Session 239 Dr. Rabbi Michael (Miki) Abraham – A Different Approach to Disputes – Da’at Cafe – Free Public University

Table of Contents

• The dispute between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai and the heavenly voice
• The Platonic question: majority of wisdom versus majority of people
• Majority, metrics, and the mathematics of representing the public will
• Halakhic disputes and the religious court: striving for truth and the weight of wisdom
• The wisdom of crowds and the law of large numbers
• Truth versus the proper: David Hume, values, and experts
• Breaking down dichotomies as a way out of disputes
• First mechanism: stepping outside the framework and the third possibility
• An additional mechanism through free choice: breaking down the dichotomy of cause versus chance
• Second mechanism: vagueness of concepts, the heap paradox, and continuous logic
• Critique of binary dilemmas and the example of exams
• Third mechanism: both sides are right on different planes of discussion
• Conclusion and the context of the event

Summary

General overview

Rabbi Michael Abraham presents disputes as something that requires distinguishing between different kinds of decision-making, and he begins with the dispute between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, which lasted three years until a heavenly voice decided it. He argues that a meta-halakhic dispute over the very rules of decision can jam the system, and in such a case an external ruling is needed. He connects this to the Platonic question of rule by the wise, rejects it in the democratic context because democracy is meant to represent rights and desires rather than arrive at truth, and distinguishes between disputes about truth and normative disputes. Later he offers tools for dismantling dichotomies in arguments that appear binary, by stepping outside the framework, by means of vague and continuous concepts, and by understanding that both sides may be right on different planes of discussion.

The dispute between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai and the heavenly voice

Rabbi Michael Abraham describes the Talmudic text in Eruvin in which Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai disagreed for three years without a decision, until a heavenly voice came forth and said: these and those are the words of the living God, but the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel. He brings from the Talmudic text in Yevamot that the people of Beit Shammai were sharper, while the people of Beit Hillel were more numerous, and he presents an interpretation according to which the argument was about whether “follow the majority” means the majority of wisdom or the majority of people. He explains that when the very rule of decision is itself in dispute, a vote cannot decide the matter, because each side will interpret the majority in its own favor. He explains that Tosafot in Eruvin asks how a heavenly voice can decide despite the rule of “it is not in heaven” from Bava Metzia, and answers that the rule of “it is not in heaven” applies when the rules of Jewish law are able to function, but when they are stuck and there is no internal alternative for decision, the heavenly voice gets things out of the tangle.

The Platonic question: majority of wisdom versus majority of people

Rabbi Michael Abraham presents the Platonic discussion of rule by philosophers as the question of why not let the wise decide, instead of giving equal weight to every voice. He formulates two common answers to that question: the essential and technical difficulty of identifying relevant wisdom, and perhaps the absence of universal intelligence; alongside that, the moral concern that the wise will exploit power to advance personal interests. He argues that both of these answers are partly good, but that the question itself is mistaken because it assumes that democracy is meant to reach the correct decision. He says that democratic decision-making is meant to represent what the public wants, on the basis of equal rights to influence a shared fate, and that the majority is a simple measure for representing the public will when there are disagreements, even if it is not ideal.

Majority, metrics, and the mathematics of representing the public will

Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that when the public is divided, there is no clear way to represent its will, and he points to a field in mathematics and mathematical economics, and to a book by Professor Shmuel Nitzan from Bar-Ilan that was published by the Open University, in which there appears a theorem stating that no decision can satisfy five criteria for representing the public will. He argues that the simplest democratic criterion is to follow the majority, but that this can miss situations in which the issue matters a great deal to the minority and hardly matters to the majority, so it is proper to consider the intensity of the harm and not only the number of those affected. He presents periodic voting in elections as an even more simplified implementation of the idea of majority rule, and emphasizes that the majority is not chosen because it is right, but because it represents the public will in the simplest way within a framework of equal rights.

Halakhic disputes and the religious court: striving for truth and the weight of wisdom

Rabbi Michael Abraham distinguishes between democratic disputes, which deal with what people want to happen, and halakhic, legal, and philosophical disputes, in which the goal is to arrive at the correct answer. He argues that in a religious court the judges do not have “rights,” but rather an obligation to clarify what the Jewish law is or what the law is, and so the question of whether to count heads or legs becomes relevant there. He cites the author of Sefer HaChinukh, who says that even a band of ignoramuses as numerous as those who left Egypt would not overrule one sage, and he presents a tradition of halakhic decisors according to which, where there is an agreed and clear measure of who the greatest sage is, one follows the majority of wisdom even if it is a numerical minority. He adds that when there is no agreement about who is wiser, and the matter would never end, one returns to deciding by the majority of people.

The wisdom of crowds and the law of large numbers

Rabbi Michael Abraham rejects general faith in the wisdom of crowds and argues that it works only in simple contexts in which the law of large numbers applies. He describes experiments in numerical estimation, such as the number of animals in a field, in which the average of a thousand laymen may come closer to the truth than a single expert, because the average converges on the expectation under statistical assumptions. He argues that when actual thinking is required, and not just a “shot in the dark,” it is better not to go with the crowd, and he emphasizes that the reason for the crowd’s success in certain cases is statistical rather than essential.

Truth versus the proper: David Hume, values, and experts

Rabbi Michael Abraham uses David Hume’s distinction between what is and what ought to be, and the claim of a logical fallacy in deriving norms from facts, in order to explain why many questions in politics are normative rather than factual. He illustrates that a statement like “it is forbidden to hit” does not follow from the fact that hitting causes pain without an additional normative premise such as “it is forbidden to cause pain.” He argues that experts can contribute factual input about expected outcomes, but they are not authorized to decide between values, and he gives as an example the dispute between communism and capitalism as a value-based argument about equality versus liberty. He adds in parentheses that even in a normative discussion there is skill in analysis and in presenting arguments, but still the dispute is not decided by factual expertise.

