The Moral Wager

The Moral Wager
Author: Malcolm Murray
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2007-05-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402058551

In the following chapters, I offer an evolutionary account of morality and from that extrapolate a version of contractarianism I call consent theory. Game theory helps to highlight the evolution of morality as a resolution of interpersonal conflicts under strategic negotiation. It is this emphasis on strategic negotiation that underwrites the idea of consent. Consent theory differs from other contractarian models by abandoning reliance on rational self-interest in favour of evolutionary adaptation. From this, more emphasis will be placed on consent as natural convergence rather than consent as an idealization. My picture of contractarianism, then, ends up looking more like the relativist model offered by Harman, rather than the rational (or pseudo-rational) model offered by Gauthier, let alone the Kantian brands of Rawls or Scanlon. So at least some of my discussion will dwell on why it is no loss to abandon hope for the universal, categorical morality that rational models promise. In the introduction, I offer the betting analogy that underwrites the remaining picture. There are some bets where the expected utility is positive, though the odds of winning on this particular occasion are exceedingly low. In such cases, we cannot hope to give an argument that taking the bet is rational. The only thing we can say is that those predisposed to take this kind of bet on these kinds of occasions will do better than those with other dispositions, so long as such games occur often enough.

Taking Pascal's Wager

Taking Pascal's Wager
Author: Michael Rota
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2016-04-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830899995

Blaise Pascal's wager argues that since there is much to gain and relatively little to lose, the wise decision is to seek a relationship with God and live a Christian life. Michael Rota explores the dynamics of doubt, evidence and decision-making in order to consider what is necessary for people to embrace the Christian faith—and the difference it makes in people's lives.

Pens閑s

Pens閑s
Author: Blaise Pascal
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 716
Release: 1995-12
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0140446451

Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. The Penseés is a collection of philosohical fragments, notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in pscyhological, social, metaphysical and - above all - theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal's analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but who can be transformed through faith in God's grace. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Modernity's Wager

Modernity's Wager
Author: Adam B. Seligman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2009-02-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1400824699

Adam Seligman, one of our most important social thinkers, continues the incisive critique of modernity he began in his previously acclaimed The Idea of Civil Society and The Problem of Trust. In this provocative new work of social philosophy, Seligman evaluates modernity's wager, namely, the gambit to liberate the modern individual from external social and religious norms by supplanting them with the rational self as its own moral authority. Yet far from ensuring the freedom of the individual, Seligman argues, "the fundamentalist doctrine of enlightened reason has called into being its own nemesis" in the forms of ethnic, racial, and identity politics. Seligman counters that the modern human must recover a notion of authority that is essentially transcendent, but which extends tolerance to those of other--or no--faiths. Through its denial of an authority rooted in an experience of transcendence, modernity fails to account for individual and collective moral action. First, deprived of a sacred source of the self, depictions of moral action are reduced to motives of self interest. Second, dismissing the sacred leaves the resurgence of religious movements unexplained. In this rigorous and imaginative study, Seligman seeks to discover a durable source of moral authority in a liberalized world. His study of shame, pride, collective guilt, and collective responsibility demonstrates the mutual relationship between individual responsibility and communal authority. Furthermore, Seligman restores the indispensable role of religious traditions--as well as the features of those traditions that enhance, rather than denigrate, tolerance. Sociologists, political theorists, moral philosophers, and intellectual historians will find Seligman's thesis enlightening, as will anyone concerned with the ethical and religious foundations of a tolerant society.

Gambling on God

Gambling on God
Author: Jeff Jordan
Publisher: Rl Innactive Titles
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1994
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780847678334

Gambling on God brings together a superb collection of new and classic essays that provide the first sustained analysis of Pascal's Wager and the idea of an infinite utility as well as the first in-depth look at moral objections to the Wager.

Pascal's Pensees

Pascal's Pensees
Author: Blaise Pascal
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2013-08-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1627933646

This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works.

