Week 8 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 8 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 9 items (4 readings and 5 videos). Allow 75–95 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more depth before the midterm, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–20 min total)

• Logical Reasoning (Sound, Valid & Invalid arguments - Deductive, Inductive, Abductive Logic) — Philosophy Vibe
• What do A Priori / A Posteriori mean?: Philosophy Glossary — Attic Philosophy
• Pascal's Wager Argument - For the Belief in God — Philosophy Vibe

① Form first: valid, sound, deductive, inductive

Chapter 8, Section “Keep a valid argument apart from a sound one” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Valid versus sound, deductive versus inductive” · Remember: a valid argument can still have a false premise, and an inductive argument is judged by its strength, not its validity.

• Logical Reasoning (Sound, Valid & Invalid arguments - Deductive, Inductive, Abductive Logic) — Philosophy Vibe — an animated conversation between two speakers who build a sound argument about a city, then change one premise to make it valid but unsound, then show an argument with true premises and a true conclusion that is still invalid. They go on to separate deductive arguments, which aim at certainty, from inductive ones, which aim at high probability, with a neighbor's dog and the need for water as examples. They write the if-then premise as "P equals Q", which the course writes as if P then Q, and the last two minutes, on abductive reasoning, go beyond this course. Use it while working through the Week-8 module overview. (video, 7 min) (captions: automatic)
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV: Sceptical Doubts concerning the Operations of the Understanding — Hume Texts Online — Hume's own text, in a free scholarly edition. Read Part II, where Hume argues that our conclusions from experience about the future rest on the assumption that the future will resemble the past, and that no argument from experience can support that assumption without circling back on itself. This builds on Week 4's problem of induction, now read as the line between deductive and inductive reasoning. Part I is background and is not needed for the review. (reading, 10–15 min)

② How a claim is known, and what a mind is

Chapter 8, Section “Sort how a claim is known: a priori versus a posteriori” · Session 1, Segment 2, “A priori versus a posteriori, and dualism versus physicalism” · Remember: a priori is about how a claim is known, not when you learned it, and physicalism says everything that exists is physical.

• What do A Priori / A Posteriori mean?: Philosophy Glossary — Attic Philosophy — a short glossary explainer that uses two oranges in each hand: you can know the total without looking, but you must look to know how many oranges are in a closed hand. It then takes on the worry that you needed school to learn arithmetic, and answers that a priori knowledge only needs the concepts, not a check of the world, which is the chapter's cure for reading a priori as "learned first". It mentions that the pair matters to the rationalist and empiricist debate without going further. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
• What is Physicalism?: Philosophy Glossary — Attic Philosophy — a glossary explainer that sets physicalism, one kind of stuff, against dualism, two kinds, and then shows that the identity theory is only one way of being a physicalist; functionalism can be another. Its key idea is dependence: on physicalism there could be no change in the mind without a change in the physical world. The talk of supervenience and emergence goes beyond this course, so keep the contrast with dualism and the place of the identity theory. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Is it rational to bet on belief?

Chapter 8, Section “Meet Pascal's wager: a bet about belief” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Pascal's wager and its table” · Remember: the wager argues about what a prudent person should believe, and it does not try to prove that God exists.

• Pascal's Wager Argument - For the Belief in God — Philosophy Vibe — a two-speaker debate that opens by saying the wager does not try to prove God's existence, explains decision theory with a lottery ticket, fills in the four cells of the table, and then argues over whether a believer's life is a real loss. Its last three minutes raise the objections that belief cannot be chosen and that other gods could make the same offer, and the speakers end without a verdict. One speaker describes a believer's life through the rules of one religious tradition; that is his example, and the course takes no view on any tradition's practices. It reads aloud a line from Pascal that the course does not pin, so do not quote it. (video, 8 min) (captions: automatic)
• Pascal's Pensées, by Blaise Pascal — Project Gutenberg — the whole Pensées in a public-domain English translation, free to read online; choose Read online now and search for the number 233 standing on its own line to find the fragment that contains the wager. The eBook does not name its translator, so the English words are an unnamed translator's, not Pascal's own, and the course quotes none of them. The rest of the book, a collection of unfinished fragments, goes beyond this week. (reading, 10–15 min)

④ Pressing the wager

Chapter 8, Section “Press the wager: two objections and two replies” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Two objections and two replies” · Remember: an objection presses a premise, a reply defends it, and the course keys no verdict on the wager.

• Objections to Pascal's Wager — Carneades.org — a four-minute explainer on the two objections the chapter names. It first adds new columns to the table, imagining gods who reward different beliefs, to show that more than one choice could carry an infinite reward; then it explains that belief may not be something you can change at will. The speaker calls the many-gods objection decisive, which is his own verdict; the course gives the wager's replies too and keys none. Its closing line from Pascal is not pinned in this course. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
• Pascal's Wager — The Philosophers' Magazine — a magazine essay by a working philosopher that treats the wager as a prudential argument, sorts the objections into four groups, among them the many-gods objection and the worry that belief for a reward is not real faith, and then sets out the wager's decision table. Read from the opening through the decision table; the later sections on decision theory and on how beliefs change over time are advanced and go beyond this week, and the essay's own leanings are one position in an open debate. (reading, 15–20 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Pascal's Wager, section 1: Background — online Encyclopedia of Philosophy (reference entry) — read section 1 for the contrast between an argument that God exists and an argument that you ought to believe, which is the chapter's prudential argument; section 5.1 returns to the many-gods objection if you want more. Skip the formal decision theory in the later sections. (reading, 10–15 min)

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