Philosophically Speaking...

...it's been quite some time since I've taken a philosophy course, but it's funny how quickly old-knowledge resurfaces. In today's class we were debating proofs for the existence of God, and I'm sure Pascal's Wager is a concept you're all familiar with. It states that if you were to analyse your options in regard to belief in God carefully (or belief in any other religious system with a similar reward and punishment scheme), you would come out with the following possibilities:

- You may believe in God, and God exists, in which case you go to heaven.
- You may believe in God, and God doesn't exist, in which case you gain nothing.
- You may not believe in God, and God doesn't exist, in which you gain nothing again.
- You may not believe in God, and God may exist, in which case you will be punished.

From these possibilities, and the principles of statistics, Pascal deduced that it would be better to believe in God unconditionally. It's a classic application of game theory to itemize options and payoffs and is valid within its assumptions. Here's a simple table that shows the values assigned to each possible outcome:

	God exists (G)	God does not exist (~G)
Belief in God (B)	+ ∞ (heaven)	0
Non-belief in God (~B)	− ∞ (hell)	0

Of course, Pascal's Wager is not an argument for the existence of God, per se. He concluded that since we can never know for sure, and that our minds were absolutely incapable of truly comprehending God (or infinity, or perfection) we'd gain nothing by debating it.

What this post's really about, is that the entire class exercise brought me back to a previous Risk, Choice, and Rationality course where our first decision matrix was the Prisoner's Dilemma.

For a bit of fun, you can follow this link to play the game with a computer. Enjoy!

Currently: Sitting amongst moving boxes full of books.