 Hey everybody tonight we're debating Pascal's wager and we are starting right now with Dr. Liz Jackson's opening statement. Thanks so much for being with us Liz the floor is all yours. Awesome. Thank you so much James I just wanted to start up by saying thanks for having us on and also thanks to Graham for just being here and be willing to talk to me about this. Thanks to the audience really quickly James and I go way back and he actually introduced me to the Chipotle Venn diagram hack. So if you do not know what that is Google it because you're missing out so I just wanted to let everyone know publicly how awesome James's life hacks are. Okay, let's jump into Pascal's wager. So I, so I, so what I want to do basically is just talk a little bit about opies article in his book arguing about gods on Pascal's wager it's one of the chapters in the book chapter five. I just wanted to say I want to try to keep this to 10 minutes. So what I want to do is kind of skip the decision theory background I'm not going to go through and explain the basics of decision theory. If you don't have that background and you want that background, I think James linked my YouTube channel in the description and I have a video on there that's called responding to three objections to Pascal's wager. So go over some decision theory background in that. So go check that out. So I'm really looking forward to our, our discussion today there's just two kind of preliminary things I wanted to say the first is that sometimes I don't like the word debate because I really want all of our goal today to be getting at the truth. And sometimes making it into a debate makes it more about when you're losing so I want us to just focus on what's the truth how can we learn from each other and sort of set that tone for the night. And so what I want to do is in this opening statement basically give a super, super short background on like what is Pascal's wager. And then focus on this chapter and arguing about God's talk about a few things that I liked and I agree with in the chapter and then I think I have six points of disagreement I probably won't get to them all but maybe I'll just mention the ones I don't get to really briefly. So hopefully that sounds good. All right, so what is Pascal's wager let's start with that question. Pascal's wager is an argument that it is rational to believe in God or that you should believe in God. So it's not an argument that establishes that God exists it doesn't raise the probability that God exists. I think that's a common misconception it's not meant to give us evidence that God exists but instead it's an argument that it's rational to believe in God. I think the most basic form of Pascal's wager basically says look, there's two acts there's two actions you could take you could wager on God or you could not wager on God. And then there's two states of the world to raise the world could be God exists God doesn't exist. So we have this nice sort of two by two matrix where we have for combinations and then decision theory language user called outcomes. So if you wager on God, and God exists, things are infinitely good you get to go to heaven you have a relationship with God. And then on all the other possible outcomes. Things are less than infinitely good I'm actually stealing this from office chapter I think it's a nice way of putting it. So if you wager on God and God doesn't exist things are less than infinitely good. And if you don't wager on God and God doesn't exist things are less than infinitely good. And if you wager on God and God doesn't exist things are less than infinitely good. And so, if we have two assumptions. The first is that you ought to maximize expected value which is a pretty common assumption among people working in decision theory. The second is that your credence that God exists is non zero and non infinitesimal. Then we can get the result from sort of this setup and those two assumption that you should wager on God. So, this is, I think, a helpful starting point just to kind of get us on the same page about what Pascal's wager is saying and what it's not. But my version of the wager is ultimately more complex than this. I'll talk a little bit more about it in a second but I think we have to make it more complex than just either God exists or God doesn't exist to account for the fact that there's various religions. So, I think we sort of need to put these religions into the decision table and make the, the Pascal decision matrix more complex. I also will say my wager is not a wager for Christianity. So in the version of Pascal's wager I give my conclusion is not that you should be a Christian or that you should wager on Christianity. I wanted to clarify that. Okay, now I'm on part two, which is things I liked or agreed with in the chapter and so one thing I definitely agree with is that wagering isn't for everyone. If someone has a credence of zero and theism or an infinitesimal credence and theism. So your credence is like one over infinity. Then you shouldn't wager. So we can, you know, argue about the question of whether those credences are rational that is something that oppie talks about in this chapter a little bit. That is, and that's one of the six things that I wanted to address that I don't know if I'll get to, but I do agree that if you have those credences, then you're not rationally required to wager. There's also another case where credence is vague over an interval that includes zero. And I agree there it's indeterminate whether you should wager again question. Is that a rational credence assignment to me it does seem a little bit odd, but we can we can talk more about that. Another thing I thought was super interesting in the chapter, but I don't have like firm views on but I just wanted to flag is super interesting is the relationship between the odds that are delivered by decision theory and then the all things considered I actually just think that's a super interesting possible issue and I'd love to see more philosophers working on it. I do, you know, one thought I guess on this is that decision theory, it's a pretty flexible theory and it doesn't take a stand on what you build into the utility function like it doesn't take a stand on what's valuable and so it can incorporate a lot of different kinds of norms and values. I do see the worry like, kind of is this consequentialist framework. How is it can it capture certain categorical norms maybe to do that you would need a decision theory with certain side constraints or something. So, I don't really have a lot more to say about that I just thought that was a really interesting question that probably deserves more work among decision theorists and people just working on normal. Normativity in general. The final thing that I thought was really awesome in the chapter was opi has this lottery ticket case and I'll explain what that is in a second but I really like the case I thought it was really clever. And I think it nicely illustrates a problem for certain infinite versions of the wager. So, I'll talk more about that in a second. Okay, now to my points of potential disagreement. How long have I been talking James. Have I really been talking 10 minutes already. It's a little bit yet. Okay, I'll try to be quick. It's fine. So I have six points of potential disagreement. I say potential because you know, maybe we will end up agreeing more than we think but just things that in the chapter. Yeah, I thought I didn't fully agree with. Okay. So, the first is the point about the many God's objection and then the death kayak mixed strategies objection. And I think, and in my paper salvaging Pascal's wager I explained this in more detail so if you're interested in and kind of a more beefed up version of this argument. I think both of these objections fail. And that's because I don't think all infinities are created equal or they all shouldn't be treated equally in our decision making. And so, you know, the very basic version of Pascal's wager I gave a second ago, it relies on this idea that the infinite Trump's the finite and that's kind of it you know if you wager and God exists. Then things are infinitely good and then on all the other outcomes, things are less than infinitely good. And I just, I think that's overly simplistic I don't think that version of the wagers going to work. And I think what we need to do is we need to actually incorporate different states of the world including different religions into the wager. And I have an extended example of how this might work in that paper salvaging Pascal's wager. Again, I'll reiterate I'm not arguing that everyone needs to to wager on Christianity. But what I'm suggesting that we do is we decide between religions using the tools of decision theory. And there's going to be a number of deciding factors here but probability is going to be one of the big ones. The thought here is like, look, clearly, we should go for the higher chance of getting something. Sorry, infinitely, infinitely good, rather than the lower chance and I have this two doors case I've given many times before where behind door number one there's a point zero zero one chance of getting infinitely infinite utility behind door number two there's a point nine nine nine chance. So I picked door number two, even though both give you some chance at getting some infinite good right. So I think at the very least all else equal, we should go for the higher chance. But I think we could maybe even get a claim that's slightly stronger than just an all sequel claim to. So you know there's this claim we should go for the higher rather than the lower chance at infinite utility. And then there's this question of like, how do we weigh the infinite utilities against the finite ones. And this is where the lottery to get case comes in and I think is really interesting so you might think, well so so just to clarify we're talking about expected values here. So you might think we're always going to prefer the infinite expected value to the finite one, you might think prima facie that seems pretty plausible. Here's where the case comes in so he said look, if there's in a thousand ticket lottery, and the payout is positive infinity. I already hold 900 of the tickets. What grounds are there for insisting that I should be prepared to betray all my friends and family in order to obtain another ticket. So here's the thought this I think this case is super clever. You're slightly slightly slightly raising the probability that you get this infinite good, but that does have an unexpected value. At least prima facie that seems like betraying your friends and family has some finite negative value. If infants always try finance, you should betray your family in order to get this lottery ticket, but that seems absurd right. So, I think this is a great objection I think it's actually kind of underrated. And it's something I just want to think more about in general. So I have three potential replies to it, but I think it's a super interesting question like if infinite expected values always trump my night ones. And then if not like what print like, what are plausible principles that we can kind of get to capture the way we weigh these expected values against each other. Okay, response number one and I think this response is the most consistent with what we argued in the salvaging Pascal's wager paper. So response number one is just to bite the bullet and say this look, we're actually really bad at reasoning about infinities. They did studies and one study I think is super interesting they basically asked people, like, how much they would pay to save. It was like 100,000 birds, a million birds or 10 million birds or something, and like, each group said like $25 basically. And that's really bad at reasoning about these large numbers and I think, kind of, in our heads we kind of just classify it as really big number, you know, and so you can give an error theory here, right and say look, we're just really bad about reasoning about infinite expected values, it might seem like we really shouldn't, you know, give up a good relationship with our friends and family get this lottery ticket but if it really does have an expected value that we should. And by that, I think it's an interesting potential response but I definitely feel conflicted about it. So that's one response. The second response would be to find some kind of alternative principle about when infinity is trump finite and so maybe not say that every infinite expected value trumps every finite expected value. Maybe sometimes infinite expected values trump finite expected values like I would pay a pretty large sum of money to get an infinite good, and I would pay a pretty large sum of money even to increase my chance at getting an infinite good. And so maybe like one thing we could do is have some kind of probability threshold so the probability you get the infinite good needs to, you know, have this value x and then that's when the trumping starts to happen. So help with some other objections to Pascal's wager to like Pascal's mugging some people might be familiar with. But I think, you know, in general, yeah, we would need to figure out some way to make that principle not sound ad hoc so that's a potential worry for that, but potentially away we can go. And it's just to go to the finite version of the wager so kind of push infinity out of the way and instead treat the value of a relationship with God or the value of heaven as kind of like an arbitrarily large finite value. And it brings up some worries for that and in the paper I may or may not get to responding to those because I'm already basically out of time. So maybe I'll say like one more thing and then just say the things that I don't have time to say and then anything you want me to say more about and happy to say more about. So the second worry that a happy raises for this idea that we should go for the higher probability of an infinite value is like, how does this have practical import. So even if it rules out certain things like maybe super low probability religions or certain mixed strategies, how do we know what actions are most likely to lead me to wager and God. And so I think this depends on the kind of wager you're going in for, but I basically normally my work distinguish between two kinds of wagers. There's the doxastic wager, which is a belief focused wager, and it basically says you should take actions that make it more likely you'll believe in God. So you should pray, read religious texts read arguments in favor of theism, immerse yourself in a religious community with the eventual goal of coming to believe in God. And there's also a commitment based wager that basically sort of pushes belief to the side and says, no, the important thing in wagering is making a commitment to pursue a relationship with God. And in practice, this might actually look sort of similar to the things I was saying about the doxastic wager, but your goal isn't necessarily to come to believe in God it's to to commit to pursuing a relationship with God. I would think that doing either of these things would at least raise the probability of getting something infinitely good. And I think to, and this regards the motives question, like is this passive wager necessarily involved bad motives. I think it's not just not going to heaven. But I think you would, you could totally take the wager, because you think it would be a good thing to know an all powerful all good being if