Prudential Versus Probative Arguments for Religious Faith: Descartes and Pascal on Reason and Faith
Abstract
:1. 17th Century Skepticism
- The problem of relativism: there are conflicting opinions about reality and each is somewhat rationally defensible, dogmatism about reality is untenable since its ends up begging the question and, particularly, pleading its claim;
- The problem of foundations: any evidence given to support a dogmatic conclusion about reality also needs evidence, and that evidence needs evidence, and ad infinitum; knowledge cannot be about reality in itself, only appearances;
- The goal of disbelief: as a consequence of numbers 1 and 2, we should suspend judgments about reality;
- The goal of tranquility: as a consequence of numbers 1–3, we find wisdom through ataraxy (the general disinvestment of all ultimate concerns) and thereby gain an inner tranquility.1
2. Descartes’ Probative Argument for God’s Existence and Scientific Knowledge
2.1. The Methodological Doubt of the Meditations
- We can doubt our senses and philosophical propositions because there are conflicting sense experiences and dogmatic claims;
- We cannot doubt that we are the doubters about such matters, leading us to realize with more certainty than what we know through our sense experiences and in propositional claims that we are “thinking things” (“Cogito ergo sum”);
- Yet doubt persists in the form of the malin genie who may deceive us of our thoughts (even of ourselves as “thinking things”) at this moment by putting them into our minds;
- Even if we grant that we may be deceived in thinking, we nonetheless can still think of God as the Perfect Being;
- The idea of God as the Perfect Being cannot come from experience or an authority; it is an innate idea, clear and distinct in itself; our knowledge of it is a flash of intuitive insight, and because it is as certain in its meaning to us as is the clarity of the idea to our thinking, we must conclude that neither ourselves nor a malin genie could have caused the idea of God in our minds; it had to come from God;
- With the innate idea of God as a Perfect Being, we have an epistemological connection to an extra-mental reality not eviscerated by skeptical doubt; there is a certain knowledge even greater than our knowledge of ourselves as “thinking things”, because, until we think of God, we have a lack of certainty that we are not deceived about ourselves; knowledge may start with thinking but it is secured upon the knowledge of God;
- Since our most certain knowledge is of God as a Perfect Being, we are assured that God would not deceive us about the world’s existence; science needs a link to reality and, because skepticism (according to Pyrrhonism) refutes the effort to base the link upon empirical experiences or even mathematical ideas, science gains the needed connection though the innate idea of God as a Perfect Being.
2.2. The Argument for God’s Existence as a Perfect Being
That is, because of the formal and objective realities of the idea of God as the Perfect Being, God must exist.7“For just as the objective mode of being belongs to ideas by their very nature, so the formal mode of being belongs to the causes of ideas—or at least the first and most important one—by their very nature …. If the objective reality of any of my ideas turns out to be so great that I am sure the same reality does not reside in me, either formally or eminently, and hence that I myself cannot be its cause, it will necessarily follow that I am not alone in the world, but that some other thing which is the cause of this idea also exist (i.e., God).” 6
- The formal reality refers to the idea’s inherent reality as an act of thought; that is, we cannot doubt that we can think the thought of God;
- The objective reality is the distinction of what is clearly represented in the idea of God as a Perfect Being; that is, the thought of God is not confused with other thoughts because of its particular content;
- Ideas represent realities when the objective reality has at least as much clarity and distinctiveness as the formal reality; that is, with God, the certainty of the representation of God is as clear and distinct to us as is the act of thinking of God;
- Because of skepticism, we can doubt the correspondence between ideas and reality; the representational structure of ideas makes our ideas about the world uncertain;
- Only the idea of God can actually and most certainly represent God, because, in brief, only a perfect reality can be represented by the idea of a perfect reality; in other words, the certainty of having such a unique idea indicates there must have been a Perfect Being to cause the idea;
- Only in the idea of God do we know this certainty, and this is so because, as a Perfect Being, God would not deceive us of the thought of God; an imperfect being cannot be represented by the idea of perfection and it is a necessary characteristic of perfection not to deceive and cause an imperfect idea.
However, it is still possible say that the thought of God per se is not necessarily incoherent, because it is logical to maintain that if we think of God as a Perfect Being, then it would be consistent to maintain that, since it is more perfect to exist than not, God must exist.Again, to intuit [through the cogito] God’s necessary existence, Descartes must equate His perfection with His existence. Then if the idea of His perfection includes any content other than that He exists—for example, that He is not a deceiver—the idea of God would be complex and thus dubitable because of possible confusions of reason.
