Question

Hello Rabbi,
Not long ago you wrote that in principle you’re against debates, because people don’t really change their minds from them; rather, everyone just continues with what they thought beforehand. So what was different about Aviv Franco, with whom you did it twice?
And regarding the debate itself: toward the end you argued about moral judgment. You claimed that this means I’m “really” judging and not that it’s just a utilitarian matter, while Franco claimed that it’s just a built-in reaction in the brain. I’m interested to know whether I understood your view correctly: just as when I see a lamp I assume that this says something real about the world and not just something physical in my brain, so too when I judge someone for murder, that says something real and not just a physical change in the brain.
And right near the end you argued that this is basically a proof by negation: if matter is incapable of explaining what happens, then there is spirit.
My question is whether maybe there is a third possibility. It’s true that today we don’t understand how a physical structure, however complicated it may be, could produce free choice and understanding. But why is that something you rule out on the level of principle? Just as with understanding chemistry alone it’s hard to nearly impossible to understand how there can be something alive, and once we know about the cell and protein a new layer opens up before us, maybe there is some particular structure of proteins—let’s call it x—that makes it possible to construct free choice and real understanding?