God does exist. So even the small possibility, the small chance that God exists, you could say, because it would be so good to know God if God existed. I'm going to, you know, either take actions to try to believe in God or take actions to, you know, make a commitment to God. So, okay, so now just briefly go through the other five things and then I will stop talking. So number two was what I basically just said. It involves the motives and involved in Pascal's wager. I think of course you can take Pascal's wager with bad motives. No one's denying that. But I think there is a way to take Pascal's wager that does demonstrate good motives and actually have a whole paper on this. It's called faithfully taking Pascal's wager. You can download that and fill papers for free if you want. And I basically not only argue that Pascal's wager, there's a way that, of taking Pascal's wager that involves good motives, but also that it can demonstrate genuine faith in God. And I kind of draw on some recent accounts of faith. Okay, third thing I was going to talk about, I'm just going to go through these super quick responding to some of the words about finite wagers. And my thought was if they're more of like a model to basically model the value of heaven, the best way that we can, even if they're not like literally perfect. I still think, you know, you might think decision theory itself was just a kind of model anyway. So I think we could put finite values in to represent the value of heaven without having to commit to the idea that heaven is literally only finitely good. Fourth thing, you seem to rely quite a bit on a historical point this idea that Pascal says that reason cannot decide throughout the chapter and I guess I had two worries I'll just be super brief. I guess it's not clear to me that even as a historical matter Pascal thinks we're like totally in the dark or we have no evidence that bears on the ism. I think the point is more that reason doesn't require us to land one way or the other or reason is not going to fully settle the matter but we might still have some evidence. And I actually think if a kind of epistemic permissivism is true. This can actually solve some some big problems are Pascal's wager. The question is that I'm at least personally a lot less interested in the historical question that I am just the question of whether we can create a good argument that we should wager on God whether or not that's kind of what Pascal actually made or not so you can call Pascal's wager you can not call Pascal's wager I don't really care. I'm just interested in this idea that we can be rational to believe in God or commit to God even if the probability that God exists as well. I was going to say something about like rational credes as preferences and decision theory so we can talk more about that. There's this tension between do the credences and preferences that we input into decision theory have to themselves be rational. Or do we just take whatever credes and provinces you happen to have and throw this into decision theory. And I'm actually okay with going either way. And I recognize that if you put rational constraints on credences and preferences that does take some additional argumentation. So that came up a little bit in the chapter and I thought that was interesting. And then my final point. How to do with this idea that we either couldn't or shouldn't adjust our either beliefs or credences in accord with our practical reasons. So I've actually argued that if epistemic permissivism is true, both of these objections kind of don't don't work. But I also have other responses to these objections that I could say more about if you're interested. So that was all I had to say sorry that was super long. Thank you very much Liz for that opening statement and folks want to let you know if it's your first time here at modern day debate we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science religion and politics and we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from. And so with that we will kick it into open conversation. We'll let Dr. Robbie take the lead in that starting us off. So thanks so much for being with us here as well. Graham and the floor is all yours. Okay, so thanks Liz. That was that was really well there's a lot there and it's going to be hard to choose what exactly what we're going to talk about. So maybe one place to start is just thinking about the kind of setup of the wager arguments so sometimes the way that they're set up they're set up in with you. I mean in general the decision theory we're going to have actions and we're going to have states. And so the things that are on imagining visualizing a table the things that are on the action side of the table actually have to be actions. And so it was quite common up until about 20 years ago for people to write believe that God don't believe that God into that side of into that part of the table. And I think that the kind of straightforward objection to that is that those are not actions I can't just right now perform the action of believing something where I don't have any other considerations going forward other than perhaps something like the Pascalian calculation. So when you were describing the setup you didn't talk about belief you talked about wagering and I think that that makes a difference to the way that the table then comes out because there's a gap that that's now going to open up suppose I wager and God exists but my wagering fails right then I won't get the reward. And so I have to when I'm thinking about that the outcomes now there have to be more columns in the table because there's these two possibilities that I don't wager but I end up believing and I do wager but I don't end up believing that you have to take into account. And the reason why this matters is going to be that when you think about now calculating the doing the calculation of the expected value that against both wagering and not wagering there's going to be an infinite value in there. Right and if you if you think about what the tables look like God exists you end up believing it can go by two routes either by your wagering or by your not wagering. And so it seems as though in order to get a result out here the probability that's going to be most important is how you weigh the likelihood of success right what's the most likely route for you to get to. I'll say the end state is end up believing I don't care believing commitment whatever we want to call it and I'll have sort of to feel to sort of hunches about that for lots of people. One is that it would just be completely unclear to them. You know what might be what where the kind of directly argue aiming for it is going to be more likely to get them there versus just going on as they are right if you look at all of the data about conversions and transformations and things like that. It's not clear that there are kind of methods here that we've got much evidence or data that's going to help us decide what to do. So so one of the things that I've been thinking about lately is this thought that you kind of end up here in a without much reason to think that you've got any guidance for action. Anything that you might do is about as likely to succeed as anything that you might not do. And so the wager argument is going to break down at that point so I thought I'd ask you what you thought about that. So the reason why I'm mentioning this it relates to I think to your discussion in the paper salvaging Pascal's way during the following way that you at a certain point you say there's all these kinds of considerations we can just build them in by adding a multiplying factor. But this particular consideration doesn't work that way. So that was the reason why I'm bringing it up. Yeah. No that's great. I mean I agree with a lot of what you said so I don't think we're totally in opposition. I agree that there's at least a big question about whether we can just believe it well and at least in a lot of cases it seems like we can't. So I'm actually one of those really weird philosophers I know that most people don't agree with this but I do think in certain cases we have significantly more control over our beliefs than you might have thought. And so I actually think this is when we're kind of so when we're in a permissive case and to some level sort of aware of that fact we might not have the concept of epistemic permissivism. But you might think of a case where you're really torn between you know should this thing be legal or not or is this thing moral or not and you're really like you could really see it going either way. And I actually think like this is kind of true in the action cases as well arguably like when you're torn between going to law school and going to medical school. You might think those are the cases where it's more clear that we exercise free will then kind of just like our daily habitual actions where you know just like me waking up and brushing my teeth is similar to like me just believing that one plus one equals to like I don't really have at least you know the level of control over that it kind of just happens to me but when I'm really torn between two things. It's a lot less clear that I don't have at least a stronger level of control over my beliefs and so one thing I try to argue is that if you're in the situation with respect to theism. And you're really torn like it does God exist does God not exist there's some arguments for both sides. It's not at all clear to me that we don't have more control over our belief in that case and I think that's consistent with saying a lot of a lot of other beliefs we don't have control over. So that's one thing to say I think though like that might not hit at the deepest point of what you said though because I really think there's this big question which is like what does God want from us or like what is wagering look like and is that belief or is that something else and I think at least in the Christian theological tradition belief by itself might not be enough there might be some kind of works or actions that at least are the result of a genuine Christian commitment. So, so yeah I think here here's maybe the big I think a big choice point and maybe something that we would just disagree on. But I think that making a genuine commitment to God really seeking God praying going to church reading Holy Scriptures doing all these things raises the probability that you get infinite utility and if you're in one of these cases where you're really torn about what to believe. And I think actually doing these things could bring you bring you to one of these cases where you really are in a permissive case and you could believe that God exists and believe that God doesn't exist and you know really you could be rationally their way. Then I think you know this could even be a matter of belief so yeah I think you know believing in God because you're in a permissive case or making that commitment to God does raise the probability that you'll get infinite utility. And you know this might be a case where like our intuitions just conflict because you might just say it's just not clear to me that that does raise that probability. And then you know we could have a whole debate about what God's intentions would be but I guess the way that I view God God is personal and God wants a relationship with us and it would raise the probability you get infinite utility if you kind of wholeheartedly seek God. So you might just say that's not clear to me and there's it's not clear to me that that would raise that probability more than just you know going on with my life and then we might be at a standstill but I'm kind of curious what you think about that. Yeah so so there are lots of different Christian traditions and I mean lots of different even so I'm now just going to kind of restrict the tension to kind of Christianity for a bit. Some of which I think would suppose for example that there's just an elect and it's kind of already determined who's going to go to heaven and who isn't. The most I could be doing if I was doing the sort of things that you were suggesting was sort of garnering evidence that maybe I'll go to heaven but if you're a kind of causal decision theorist right you're not going to be very interested in that. Right so so so it really isn't obvious I mean it's not just sort of Christianity tells you the answer here. There are different parts of the Christian tradition or different I don't know what different denominations or whatever you want to call them that are going to give you rather different answers I think. Yeah so if like a really strong kind of Calvinism is true then yeah I agree with you and I do think some Calvinists probably have stories similar to maybe what compatibals would tell about why our actions really do matter and they really do change the probability and I'm not really an expert on that so I think some at least self identified Calvinist would want to say that. You know wagering on God would raise the probability but I acknowledge it's like a really deterministic version of Calvinism is true then you're probably right can I pause for two seconds I am being told that my audio is really bad is that true. I'm not see I'm not recognizing as bad. Okay so I sound okay okay I just wanted to make sure that you're good I turned it down a little bit but I just heard someone said it was super scratchy but maybe it's fine. I think I'm good. They'll always find something go ahead you're good. Yeah so yeah I mean you're right that there are certain denominations and certain you know worldviews on which you couldn't raise that probability right but I still think in some kind of all things considered sense you can raise that probability. So I guess that's how I would respond. Right so and maybe that's right. It kind of now depends on when we take a wider purview and we think about all the gods. Now what you think that the outcome is going to be right so yeah maybe we could go back and talk about so one of the things you said early on about the many God's objection. And your reasons for thinking that it's not a significant objection. So I don't know maybe maybe I'll be useful for you to say something about that. Yeah I mean maybe I should also clarify too so I guess I don't think that it's insignificant in the sense that we can just dismiss it or it doesn't matter. I guess what I do think is that in spite of the fact that there are many gods we can still use something like Pascal's reasoning and I'm not really interested in debating about whether it's close enough to Pascal's reasoning to be considered Pascal's major I don't think you care about that either. But some kind of decision theoretic reasoning that takes into account the afterlife. And we can still use that reasoning to decide between various religion and sort of the way that will go will depend on a couple things but one of the important things that will depend on is the probability of these religions. So in the same way I gave this example where there's a there's a 99% chance of getting an infinite good and there's a 0.1% chance of getting an infinite good and clearly you should pick, you know the 99% chance in the same way. You should wager on the religions all a sequel that you think has the highest probability. So it's kind of incorporating the many gods worry into Pascal's wager, rather than saying like, it doesn't matter or it's irrelevant. And again, my argument is not that people should wager on