Reasons of the Heart ? Pascal on overcoming skepticism.

Terence Cuneo writes about Pascal and faith HERE in his essay,
Combating the Noetic Effects of Sin: Pascal's Strategy for Natural Theology, he offers a few quotes by Pascal on the heart before commenting :

“We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. The sceptics have no other object than that, and they work at it to no purpose. We know that we are not dreaming, but, however unable we may be to prove it rationally, our inability proves nothing but the weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of all our knowledge, as they maintain.

 For knowledge of first principles, like space, time, motion, number, is as solid as any derived through reason, and it is on such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason has to depend and base all its argument. The heart feels that there are three spatial dimensions and that there is an infinite series of numbers, and reason goes on to demonstrate that there are no two square numbers of which one is double the other.

Our inability must therefore serve only to humble reason which would like to be the judge of everything, but not to confute our certainty. As if reason were the only way we could learn! Would to God, on the contrary, that we never needed it and knew everything by instinct and feeling. (F 110, ).”

We find that instinct corresponds to Ie memoire, or an inchoate recollection we have of our pre-fallen grandeur .

"That is the state in which men are today. They retain some feeble instinct from the happiness of their first nature... (F 149)."

"Man is therefore nothing but disguise, falsehood and hypocrisy, both in himself and with regard to others. He does not want to be told the truth. He avoids telling it to others, and all these tendencies, so remote from justice and reason, are naturally rooted in his heart (F 978).

I say that it is natural for the heart to love the universal being or itself, according to its allegiance, and it hardens itself against either as it chooses (F 423)."

Cueno comments, “…reason is not our sole epistemic faculty; neither need it serve the whims of a corrupt heart.  The intellective aspect of the heart and reason evince goodness and value when directed by the volition of a virtuous agent.

Pascal places great emphasis on the idea that the volitional aspect of the heart can greatly influence which beliefs we hold. Thus, in some sense, Pascal believes that the volitional part of our being can influence the intellective part of the heart and our reason. 

Pascal then adopts a form of doxastic voluntarism, or the doctrine that some portion of our beliefs are subject to voluntary control. In particular, Pascal champions a form of indirect doxastic voluntarism with respect to beliefs concerning the spiritual and moral state of ourselves, our neighbors, and the existence of God.

This is to say, Pascal is not claiming that we can by fiat decide whether or not to believe some proposition concerning ourselves, our neighbors and God; rather the claim is that by acts of volition we can influence what beliefs we hold on these subject matters by deciding what persons or states of affairs to direct our attention, what influences to admit in our belief forming tendencies, what beliefs to keep in the forefront of consciousness, and so on

Moreover, and this will become clear as we examine Pascal's natural theology, if the volitional part of our being can influence the intellective part of the heart and our reason, it turns out reason can in some sense influence the volitional aspect of the heart, and indirectly, the intellective aspect of the heart.

Pascal makes two major claims concerning our belief in God. First, belief in God is necessarily attained via the heart. Second, we cannot know God without knowing our own morally and spiritually depraved state.

Pascal argues,

“Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair (F 192).”

Man's true nature, his true good and true virtue, and true religion are things which cannot be known separately.

This realization will prevent us from considering ourselves the most worthy object of our own trust and love. We will not be able to absolutize ourselves.

“The nature of self-love and of this human self is to love only self and consider only self. But what is it to do? It cannot prevent the object of its love from being full of faults and wretchedness: it wants to be great and sees that it is small; it wants to be happy and sees that it is wretched; it wants to be perfect and sees that it is full of imperfections; it wants to be the object of men's love and esteem and sees that its faults deserve only dislike and contempt (F 978).”

Pascal holds that our volition must, as it were, turn outward to find a more worthy object of love, an object that satisfies this insatiable appetite for eudaimonia.”

On the connection between a morally virtuous character and epistemically virtuous belief Cueno writes,

“….a virtuous epistemic agent must be characterized not only by the desire and ability to see reality truthfully, but also exhibit enough honesty to accept what is true.

In fact, this is how Pascal defines reasonableness; reasonableness is a wholehearted desire for truth.

We increase our sensitivity to both the true state of our characters and the reality that surrounds us; hence, we increase the amount of true beliefs we hold. For Pascal, at least, for one to hold true beliefs concerning the emptiness of self-love requires an advanced stage of moral development.

It is the heart that perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

Though faith is a most complex concept, we might provisionally view it as an inclining of the volitional part of our being to trust in God.

In short, faith in God is a phenomenon that involves both the volitional aspect of the heart inclining towards God and the intellective aspect of the heart perceiving God in a non-inferential manner…the psychology of faith is an instance of the volitional aspect of the heart directly influencing what the intellective aspect of the heart perceives.

For Pascal, a necessary condition (note, not a sufficient one) for faith is that the volitional aspect of the heart turn away from love of self; the upshot of this, Pascal argues, is not some inferential process by which we come to believe in God but a movement of divine grace in which the heart turns its love toward God and perceives the reality of God.

Most of us will find ourselves seeking evidence for the existence of God and yet remaining unconvinced of His reality.

“There is thus evidence and obscurity, to enlighten some and obfuscate others. But the evidence is such as to exceed, or at least equal, the evidence to the contrary....Thus there is enough evidence to condemn and not enough to convince....(F 835)”

Pascal puts forth the "proof from the machine" to demonstrate how one might come to believe. The idea behind the proof from the machine is that many of our doxastic attitudes are largely a function of our habits and actions.

“For we must make no mistake about ourselves: we are as much automaton as mind. As a result, demonstration is not the only instrument for convincing us...Proofs only convince the mind; habit provides the strongest proofs and those that are most believed...it is, then, habit that convinces us and makes so many Christians. It is habit that makes Turks, heathen, trades, soldiers, etc. In short, we must resort to habit once the mind has seen where the truth lies, in order to steep and stain ourselves in that belief which constantly eludes us, for it is too much trouble to have the proofs always present to us (F 821).”

We can, according to Pascal, take certain steps, acquire certain habits so that we come to believe certain propositions we did not believe previous to practicing these habits.

Reason can then influence the volitional part of a person in such a way that the will induces that person to undertake certain actions that in turn influence what beliefs he holds.

A person's coming to believe in the existence of the Christian God in this way entails both that person's believing that it is in some sense rational to do so and that person's cultivating good habits such as attending mass and taking holy water so as to "steep and stain" himself in the ways of faith.

Habit functions in such a way that it turns the volitional part of the heart further away from self-love and prepares the way for God's movement of grace through the intellective part of the heart."