Pascal's Wager

Pascal's Wager
Author: Jeff Jordan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2006-10-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199291322

What if there is no strong evidence that God exists? Is belief in God when faced with a lack of evidence illegitimate and improper? Evidentialism answers yes. According to Evidentialism, it is impermissible to believe any proposition lacking adequate evidence. And if any thesis enjoys the status of a dogma among philosophers, it is Evidentialism. Presenting a direct challenge to Evidentialism are pragmatic arguments for theism, which are designed to support belief in the absenceof adequate evidence. Pascal's Wager is the most prominent theistic pragmatic argument, and issues in epistemology, the ethics of belief, and decision theory, as well as philosophical theology, all intersect at the Wager. Other prominent theistic pragmatic arguments include William James'scelebrated essay, 'The Will to Believe'; a posthumously published and largely ignored pragmatic argument authored by J.S. Mill, supporting the propriety of hoping that quasi-theism is true; the eighteenth-century Scottish essayist James Beattie's argument that the consoling benefit of theistic belief is so great that theistic belief is permissible even when one thinks that the existence of God is less likely than not; and an argument championed by the nineteenth-century French philosopher JulesLachelier, which based its case for theistic belief on the empirical benefits of believing as a theist, even if theism was very probably false.In Pascal's Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God, Jeff Jordan explores various theistic pragmatic arguments, and the objections employed against them. Jordan presents a new version of the Wager, what he calls the 'Jamesian Wager', and argues that the Jamesian Wager survives the objections hurled against theistic pragmatic arguments and provides strong support for theistic belief. In addition to arguing for a sound version of the Wager, Jordan also argues that there is aversion of Evidentialism compatible with a principled use of pragmatic arguments, and that the Argument from Divine Silence fails. Objections found in Voltaire, Hume, and Nietzsche against the Wager are scrutinized, as are objections issued by Richard Swinburne, Richard Gale, and other contemporary philosophers.The ethics of belief, the many-gods objection, the problem of infinite utilities, and the propriety of a hope based acceptance are also examined.

The Moro Morality Play

The Moro Morality Play
Author: Robin Wagner-Pacifici
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 1986-11-15
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780226869841

On March 16, 1978, the former prime minister of Italy, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, and what followed—the fifty-five days of captivity that resulted in Moro's murder—constitutes one of the most striking social dramas of the twentieth century. In this compelling study of terrorism, Robin Wagner-Pacifici employs methods from sociology, symbolic anthropology, and literary criticism to decode the many social "texts" that shaped the event: political speeches, newspaper reports, television and radio news, editorials, photographs, Moro's letters, Red Brigade communiques, and appeals by various international figures. The analysis of these "texts" calls into question the function of politics, social drama, spectacle, and theater. Wagner-Pacifici provides a dramaturgic analysis of the Moro affair as a method for discussing the culture of politics in Italy.

The Transhumanist Wager

The Transhumanist Wager
Author: Zoltan Istvan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2013
Genre: Science fiction
ISBN: 9780988616110

Philosopher, entrepreneur, and former National Geographic and New York Times correspondent Zoltan Istvan presents his visionary novel, The Transhumanist Wager, as a seminal statement of our times. Scorned by over 500 publishers and literary agents around the world, his philosophical thriller has been called "revolutionary" and "socially dangerous" by readers, scholars, and religious authorities. The novel debuts a challenging original philosophy, which rebuffs modern civilization by inviting the end of the human species-and declaring the onset of something greater. Set in the present day, the novel tells the story of transhumanist Jethro Knights and his unwavering quest for immortality via science and technology. Fighting against him are fanatical religious groups, economically depressed governments, and mystic Zoe Bach: a dazzling trauma surgeon and the love of his life, whose belief in spirituality and the afterlife is absolute. Exiled from America and reeling from personal tragedy, Knights forges a new nation of willing scientists on the world's largest seasteading project, Transhumania. When the world declares war against the floating city, demanding an end to its renegade and godless transhuman experiments and ambitions, Knights strikes back, leaving the planet forever changed.

Moral Psychology Today

Moral Psychology Today
Author: David K. Chan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2008-02-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402068727

This volume is an edited collection of original papers on the theme of "Values, Rational Choice, and the Will". The editor is a Stanford-trained moral philosopher, and the organizer of a conference held on April 1-3, 2004. The conference succeeded in bringing together a wide range of essays that dealt with most of the central questions of moral philosophy today, in both normative ethics and meta-ethics, theoretical and applied ethics, and especially in moral psychology.