Christianity, my arguments only that you should wager on Christianity if you think Christianity is most likely to be true. So you could combine the wager with an argument that raises the probability of Christianity or another religion. And then you should wager on that, but it's not an argument for wagering on a certain religion. And then maybe the final thing I'll say and then I'll turn it over to you is, there's this possibility and then you talk about it in the chapter that atheists go to heaven and theists go to hell, whether because there's an Orthodox god that some of these heaven and theists go to hell or maybe that's just how the world is or whatever doesn't really matter. And so the thought is, well, if you assign that a higher probability than you do kind of all the traditional religions, then we're not saying you're irrational like you can go on and be an atheist and our main the main reason to push in that paper is, we want you to pay attention to these these afterlife consequences in your decision making and we think in fact probably a lot of people won't assign that a higher probability than the traditional religions and, you know, we, you could go on to try to give an argument for that again, like I said, great probability raising of certain religions. But in that sense, that is one way that I think you could accept all of our reasoning but still be rational to be an atheist. So one, one thing that's sort of interesting at this point. So, since Brescia wrote his book about Pascal's wager, it's been sort of common to think about this, at least in some circles, in terms of audiences that might be persuaded by Pascal's wager and audiences that might not be. And I wonder about the size of the audience or about the makeup of the audience of people who are kind of apt to be persuaded by Pascal's wager because for a start, I imagine that you can take out of consideration all the people who already believe and all of the people who are kind of confirmed naturalists or atheists or whatever. And so I wonder what sort of population size is going to be left. Now you might think this doesn't matter. You know, I mean, in theory, all that matters is that there might be one person that this was a good argument for. But, but I wonder whether you've whether you have even have any thoughts about how you might work out how significant this argument might be. Yeah, I mean it's a nice question, although it is kind of a sociological and empirical question and we're a priori philosophers right so in one sense like yeah like I could just punt and say I don't know. But, but I do think it's interesting and relevant just because the less people the smaller my audience is maybe arguably maybe this isn't true but maybe the less interesting the argument is at least in some sense right. So, so I think it's an it's an interesting question and I guess. Yeah, I'm not. So maybe you could say a little bit more about this idea that confirmed naturalists. Maybe maybe you could just say even what you mean exactly by that so if you mean someone that like assigned zero probability to theism or all religions or infinitesimal and then there's like that interval case that I mentioned briefly. So like those cases. Yeah, but I would think, depending on, I mean, maybe not every single one, but there could be people that do believe atheism is true they just don't have a credence of one and atheism or creams of zero and theism right. And Pascal's wager could, could entail that they ought to seek to believe in God or make a commitment to God. So, I guess it just depends on what you mean by confirmed naturalists but I would like to think that a lot of naturalists, even if they do believe naturalism is true, they don't have a creams of one in it in the same way that it definitely don't have a creams of one and theism even though I believe that it's true. So I guess I was thinking so this will be kind of stipulated but I was thinking of the confirmed naturalists as the people whose values and credences had it come out that that the thing to do was to go on being a naturalist or, you know, an atheist or whatever when you do a wager style calculation because there's lots of, I mean, there are lots of things here that you might and you have to kind of why out all of the, the competing, I mean, there's probability to distribute over a whole lot of outcomes, right. And the thing that comes out at the top might be, might just be some sort of naturalism that depends on how it goes. So I'm thinking, for example, you, in your own calculation you borrow from Sober and somebody else, a kind of naturalistic way of getting infinite utility. I mean, there's kind of stories you can tell maybe there are many universes and we kind of master technology for prolonging life forever and hopping between universes as they were out so that we can have infinite value. And it's not clear that what probability you should give to that but maybe if you're a naturalist you're going to think that that's a little bit more likely than any theistic hypothesis. And so that's going to be, even if you don't think that's very likely in itself you still might think the best thing is just to go on being a naturalist. So that was sort of the idea that I had in mind. It wasn't one about the size of the credences or giving zero to all the theistic hypothesis. Yeah, I like the the black mirror style cases those are fun. Yeah, I mean, here's an interesting thought I'm just curious what you think about this but like, what about some kind of like bet hedging right so it might be that on naturalism if some if I can upload my consciousness to a computer that exists forever for some reason then I could have an utility or whatever, but I guess I'm thinking like do that and wager right like I don't I guess, you know, pursue uploading your consciousness I don't see any reason that would conflict with at least a lot of them. You know, also being a religious person and wagering on many of the major religious traditions. So if there's a way to consistently, you know, pursue multiple sources of infinite utility, like go for it right like the more the better let 1000 flowers bloom upload your consciousness and convert you know, what do you think about that. In the calculation of expected value. Is that going to rate is that going to rate higher because the way that we were thinking about it there's all these outcomes. And what you're supposed to do is maximize expected utility by picking the act that, you know, comes out with a high score. So you're now thinking that they're that there are sort of these individual acts and then they're a combination combined acts as well. Is it something like that. That's the idea. So, yeah, I mean I guess I don't see why, why we should rule it out, at least as an in theory possibility so yeah if like two things are mutually exclusive you can't do both at the same time or something then yeah you have to pick. You might think you like can't convert to two different religions at the same time, although that's, I think up for debate right. But I guess I'm not seeing any reason, although I might just not be thinking of it to think I couldn't pursue infinite utility in both a religious way Yeah. So, so with the religions, it, I mean pursuing many religions at once. I, maybe that's going to come back to questions about belief, right, you can sort of be a Buddhist on Mondays and Hindu on Tuesdays and Christian on Wednesdays. If you don't have to worry about sort of consistency over time, you could, you know, you could, you could really you could have one day every 10 years for each of rather a large number of religions. And do you think that that could be that you know that's what pastels weren't you couldn't recommend. I don't rule it out. I mean, right, but I do think, you know, it depends, it's just going to depend on your credences and your preferences right, but if you assign like, let's just say you you think one religion is significantly more likely than others for some reason. And then you think there's a good reason to think that if that religion is true God would want some kind of more wholehearted devotion. Then maybe that would be a reason to not like hedge your bets in that way right, but if certain religions are consistent. Again, I'm like, I think if there's certain religions that are consistent if you if you can genuinely practice those and hedge your bets I guess I don't want to I don't want to say that that you know I don't want to rule that out either. So I guess it just depends would be the answer. Yeah, it does sound unlikely. One of the things about it is that what's really mattering here is the kind of absolute driver is you want the infinite utility. And you're just kind of doing whatever you can in order to get it. Well, maybe that's not fair. It's not doing whatever you can because but it's you're taking reasonable steps to try to secure it or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting whether you should think when there's going back to other older objections to Pascal's wager, whether you should really think that that should be what's governing the decision that you're making. In some sense all things can see that not just sort of doing the calculation. Yeah, I mean another thought too so I mentioned I have that paper on like taking Pascal's wager in and the motives involved and whether those would please God and you might think like if you take this like pursuing as many religions as you can at once should maximally take Pascal's wager bets thing too far, then the motives start to be more questionable, and then we get this worry like is this something God would would want in the first place. Because I do think in that paper, I try to carve out a way of taking Pascal's wager, where I think it really, you know, does demonstrate good motives. But I also say there's definitely ways of taking the wager that don't seem to demonstrate good motives so you know we can argue about that and there's a lot of virtue ethics we can even talk out there right but it does kind of seem like maybe the more the further we go down this path the more that might become a worry as well. Yeah, so maybe we should. I mean, there's lots of other things we haven't discussed. Yeah, you mentioned at one point so I've made a list of the things that you wanted to discuss about finite wages. I'm not sure. So now I don't remember because it's a long time since I wrote before I don't remember exactly what I say but I thought that the point that I make there is just that once you move to finite wages. As opposed to the standard old fashioned version of the wager where you've just got a single infinity, right. The outcome now just depends absolutely on the precise values that you give to the probabilities and to the utilities, what the outcome is going to be. And so you don't have anything that looks very much like a kind of knockdown argument anymore which sort of felt like originally that was kind of Pascal's intention to the extent that he was giving an argument at all. I mean, there's a whole question about actually what he was doing when he parking that to one side and imagining that he was trying to give an argument. It was meant to be a kind of universal argument whereas the finite wager is clearly not going to be bad. And I thought that was the point that I might but I can't remember maybe I said some other things as well. Yeah, I mean I might have latched on to other things and you also said that. So let me try to see if what my notes said. I mean I can I can respond to that point to and basically I agree. So, look, I mean there's kind of two ways of going especially kind of in light of this many God's mixed strategies worry. One is to try to keep an affinity is in the wager, but modify it in some way maybe modify the way we're doing the calculations and still have an infinite version of the wager but just a more complicated one. You know the nice thing about that going that way is, you can get a little bit of a stronger conclusion so something like, maybe not in all cases but in a lot of cases, most people with sort of like a standard like utility function and a standard credence function should wager on the religion that they think is most likely to be true. That's not exactly right but something along those lines. And then if you move to the finite wager I mean there are some nice things about it you get rid of the problems caused by infinities. But I think that you're totally right that you get a significantly weaker conclusion so it's going to depend on what the finite values and question are right, but the conclusion is just going to be that you should wager on God or on a certain religion. And then the sentence meets a certain threshold and threshold is going to depend on what the values are. So, you know, my growth has a version where that threshold is as high as point five. I think that's pretty high so if I were going to do a finite wager I would try to get the threshold down as much as I can by using larger finite values, but at the very least, you're going to be able to escape the wager by just having your credence lower than that right. I think that's easier to do than, you know, giving it a credence of zero or infinitesimal or whatever. So, so yeah there's kind of a choice point here. I tend to like to try to salvage the infinite wager, but there are definitely problems that arise some of which we've already touched on. I still think it's potentially an interesting result if maybe someone with like a point one credence in theism or in a certain religion should still wager on that like that's like at least still kind of controversial and interesting. So I agree that it's it's weaker. But, you know, I think it's, it's not like a trivial point or something either you know there's there's some interesting stuff to pursue there. And what else. So, so we mentioned permissivism in passing at least. So I'm kind of tempted by permissivism. I think I think that it's and you know the kind of Roger White view where evidence there's only one thing you can believe given any data set right any set of evidence. It strikes me as kind of implausible. And I should that it strikes you as kind of being implausible to. I'm not sure how much I connect that to Pascal's wager. So it's sort of interesting I haven't really thought about that. Yeah, I mean I'm happy to talk and hopefully I don't talk for too long because I just worked on a paper on this. Okay, so here's the thought. So the first thing to maybe clarify is that you need in intrapersonal permissivism rather than interpersonal permissivism for this to be an interesting thing for the wager, at least I think. Given my evidence, I can adopt theism or atheism or I can adopt theism or agnosticism or whatever. So it's not like we have to, you know, me and Graham have different epistemic standards. So I can be a theist and he can be an atheist even if we share evidence know it needs to be about a single individual. So it's a slightly stronger version of permissivism and I admit that not everyone's going to be on board with that but I think if we, if we assume that or argue for that I guess if we get to the ground, I think we can get some really interesting results. When it comes to two objections to Pascal's wager. Oh, and then I'll say too, we don't just we need that to be true about theism. And I guess then we could talk about bringing various religions to this as well although in that paper I kind of want to try to set the many