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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Let me begin with a true story. Years ago, early in my career as a professor of philosophy, I had a fascinating series of conversations with a student whom I will call Peter. He was a bright and incisive senior, with a double major in philosophy and psychology. Raised in a religious family, the son of a Christian minister, he was himself unable to believe. His doubts were too strong. But the odd fact was that he genuinely wanted to believe. His religious scepticism deeply troubled him; part of him envied the faith of his parents. How do you go about making yourself believe?, he asked me. How do you go about having the kinds of religious experiences that lead people to faith? These were long and intense conversations, and I was unable (though I tried) to move Peter away from his doubts. So far as I know he is still a sceptic.
1 Pascal, Blaise, Pensées (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 83.Google Scholar Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the Pensées are from Section 233 in Brunschvicg's numeration, the famous Infini-rien section, which is found on pp. 79–84 of the Random House edition.
2 Hume, David, A Treatise on Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), Appendix, p. 624.Google Scholar
3 These criteria should be taken as jointly sufficient conditions for my successfully making myself believe p. As I interpret Pascal, they are not necessary conditions. Possibly there are many other quite different circumstances in which self-induced belief is possible. The claim here is simply that self-induced belief is possible in any case where the four stated criteria are satisfied.
4 Although in this paper I try to interpret Pensées 233Google Scholar, it should be pointed out that the central issue to be discussed – whether it is ever possible to cause oneself to believe something – is quite independent of the problems of Pascal scholarship or of the exegesis or Pensées 233Google Scholar – a notoriously difficult passage. Perhaps my interpretation of it is incorrect; perhaps Pascal did not hold what I am calling ‘Pascal's doctrine’. Even if this much is true (and I do not accept that it is), the issue of the paper remains to be considered.
5 The Bertrand Russells of this world will surely disagree with this; lack of evidence (they will say) is what prevents belief. But I will not try to evaluate such a criticism of Pascal's argument since it constitutes a rejection of one of its most important assumptions, namely criterion I.
6 H. H. Price argues convincingly that through measures analogous to this, we are able indirectly to cause ourselves to believe certain propositions. See ‘Belief and Will’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume xxviii (London: Harrison and Sons, Ltd., 1954), 1–26.Google Scholar
7 Furthermore, Pascal's doctrine seems to find support in the discipline of social psychology. The theory of cognitive dissonance, for example, predicts that people who are committed to a given cognition will try to bolster it and resist evidence against it, even to the extent of changing their own attitude toward it. If they commit themselves to the cognition in a small way – perhaps by playing the role of a committed believer in the cognition, or even by mentally rehearsing arguments in favour of it – this can provide justification for a much larger commitment. So one way of getting people to believe a cognition (quite apart from evidence for or against it) is to get them to make a commitment of it. The psychological point is that if you make a statement of belief that has not been externally justified (e.g. through evidence), you will try to justify it internally by making your attitudes more consistent with it. This is especially true in cases where self-esteem is at stake (we don't like to think of ourselves as liars or scoundrels) or where the inducement offered for making the original commitment was small (‘Since I only accepted one dollar for arguing that tuition ought to be raised, it must be the case that I do in fact believe that tuition ought to be raised’). See Aronson, Elliot, The Social Animal, 3rd edn. (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980), pp. 99–157Google Scholar; Petty, Richard E. and Cacioppo, John T., Attitudes and Persuasion: Classical and Contemporary Approaches (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1981), pp. 213–53Google Scholar; Kiesler, Charles, Collins, Barry and Miller, Norman, Attitude Change: a Critical Analysis of Theoretical Approaches (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1969), pp. 191–237.Google Scholar
8 See Pensées, Section 248Google Scholar: ‘Faith is different from proof; the one is human, the other is a gift of God… It is this faith that God himself puts into the heart.’
9 Mackie, J. L., The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 202.Google Scholar
10 As already noted, Pensées 233Google Scholar is an obscure text; perhaps Mackie was misled by Pascal's talk about the Wager for God being worthwhile even if there were an infinite number of chances of losing.
11 Clifford, W. K., Lectures and Essays, ed. by Stephens, Leslie and Pollack, Frederick (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1901), Vol. ii, p. 186.Google Scholar
12 James, William, ‘The Will to Believe’, in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 3.Google Scholar The concept of a forced option is spelled out further in Davis, Stephen T., Faith, Skepticism, and Evidence (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1978), pp. 113–118.Google Scholar
13 This point is recognized by Terence Penelhum in his helpful discussion of Pascal's Wager. See pp. 62–75 of his God and Skepticism (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1983).Google Scholar
14 Furthermore, there seems to be no reason why those who try to follow Pascal's doctrine, and who accordingly take steps designed indirectly to cause themselves to come to believe a given proposition, cannot keep an open mind toward future evidence for or against the proposition, should it become available.
15 James, , op. cit. p. 6.Google Scholar
16 Cited in Chevalier, Jacques, Pascal, trans. by Clare, Lilian A. (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1930), p. 243.Google Scholar
17 This point is made nicely by James Cargile. See ‘Pascal's Wager’, Cahn, S. and Shatz, D. (eds.), Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 231.Google Scholar
18 Thus Pascal says to those who wager for God: ‘At each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain…’
19 I would like to thank my colleagues Martin Chemers, John Hick, John Roth and Charles Young, as well as my teaching assistant Alan Scholes, for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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