3. Pascal’s Prudential Argument for Faith
3.1. Knowledge of the Heart
Intuitive reasoning is prudential, because it is, as Rescher says above, a journey in which people make practical decisions about not only what will work best but what is most fulfilling to the human drives for fulfillment, the kind of drives which propel people to look away from what can be demonstrated through probative reasoning towards what concerns the quest for Universal Being.And [Pascal’s Wager] insists on the need to recognize that some juncture will always be reached in the rational conduct of human affairs where probative rationality must yield way to normative rationality, where considerations of interest supplement considerations of evidence, and the questions ‘What sort of people do we want to be?’ and ‘What do we want to make of ourselves?’ become paramount.
3.2. The Wager
The argument appeals to two aspects: the wager itself, and our “interests” and “happiness.” The French word Pascal used for happiness in #418 is béatitudee. It means more than good and contented feelings; it is a state of human fulfillment, of being blessed in a particular activity. Our fulfillment as desirous humans of an ultimate concern, of an Ultimate Being, is at stake in the Wager. The Wager is compelling and obligatory upon us because we are interested in our happiness, in a fulfilled life encompassing not only our bodily needs and social necessities but our quests for ultimate fulfillment. It is compelling because the wager is about what ultimately interests us. It is obligatory because our béatitude, our quest for happiness, is involved. If our interests are satisfied in orienting our aims and actions toward ultimate reality, we experience béatitude, but if we choose for the “least interest,” then we thwart our desires to find what can possibly bring us the greatest fulfillment.Yes, but you must wager. There is no choice, you are already committed. Which will you choose then? Let us see: since a choice must be made, let us see which offers you the least interest. You have two things to lose: the true and the good; and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to avoid: error and wretchedness. Since you must necessarily choose, your reasons is no more affronted by choosing one rather than the other. That is one point cleared up. But your happiness (italics added)? Let us weigh up the gain and the loss involved in calling heads that God exists. Let us assess the two cases: if you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate then; wager that he does exist”.(#418)
In fact, the Wager is congruent with other passionate commitments we make in life. We take risks on personal relationships proportional to the hoped-for fulfillment of our emotional yearning for completion. With the Wager, Pascal attempted to focus on this emotional yearning, and the Wager is compelling as an argument if it clarifies what is needed to relate our primary life orientation and to risk our possible eternal happiness with an eternal object known only in an emotional, intimate relationship.[Pascal’s] argument attempts to show that, in light of the ultimate questions, we ought to adopt a certain kind of strategy for living, with the aim in view of coming to know, and attaining the proper relation to the highest Truth. We all employ life strategies, and we all gamble with those strategies. Pascal devised an argument to show us that we all ought to bet our lives on God.17
After describing how Pascal shows that the practical benefits of certain beliefs (in particular those that aim at eternal happiness) can make them rational, Foley raises the issue of the epistemic duty of having credible evidence for the beliefs. Until such a duty is met, the pragmatic value of beliefs is only half-convincing, and though Foley does not critique in detail Pascal concerning these epistemic duties, he thinks it is a needed requirement and one which Pascal may not be able to deliver.To show that pragmatic considerations make it rational for us to believe in God, Pascal needs to defend a number of supporting theses that are none too easy to defend. For example, he needs to argue that there is a nontrivial probability that God exists; that there is a nontrivial probably that God is prepared, under the appropriate conditions, to bestow infinitely great rewards; …. So, even once we grant that pragmatic considerations can in principle make a belief rational, Pascalians have a difficult task confronting them. (Foley 1994, p. 4)
4. Conclusions
Conflicts of Interest
References
- Beyssade, Jean-Marie. 1992. The Idea of God and the Proofs of His Existence. In The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Edited by John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Clarke, Desmond M. 1992. Descartes’ Philosophy of Science and the Scientific Revolution. In The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Edited by John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Davidson, Donald. 2001. Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar]
- De Montaigne, Michel. 2003. The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters. Translated by Donald M. Frame. Introduction by Stuart Hampshire. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. [Google Scholar]
- Descartes, René. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol. II. [Google Scholar]
