Iterated Mixed Strategies and Pascal’s Wager

Mixed strategies have been used to show that Pascal’s Wager fails to offer sufficient pragmatic reasons for believing in God. Their proponents have argued that, in addition to outright belief in God, rational agents can follow alternatives strategies whose expected utility is infinite as well. One objection that has been raised against this way of blocking Pascal’s Wager is that applying a mixed strategy in Pascal’s case is tantamount to applying an iterated mixed strategy which, properly understood, collapses into the pure strategy of becoming a theist (Monton, Analysis 71:642–645, 2011). I argue that since the assumptions used to develop the iterated mixed strategies response are even more questionable than those the initial objection relies on, this type of response to the mixed strategy objection fails.