God thing aside. So, so in interpersonal permissivism about theism is true. So here's the two objections that I think we can get a really interesting response to the first is what's known as the impossibility objection. So the idea that I can't wager because I can't control my beliefs. And then I think sort of people defending the wager in the literature. Okay, okay, no, no, no, that's fine. Let's just make it about action, you know, so it's kind of this concessive response and, you know, I'm open to that response like commitment wagers I'm cool with those right, but I think we can get a way more a way stronger and more interesting response. So that's objection one and then objection to is what I call that your rationality objection. And so it's like, even if you can wager and you do have that control over your beliefs. It's irrational to believe on the basis of a practical reason. So if you give me $100 to believe something and then I believe it. I shouldn't that's irrational right I should be following my evidence I can't just believe it because you gave me some some reward or benefit right so if evidentialism is true it seems like we're violating So here's what's cool about the kind of permissivism I was talking about. I think it really makes space for really strong and direct responses to both this impossibility objection and this irrationality objection. So one thing that people have talked about, apart from Pascal's wager that I try to kind of bring in to Pascal's wager is like, so in the doxastic volunteerism literature that's basically just the question whether for the audience the question whether we can control our beliefs. It's very very very popular to say we can't among philosophers and in fact it's it's probably now considered the orthodox position at least in contemporary philosophy. Interestingly, not the orthodox position and historical historical stuff, but definitely the orthodox position among contemporary people working on this question. What a number of authors have noted is that most of the arguments for doxastic involuntarism that we can't control our beliefs don't really seem to be considering the possibility of permissive cases so they're like look. Oh, you know, you see that piece true to believe piece to believe that piece true. So you have no choice but to believe piece beliefs just happened to you right. But they kind of seem to be assuming that in every case our evidence sort of determines this one clear attitude that we should take. And so beliefs just kind of happened to us. And they don't really think about the possibility. And I feel like they should think about this possibility that you might just be really torn between two options and rationality might leave it open, which of those options you should pick. And one thing that I think is really interesting is that Peter van Nenwagen actually talks about this in his autobiography about how he became a theist, and he says I could see the world as self sustaining, and I could see the world as created by something itself. And he said I kind of moved I could move back and forth in between these ways of seeing the world like that duck rabbit picture some of people in the audience you might have seen the illusion where you can see it as a duck seated as rabbit. He says he could kind of move back and forth like that, like, seeing the world in a theistic way and seeing it in an atheistic way. And I think that's the kind of case I'm thinking of when I say that if you're in a permissive case and you have some level of awareness of that fact. I think we have at least a stronger level of control over our beliefs. And then the paper I say either that's, I'm open to that it might be direct control and the same kind of control we have over raising our hand. But if you think that's too strong. I think at least some kind of, I give this label I call it semi direct control. So there's things that we have control over, even though they're not what's called basic actions they're things that you can't just do in one immediate act like raising your hand or kicking a soccer ball or opening things like, you know, cooking dinner, going on a run, writing a paper. Sometimes these things even happen over over a period of time seems like we have control over them they're not like involuntary or something. But it's not something we can just do an immediate act. And so, then I argue that if you're in a permissive case, either it's direct control or it's this kind of semi direct control. Do you want me to keep going and say, I mean, maybe I'll just say the other thing because it's super quick. If you're in a permissive case, and theism is among the permitted attitudes, then it's not going to be irrational to be a theist by definition. Theism is is one of the attitude that's permitted for you. And it's not even clear to me that you're violating evidentialism because your evidence under determines what you ought to believe your evidence like leaves it open. So I don't see a good reason to think practical factors can't break epistemic ties. So yeah, if you give me a bunch of money to believe one plus one equals three, that's one thing. But if two attitudes are really epistemically tied for me, then it's not at all clear that I can't believe one on the basis of a practical reason that it's not clear that that would be violating some normal rationality or violating evidentialism. So that's the argument. Sorry, that was kind of long. That's fine. And I think, I mean, there's a bunch of other cases where we have kind of control over our beliefs that people just forget about. So suppose I want to believe that there's a bunch of daffodils in a vase on the table in the next room. All I have to do is go out pick some daffodils, put them in a bar vase and put it on the table. And I mean, and that's a gen, that's this kind of illustration of a much more general point. Suppose I want to have a lot of true beliefs about quantum mechanics. There's a kind of straightforward path to that as well. And so in fact, we do exercise quite a lot of control over the cultivation of our beliefs and the kind of older stuff about volunteerism to some extent is I imagine is about those kinds of cases. It's not about it's not necessarily about what I think is much more contentious that in the permissivist cases, you can just choose to go one way or the other. But I mean, I agree absolutely that focusing on the, you know, can I believe right now that there's a wild tiger in the room isn't very helpful in thinking about the full range of ways in which we actually do control, cultivate and so on our beliefs. So that was one thing that I wanted to say. I do on the the intrapersonal versus interpersonal permissivism. Of course, the kind of permissivism that I was really happy to grant is the kind of in is between people. I mean, if you're at all sympathetic to something like subjective Bayesianism, you're just going to think that that as against why that that kind of permissivism is is perfectly fine. It's less clear to me but I have in the things that I've written about this I've never ruled it out that that it might be that applies within a single person so given, you know, all of the stuff that you might consider as your evidence. There's a lot of flexibility left about what you might believe and not. I actually just don't know what to think about that. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think it's, it's an interesting question. And, you know, I think a lot of permissivists are definitely like you said more on board with the interpersonal case than intrapersonal case. But what argument actually Laura Callahan makes this argument in a recent episteme paper that I think is super interesting. So she's like, look, what's the biggest arguably like motivation for this interpersonal permissivism. Well, it's the idea that we can have different epistemic standards. So you, Graham might value simplicity and I might value explanatory power right or we might, you know, just like way different theoretical virtues differently or, you know, we just might process evidence differently for a variety of reasons. And so we might have the same evidence, but disagree and both be rational because we're just weighing or interpreting that evidence differently. And one thing that that Laura talks about in that paper that I think is super interesting, as she actually thinks these epistemic standards that determine the way we interpret evidence and way evidence. They're not just like passive features of our psychology that we have no control over. She actually thinks we can form and shape and mold them and even like make a decision to, you know, embrace certain theoretical virtues over others or weigh evidence in certain ways. And what I think is cool about this argument is that it takes this super common, almost all permissivists except that epistemic standards, at least maybe not all, but a lot of them are into this like different epistemic standards established interpersonal permissivism. I think clear is a really nice path for intrapersonal permissivism if we allow individuals to sort of shape and mold their epistemic standards. I think a lot of this probably goes beyond like the subjective Bayesianism picture because that is kind of a thin picture. And I think that you could accept that full picture but just build a lot of stuff into it about, you know, what conditionalization actually looks like and how do we get those new probabilities from our old probabilities and our evidence. And maybe you think there's different permissible ways we might weigh that that could sort of spit out different probabilities. But then there's also the question of belief right so you might I mean it depends on the relationship between belief and credence but you might think subjective Bayesianism can't tell the full story about rational belief and so then you might appeal to some of this stuff to talk about permissivism about belief as well. Yeah, so so I'm definitely not a subjective Bayesian I didn't think that that was the full story I just thought it's a very straightforward illustration. I mean, even if that was your position. Clearly, you're going to be a permissivist right the only Bayesians who are not permissivists are the kind of weird ones that think that there's an objective set of priors rather than that you're kind of obliged to have. Yeah. So, one of the things that's interesting about the picture that you were just sketching is about the extent to which you could have the endpoints in mind when you're sort of molding your epistemic standards. I might think that just sort of engaging in certain kinds of inquiry maybe doing some epistemology or something like that may well lead you to end up with different epistemic standards from the ones that you've got now, but you don't know where that's going to go. I might be on board with the former idea and not the latter thinking that you can sort of, you know, I'm going to end up being a person who really doesn't care much about simplicity but I really care about explanatory power not that that's a real example. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So I agree. I mean, I guess I, you know, I don't know that I'm, I like Laura's argument I don't know what I haven't fully thought about it. But I think if I had to take a stand I would like to say that they can be shaped in both ways. Sometimes they're shaped in ways that aren't in our control and sometimes they're shaped the ways that aren't our control. But I totally think like, just think about like a freshman who goes into a philosophy class and like reads Descartes or Hume like arguably what's happening is that their standard for rational belief is like, instead of it being like, oh, I just need this much evidence to rationally believe it's going like way up and they're becoming like much more skeptical. So I totally agree that this happens and that seems like a case where it sort of happens to them. And yeah, it's interesting to think like, could they then respond to that and like make a decision and say no, no, no, I mean, they might not even fully comprehend that that is what's happening. But say like, that's just too high of a standard, we don't have to be able to prove that we're not brains in a vats in order to believe that we have hands, and then maybe they could lower that standard so I don't know. Yeah, I'm not, I guess I don't have like a fully formed position on this, but I think it's really interesting. And so it might also be that you have some control, but not very precise. I'm thinking about something that David Lewis talking about Bob Adams and not wanting it to come out that he had to think that Bob's views were irrational. And that that had an influence. It didn't determine exactly necessarily the form of David's epistemological views, but it influenced it in certain directions and not in others. And you might think that there's a lot of that kind of thing that goes on as well. So that's kind of, it's not all the way to sort of fully precise things but it still has an effect. Yeah, or maybe even some level of like indirect control over your epistemic standards, even depending on which epistemologists you spend a lot of time reading right so so yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah I mean there's, I guess like, there's a big question do you accept this strong kind of interpersonal permissivism about theism right but I think if you do. We both argue that we have a much more direct control over our beliefs when wagering, and you can get the result that you can take Pascal's wager, make it about belief and not violate evidentialism. So, maybe the, the whole interesting part of that claim is just resting on the truth of the antecedent. But I do think permissivism has a role in playing Pascal's wager, especially in the more like epistemological kind of aspects of the wager. Okay, so now what else, what haven't we talked about from the, the list of things we had at the beginning. I'm not sure is there anything that you think that we, that you brought up that we haven't in that in the introduction that we actually now have an I mean it seems like we hit quite a bit of it. I mean I'm curious what you ultimately think about like the many God's mixed strategies thing. I mean, I feel like at some point maybe you were saying or maybe it was a different article I was looking at your article infinity and Pascal's wager but but but maybe the thought is like, we just get a much weaker claim, if we kind of incorporate it so that the probabilities matter in this way. But I'm kind of curious, like what, what kind of at this point your judgment is about the success of those objections like do you think we can incorporate them into the wager and maybe just weaken our claim a little bit, or is your view that for some reason, you know, we should. Yeah, I don't know like what what's the status of like probability and infinities and all that. Maybe, maybe I kind of just kind of vacillate in different contexts, I say different kinds of things. I'm not sure. So I depends a lot. I mean this is one of the things I wanted to say at the beginning is that it really, it really matters you have to decide exactly what the version of the wager is that you're talking about before you decide what you're going to say about it. And in arguing about God's I had I had a particular version in mind it was one that had a infinity in there and I had a bunch of probabilities and there's lots of things to say