- Foley, Richard. 1994. Pragmatic Reasons for Belief. In Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager. Edited by Jeff Jordan. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. [Google Scholar]
- Frame, Donald M. 1965. Montaigne: A Biography. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. [Google Scholar]
- Gaukroger, Stephen. 1995. Descartes: An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar]
- Hammond, Nicholas, ed. 2003. The Cambridge Companion to Pascal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
- James, William. 1956. The Will to Believe and other Essays in Popular Philosophy and Human Immortality. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. [Google Scholar]
- Levi, Albert William. Philosophy as Social Expression. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Morris, Thomas V. 1992. Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. [Google Scholar]
- Morris, Thomas V. 1994. Wagering and the Evidence. In Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager. Edited by Jeff Jordan. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. [Google Scholar]
- O’Connell, Marvin R. 1997. Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. [Google Scholar]
- Pasca, Blaise. 1989. Pascal: Selections. Edited with Introduction by Richard H. Popkin. In The Great Philosophers. General Editor Paul Edwards. New York: Scribner/Macmillan Book. [Google Scholar]
- Peters, James R. 2009. The Logic of the Heart: Augustine, Pascal, and the Rationality of Faith. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. [Google Scholar]
- Plantinga, Alvin. 1993. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Quinn, Philip L. 1994. Moral Objections to Pascalian Wagering. In Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. [Google Scholar]
- Rescher, Nicholas. 1985. Pascal’s Wager: A Study of Practical Reasoning in Philosophical Theology. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. [Google Scholar]
- Toulmin, Stephen. 2001. Return to Reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Watson, Richard A. 1987. The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. [Google Scholar]
- Wood, William C. 2004. Reason’s Rapport: Pascalian Reflections on the Persuasiveness of Natural Theology. Faith and Philosophy 21: 520–21. [Google Scholar]
1 | Pyrrhonism refers to Pyrrho of Elea, a fourth-century B.C.E. philosopher, whom we know about mostly from Sextus Empiricus, a Greek physician from the second-century C.E. in his “Outlines of Pyrrhonism.” The four claims summarize a variety of points Sextus Empiricus made. |
2 | For a full discussion of Montaigne’s on-and-off relationship with Pyrrhonism, see Donald M. Frame (Frame 1965, pp. 162–80). A representative quote is, “If (human knowledge) cannot be perfect, our knowledge can be useful. And this is what matters to Montaigne” (p. 177). |
3 | It is risky to summarize the Essays into two primary goals. It consists of three books and 117 chapters written from 1572 to 1588. It is a compendium of names (the index of names is 21 pages), local cultural events, small direct arguments, and advice. Nonetheless, throughout Montaigne’s work, he has a certain descriptive anthropology, which highlights humanity’s weaknesses of will and mind but which also suggests people can live a meaningful life. |
4 | For the background to this period in which Descartes tried to reconcile science and the Church, see Stephen Gaukroger (Gaukroger 1995, pp. 336–46). |
5 | These seven levels summarize Descartes’ use of doubt in Meditations on First Philosophy. They are also on a whole expressed in the Discourse on Method, published in French four years earlier in 1637 and in which he described his famous “stove-heated room” experience near Ulm of 19 November 1619. The differences between the books are more about emphasis than basic agenda. In Meditations, he responded to two serious objections to the previous book about the nature of the self as a “thinking thing” and the conclusion that God exists from the idea of a Perfect Being. It is more precisely analytical about the two concerns and thus is more focused as a book of metaphysics, whereas the Discourse is a philosophical autobiography, replete with personal pronouns and stories. The Discourse tells of Descartes’ discovery of how substantial reality mirrors the working of the mind at its most foundational level. |
6 | In the First Set of Replies to the First Set of Objections to the Meditations, Descartes further explained the representational characteristics of idea, especially the formal and objective mode of beings; see pp. 74f, ibid. |
7 | In the “Synopsis” of the beginning of Meditations, Descartes repeated his argument used in Discourse that God causes our idea of God; because we are imperfect and all our knowledge of the world is imperfect, we could not have thought of a Perfect Being unless the Perfect Being influenced us to think of the Perfect Being. He does not explain how God causes us to think this way. The assumption is: “what else could make us think this way other than God.” In the Meditations, Descartes did not emphasize this argument, having found a more analytically precise way to make the argument by explaining the representational characteristic of ideas having objective and formal realities. |
