is apparently lower than a conclusive proof. In other words, the real debate is what counts as sufficiently plausible for me to accept it, but that is already a completely different topic and, to some extent, an individual matter.
2) There is a very logical claim that we all share the same objective truth. I was actually asking two things—first of all, is this an assumption that we inferred, or is it a necessary starting point? (As you once said, nothing is necessary except that statement that nothing is necessary.) At least to me, it seems that objective truth really is necessary; contradictory things cannot exist in the world, like a circular triangle. Just as there is such a concept as Euclidean space, on the other hand I thought that maybe it is possible that, just as there is a space in which the rules of the game are different, there may be different dimensions of reality that are not subject to that same objective truth, where the rules of the game are different and therefore the truth there is also different…
Basically, it is clear to me that this is only a philosophical topic and has no significance for practical life. I was just wondering about it, because if in mathematics there can be different spaces in which the answers are different according to the definitions, maybe that is also the case with our reality. Hope that clarifies it…