Breaking down dichotomies as a way out of disputes

Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that very often he agrees with neither of the two sides in a binary dispute, and he presents the dismantling of the dichotomy as a skill that prevents one from falling into the rhetorical trick of “either this or that.” He brings the anecdote about the judge who tells two litigants, “You’re right,” and in the end also tells his wife, “You’re right too,” in order to illustrate the apparent logical difficulty and the need to think differently. He presents at least two mechanisms that make it possible to disagree with both sides and point to additional possibilities.

First mechanism: stepping outside the framework and the third possibility

Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that when two possibilities are opposites, they belong to the same shared field, and therefore one can reject the framework itself and not be “neither this nor that.” He demonstrates this with respect to the dichotomy “Haredi” versus “Religious Zionist” through the words of Yosef Burg, who said that the main thing in “Religious-Zionist” is the hyphen, and he concludes that one can be Zionist and religious without the hyphen linking them. He also brings the joke about the rabbi from Ponevezh, who on Independence Day neither recited Hallel nor omitted Tachanun, and said, “I’m as Zionist as Ben-Gurion,” and he interprets this as a serious answer: a Zionism that is not religious alongside a religiosity that is not Zionist. He also presents his own personal position, that he thinks God created the world and he also thinks evolution is correct, and explains that the dichotomy “either evolution or the Holy One, blessed be He” assumes unnecessary premises, such as the impossibility of creation through evolutionary processes.

An additional mechanism through free choice: breaking down the dichotomy of cause versus chance

Rabbi Michael Abraham presents Peter van Inwagen’s argument according to which if there is a cause for an action then it is deterministic, and if there is no cause then it is random, and therefore there is no free choice. He argues that under the concept “there is no cause” two different mechanisms are hidden: action without a cause but with a purpose, and action without a cause and without a purpose. He defines purposive action, directed toward the future and toward the realization of values, as a mechanism of free choice, in contrast to blind random action, and in that way a third possibility is born that disappeared from the dichotomous argument.

Second mechanism: vagueness of concepts, the heap paradox, and continuous logic

Rabbi Michael Abraham presents the heap paradox: one stone is not a heap, adding one stone does not change the status, and a million stones are a heap, and he shows that these claims do not fit together. He presents other instances as well, such as “when is it afternoon,” and the baldness paradox involving adding hairs, and argues that every everyday concept is vulnerable to such paradoxes because it is vague. He rejects technical solutions like an artificial determination that from 13 stones onward it is a heap, and argues that this does not describe the meaning in ordinary language. He proposes changing the second premise so that adding a stone changes the status “a little,” and concludes that this is a continuous concept of “degree of heap-ness” within fuzzy logic, rather than a binary concept of yes or no.

Critique of binary dilemmas and the example of exams

Rabbi Michael Abraham brings a logical dilemma: there is no point in exams, because the lazy students will not study even if there is an exam, and the diligent students will study even without an exam. He argues that the fallacy is the binary assumption of “lazy” versus “diligent,” whereas in reality there is a continuum of levels of diligence, and in the middle there are people whose behavior really is changed by an exam. He concludes that many dichotomies are created because vague concepts are presented as though they were sharp and binary.

Third mechanism: both sides are right on different planes of discussion

Rabbi Michael Abraham presents the story of Newton and the apple and asks why Newton did not settle for a theological answer of punishment, but instead looked for a physical answer of gravity. He argues that the two answers do not contradict one another because they belong to different planes of discussion, and therefore there is no need to choose between them. He also illustrates this with descriptions of repentance and becoming secular, where secular friends explain things psychologically and religious friends explain them philosophically, and he shows that every human action can be explained both from the psychological perspective of influences and causes and from the philosophical perspective of justifications and meaning. He concludes that the argument over “who is right” is replaced by the understanding that both explanations can be correct, and that choosing to present only one of them may be intellectually dishonest.

Conclusion and the context of the event

The remarks conclude with thanks to Rabbi Michael Abraham from the Advanced Institute for Torah at Bar-Ilan, while noting that he holds a doctorate in theoretical physics. At the end it is said, “Listen, I once heard Dr. Micah Goodman when I was at the Israel Museum.”

Hello everyone. Shall we begin? Yes, yes, we can start. Okay, today I want to talk a bit about disputes. It seems to me, all in all, that this is very topical these days, but I want to look at them a little from a broader perspective. I’ll start maybe with a Talmudic passage in tractate Eruvin. I’m not bringing the sources here because I don’t want to start getting into all the details. Just listen to what I’m saying. The Talmud in tractate Eruvin describes that Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai argued for three years and couldn’t—couldn’t reach a decision. Then a heavenly voice came forth and said: these and those are both the words of the living God, but the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel. That’s a very interesting Talmudic passage, and we need to understand exactly what the heavenly voice meant there, but before that it’s perhaps interesting to notice the dispute itself. There was a dispute there that went unresolved for three years, and the question is: why? What was special about that dispute that they couldn’t resolve it?

So there’s another Talmudic passage in tractate Yevamot. The Talmud says there that the members of Beit Shammai were sharper—sharper still—than the members of Beit Hillel, while Beit Hillel were more numerous. That’s only natural, you know, there’s an intelligence pyramid. There are few very wise people and more less-wise people. So Beit Shammai were sharper, and Beit Hillel were more numerous. Then some commentators explain that their argument was really over this question: we know that when there is a dispute, the rule is to incline after the majority. You vote, try to persuade one another; if it doesn’t work, you vote, and the majority decides. So what was the problem? Why didn’t they do that there?

Several commentators explain that there was a kind of meta-halakhic problem in the methodology of decision-making. Why? Because the members of Beit Shammai, surprisingly, claimed that the majority one should follow is the majority of wisdom, not the majority of people—and therefore, of course, one should rule like them. And Beit Hillel claimed that one should follow the majority of people. Once I heard someone say that the dispute was whether to count heads or count legs. Meaning, do you go by the majority of legs or the majority of heads? And once that is the dispute underlying all halakhic disputes, we’re stuck. Because what are we going to do? Hold a vote—and then what? Beit Shammai against Beit Hillel. Fine, so now there’s no problem: incline after the majority. But even then Beit Shammai say, yes, yes, we are the majority—the majority in heads—and Beit Hillel say, we are the majority in legs. So the vote itself won’t help us here.