8 | Stephen Gaukroger also makes the point the Descartes tried to demonstrate the Church’s two main teachings and the new science metaphysically: “Descartes’ project is ultimately directed towards metaphysical legitimization of his natural philosophy, which is resolutely Copernican. For this metaphysical legitimization to be successful, it was necessary to show that it was in line with the teachings of the Church that it did not involve or lead to any theological unorthodoxy. Generally speaking, Descartes steers clear of theological questions, restricting his attention to showing that there is no incompatibility between his metaphysics and theological orthodoxy” (Gaukroger 1995, pp. 355–56). Because Descartes would rather base his theological claims upon a metaphysic, which also gives cognitive confidence in natural science than support a metaphysic upon theological dogma, he is a modern and not a scholastic thinker. |
9 | For a parallel critique, see Davidon’s critique of the “myth of the subjective.” (Davidson 2001, p. 52). |
10 | I am following the Lafuma edition rather than the Brunschvicg edition. For an interesting telling of the formation of the Lafuma edition, with Nazis and all, see Pascal: Selections (Pasca 1989, pp. 10–15). |
11 | The two references in Pensées are #79, “Even if [Descartes’ system] were true we do not think that the whole of philosophy would be worth an hour’s effort” and #887, “Descartes useless and uncertain.” Henry Phillips maintains that Pascal’s approach to religious apologetics differs significantly from Descartes’ “ahistorical concept of the status of knowledge,” and “Pascal’s response to such an overwhelmingly optimistic view of the capacities of the human mind is firm and uncompromising, especially in relation to Descartes’ apologetic claims, to which the Pensées as a whole stand as a monumental objection. Reason as an instrument in understanding faith is acceptable, but faith in reason is not,” in “Pascal’s Reading and the Inheritance of Montaigne and Descartes,” (Hammond 2003, pp. 33–34). |
12 | See Marvin R. O’Connell (O’Connell 1997), Chapters 2 (“The Ghost of Augustine”) and 3 (“Port-Royal”) for a thorough discussion of Pascal’s role in the controversy associated with Port-Royal. |
13 | On November 23, 1654, Pascal experienced an intense religious conversion on the Pont-Neuf of Paris, about which he wrote two similar versions, one on paper and the other on parchment, which were found by a servant shown in his doublet: “FIRE, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and of the learned…” See O’Connell, ibid., pp. 95–103. |
14 | My purpose here is not to engage the well-known criticisms of the Wager that deal with its possible “self-corruption” and “credulity” (W. K. Clifford), and “complicity” (Terrence Penelhum), but to understand its coherence within Pascal’s overall apologetic agenda. For a summary and reply to these three criticisms of the Wager, see Philip L. Quinn (Quinn 1994, chp. 6). |
15 | A way to render the sense of “expected value” of a bet is that the expected value equals the probability of it winning times the payoff of the winning minus the cost of the bet, (Probability X Payoff) − Cost = Expected Value. For a discussion on the “expected value” angle of the Wager see Thomas V. Morris (Morris 1992, pp. 111–27). |
16 | Pascal does not use the phrase “passional nature” in the Wager. The phrase is from William James, who uses it to build his “will to believe” prudential argument for religious faith. For James in the Will to Believe our passional nature refers to the willing nature in which people have the moral obligation to establish and keep their personal integrity. “Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, ‘Do not decide, but leave the question open,’ is itself a passional decision,—just like deciding yes or no,—and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth,” (James 1956, p. 11). |
17 | Morris, ibid., p. 110. |
18 | William Wood uses the phrase “attentiveness to the dynamics of rapport” to account for the aspect of human nature to which Pascal appeals in the Wager and throughout the Pensées, (William C. Wood (Wood 2004)). Wood’s point is that the word rapport is more than a relationship; it is a fitting and appropriate value. The Wager indicates an orientation to faith, which is fitting and appropriate for human nature. |
19 | The issue of evidence and its warrant for an argument is complex. The distinction I make is gleaned from Alvin Plantinga’s discussion of evidence and warrant in Warrant and Proper Function (Plantinga 1993, pp. 185–93). |
20 | Stephen Toulmin has influenced me in making this distinction between rational certainty and reasonableness. He claims that Descartes and modernity emphasized rational certainty and promoted the “myth of the stable,” and consequently ignored how we gain knowledge through prudential, reasonable arguments; see Stephen Toulmin (Toulmin 2001, pp. 204–14). |
© 2017 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Share and Cite
Sansom, D. Prudential Versus Probative Arguments for Religious Faith: Descartes and Pascal on Reason and Faith. Religions 2017, 8, 136. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8080136
Sansom D. Prudential Versus Probative Arguments for Religious Faith: Descartes and Pascal on Reason and Faith. Religions. 2017; 8(8):136. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8080136
Chicago/Turabian StyleSansom, Dennis. 2017. "Prudential Versus Probative Arguments for Religious Faith: Descartes and Pascal on Reason and Faith" Religions 8, no. 8: 136. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8080136