against that particular argument sort of the kind of what at least up until 10 or 15 years ago was kind of the standard dominating expectation version of the wager argument. There's a lot more different arguments out there now. And those different arguments probably require, well, I mean they do I mean there's part of the kind of, there's a part of the general idea behind arguing about God's right every every argument deserves its own attention right and there'll be different things to say about the arguments right so there isn't a kind of general thing I think to say about Pascal's wager and many God's objection or Pascal's wager and the Duff Hayek objection. There are definitely versions of Pascal's wager that in my view are just defeated by those arguments. But that leaves it open the kind of interesting question the question that you're more interested in exploring is there are these other versions of the argument and now we have to decide about them what are we going to say in connection with them, and maybe for some of them those objections just don't get any bite on it. I think that it's kind of plausible see the paper that you were just talking about the one that I wrote for Paul Bartha, right that his, it looks like I mean his kind of relative utility theory, you do escape those objections and similarly in the kind of salvaging Pascal's wager paper that looks as though you've got a kind of route that enables you to run around those objections as well. That seems fine. The question then will be so what else what are the other things what are the what are what are the problems that you might see with those arguments. So, and it is, this is kind of a general thing that you can't kind of stock up objections to arguments and then just kind of will them out when you come across an argument that belongs to that family. You have to go back and look at the details of the argument every time. Yeah, so, so I'm quite prepared to accept that that there's there's no single kind of magic bullet that shoots down every conceivable version of Pascal's wager it'll be quite surprising if that turned out to be the case. Yeah. Yeah, cool. No, I totally agree with you. And yeah, there are certain things about the argument that are weaker because you're, you know, doing things in light of the many God's objections and the mixed strategies objection. I'm not wait I'm not giving an argument for any particular religion and I've outlined several ways that you can even be rational to be an atheist and accept my argument right so in some sense it is it is weaker. But it's it's clear to me that we have to do something to deal with the many God's and mixed strategies thing and I actually think it's kind of interesting how in a lot of cases whatever we do for one can help with the other, maybe not always but it does seem like those objections tend to they're like related in a certain way. So that was one thing the other thing is so I spent a lot of time recently just thinking about arguments in general what they're good for what you can do with them. And one of one of the thoughts that I've been trying to do a lot with is the idea that really theories prior to argument what you say about arguments really depends upon the theory that you accept. I mean in the following sense, at least if we think about deductive arguments, and we focus on the ones that are valid, which ones you say a sound just depends upon where you think the truth lies. And so we can have this conversation about which arguments are sound but it's really not that interesting that kind of interesting question is about the theories which is the true theory. And so there's this question about what arguments might do for you. But I'm also starting to think that what's important about Pascal's wager is not that it's an argument right so in the book I present an argument right that's constructed around Pascal's wager but what I think rather you should think about it in the following way. There's this decision theoretic calculation that you can do that seems to have tell you to do this thing. How do you respond to that now it's not an argument anymore. Right, it's a kind of a practical problem to respond to. And so I also have this kind of inclination not to think about Pascal's wager as an argument. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, I kind of want to hear more about this idea that like the interesting question is about the theory maybe I want to understand what exactly you mean by that so I guess I would like to think and maybe I'm just a idealist of some sort that there's theories and there's arguments and of course the background theories that we accept are going to affect what we say about arguments and how plausible we find certain premises and you know we might even like do some more in shifts or whatever right, but I think at the same time I would like to think that the reflective equilibrium goes in both ways and sometimes arguments can change what theory we accept. And so it's not just. It's not that theories prior to arguments is that they kind of work together. But like, yeah, I mean, aren't don't you think that there are cases where because of an argument, someone changes the theory that they advocate for I mean, maybe I'm just asking for clarification for what you mean. So the kind of if you pick up a textbook on argumentation, it will tell you that a good argument is one that has two features one that the conclusions are proper appropriately related to premises and the other one is the premises have certain properties. Now I think there are good arguments but they just don't fit that form they're called reduxios whenever you have a reduxial argument. So, so someone let's imagine it's a kind of two way exchange and you point out to someone that there's a contradiction in their views and you give them the derivation if they need it. That's good. It's good for them. Their views were contradictory. That was a bad thing from their point of view. They should try and sort it out. It doesn't tell them what to do. And of course, that kind of argument is extremely important. And you can generalize from that. It might be that it's that the unnoticed consequence of your beliefs isn't absurdity as in the case of reduxio it's just that there's some claim you hadn't noticed you were committed to and learning that can be very valuable as well. So of course there's a role for arguments. It's the other kind of argument the one where you say premises and conclusion and and what's good about this is the virtues of the premises. There I have a hard time figuring out what that could what what the value of that can be if we're imagining two people who've got theories who are in conversation with one another because if I mean let's let's make it more concrete suppose it's an argument with the conclusion that God doesn't exist and it's got a bunch of premises and we're just you and I are just going to disagree almost certainly about some of the premises in that argument assuming that it's valid. Right. And it's just actually going to get us nowhere. Right. I mean if I couldn't win by saying God doesn't exist I can't win by saying premise one premise to therefore God doesn't exist because the disagreement just goes back up to the premises. So that's sort of thought sort of the idea it's not it's not an anti argument view it's just that you have to remember what kinds of arguments could actually do useful work of which ones it's saying. Yeah that's interesting. I mean I guess I'm thinking like I think there are cases where like I think this genuinely happens to me with like some of the stuff about free will and libertarian free will where I accepted some conclusion. And then I saw some argument and I was like dang I got to change my view. And this was in virtue it wasn't a reductio either I don't think it was an argument you know for a conclusion that I disagreed with so. So yeah I mean I think I get I totally get what you're saying and I think like if P than QP there for Q that's not the full story reductus have a role to play theory has a role to play. I mean all of this stuff kind of comes together to determine what we should believe right. But but I guess I I guess I think like all of it happens and and yeah I mean you a lot of people will respond to an argument that has a conclusion they disagree with by saying one of the premises must be false. But I think a really really compelling interesting argument is one with premises that just seem like they got to be true in a conclusion that just seems like it's got to be false I mean that's almost more like a paradox right. But I've experienced arguments like that. And I am significantly less confident in certain kinds of free will for example, accordingly. So, so that one does sound to me. I mean you said paradox but it's very close to inconsistency. If it seems to me, the premises are all true it seems to me the conclusions false and it seems to me that the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises. Then my doxastic state is very uncomfortable and I agree there. Although you can. I mean sometimes you have to tolerate that for a long time because you just can't see what to do. But, but you don't want to be in that state you want to move away from it if you can. And that just means by my lights that's a great argument right for you. Yeah, but it's not but it's not of the form that I was objecting to right the right it's precisely I mean it's in the ballpark of Reduxio maybe you don't when you kind of in this sort of paradoxical situation. You don't quite want to say that you've got a reduxio but you've still got the same kind of thing right there's clearly pressure on you because there are features of your view that are less than optimal. I mean whereas whereas merely disagreement me disagreement isn't for philosophers. That's not a problem about sort of sub-optimality that's just the normal state of affairs we disagree about everything. Right, right. I mean maybe one lesson is that many arguments can be just framed as reduxios. That's interesting I guess. So that that might be one way of putting the lesson I mean I guess you can write so every argument can at least classically. Yeah, right, right, right classically. Yeah. For sure. For sure. But then, and in our everyday lives, lots of us are classical. Yeah, I mean there's also the case where there's the conclusion that I either sympathetic to or I agree with and then I learn of a new good argument for that conclusion and then I become significantly more confident or maybe I'm you know withholding belief but like leaning one way and then I form the belief. Is that a reduxio? So that might be going too quick though because I think that if you believe some things and then you discover that actually some of the other things that you've got are evidence for those things then that sort of somehow or other improves your position because you realize that there was this evidential connection. It's not clear that kind of me a logical consequence has the same has the same standing that's not obvious to me either I mean and you want to distinguish between the kind of explanatory relations and logical relations. Again, my current project is kind of working on this stuff and trying to sort it out. I can't say that I'm very clear about it yet but but I do have this suspicion that we kind of in some areas of philosophy we kind of make a fetish out of argument in a way that we shouldn't. Yeah, but the last thing I might say about that is I guess it's not clear to me that in every case where you find the premises plausible and the conclusion is something that you're already sympathetic to that you already have the evidence like couldn't the premises be new pieces of evidence that for whatever reason you are inclined to accept. So, but it might also be right suppose the I mean I don't know if you're just prepared to take my word for something then all I have to do is say it and you'll accept it. In that kind of case, if my giving you the argument means that you just accept the premises. I didn't really maybe I didn't really need to give you the argument I just needed to give you the premises right because that way you acquired the evidence. That would be the so I mean. No I see what you're saying and if it's like especially cases of like a priori truths that you just kind of see that they're true. There's a debate actually they're right about whether those are already part of your evidence and you just see or you can actually like get new evidence in the form of this opportunity reasoning that's that's interesting I don't know if I have a view on that. Yeah, yeah so I might think about that. Very clear view about that either. It would be a good time to jump into the Q&A as I do under spec both of your time both of your times and want to say folks are at the at the moment. Dr. Opie does not have a link in the description though we may if there ever is one will be happy to add it and then Dr. Liz Jackson is also linked in the description right now so want to encourage you folks we really do appreciate our guests you can check out that link in the description and want to encourage you to be your regular friendly selves and attack the arguments instead of the person will jump into the questions. Right now with arm to Jamal. Thank you very much for your question said God is not applicable to waging and Pascal's reasoning. What if this is an analytical truth, namely that for sentence they say what conclusions can be drawn question for Dr. Opie. Okay, you're gonna have to repeat the sentence it didn't sound like an analytical truth to me. You got it it was a quote God is not applicable to waging or wagering and Pascal's reasoning unquote. So, if you mean something like God's God's not amenable to it right God's not going to look favorably on somebody who comes to believe by following the Pascalian reasoning. I don't think that that's a kind of truth by meaning. I suspect that you'll just find disagreement about whether it's true at all. I'm sure that Liz is not going to think that it's true. And I guess I'm not inclined to think that it's true either. You got it. Thanks very much and same second question. This one to Dr. Jackson said will heaven as a final outcome be necessitated for all those who agree with Pascal's reasoning. Say 95% of people agree. Hmm. Um, yeah. So, I mean, so will heaven as a final outcome be necessitated to all of those who agree with Pascal's reasoning. I mean, I suppose you could agree with Pascal's reasoning and say, there is a rational requirement to wager but then choose not to wager. Maybe you're in an acratic state of some time when, you know, you believe you shouldn't eat the chocolate cake, but you eat it anyway, right? Um, so yeah, I mean, I would say I, okay, first of all, like, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not God. I can't tell you who's going to go to heaven who's not. But I also don't think that just agreeing with Pascal's reasoning is the same thing as actually taking Pascal's wager so it seems like there's a distinction to be made between those two. You got it. Thanks. Cool. Can we add to that? I mean, uh, suppose you think that the wagering argument is good. Do you have to do it right now? Hmm. Yeah. Can you just postpone it for a bit? Then you get unlucky because you get run over by a bus or something. But yeah, no, that's, that's interesting. That's an interesting kind of follow up question. And then maybe