So what do we do? Decide that very dispute—whether we follow the majority of wisdom or the majority of legs, the majority of heads or the majority of legs—also by a vote? But then the same problem will arise in that vote too. So in fact the disputes between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel were the first time in the history of Jewish law that there were disputes that dragged on and on and couldn’t be resolved. They simply couldn’t be resolved. Incidentally, that’s why a heavenly voice comes out from heaven and decides, saying that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel.

And the medieval authorities (Rishonim) there already comment and ask: how can that be? We know from the Talmud in tractate Bava Metzia that “it is not in heaven.” Meaning, we don’t decide Jewish law based on a heavenly voice coming from heaven. We have to decide Jewish law according to the accepted rules of Jewish law. We argue, we vote, and we decide. So there are commentators who ask—Tosafot in Eruvin, for example—why here did they allow the heavenly voice to decide?

In light of what I said earlier, the answer is of course very simple. When the Talmud says “it is not in heaven,” what it means is that we do not resort to heavenly voices and transcendental arguments of one kind or another. We go according to the rules of Jewish law. We have the rules of Jewish law, and those are the tools we use to decide. But what do you do when the rules of Jewish law are stuck? We have no way to use them, as I explained before, because the rule of “incline after the majority” won’t help us in this case. What do you do in such a situation? In such a situation, you can’t apply the rule of “it is not in heaven.” Because “it is not in heaven” always—like Shimon Peres used to say—what’s their alternative? Meaning, we always have to decide between two alternatives. If we have the alternative of deciding through the rules of Jewish law, then we’re told: use that, and don’t resort to a heavenly voice. But if we no longer have the option of deciding through the rules of Jewish law, then what can you do? Then a heavenly voice comes out and gets us out of that tangle. And that’s why they needed the heavenly voice.

The question with which I want to open is: what exactly is the basis of the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel? The dispute—the meta-dispute. Meaning, do you follow the majority of wisdom or the majority of people? This somewhat recalls the Platonic discussion, right? The rule of the philosophers. Plato already raised the question: why do we actually let the majority decide? Look at modern democracy, for instance. In Greece it wasn’t exactly like this—there the percentage of people who had the right to vote was not very high—but say everyone has the right to vote, like אצלנו, like in our system. Why do we actually let the majority decide? Why not choose the wisest people and let them decide? Wouldn’t that be a better way to reach correct decisions? Smarter people will make better decisions.

If you want a softer model, I’d say: don’t choose a few wise people to make the decision, but at least weight each person’s vote according to his intelligence. Okay? Give someone with higher intelligence greater weight at the ballot box, so that overall we are still using—or taking into account—the wisdom of people and not just counting people. That is basically the Platonic question, or the Platonic problem, of the rule of the philosophers. And on the face of it, it sounds reasonable. Why shouldn’t we entrust decisions to the wise? That seems like a better way of reaching a decision than handing it over to the broad masses. As I said before, people usually think that the majority is a criterion for justice. The majority is closer to the truth than the minority. My own assumption is usually the opposite. If there is a dispute between a majority and a minority, usually the minority is right unless proven otherwise—because of that intelligence pyramid I mentioned before.

Who decides who is wise? Hm? Who decides who is wise? Okay, now we’re already getting into explanations or answers. So basically we have the question: why not let the wise make the decision? Why give equal right or equal weight to all voices? In this context there are usually two answers, two types of answer.

One answer asks how it’s possible to determine who is wise for this purpose. Not only who will decide who is wise for this purpose, but whether there is even such a thing as being wise for this purpose. In other words, the problem of who decides is a technical question. I also want to ask the substantive question. Who says there is some kind of wisdom that will actually lead you to better decisions? Alternatively, it could be that in the economic realm you need one kind of wisdom, in the political realm another kind, in the security realm yet another kind. Unfortunately, we have apparently managed to get leadership that lacks all of these kinds of wisdom, but these are different forms of wisdom, and each person with certain abilities may be able to make decisions in certain areas. We don’t have some universal kind of intelligence—certainly not in the age of multiple intelligences, as people have accepted in recent decades—that can make better decisions in every field. So that’s the first answer. It says, in effect, that we have no way to determine—or perhaps there is no such thing as—universal wisdom, a wisdom that can ensure, or at least improve the chances of, making a better decision.

The second answer is more technical, and it says that even if we had a way to determine who is wise, and to identify the wise people and give them the authority to decide—or determine the weight given to each person’s vote in the ballot box—we would still have a concern about improper behavior on the part of those wise people. Who can guarantee that those wise people will not act to advance their own interests rather than the good of the public as a whole? So even if they really are wise, and really can make better decisions than other people, it is not clear that they will use that talent for the right purposes. Meaning—it could be. Here we get into the issue of morality. Sorry? Here we get into the issue of morality. Yes, meaning the question is how we can make sure that those wise people who receive the authority to decide for all of us will behave morally—that is, care for the public as a whole and not for their own interests.

So those are the two main directions I know for answering Plato’s problem. The first is whether there is even such a thing as this kind of universal intelligence, and whether we have any way to identify it, even if it exists, in order to determine which people should have the right to decide. The second is: even if there is such a thing, how can we make sure that the person uses the intelligence he has for our benefit, for all of us, and not only for his own interests or those of his own group.

Both of these answers have something to them, but it seems to me that the question itself is simply mistaken. You don’t need to look for answers. The question is wrong. Why? I think Plato either didn’t understand—or maybe in his time it was somewhat different—but anyone who asks this question today does not understand the nature of democratic decision-making. If democratic decision-making were meant to achieve the best, most correct, most effective goal, then it would make sense to ask: so why not let the wise decide? And then you’d need all the explanations I gave before. Then the question would make sense. If you want to reach the best decision, and I have a better mechanism or methodology for reaching the best decision—let the wise decide. I understand that question, and then one can discuss the answers I gave before.

