Blaise Pascal : Pensées (posthumously 1670)

About the Text

The disjointed appearance of the Pensées has two causes. First, its composition: The manuscript is a set of notes preparing for an apology for the Christian religion. The notes were published after the author’s death and ordered differently in the editions that followed. It is even unclear if the Pensées had an intended disposition or not. Is one of the lists found a disposition or just another note? Pascal took the matter to the grave.
   Second, its breadth of scope: Pensées covers a broad range of topics. The connections remain elusive. Even within a single note, wide ranging claims can be made. For instance, the first line of the first note establishes “the difference between the mathematical mind and the intuitive mind”. The mathematical mind sees order by mathematical principles. It shifts perspective, and when properly shifted the principles impose themselves. An example can be found in his Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle, where the mathematical mind of Pascal sees how the stakes in a gambling situation should be divided.
   It is tempting to assume that the intuitive mind is akin to common sense or practical reason, but this would be a mistake. Unlike the intuitive mind, practical reason is not about discernment but about action. Common sense, on the other hand, is indeed about discernment, and like the intuitive mind it proceeds “tacitly, naturally, without technical rules”. Yet, common sense resorts to simplification and reduces what is complex to what matters most, while the intuitive mind distinguishes itself by discerning principles that “are so subtle and so numerous that it is almost impossible but that some escape notice.” The intuitive mind is hard to grasp. I would hope this is due to my mathematical mind, but I may simply be dull because, as Pascal notes in passing, “dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical” and there is very little in between.

   Despite its conditions of creation, Pensées is a rich text. I will focus on its most well-known topic, Pascal's wager in note 233. We will however get there via note 194, which displays a superb blend of rational thinking and writing.

Pascal's Wager : Setting the Scene

Pascal’s wager is often considered a simple mind game. In addition, it is usually misconstrued as a wager on whether I gain most by believing in God or not. Leading up to Pascal’s wager, the real stakes are laid out in note 194 with a rigor that deserves lengthy quoting, and without a trace of dullness:

How can it happen that the following argument occurs to a reasonable man? 

   “I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short tie which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinities on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a show which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.

   As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall be for ever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty. And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all the days of my life without caring to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some solution to my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor take a step to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are concerned with this care, I will go without foresight and without fear to try the great event, and let myself be led carelessly to death, uncertain of the eternity of my future state”

   Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? [...]
   It is a monstrous thing to see in the same heart and at the same time this sensibility to trifles and this strange insensibility to the greatest objects. It is an incomprehensible enchantment, and a supernatural slumber, which indicates as its cause an all-powerful source. There must be a strange confusion in the nature of man, that he should boast of being in that state in which it seems incredible that a single individual should be. [...]
   Finally, let them recognize that there are two kinds of people one can call reasonable; those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know him.

 

Pascal's Wager : Playing It Out

In Pascal’s wager (233) the mathematical mind has the upper hand. I will follow Ian Hacking’s account in chapter 6 of The Emergence of Probability. 

   Hacking argues, contrary to others, that Pascal’s reasoning is correct. The reason the argument fails lies in the premises. Some of the confusion stems from the fact that it is actually three arguments, all of which are valid: The conclusions follow from the premises. Hacking underlines that 

 

each has the form of a decision-theoretic argument of a kind properly named only in this century. [...] Pascal’s procedure [...] is to offer an argument of dominance. But if it is rejected, another premise is added and we obtain an argument from expectation. Then, if the second lot of premises be rejected, he offers an argument from dominating expectation.

 

 The ideas behind these terms are not complicated:

• Dominance is a technical term for when “an action is better no matter what the world is like.”
• Expectation means to include the likelihood of different states of the world; summing up all the possible actions and likelihoods, then perform the action with the highest expectation.
• Dominating expectation is the case where we can’t define the probabilities, so we have to resort to probability assignments. Combining the reasoning of dominance and expectation, we perform the act of dominating expectation.

There are two states and two actions: The states, “God is, or He is not”, combine with the actions, either “act with complete indifference to God” or “act in such a way that you will, in due course, believe in his edicts and his existence”.

• Dominance: If God is not, both actions will do. If God is, act to in due course believe; it can bring salvation, which is better than sure damnation. By dominance, act according to “God is”.
• Expectation: One problem is that if God is not, a libertine loses something by following dominance; “He likes sin.” (Hacking) That changes the scene. Pascal assumes “an equal risk of gain and of loss”, which Hacking calls “a monstrous premise of equal chance”. Maximizing the gain here clearly is to “act so you will come to believe in God”: the incomparable benefit of salvation by far outdoes the pleasures of any worldly life.
• Dominating expectation: We do know that there is a chance of God’s existence; it is not zero. And however small, “the expectation of the pious strategy with infinite reward exceeds that of the worldly one".

At least two of the premises are thought-provoking:

1. Is faith really a choice? The premise is that “belief is catching”. If I devote myself to the forms, content (belief) will come. This idea may seem farfetched, but isn't it confirmed in everyday experience? Doesn't it apply to the actions and distractions of daily work life? Doing a job, won't I even start thinking like a professional? (Pascal himself seemingly questions this idea when in note 292 he states that from “conformity of application we derive a strong conviction of conformity of ideas”. Here that conviction may be false: When we use concepts, we may arrive at the same conclusion from different premises. The premise for the wager is different: acting in such a way that one will "in due course, believe in his edicts and his existence", what is presumed is not change but consistency in action.)
   
2. Does one really have to place the bet? Pascal’s imagined interlocutor challenges this premise, but Pascal dismisses him: “You are embarked.” Next the discussion tips into the three-step procedure of dominance, expectation, and dominant expectation, that is mathematical thinking. It is unacceptable for the Christian Pascal to leave a fellow man of the dull mind ignorant: The lengthy citation from note 194 above indicates that not playing is a refusal to rational consideration, and Pascal finds this refusal to be rational and still claim to be a Man abominable. In note 195 he even considers it a duty to his fellow man to relieve him of his beast-like condition: “The resting in ignorance is a monstrous thing, and they who pass their life in it must be made to feel its extravagance and stupidity, by having it shown to them, so that they may be confounded by the sight of their folly.” Before we dismiss this caring intention as a 17th century religious assault on the freedom to be dull, we can remind ourselves that in relation to education Alfred Norton Whitehead less than a century ago said that: "Where attainable knowledge could have changed the result, ignorance has the force of vice."
   

Pascal's Wager: The Bottom Line

There is another, unnamed premise tucked away in another note (273), one that could be considered the real basis of the wager: The relation between reason and religion is one of close affinity, or equality, or even identity, depending on how rigorously one takes the following statement. I will take it to be identity, because one can swap reason and religion, and still retain a clear meaning:

If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.

This powerful statement – by a great scientist, great mathematician, great inventor, great entrepreneur, and great religious thinker, also arguably the foremost master of style in the French language, someone who died after a life of physical suffering at the age of 39 – rhymes with a sententious phrase jotted down on another scrap of paper: “the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” (277) Yet another world of thought opens up: Reason depends on the heart; it is nothing without it.