there's, there's questions about risk there too. Like, if I could wager later. I mean, this comes actually down to like the paying a finite price for some infinite good and to what extent we should do that. And if I could wager later, I am taking a big risk. I'm lowering the chance they get infinite utility. But what finite outcome is that worth paying? And it might, the answer might just be like, it depends on the situation, you know. You got it. And this one from Tom's chair. Appreciate it. Now they're, they're quoting Liz. They're saying, Dr. Jackson just defined the wager as quote, reasonable belief in God. And they asked for you, Dr. Oppy, they say, does that match your definition? And they say, I thought it was a bet on a person's belief in a God. Okay. Say it again. I'm starting to tire. No worries. They say, they say, Dr. Jackson defined the wager as quote, reasonable belief in God. But does that match your definition, Dr. Oppy? So I don't think that Liz said that defined the wager as reasonable belief in God. What, what I thought Liz said was that you could reasonably come to believe in God by following through on the wager. And there's nothing that I said, even in back when I wrote arguing about God's, I think, that ruled that out. There was this idea that, that Russia had that maybe the, the, the, the kind of wager inference was a reasonable thing for some people to do. The main thing that I'm interested in, or at least I was when I was writing arguing about God's is that there's lots of different classes of people for whom the. The inference is not obligatory. You bet. And then Tom's chair. For you, Dr. Jackson says, won't God be able to know you only believed on a bet. Yeah, no, this is great. So this comes down to that question of motives we talked about earlier and maybe I'll just say a little bit more about this objection but then point you to a paper also so here's the basic thought. Look, not everyone who take Pascal's wager automatically has good motives I already said that, but I think it's possible to wager in the following way. If God exists and I make this commitment to God, that would be a very good thing. There's this powerful this good being that created the universe is someone I would want to pursue and have a commitment to. Even if I think it's unlikely that God exists. I still have a strong reason to pursue this relationship with God because knowing such a being would be incredibly valuable. And I think you could, you could call that a bet you could say that's just gambling or something, but I think that's the kind of betting that God would be pleased with and so I have a paper it's called faithfully taking Pascal's wager. And I talked more about that in that paper and then I also bring Pascal's wager kind of into conversation with some of the recent accounts of what it is to have faith in God, and I try to show that taking Pascal's wager can actually be a way of demonstrating genuine faith that God exists so check out that paper and I also have a video on my YouTube channel of me like giving giving the paper at a conference so you can check that out too. Just one little finger on that one. It's, I mean, we are talking about something that potentially will last for quite a long time like you might decide now to wager. It may well be that you will be transformed subsequently and that the motives that you have right now will just be completely irrelevant. It's a different kind of point to the one that was making, and that was a point that I made in, I think somewhere in arguing about God's. So, so you don't really have to worry so much about whether this is a glorious motive or not, at least in lots of cases. Thank you very much and this one coming in from Mark Reed says Liz wouldn't hedging your bets quote unquote and we're shipping all religions to cover the all God's outcome result in an unmanageable life of religious ceremony. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, yeah, I think that is something that you also need to take into consideration when wagering and I think that could also be something to that doesn't just apply to hedging bets but if a certain religion makes like totally unreasonable demands and what you ought to do to the point where you couldn't even convert if you wanted to or something. That seems like a cost to that religion right so so yeah I agree that's that's a cost to this very extreme bet hedging strategy I mean maybe one thing you could say is, hedge your bets to the extent that you can. But yeah, if a type of wagering requires you to do something that is truly impossible and maybe you should think is this actually impossible or not like again some people think can't control your beliefs at all or whatever and that I don't think that that is true. I think that counts against that style of wagering. You got it this one from Ben Jackson says Liz spitting straight fire though. Oh, that's my brother. That's really love it. Rod nakedness says what if God only lets atheists into heaven. What are your thoughts. Dr. Jackson about this atheist favoring God potential. Yeah, we talked about this a little bit on so the idea at least behind my version of the wager is that you should wager in a way that gives you a higher chance at getting some infinite good. So if you think that being an atheist gets you the highest chance that going to heaven, then on my version of the wager. I don't really, I'm say okay fine you know that's the way that's how you think the highest chance that getting into heaven is so we can then talk about whether that's a reasonable belief to have, but my version of the wager doesn't really speak to that. I do think in fact most people probably will think that practicing or wagering on attritional religion would be more likely to get them infinite utility than being an atheist. But yeah, I think this is one of the ways you can kind of get out of being religious but still accept most of what we say in that paper. One way to get around this would be trying to like give arguments that raise the probability of a certain religion, but that would be separate from from pastels wager. So I'd like to say something about this one too. There is something a bit odd about the idea of thinking for example that well, if there were a God, what God would do would be to reward people who acted rationally and morally by their own lights. And then making a calculation according to Pascal's wager and arriving at the decision that you should not believe in any of the gods. It doesn't feel entirely consistent to me. It feels more like that if you had that view, you might think oh look this whole wagering business is just irrational. I'm not going to engage in it at all. And that's how nonetheless it just turns out that because God's disposed in a certain way that turns out to be the pathway to heaven. I don't know maybe there's something incoherent and all of that. You got it. Thank you very much. This one coming in from brute facts podcast says question for both would an externalist epistemic justification like reformed epistemology or proper functionalism. Increase the power of Pascal's wager, ie if belief in God was properly basic. Hmm. Trying to think about the connection there. I mean it might be that this would speak so we didn't get into this as much but there's sort of two parts maybe to Pascal's wager the first is like what credences or beliefs and preferences you have. And then whether those are rational so that's kind of one question and then you can kind of put those into decision theory to get results about how what you want to do. And so maybe this would sort of, I'm curious what you think Graham but play into that first step and maybe the idea would be that people's credences and theism that are high more of those are rational. And so if if theism is properly basic. And so, then if you're putting these credences into Pascal's wager, you would both be rational and sort of this credence and and decision theoretic sense I don't. That's the best I can come up with maybe I'm not thinking of something though. One other thing to think about here is the connection between belief and credence and how we're putting those together because you might think that what what you're going to get out of the reformed epistemology is that it's going to be kind of basic to have a credence that's at least point five but possibly quite a bit higher than that. And if you've got that it's going to make look as though the Pascal's calculation is going to come out favorably. But on the other hand the other thing I wanted to say is though you have to think about what the use of Pascal's wager is you're not going to be giving it to people who already have a proper basic belief in God so. Well, can I can I say one last thing sorry James. One thing that I think is really interesting is the use of the wager for people that are already religious but have very serious doubts about their religion. And it could show that you're actually rational and continuing to continuing with that religious religious commitment, even in the face of very serious doubts. One thing that I actually like about this is I think it enables religious people to take objections like the problem of evil or the problem of divine hiddenness very seriously and but nonetheless those don't require you to give up your religious commitment if if Pascal's wager works so I actually think it's interesting to apply it to both skeptics and religious people. Let's go back to something that we sort of got mentioned early on but we didn't end up pursuing further. I mean if you think that doubt is going to be modeled by kind of vague, you know interval credences. Then there's just the kind of question, maybe about how low down the lower bound on that can go because otherwise we'll get back into that question about okay so what happens if it goes all the way to zero. Yeah, no this is actually something I've been thinking about and working on actually not even just about the theistic case but you might think like here's an interesting view about the attitude we should take towards philosophical theories more generally believe them but lower credence in light of you know all this disagreement and and stuff like that and so so this question comes up pretty quickly like how low can can you make that credence but continue to hold that belief and I think that's that's a super interesting issue. And if you do kind of let those pull apart a little bit. One thing I think is cool about it is it can let you kind of take a stand on, you know your philosophical view or maybe you have a commitment to not eating meat or commitment to theism or whatever, but nonetheless give weight to this back that smart people disagree with you and you're not very confident. So, yeah, there's there's a ton of interest. Right. So, and you think that that sort of just goes beyond the kind of the fallibility that most people, the fallibilism that most people think is just proper to have with respect to your philosophical beliefs, in part because of the fact that there's just this disagreement amongst your kind of your peers but also very often people that you think of in some sense as your superiors as well. It's funny how the disagreement literatures focus so much on peers and I'm like, I mean maybe as a simplifying assumption that's that's useful but I actually think there's like slightly above slightly below superior. I mean, all of those have epistemic implications too. And, you know, maybe we just focus on the pure case to make it easier but I really don't think this point that oh we have no epistemic peers. I actually don't think that that's that important as long as you know maybe they're in on a par with you epistemically or maybe they're if they're slightly better it seems like we should give them even more weight you know so. Right so Brian Francis for quite a while has been writing stuff about that but yeah yeah it's interesting that hasn't had as much uptake it's I mean I think we agree it should have. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You got it and endo xd thanks for your question. Must be people I don't know. They say York over rice Iran. Is it rise Iran. I'm scared to take predicate logic. I think I think this person met Ryerson. So York is is better than Ryerson I'm scared to take predicate. I think although I've only been teaching at Ryerson for a year so I'm not an expert on this. Well, may is it Ryerson requires critical thinking, but I don't maybe they require predicate logic for like philosophy majors or something I'm not sure. But yeah I know different schools have different kind of requirements so maybe they're preferring York because of they don't want to take logic and they would rather take critical. I don't know. So I'm guessing it's something about that so I see okay thanks for that. In fact, podcast says question for both what are your thoughts on quote iterated mixed strategy by mountain and then collapsing into pure strategy of becoming a theist. Right so so the thought was that if you I think from memory so this is months paper that if if you were to go with a mixed strategy. And it gave you a, you know, you got a certain result out that said, don't wager. The question would then just immediately arise again I can't remember sorry I'm getting very fuzzy so I can't remember the exact details but the idea was that you would just come back to the same decision point over and over and so you might as well just move directly to the pure strategy. Liz will be able to clarify this. You got it. Yeah, no I think that's basically right. Yeah, I'm curious. I mean I guess I think the mixed strategies objection fails for other reasons too. I don't have like a strong view on on that. I guess maybe I'm sympathetic. I don't know. You got it. And then, folks, I can't take any more questions so the questions that we have are the only ones I can cover these last several just because we do want to respect the time of the debaters and get them out of here by two hours or less. So Sai Hansen says, Dr. oppie, please make your books available on audible. Then we also have. Endo XD says quote pick most probable religion unquote. Can we put a probability on something never shown to be possible in parentheses God. If so, what do you think of Hume lesser miracle. Both of your thoughts please. Okay, so it depends what you mean by shown. There are plenty of people who think that it's possible that God exists. And it's it's a kind of hard road to argue that they're all irrational in that belief. I'm not sure that that sort of following this line is going to lead to anything very interesting. So I'll at least say what she wants to say. Yeah, I mean another kind of question that comes up with this. This question is the relationship between possibility and probability but I think a natural thought is to think God is possible is to sign some kind of non zero credence to the theism and as we talked about, if you had like an infinitesimal credence and theism, maybe that would be a case where you think God is possible but you shouldn't wager. So, yeah, but I think in most cases of non infinitesimal non zero credences. There's at least an interesting argument those people should take the wager. Yeah, I don't know if that answers it but gosh you're then brute facts podcast says Dr. Jackson and Dr. oppie tell James it was more fun on my show. Why did you guys have a discussion already that because we can link it in the description I didn't know you guys