But the purpose of a democratic decision is not to reach the correct decision. That is simply a mistaken understanding of democracy. The purpose of democratic decision-making is to represent what the public wants. The underlying assumption is an assumption about rights, not about truth or falsehood. The democratic assumption is that every person has an equal right to influence his own fate and our common fate. Everyone has an equal right to influence. And since that’s the case, democratic government is supposed to carry out what the public wants. What the public wants—the government is appointed on its behalf to carry that out.

Except that sometimes it isn’t clear what the public wants; there are disagreements. What should government do in that situation? One can think of various mechanisms to represent what the public wants in such a case. You need to find some criterion that tells me: okay, do X, and X can be called what the public wants, despite the disagreements. Incidentally, there is a field in mathematics, in mathematical economics, that deals with these questions. There is a fascinating book by Professor Shmuel Nitzan from Bar-Ilan that was published by the Open University—if anyone is interested, it’s worth reading, though I no longer remember its name. There he proves a theorem in mathematics saying that if a decision representing the public’s will has to satisfy five criteria—I think something like that—then mathematically it is impossible to reach such a decision. There is no such decision. No decision can satisfy all five criteria. Or in other words, when there is disagreement within the public, there is no clear way to represent what the public wants in that situation.

Notice: the question is not what is correct to do in that situation, but what ought to be done in that situation. And what ought to be done in such a situation is what the public wants—but what does the public want? There is disagreement. So we need criteria. Now the simplest criterion that democratic culture adopted is following the majority. For us, the majority is what in Jewish law is called “its majority is as the whole of it.” That is, for us the majority is what represents what the public wants. Not such a good representation, by the way. It does not satisfy some of the conditions I mentioned earlier. It’s not all that good because, for example, there can be situations where this issue is extremely important to the minority, and the majority has a different position, but it doesn’t care that much about it. In such a situation, should we still follow the majority? Not so simple. Maybe we should measure the level of harm caused by not acting as I want. There is room to consider not just how many people are affected, but how strongly each person is affected. Yes, expected harm is the product of the number of people times the intensity of harm to each one. So this is an example of why the criterion of majority is not an ideal criterion.

But it is the simplest one available. Doing more complicated things is hard. In Switzerland they hold referendums on every question; elsewhere, less so, because that too is complicated. So even the criterion of majority is too complicated for us. Instead we use a simplified majority criterion. Once every few years there is an election, and the majority will determine what happens over the next few years. That too is a kind of simple implementation of majority rule.

But still, for our purposes, what matters is that majority rule in this case is not intended to reach the correct answer. That is not its goal at all. Not because it fails to reach the correct answer—it doesn’t even want to reach the correct answer. That isn’t its aim. The aim of following the majority in a democracy is basically to act in accordance with what the public wants. And the majority is the simplest criterion for representing what the public wants when there is disagreement. So I say: the majority, as far as I’m concerned, is more or less what I can point to and say, that’s what the public wants. And I demand that the leadership do what the majority wants. Why? Not because the majority is right, but because it is the majority. Because we want to do what the public wants.

A poll is a criterion? I can’t hear. A poll, polls. What do you mean by criterion? How do you define criterion—but why is that important for our discussion? In order to measure public opinion, you conduct a poll. So I’m saying: in Switzerland, for example, they try to conduct a referendum on every question, and fine, that’s the method they use, but that too is complicated. Not only that—even if you conduct a poll and discover that eighty percent want such-and-such, still you return to the question whether the majority is even a criterion at all. So what does the poll help? The poll only tells me there is a majority. And now I ask: fine, there is a majority, understood—but is the majority really a proper representation of what the public wants? That is the important question for us. How you determine whether the majority wants something or not—that’s already technical.

Why this criterion? Wait, questions at the end. So in the end, if I go back to the Platonic question, in disputes that take place within a democracy, within a community, within a state, a city—the Platonic question doesn’t need answers; it doesn’t arise in the first place. Anyone who raises the Platonic question in this context simply does not understand what democracy is. Because he assumes that the purpose of the decision is to reach the correct answer, and then he says, fine, we’ll reach the correct answer better if we let the wise decide. But if that assumption is incorrect—if the purpose of the decision is not to reach the correct answer—then there is no point discussing whether to give the decision to the wise. Since we are talking about rights, on the level of rights everyone has an equal right. It doesn’t matter whether he is wise or not wise; everyone has an equal right to influence the conduct of the society in which he lives. Therefore, by definition there should be equal right for everyone.

This is not at all a question of whether the majority reaches the right decision or not, or whether the majority will abuse it, or perhaps the wise would abuse it, or whether we know how to determine who is wise and who is not wise. None of that matters. Even if I knew how to determine it, and even if those wise people were perfectly righteous and would do everything for the good of the public, it would still not be right to apply the Platonic method in the democratic context. It is simply a mistake.

But why is the Platonic proposal so persuasive at first glance? Because we are used to disputes of a different kind. There are disputes that are not in the democratic context, but for example—as I mentioned at the beginning—halakhic disputes. Halakhic disputes among sages, or disputes among judges on a religious court, or judges in a civil court. Those are disputes where we are indeed trying to reach the correct answer. Unlike disputes in democracy, which concern the question of what I want to happen—not what is best to happen, but what I want to happen. In a religious court, or in a halakhic dispute, or in a philosophical dispute, or in many other disputes, the discussion really is about the question: what is the correct answer? Not what do I want to happen. In that context, it is entirely natural to ask the Platonic question.

When we are in a religious court and there is a disagreement between two judges—say the majority view in a court of three deciding monetary matters, and there is a disagreement: two judges against one judge—there the Platonic question can definitely arise. If the one judge is a very great sage, a great Torah scholar, and the other two are less so, should we count heads or count legs? This is an excellent question, because here the purpose of the dispute—or the purpose of deciding the dispute—is to reach the correct answer. It is not about the rights of the judges to act as they think. Judges have no rights. Judges need to decide what Jewish law says, or what the law says. And since that is the case, in those disputes the goal is to reach the correct answer, not the answer that represents the opinion of the group, unlike a democratic dispute.

