This strikes me as a rather odd question. I thought we were more or less agreed that beliefs don’t generally have utility. The peculiarity of Pascal’s wager and religious belief in general is that you are postulating a universe in which you are rewarded for holding certain beliefs independently of your actions. In a universe with no god (which I claim is a universe much like our own) belief in god is merely false belief and generally false beliefs are likely to cause bad decisions and thus lead to sub-optimal outcomes.
If the belief in god is completely free-floating and has no implications for actions then it may not have any direct negative effect on expected utility. Presumably given the finite computational capacity of the human brain holding non-consequential false beliefs is a waste of resources and so has slight negative utility. It strikes me that this is not the kind of belief in god that people are usually trying to defend when invoking Pascal’s wager however.
This strikes me as a rather odd question. I thought we were more or less agreed that beliefs don’t generally have utility.
I’m not sure that beliefs don’t generally have utility. It seems to me that beliefs (or something like beliefs) do a lot to organize action. There’s a difference between doing something because of short-term reward and punishment and doing the same thing because one thinks it’s generally a good idea.
Hmm. I think beliefs do have a utility, whether or not you can act on that utility by choosing a belief or whether or not you can accurately estimate the utility. If you believe something, you will act as though you believe it, so that believing in something inherits the utility of acting as though you do. It seems very strange to think of someone acting as though they believe something, without them actually believing it. There are exceptions, but for the most part, if someone bets on a belief, this is because they believe it.
If you believe something, you will act as though you believe it, so that believing in something inherits the utility of acting as though you do.
I don’t in general agree with this. Outcomes have utility, actions have expected utility, beliefs are generally just what you use to try and determine the expected utility of actions. As a rule, true beliefs will allow you to make better estimates of the expected utility of actions.
This is true for ordinary beliefs: I believe it is raining so I expect the action of taking my umbrella to have higher utility than if I did not believe it was raining. It is possible to imagine certain kinds of beliefs that have utility in themselves but these are unusual kinds of beliefs and most beliefs are not of this type. If there is a god who will reward or punish you in the afterlife partly on the basis of whether you believed in him or not then ‘believing in god’ would result in an outcome with positive utility but deciding if you live in such a universe would be a different belief that you would need to come to from other kinds of evidence than Pascal’s wager.
It is possible to imagine other beliefs that could in theory have utility in themselves for humans. For example, it is possible that believing oneself a bit more attractive and more competent than is accurate might benefit ones happiness more than enough to compensate for lost utility due to less accurate beliefs leading to actions with sub-optimal expected utility. If this is true however it is a quirk of human psychology and not a property of the belief in the way that Pascal’s wager works.
It seems very strange to think of someone acting as though they believe something, without them actually believing it.
I don’t find it at all strange to think of someone acting as if they believe in god even though they don’t. This has been common throughout history.
This strikes me as a rather odd question. I thought we were more or less agreed that beliefs don’t generally have utility. The peculiarity of Pascal’s wager and religious belief in general is that you are postulating a universe in which you are rewarded for holding certain beliefs independently of your actions. In a universe with no god (which I claim is a universe much like our own) belief in god is merely false belief and generally false beliefs are likely to cause bad decisions and thus lead to sub-optimal outcomes.
If the belief in god is completely free-floating and has no implications for actions then it may not have any direct negative effect on expected utility. Presumably given the finite computational capacity of the human brain holding non-consequential false beliefs is a waste of resources and so has slight negative utility. It strikes me that this is not the kind of belief in god that people are usually trying to defend when invoking Pascal’s wager however.
I’m not sure that beliefs don’t generally have utility. It seems to me that beliefs (or something like beliefs) do a lot to organize action. There’s a difference between doing something because of short-term reward and punishment and doing the same thing because one thinks it’s generally a good idea.
Hmm. I think beliefs do have a utility, whether or not you can act on that utility by choosing a belief or whether or not you can accurately estimate the utility. If you believe something, you will act as though you believe it, so that believing in something inherits the utility of acting as though you do. It seems very strange to think of someone acting as though they believe something, without them actually believing it. There are exceptions, but for the most part, if someone bets on a belief, this is because they believe it.
I don’t in general agree with this. Outcomes have utility, actions have expected utility, beliefs are generally just what you use to try and determine the expected utility of actions. As a rule, true beliefs will allow you to make better estimates of the expected utility of actions.
This is true for ordinary beliefs: I believe it is raining so I expect the action of taking my umbrella to have higher utility than if I did not believe it was raining. It is possible to imagine certain kinds of beliefs that have utility in themselves but these are unusual kinds of beliefs and most beliefs are not of this type. If there is a god who will reward or punish you in the afterlife partly on the basis of whether you believed in him or not then ‘believing in god’ would result in an outcome with positive utility but deciding if you live in such a universe would be a different belief that you would need to come to from other kinds of evidence than Pascal’s wager.
It is possible to imagine other beliefs that could in theory have utility in themselves for humans. For example, it is possible that believing oneself a bit more attractive and more competent than is accurate might benefit ones happiness more than enough to compensate for lost utility due to less accurate beliefs leading to actions with sub-optimal expected utility. If this is true however it is a quirk of human psychology and not a property of the belief in the way that Pascal’s wager works.
I don’t find it at all strange to think of someone acting as if they believe in god even though they don’t. This has been common throughout history.