already did I hadn't seen it. No, we were just I think I was on the show I'm guessing Graham you were to so we were on it separately. Yeah, we were on it. Okay, and then Farron Salas thanks for your question said can Bayesian stats be used to bolster a Pascal like wager. If so, how would we establish that the baseline data used to formulate Bayesian Bayesian was reliable if we can't test for evidence of God claims. I wonder if what this question is referring to is this idea that your credences should be regular. So the thought behind regularity is that you should only assign probability zero to necessary falsehoods or things that could be written to be false a priori or something like that. So if you, and oftentimes Bayesians will say that that is a requirement on rational credences. So one way to kind of bolster the wager is by saying look, you know, you might think oh just assign credence zero to the ism that I don't have to wager, but then if you buy this axiom, then, according to Bayesian Bayesian it will be irrational. And one thing Graham talked about is well you could. There's other ways of going right so you could assign an infinitesimal credence to the ism you could assign a credence to the ism that's vague over some interval that includes zero. So assigning credence zero isn't the only way to get out of it. But yeah I do think this is a common response that you could give to someone who just assigns credence zero to to the ism or to all religions or something. So I can ask a question there. What about if you think that some things necessary are posterior right? Is it okay for that to come out as a zero or are you required, I think it's quite tricky because the way that probabilities are usually defined. It's over a possibility space. Yeah, that's actually super interesting. I mean, and some people obviously think that that is an empty category. But if you don't, yeah, I mean, it might just depend on the way you formulate the axiom of regularity. It might just be different ways to formulate it. But yeah, that that's actually that might be a way to go if you think it's necessarily false but shown posterior I guess I don't see it in obvious reason to rule that out. But yeah, that's a that's a cool question. This one from brute facts podcast says Dr. Jackson is going to get her ankles broken at the CC conference I think that's capturing Christianity. Yep, yep, I'm actually wearing my philosophy basketball shirt right now, you may have noticed so it's play dough and Aristotle. And they're both holding basketball so yes, I'm, I'm a basketball fan and we're going to play at the caption Christiani conference so yeah I'm looking forward to that. That's awesome they put in parentheses Eddie Kroom is that the name of the person from brute facts podcast. Okay, yeah, thanks for that Eddie and then we got maybe just one or two more questions and then we'll wrap up here. But want to say thanks so much go go slide for your question. This is for Liz they say does the idea that you can freely choose your beliefs to get a reward presupposed doxastic volunteerism already discussed if you anything that you maybe want to share that you hadn't covered already regarding that question. Yeah, maybe I'll just say briefly I mean the view isn't that you can control all of your beliefs it does I can't just make myself believe one plus one equals three because I want to believe that or something. The view is that in very specific cases, and like I explained there are these certain kinds of permissive cases. We have some level of control over our beliefs and then I also say that might not always be direct control that might not be like it's as easy to change my belief as it is to raise my hand. But we have a lot more control over our beliefs, then we do in cases where it's like just some thing is obviously true or obviously false so it's not a claim about all beliefs it's just a claim about some beliefs in certain situations, but in those situations yeah I do think the You bet and then dogs domain thanks for your question said what if there was a God who didn't want us to believe in a God. In any case and quote elected some people to go to hell and others to heaven by faking evidence really well is basically already covered fair to say. And then master qt one thanks for your question said for Liz how do you know God isn't evil or partially evil, for instance, if a holy text was written by a God that was deceitful, it could look exactly like it looks now kind of different from the wager. Yeah, I think it's a little separate from Pascal's wager but it is an interesting question I mean I haven't really worked on this or written on this but there. There's been actually even think some discussion on YouTube recently about this issue but some some philosophers have suggested look. It seems like there's some evidence of design in the world maybe there's a creator but there's also a lot of evil, and so it's at least not clear we have reason to think that God is all good rather than God is all bad. And then I think at least one response to that is that it's in some way a simpler hypothesis if God is good. You could also I guess appeal to some kind of divine revelation to try to establish that God is rather is good rather than evil. But yeah, this isn't one of my main areas of research but I do think it's a super interesting debate so yeah. Right, so you might think it's the sort of supposing that there's always deception going on is a slightly more skeptical hypothesis, which sort of relates to your idea about simplicity and so maybe it just gets a little bit less probability but that will be enough right in the context of the wager argument. You got it and then iron charioteer last one thanks so much for your question said for Dr. Jackson if Christians have the Holy Spirit they cannot wager so it's kind of I think an attempt to pit some forms of Christian theology against your view. Let's say so they say so it seems the argument was designed for non believers. How does the HS wager with non believers. I mean, I guess I don't see why having the Holy Spirit would mean that you can't wager I think that you can have the Holy Spirit and still experienced out and still focus on the possibility that look if I wager on God and God exists that'd be a very good thing. I'm not 100% sure that God exists. I have some doubts about it but I'm nonetheless going to kind of continue in my commitment so I actually think it's a really really problematic thing that Christian say that, you know, doubting is a sin or if you truly have the Holy Spirit you won't doubt I just I think both false and also doesn't do justice to things like the problem of evil and the problem of the divine hidden this so. So yeah I guess I just don't see a reason to think that some I mean depends on also what you mean by the wager but showing that you can continue in your commitment, even in light of doubt that to me I see no reason to think that's inconsistent with having the Holy Spirit be with you and active in your life in some way so that's how I would respond. Thank you very much and folks, we are so thankful want to say Dr. Jackson, Dr. oppie it is been a true pleasure thank you so much. We really do appreciate you spending your time with us it's been absolutely interesting and I can tell you that the responses and live chat people really enjoyed and so we really do appreciate you spending time with us tonight. Thanks so much for having us this has been a really fun discussion and thanks so much Graham I've really enjoyed this. Thanks to least thanks to James. It was great. My pleasure. Absolutely. And so folks, as mentioned, links in the description highly encourage you. You can see Dr. Jackson link in the description right now and then as mentioned if Dr. oppie has one in the future we're glad to throw it in the description. And so we really do appreciate our guests want to encourage you and say thank you so much. It's been a true pleasure. I'll be back in a moment folks with a post credit scene on upcoming debates so stick around for that and thanks again to our guests. Hi dear friends so excited that was a true pleasure we really do appreciate our guests the guests of the life of the channel they make this fun they make it interesting and so we can't thank them enough. We really do appreciate both Dr. Jackson and Dr. oppie it is been a true pleasure tonight and also want to say folks we are thrilled to have you here no matter what walk of life you were from whether you be Christian whether you be atheists whether you be agnostic Muslim you name it we really are glad that you're spending your time with us right now we do appreciate you and we hope you feel welcome so got to let you know with some juicy upcoming debates but also yeah you guys I am pumped want to say hello to you in the old chat and you know I never really I'm so I'm so behind in terms of saying hello to everybody in the twitch chat I'm starting with the twitch chat folks I don't know if you know we have both twitch and YouTube. And the twitch stream is live at the same time it's just a little bit more quiet serene and so to Potsall good to see you there and Lily Ajah good to see you as well. And thanks everybody I see let's see there's surgeon general 777 good to see you as well in the old twitch chat and then jumping over to the old YouTube chat want to say we do appreciate you Tim are glad you're here as well as as Rattaza Rattazala thank you very much for coming by as well as free naturalist and to Potsall thanks so much for your super chat we appreciate that says that was a high quality debate love it and said this is a high quality juicy debate I couldn't agree more it was you guys I really this is like a really special debate that we got to host and so when I mentioned yesterday I said this is like such a huge honor. This really is I am really excited about it myself so it went absolutely awesome and I love it very professional as well in addition to the ideas being rigorous and in depth. It makes it so fun for me when we have professional speakers where it's it's calm it's a normal conversation I did just enjoy it and so I am not having to jump in and like worry too much about someone talking over somebody all that stuff class acts true class acts on both sides and so we really do appreciate them and also I missed a super chat during the live stream so sorry Anthony. I saw you had mentioned you said James rocks thanks for your kind words I appreciate that always embarrasses me to read it while the guests are here to say that things your kind words and then said debaters are great and Jesus loves you all so thanks Anthony for your super chat and thanks for hanging out with us here at modern day debate we really do appreciate you folks no matter what walk of life you're from and folks I forgot to mention that our guests are also linked in the description of our podcast so all these debates end up on podcast usually within 24 hours of the debate happening live on YouTube. So that means if you want to listen to this one odds are good it's going to be up and ready for you by tomorrow morning probably late in the morning. I'm in mountain time and give me cut me some slack but yeah we're excited and let me let me say that in the old chat to Botzel I also remember I'm working on getting nightbot do I remember it's called nightbot right. 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It could be what's that green one Spotify it could be it could be any of them folks believe me pull out your phone right now if you haven't already pull up your favorite podcast podcast addict for me because I'm a boomer and you can find modern day debate in your favorite podcast app. See these over here bottom right you see Stitcher there Apple podcasts what's the green one again Spotify and my favorite podcast addict so highly encourage you folks find us on your favorite podcast because all of our debates every one of them ends up on podcast and we also have our juicy throwback Thursday podcast debates where we upload a past debate that is brand new to the podcast because we started the podcast I say about a year and a half into after we had started the YouTube channel and so from that first year and a half we are pulling those debates and we're actually uploading them as throwback Thursday ones and it's like the first time they've ever ever been on a podcast so you guys tons of juicy treats over there on the old podcast good to see you human girl and good to see you Tim are as well as Saichon have thanks for your kind words says and thanks to you for providing the platform great debate tonight thanks for your kind words Saichon have seriously it means a lot and it is my my pleasure you guys make it fun I enjoy it and so it's really fun for me it's a joy and I love meeting new people and and that's Christian people atheist people agnostic people you name it I really do enjoy people and so that's what makes modern a debate fun for me and in additional learning I always thought I was like how could I have a YouTube channel where I get to learn at the same time as like where content is being uploaded and it was like wow a debate channel is perfect for that because I do like to learn I I'm just kind of a man if you knew me personally some of my friends would tell you there's like he just he thinks so many weird things are interesting and I can't help it I do William runner glad you came by and Carmel Cronk good to see you said I'm taking philosophy classes this coming fall well that sounds fun and boy I tell you I'm encouraged when I hear people say express appreciation for philosophy for a number of reasons and I'm a little bit biased I admit because I have done a little bit of philosophy course work myself but I will say this my dear friends philosophy if you want to learn logic you're not gonna I mean I've talked to people getting their PhD in the hard sciences so like chemistry whatever it is and I've asked like do you guys have and this is back before I knew now it's like more obvious to me because getting my PhD in psychology I know like I'm like we don't take a logic classes in psychology and neither though do people that are let's say in chemistry or physics or something like that if you want to take a graduate or for that matter undergraduate course in logic it's gonna be in philosophy department it's not going to be in the hard sciences now I've got mad respect for all of the sciences I like I enjoy my own you know I'm pursuing a scientific degree I think it's great statistics are absolutely valuable I think as sir I can't remember was it Sir Francis Bacon it said mathematics or is the backbone of science now that's debatable but nonetheless I have respect for the sciences but at the same time I have respect for philosophy and I think it's a good and healthy thing to have I'm always like a little bit worried when people say like philosophy is stupid and it's like philosophy is where you would learn logic so I mean like really just that by itself is usually enough to where I'm like when people say philosophy is stupid I'm like it's like that the Chloe meme the little little girl in the car who's making that face you guys know what I'm talking about right I'm pretty sure it's called the Chloe mean but nonetheless Danny 3648 says amazing I couldn't agree more Danny and shameless Crawford thanks for coming by as well as Darth Revan and let's see Dave M glad you were here let's see that's right Ron Akinis James sends some