In such a case, there is definitely room to say that if the one judge is very, very wise, and the other two judges are somewhat less wise—or much less wise—then despite the fact that they are the majority, and have four legs, when we count heads we should follow him, because he is probably right. Or as the author of Sefer HaChinukh says, even a group of ignoramuses as numerous as those who left Egypt—six hundred thousand people—cannot outvote one sage. So what if you have one million two hundred thousand legs? In terms of heads, if we summed all your wisdom together, it still would not overcome the wisdom of the one wise judge. Not the head, not the legs. Yes, exactly—so I’m saying we should follow the head and not the legs. That is exactly the claim.

You know, nowadays it is very popular to talk about the wisdom of crowds. I’m not one of those who believe in the wisdom of crowds, as I said earlier. But even where the wisdom of crowds does work, it only works in places where the law of large numbers applies. You know, they do experiments of a kind where, say, people estimate the number of leaves on a tree or the number of animals grazing in a field. They let an expert estimate—not count, estimate—how many animals there are, and alongside that they ask a thousand laymen who have never dealt with such things and have no experience in the matter to say how many animals are grazing in the field. If we take the average of the thousand laymen’s answers, we will probably get a better answer than the answer of the experienced expert. That’s what is usually brought up in connection with the wisdom of crowds.

But here the explanation is very simple: it’s just the law of large numbers. The law of large numbers only says that once I have a sum of a thousand random variables—a thousand opinions, or a thousand coin tosses, or a million coin tosses—the distribution of the results will be exactly according to the expected probabilities: one-sixth for one, one-sixth for two, one-sixth for three, and so on. If we toss only a small number of times, the outcomes won’t be distributed equally, right? Only when we toss very many times. In this context too, if we look at each guess as a kind of coin toss, then if there are a thousand people tossing coins, the average at the end will be very, very close to the actual result. One has to assume a few statistical assumptions here, but I’ll skip that. By contrast, a single person may make a mistake—even if he is an expert, he can still err. So there are places where the wisdom of crowds works, but that is only in very simple places where people are usually shooting in the dark. When you’re shooting in the dark, the crowd has an advantage. When you have to think, it seems to me better not to go with the wisdom of crowds. That is, at least, the wisdom of the few with whom I agree.

Anyway, for our purposes, Sefer HaChinukh essentially argues—and with this he opens an entire tradition of halakhic decisors—who say that when there is a halakhic dispute, one does not follow the majority of people, but the majority of wisdom. Again, in places where there are clear and agreed-upon criteria for who is the greater sage, because one can argue about that too. The judges can say: we do not recognize that he is greater than we are, and then there is no end to it. So there they would follow the majority of people. But in a case where everyone agrees that he really is the greatest Torah scholar—even though we too are legitimate, we too are judges, but there are two against him, and even we admit that he is greater—then, says Sefer HaChinukh and a number of other halakhic decisors, we should follow the greater sage even if he is in the numerical minority. That is the Platonic principle, and it applies in those places where the decision is striving toward the correct ruling, striving toward truth. In democratic decisions, where truth is not the goal, wisdom is of no importance whatsoever. Again, unless someone persuades me, and then I am persuaded because he is wise and I come to think as he does—fine, no problem. But once we have reached our conclusions, each of us his own conclusions, and now we are voting, there is no advantage to wisdom in these contexts, as Ecclesiastes says.

So this tells us that there are two kinds of dispute. There is a dispute about what is true, and there is a dispute about what we want to happen. Two different things. Sometimes perhaps one could connect this to the distinction David Hume made between is and ought. There is the desirable and the actual. He says there is a logical or philosophical fallacy when we derive a normative or evaluative conclusion from factual premises. For example, I say: it is forbidden to hit a person. Why? Because if I hit him, it hurts him. That is a fallacious argument. Why? Because the fact that when I hit him it hurts him—that is a fact. And the statement that it is forbidden to hit him is a norm. A norm is never derived from facts. Never. Anyone who makes that derivation is making a logical mistake.

Rather, what usually happens when someone makes an argument like that is that he is smuggling in another hidden premise that he does not put on the table: that it is forbidden to cause pain to a person. Now that’s fine, right? If I say: when I hit a person it hurts him—that’s premise one. Premise two: it is forbidden to cause pain to a person. Conclusion: it is forbidden to hit him. Don’t hit—it isn’t nice, like your mother said. Okay? But you need to add the second premise, because if we assume only the factual premise that hitting hurts, then from facts you cannot derive a norm. Incidentally, not even an aesthetic judgment. You can’t say that this picture is beautiful because it has such-and-such a color combination. That’s also a fallacious argument. You need to assume a premise that a certain color combination of that kind is beautiful, that it has some aesthetic value or another. But the mere fact that it has such-and-such a color combination is a fact. From a fact you cannot derive a judgment or a norm—not an ethical one, not an aesthetic one, and not anything else that is not factual.

Why am I bringing up this fallacy here? Because when we are discussing the factual plane, we are usually accustomed to treating it as a discussion whose aim is to know what the truth is. Then there might be room for the Platonic proposal that the decision be determined by wisdom rather than by the majority of people. But when we deal with normative questions—what ought to be done, what is moral to do—there it may be possible to discuss this; I don’t want to open that here. But at least many people would say that this is not a matter of wisdom. It is a matter of values. Each person and his own values. And when there are disagreements, there is no advantage to wisdom over foolishness. In the end, everyone has his own values, and therefore a dispute of this kind is not a dispute that strives to reach the correct answer but to reach what ought to be done. And with respect to what ought to be done, there is no wise and unwise, there are differing opinions, and we need to make shared decisions about how to act. Therefore it is closer to democratic arguments.

Most of the questions we argue about in political contexts and in states, incidentally, are not factual questions—almost none of them are—although they often appear to be. They are questions of what ought to be, not of what is. Therefore the use of experts is also very reckless. People say, all the experts say this; of course, every person says that all the experts say what he thinks, so naturally all the experts say it should be this way or that way. Experts can say things about facts. Experts cannot say things about values, about what ought to be.

