I’ve periodically wondered why doing poorly when faced with a Dutch Book is supposed to be a sign of irrationality, but it’s not a sign of irrationality that rational people do poorly when faced with someone who hits all and only rational people on the head with a baseball bat.
This occurred to me today:
One cannot get a rational person to act against their own interest except by force, luck or superior information.
Putting a Dutch Book over someone with inconsistent credences does not require force, luck or superior information.
This seems to get at some of the intuition as to why being subject to a Dutch Book is supposed to be a sign of irrationality.
But I don’t know how much confidence we should have in (1). The exception clause already admits three exceptions. This sounds ad hoc. Would we be very surprised if more exceptions had to be added?
Still, there is some plausibility to (1), at least for self-interested rationality.
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Under the pretense that an actually infinite number of things is impossible (including an infinite regress, as Dr. Craig and yourself have pointed out), how are heaven and hell infinite? Don't they also fall victim to the paradoxical nature of infinity?
Have a nice day :)
You cannot HAVE DONE an infinite number of things. In heaven or hell, you'll will never HAVE DONE an infinite number of things.
Sorry, but isn't the mere action of existing doing a thing? Thus you will have existed an infinite number of times?
You WILL exist an infinite number of days, but you won't HAVE existed an infinite number of days. For it to be the case that you will HAVE existed an infinite number of days, there would have to be a time that comes after all the infinitely many days. But there isn't. Each day in heaven is a day on which when you HAVE existed only a FINITE number of days.
Interesting, this line of thought came to me right before reading it 😂 thank you Dr. Pruss.
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