selfies do you remember what time you're joking with what Darth Dawkins was on and Darth goes James James do you remember what I told you I wanted and I was like what I don't remember and he's like James what did I tell you I wanted before the debate and what he really wanted was he wanted like their full name to be sure they weren't a troll and and like and he wanted me to like vet them and make sure that they were like a quality interlocutor and when Darth Dawkins is like James what did I demand from you before I was willing to debate this person he said it was like pictures of them in their bedroom don't oh man that was like that was where he went off the handle but no hard feelings no hard feelings so but yes no I don't send selfies to anybody believe me because I'm too lazy let's see Anthony beyond he says that thanks for your your support Anthony and then let's see Fox popularly thanks for coming by and Odin all farther thanks for dropping in as well as pancake of destiny Dave M glad you came I didn't master optics good to see you Kevo Mackie thanks for dropping in he she'll good to see you God equals the square root of negative one we're glad you're here and then Dave Z thanks for dropping in Henry Hansen glad you were with us as sorry miss Jackson that's funny I get the joke because of the song yeah and then Bob Sadler dropped in thanks for coming by let's see no name glad you came by says I missed it you did but don't worry you can rewind this stream is anybody you guys anybody remember when you used to rewind VHS tapes it was like a pleasing sound and feeling to have that ability I would say because usually when the reason that like thinking of the sound and like the the sound and the phenomenal like the feeling you have emotional feeling that you have from hitting the rewind button of VHS is because when you would hit that button is usually because there's something you really liked and you were like rewinding to watch it again at at least that's the way I was let's see Hannah Anderson thanks for your support in the chat good to see you and then I'm almost caught up with chat it's moving on me my dear friends if you haven't already do you already forget to hit that subscribe button you guys we're excited that I think just at like we're excited to grow folks we have big dreams big aspirations and I want to say thank you so much for being a supporter of this channel as we strive to fulfill the vision of providing a level playing field for everybody to make their case on equal footing it's very important to us and so I am excited though got to tell you some sweet stuff one we will have a debate this Friday it's going to be on a brand new topic in particular it is a very serious topic a philosophical more ethical well ethical falling under the breath under the umbrella of philosophy again for those people like our philosophy is stupid it's like well I mean like ethics is like under philosophy you don't get ethics from the hard sciences it's it's true you can learn from the hard sciences as I think this is John Lennox I'm quoting you can learn whether or not poison being put in somebody's tea will kill them like you can certainly learn that from chemistry and biology. However you can't learn from chemistry and biology whether or not it was wrong of you to poison them that's an ethics question that's in philosophy and so like I said folks when I am a little bit alarmed I have to be honest like I'm I'm going to call people out that I worry a little bit when they're like philosophy stupid and I'm like oh gosh like oh boy a little alarm but most of you I appreciate that you're kind of like yeah there's like value in philosophy you can learn things in philosophy and there's it's not all some would say you know gibberish or stupid or whatever I appreciate that the vast majority of you seem to have a more well rounded comprehensive view regarding the different fields in academia and then Tim are so let's see where is it Sasha Nav thanks for your kind words and then Glenn Davis we appreciate you thank you to Botzel seriously for your support about nightbot I totally appreciate that we good to see you thanks for your kind words Riley S glad you're here human girl is right badass and Danny 3648 says really amazing in that amazing what the let's see naked beekeeper says hey James whatever happened to the apostate profit debate we're working on it it did to be honest the original person that I was hoping to have it be with apparently no longer interested no worries however I do think that we're going to be able to like salvage that debate so hanging there I haven't it's not on the channel yet or as of now as of late because I'm like reorganizing and I don't know for sure if it's going to be this month but I'm working on it and so Liz Jackson good to see you says whoa is this still go this is still going yes it is glad to see you Liz thanks doctor Jackson for all of your help and so let's see here human girl says who is sub to Tom rabbit that's right I wish is there like a clip does Tom rabbit have the clip where I was like teasing doctor was it a when I was teasing Darth Dawkins by saying that he requested pictures of people in their bedroom if he has that specific clip I honestly would be so happy I wish I could remember I think I know what debate it was in that I said that but I can't remember but man oh man that but yeah Liz thanks so much for coming on seriously it was seriously a fun talk we really enjoyed it and so I enjoy that I get to what's the word I'm looking for I get to go back and listen to debates after because my attention during the debate is oftentimes split and this is one I'm so glad I can actually listen to later as mentioned on the podcast you guys because we do have that podcast that I've been trying to tell you about I mean people do you not believe me let me know if you haven't been able to find modern debate on your favorite podcast we need to know because if it's not showing we've got to fix it. Let's see Anthony beyond is it beyond II is working I find a chat room to talk with atheists and religious people modern day debate does have a discord so it is linked in the description I'm going to pull that link up in just a moment so I highly encourage you to check it out and master QT one says good evening how are you doing tonight I'm doing so well you wouldn't even believe it nobody's doing more well than me and then pancake of destiny says rewind VHS what pencil and tape have in common I don't get it and that Hannah Anderson says you're so welcome thank you very much Hannah and then Bob Sather's right hit that sweet join button folks if you haven't yet at some point where we're going to try turning on the members only chat I know that some of you might be like oh James how dare you well we don't plan on doing it much and I'm not even sure if we would do it for the whole debate or just temporarily but it is something that it's a way of like reminding people because sometimes people don't hear believe it or not even if I say something on stream many times sometimes people don't hear it and so we probably will try it as a way of like letting people know like hey we have memberships now what he says James taking no prisoners and then Liz Jackson says go James defending philosophy I suspect many people who think philosophy is stupid don't know what philosophy is yeah I mean that's a good point is like I agree that a lot of people where I'm like do you really know I mean there's another thing too that I think people would find really valuable a lot of people are like oh you know like I'm so into the sciences philosophy is stupid and it's like have you ever heard of philosophy of science that's another one of those things that it's like I think if you learn more about it you find it really valuable and you'd realize that many of the assumptions that I mean for me too there are a lot of philosophy of science things that apply in and there are I mean like it's huge in terms of all the different ideas that apply in the different sciences and so not just the you know biology physics and chemistry but also things like psychology sociology all that and then Pat Riley thanks for coming by thought criminal glad you came by and hacks good to see you and Farron Salas as always a pleasure let's see here Anthony Blonde Anthony be on D that's how it's pronounced let's see YouTube surgeon urinal says maybe a members only Q&A for a few that's not a bad idea I can dig that and then pancake of destiny says put cassette on pencil it will rewind the tape inside you're not a boomer you young boy oh you're right put cassette on pencil it will rewind the tape inside you mean like wait why wouldn't you just hit rewind I oh that's right rewind like okay I get it I get it and Woody says would members only chat apply to Patreon subscribers that's a great question because Patreon peeps we would like for you to be active in the chat as well I can see where you're coming from yeah that's a toughie I don't know I wonder how other people how do other creators handle that do they like find a way that such that YouTube like I don't know how it works I honestly don't I know that we're not the only person we're not the only channel on YouTube that has both memberships and Patreon so I don't know let me let me we'll get some ideas on that because I agree it would be cool if Patreon patrons could already be active in chat the same way members would be during that time I'm trying to think of how we could do that that's tough but I'm glad you asked so I've got a run in just a moment and Anthony beyondy thanks so much or I should say heat shield thanks so much for posting our discord link is that ours I can't remember I'm embarrassed to say I've been learning discord this week I learned how to find friends on discord this week not trained to brag I told you guys I try to learn it it's not easy for boomers like me you guys it's not easy and then raw nakedness as they make patreons mods oh so raw nakedness if I turn on members only chat that means that mods would still be in the chat right like as a general rule even if we independent of patron that's that's how well let us try it right now don't worry folks this is you don't have to I'm only gonna do this for a minute but I just want to see how this works as I've never tried it and I'm curious how it works so if I understand right raw nakedness as she likes to be called weirdo says that if you have members only chat on and only do this for a second just don't freak out folks it's okay if I have members only chat it sounds like the mods will still be there so I could just add patreon people as moderators so let me check this out people are gonna be like what the heck let me check mods can you do me a favor and speak up let's see we'll see I'm gonna watch the live chat right now I see there are some and this isn't a way to try to like pressure okay Hannah Anderson says that's so not true okay so Hannah Anderson says is not true so are there any mods in the chat that can say hello and by the way by the way membership as it just as a oh he shield we see there says he shield we can see and lili agile we can see so it is the case and I'm gonna turn it off because that was just a test but it is the case that moderators raw nakedness Sarah I just there's nothing that gives me more pleasure than doxing Sarah is right that the mods can still can still let's see what's the word I'm looking for the moderators can still be seen in chat long day you can tell I'm getting tired I'm sundowning I've told you guys I sundown hard at about 8pm and it's 8pm here in mountain time for those of you on the east coast including Liz if you're still listening thanks for staying up late with us we do appreciate it seriously but yeah so that's cool now we know we can make patreon patrons what are they called human girl says cool and raw nakedness says I didn't say it was so it's hilarious that Sarah putting on both using both profiles simultaneously and as rataz a has a lot of rataz a rataz a rataz a lot of Zola thank you for being with us says mod yes mod doing Burke says yeah buddy thanks for coming by Dwayne good to see you again Dave Hill good to see you as well and then see Dave Hill says so much for the heavy gatekeeping process to keep mods honest then yeah I mean we're gonna have to be careful well it is going to be temporary too like so if you're worried about I mean I'm not worried too much because I don't think that if a person's a patreon patron I'm not worried I think that they believe in the vision of the channel enough to where I don't think they're going to like ban somebody because oh well they're an atheist or oh they're a Christian so I'm going to ban them I don't think that the patreon supporters would do that because they're like they're firmly like believing in the in the vision of modernity debate so I'm not too worried but the other thing is it could just be temporary we were we just mod up the patreon peeps during that time Manorite thanks for coming by says thank you James Yukami beta beta thanks for being with us and let's see here we appreciate you guys we love you guys seriously I've got to go it's a busy busy day this is a pretty productive day I'm excited I'm still working on this comprehensive exam I told you about and high pressure lot going on with that my dear friends we are at 167 likes I know we can get to 175 we're only eight away only eight away from 175 likes which is powerful and we're only at three dislikes but don't worry I know you're like oh I'm disturbed why would three people dislike the stream those are from our three Australian viewers who hit like thank you so much and my dear friends I have to tell you I'm excited as we are setting up some cool stuff in the next month oh I didn't even tell you about the upcoming debate so this Friday we have Kaz and Kay are going to be debating assisted suicide it's going to be a controversial one as well as this Saturday we are working on setting up one on the new topic as well so we are looking for new topics on the Israeli Palestine conflict that one we're still confirming that we would be in it but we also have a number of juicy ones coming up next month is going to be a hop in as well poppin or hoppin is that what's the word PI 373 thanks for coming by we appreciate it and yes it's going to be hoppin it's really going to be hoppin or poppin it's going to be both and Woody says oh well I love you James cackling at 3M for that silly joke appreciate that Woody thanks so much oh man I love you guys I hope you have a great rest of your night seriously now I don't know if you know about this but the rumor is men may live longer if they castrate themselves did you know this do you know that for real raw nakedness do you know that punch out 24 thanks for coming by says James you probably offended a couple flat earthers with that Australia comment that's so true I'm sorry flat earthers for my partisan my partisan joke but yes we are excited you guys big stuff coming I appreciate you guys I love you guys seriously thanks so much for joining with us passionately as we pursue the vision of providing a level playing field for everybody to make their case on an equal platform so thanks so much everybody we do appreciate you and we look forward to seeing you at the next one keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable take care everybody love you guys amazing amazing Tim Durant I see you there stoked you're with us isn't that amazing