Think about an argument between a communist and a capitalist, okay? The two ends of the spectrum. Very often you’ll see each side recruiting to its cause all the great economists and who knows what else. The great economists, of course, are the ones who agree with me. So all the great economists say one should be socialist, or one should be capitalist. But great economists have nothing to say in this domain. It is irrelevant. Because the argument between communism and capitalism is a value dispute. It is not a factual dispute. The question is whether, to put it a bit simplistically, you prefer the value of equality or the value of liberty. What does an expert have to say about that more than I do? The question is what my values are. If the value of equality outweighs liberty for me, then I am a communist—or socialist, if you prefer. And if liberty outweighs, then I am closer to the capitalist pole. In that dispute there is no weight whatsoever to the opinions of experts. It has no significance. They can give me inputs. They can tell me: look, if you behave this way, the economic result will be such-and-such—take that into account. Fine, one hundred percent, and that is the role of an expert. But to think that an expert’s opinion can determine the issue—that is simply a mistake.

In normative disputes there is not much added value to expertise. That’s a somewhat extreme formulation, because even in moral discussions, for example, there is skill in ethical analysis and in formulating ethical arguments, and the fact is that someone more skilled will usually be more successful in persuading someone less skilled. So there is some weight to expertise even in normative questions. But that is just a parenthetical remark so that the picture I painted here not be overly simplistic.

For our purposes, I return: we have two kinds of dispute. One kind concerns truth or falsehood, and there there is room to give weight to wisdom. The other concerns what ought to be done, or what should be done, and there the Platonic question does not arise. The parameter of wisdom is not relevant.

Now I want to focus on disputes that take place on the plane of truth or justice, not of what is desirable. So I’m leaving democratic disputes aside now. I’m talking about halakhic disputes, disputes about what is right. Even on this plane there are several points worth noticing. Let me just glance at the time. I only want to make sure I’m keeping to time. There are a few points that need attention.

Usually when I encounter disputes on various topics, I find—in most cases—that I agree with neither opinion. And that is surprising at first glance, because in a large portion of these arguments it seems that the two opinions—I’m talking now about two opinions, binary disputes—seem to cover all the possibilities. So how can you disagree with both? Like the judge’s wife: one litigant comes to him, presents his case, and he says, you’re right. Then the other comes, and he says, you’re right too. So his wife says, wait a second, how can they both be right? He tells her, you’re right too. Meaning, if X is true then not-X is not true, and vice versa. So how can it be that you don’t agree with either side?

Here I want to raise a few perspectives that provide a way out even in disputes that seem to have no way out. Meaning, even in disputes where it looks as though you have to choose a side—no, you don’t always have to choose a side. Sometimes you can disagree with both sides. And I want to show at least two mechanisms, with a few examples, of how to do that. This is an important skill, by the way, because very often it is a very common rhetorical trick to place you before a dichotomy. Either you are this, and if you are not this then obviously you are that—which is what had to be proved. Therefore you must find yourself here. But inwardly you feel: no, I don’t find myself here. True, I’m not there either, but I don’t find myself here either. Yet because I can’t explain to myself how that can be, I often feel that I nevertheless must be here, because the alternative is problematic. It is proof by negation. If you don’t accept not-X, then obviously you have to accept X. Therefore the skill of dismantling dichotomies is very important. Dismantling dichotomies means that when a dichotomous picture is presented to you, you see how there can nevertheless be a third possibility that is neither of the two options being presented.

For example, when I write about all sorts of current issues, people often tell me, wait, wait—you’re really Haredi. Okay. And others tell me, no, you’re really Reform. Fine, that too. But at a certain point some people asked me: wait, something here doesn’t add up. If you’re, say, a religious person for the sake of the discussion, then what can it be? Either you are religious and Zionist, or you are religious and not Zionist, right? What else could there be? There’s no third option. So how can it be that you are located neither here nor there? At first glance that really is an embarrassing and good question. How can it be that you are neither the no nor the yes? There is, you know, the law of the excluded middle in logic, which says that necessarily either X is true or not-X is true; there is no third possibility. But it turns out that in life there is a third possibility. One has to be careful with logic in life. There are often third possibilities.

In the context of this example, someone later told me this probably came from Leibowitz, though I’m not sure—or maybe I heard it once—but at some point I came to the conclusion that the dichotomous presentation of Haredi or Religious Zionist is simply wrong. Why? Because when they once asked Yosef Burg what a Religious Zionist is, he said: what is primary in a Religious Zionist, the Zionist or the religious? And he answered: the hyphen. The hyphen connecting the two. That’s not a joke; in my view it’s completely true. What is central in Religious Zionism is the hyphen. But notice that if that is really so, then additional possibilities open up. For example, if I am both Zionist and religious but I don’t have a hyphen, am I Haredi? Or am I Religious Zionist? No—I am neither. So here is a third possibility.

What do I mean? You know, I spent a certain period of my cheerful years in Bnei Brak, and the people there more than once told me the well-known joke about the Rabbi of Ponevezh: on Independence Day he did not recite Hallel and he did not recite Tachanun. Not reciting Tachanun is a kind of holiday, and not reciting Hallel means, ostensibly, that it is not really a holiday for you. So they asked him—again, the dichotomy question. And he answered: I’m a Zionist like Ben-Gurion. He too doesn’t recite Hallel and doesn’t recite Tachanun. Now this sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. In my opinion that is an entirely serious answer. And that’s what my conversation partners didn’t understand. They thought they were joking at the expense of Religious Zionism, but they were really joking at their own expense. Because what the Rabbi of Ponevezh was saying—and I think he meant it completely seriously—was that he was a Zionist like Ben-Gurion. His Zionism was not religious. He was a Zionist like any person or any Jew who feels connected to the state, to his people, but there is no religious dimension to it in his eyes. No religious dimension. Therefore his Zionism is not religious, and his religiosity is not Zionist. So what is he? He is Zionist and he is religious, only without a hyphen between them. That’s all. That option, for example, is a third option in addition to the ordinary Haredi or the ordinary Religious Zionist.

So you see, we started with a dichotomous presentation: if you are religious then either you are a Zionist religious person or you are a non-Zionist religious person. What else could there be? But when you look at it with higher resolution, you discover that all sorts of other options are hidden there.

Let me give another example from another field. I also dealt quite a bit with free will, neuroscience, and the connection between them. One common argument in this context is from an American philosopher of Dutch origin named Peter van Inwagen. He tries to prove that we have no free will, that the very concept of free will is not defined. Why? He says the following. Suppose I do something. If there was a cause that made me do it, then that is a deterministic action, right? It is forced upon me, it is not the result of my choice. If there was no cause, then it is random, accidental. Either way, it is not the result of free choice. Either there is a cause or there is no cause—what else could there be? There’s no third possibility, right? So if there is a cause, it is deterministic, and if there is no cause, it is what is called indeterministic—that is, random, accidental. But when we talk about a person’s free choice, we are not talking about a random action. A person who chooses to do something exercises judgment and decides that this is what seems right to him, and therefore he acts accordingly. It is not a lottery or a shot in the dark. Therefore, he says, since there are only two possibilities—either there is a cause or there isn’t—and neither of them describes a mechanism of free choice, therefore there is no free will. QED.

That argument is very similar to what I described before, and the solution is also very similar. What happens here is that under the concept of indeterminism there are actually two different mechanisms hidden, not one. That is what he misses. Why? Actions can occur as the result of a cause—those are actions performed deterministically. There are actions with no cause—fine. But the fact that they have no cause still doesn’t mean there isn’t another subdivision. For example, actions that have a purpose. They have no cause, but they are done for the sake of a purpose. The goal lies in the future; it is not the past that caused me to do this, but some aspiration or desire to realize some value or other, and therefore my face is turned toward the future. That is an action one may call purposive. And then there is an action that has neither cause nor purpose. In other words, there are actions without a cause but with a purpose, and actions without a cause and without a purpose. Both kinds are actions without a cause. So under the heading of indeterminism there are in fact two different mechanisms. When there is purpose, that is called free will. When there is no purpose, that is the ordinary indeterminism he is talking about—the blind, random action. Okay? So suddenly you see how a third possibility is born, even though at first glance it seemed completely dichotomous: yes or no, what else could there be?

What lies behind these examples? One could bring many more such examples. I think what lies behind them is one mechanism. When we talk about opposites, usually two opposites belong to the same type. Right? If someone asks me: what is the opposite of a bird? Is a chair the opposite of a bird? No, right? Maybe one might say a fish is somewhat closer to being the opposite of a bird—not exactly either—but why? What is the difference between a fish and a chair? The fish and the bird belong to the same category—they are living creatures. It is only the difference in species between them that can be considered opposition or contrast. But a bird and a chair do not belong to the same type at all. Opposition applies between two things that belong to the same type. If they are not of the same type, there is no opposition between them.

Now notice what this means. When a dichotomy between two opposite possibilities is presented to us, clearly the two possibilities belong to some common field, because otherwise they would not be opposites. But then I can always ask myself: wait a second, do I even agree to play in that field? Maybe I’m not in that field at all. If I am not in that field, suddenly other possibilities open up before me. So when we see a dichotomous picture, it is always black or white inside that framework. But I can refuse to play the game; I can go outside that framework and be neither black nor white. Therefore I think this is what lies behind the examples I brought, and behind many others.

When, for example, you talk about Haredi or Religious Zionist, what you are really saying is that both relate to the question of the religious value of Zionism. One says it has positive value, and one says it has negative value. Okay? But if I say: I do not look at Zionism in terms of religious value at all—not positive and not negative—I’m not in the game. Then we have a third possibility. So very often, when we are presented with two dichotomous possibilities, some assumption or framework is being made without putting it on the table, and the discussion is taking place within that framework. Then they tell you: either you are here or you are there. And I can always say: no, no, I’m not even in that framework—I’m over here. Therefore, almost always when a dichotomy is presented to us, we should notice that there are additional possibilities.

Another example perhaps is evolution, something I have also dealt with—evolution and faith. It is common to think there is a polar dispute between what are called creationists and believers in evolution, or neo-Darwinians, or whatever you want to call them. Again the game is dichotomous. If you accept faith, you have to reject evolution; if you accept evolution, you have to reject faith. One of the two: either evolution created life, or the Holy One, blessed be He, created life. And once again this is a dichotomous picture which for some reason is accepted by both sides of the argument. Both sides agree that this is a zero-sum game. The only dispute is whether to be here or there. But both sides agree that this is the framework of the discussion, that you have to decide between these two possibilities. But here too I find myself neither here nor there. I think God created the world, and I also think evolution is correct. Then of course one can suddenly think of other possibilities, because that dichotomy assumes all sorts of things that are not necessary at all. For example, that He created the world through evolutionary processes, created life through evolutionary processes. That too is a possibility.

So I’m not going into the details of the examples; through them I’m only trying to show you ways of dealing with disputes—like I said before, disputes that do aim at truth or falsehood, not disputes in the democratic sense. And still, you don’t always have to decide whether you’re here or there. Sometimes you need to check whether there is also a third possibility, or a fourth, or a fifth, or whatever it may be. So that is one mechanism. The first mechanism for breaking a dichotomy in a dispute is basically to step outside the box, to refuse to play the game.

The second mechanism I can illustrate through what is called in logic the heap paradox. What is the heap paradox? Suppose we know that one pebble is not a heap, right? Now if I have some number of pebbles that is not a heap, adding one more pebble won’t change the status of the collection, won’t turn it into a heap, okay? But a million pebbles is definitely a heap. Now you understand that those three claims don’t fit together. Right? One pebble is not a heap; adding one pebble does not change the status of the collection; but a million pebbles are a heap. That cannot be. How can it be? How? If you add until— But if, say, you add one, then you get to two. Is two a heap? No. Not one-two. No, wait, but I’m adding them one by one. Let’s think about it one at a time. I added one pebble, now I’m at two. Is two a heap? No. So if two is not a heap, adding one more makes three, that’s also not a heap, because adding one pebble doesn’t change anything. So four isn’t, and five isn’t, and a million isn’t either. It’s mathematics—you can’t escape it. Those three claims do not fit together. That is called the heap paradox.

Incidentally, this paradox has many applications or appearances. For example, my children ask me: when is it already afternoon, so that they’re allowed to go play outside and make noise? For Americans, 12:01 is already afternoon. But here in the Middle East it works less precisely, so you ask yourself: when is it afternoon? Twelve o’clock is not afternoon, right? One second that passes doesn’t really change the situation. But four or five o’clock is already afternoon. Again, it doesn’t fit. Those three claims don’t fit together. At what second do we move from noon to afternoon?

Now, yes, municipal bylaws solve this by stipulation and say four o’clock—not because that is what afternoon is, since the concept of afternoon is problematic, but simply they say four. Between two and four it is forbidden. But if they said “in the afternoon,” that would be a vague concept, like the concept of a heap—it is a vague concept. Now you need to understand that every everyday concept, every everyday concept, is vulnerable to this kind of attack. There is no concept that isn’t. Think of—do you know Escher’s drawings, where a flock of birds becomes a school of fish, and vice versa? Ask yourselves: when does it become from a flock of birds into a school of fish? There is no way to determine it. But here it’s birds and there it’s fish. So when you apply it in this way, you see that the concept fish is also a vague concept, or bird; that too is a vague concept, and every concept is like that. Incidentally, on a computer there is no problem producing such morphings between any two images you want, and that raises the same question: when is it defined as being a chair and when a bird? I spoke before about a chair and a bird.

So what is the solution? There is some paradox here, three claims each of which sounds reasonable, but together they do not fit. Let’s return to the heap, yes. People say—yes, who is bald? That’s also a well-known application. With one hair on your head you are bald. If you are bald and they add one more hair to your head, you are still bald—it won’t help you at all, right? And if you have, I don’t know, a hundred thousand hairs on your head, then you’re not bald. Again the same question. It’s exactly the same question.

Now understand: it may sound amusing, but this is not a simple philosophical problem. Because it means that all the concepts in our everyday language are not defined. All of them are vulnerable to paradox. You know that when there is a paradox in the system, you cannot infer any conclusion. That is a basic theorem in logic. A parameter is missing. Okay, but that’s symptomatic. No, if you tell me: you can define it—thirteen stones and up is a heap—there’s no problem, you’ve solved the problem. But you solved it artificially, because it doesn’t describe how we actually use the concept heap. We don’t use the concept heap that way. And when I ask what the meaning of the concept heap is in our language, it doesn’t help me if you say, fine, let’s define from thirteen and up as a heap. That’s like defining four in the afternoon as “afternoon.” Technical definitions can be given. But when I am trying to understand everyday language, the language I actually use, those definitions do not really describe the meanings of the concepts. Then I say: wait, then do these concepts I use have meaning or not? Am I just moving my lips for nothing? If that bothers me in everyday life? It bothers me when I say things that have no meaning; I don’t know, everyone has his own taste. But it bothers me. So anyone who shares that concern can keep listening.

Look, it seems to me that in the heap problem, everyone understands that the trap lies in the second assumption, right? One pebble is not a heap—that is probably true. A million are a heap—that also seems true. “Adding one pebble doesn’t change anything”—that is the catch. Now it’s easy to point out that here is the catch. But what is the catch? What is the alternative? What other formulation, instead of that one, would hold water and solve the problem?

At some point quantity becomes quality. That doesn’t help, because I’m asking precisely about that statement: at what point? We all agree that’s true, but the paradox asks why it is true. It’s like solving the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise by saying: but obviously Achilles catches the tortoise. I have often heard people say that. But that isn’t a solution to the paradox, it is the definition of the paradox. When I present you with an argument and you can’t point to where it is wrong, even though the conclusion is obviously false, that is what is called a paradox. The fact that the conclusion is false is not the solution, it is the question. You have to point out what in the argument is wrong in order to synchronize the argument with the conclusion—to show why the conclusion is indeed false. There the sum is a sum. Yes, the answer there is clear. I’m only saying that that answer is not a solution.

So what is the solution? Fine, yes, that’s an infinite series, obviously. Anyway, what happens with the heap paradox? I think the solution is this: one has to change the second assumption and say, instead of “adding one pebble does not change the status,” say: adding one pebble changes the status a little. Changes it a little. What does that mean? That as I add more stones, the degree of heap-ness increases. The concept heap is not a binary concept, either heap or not heap. It’s just that in our usage, when something has a very high degree of heap-ness, we call it a heap. When its degree of heap-ness is very low, we say it is not a heap. But the truth is that this is what is called fuzzy logic, yes? There is here a kind of logic with a continuous range of values, not only yes or no, or true or false, but a continuum of values between zero and one.

Therefore it seems to me that what the heap paradox reflects is that our thinking often suffers from dichotomy. The dichotomy is the fallacy. We assume there are only two possibilities, and once again, you see the familiar move: proving by negation that there cannot be a heap, therefore heaps do not exist. But you are assuming there are only two possibilities, either there is a heap or there isn’t. And there is a third possibility: that there are different levels of heap-ness. Different degrees of baldness, or different levels of afternoonness—different depths of afternoon—and so on.

Think, for example, of an argument in logic, what is called a dilemma argument. There is no point in giving exams. Why? Because the lazy won’t study even with an exam, and the diligent study even without an exam. So what is the point of exams? What is wrong with that argument? Again, the fact that it is wrong—that’s the paradox; I’m asking why it is wrong. Because there is a range of levels of diligence. The world is not divided into pathologically lazy people and pathologically diligent people. For those two extremes it really makes no difference. But for all kinds of people in the middle of the diligence spectrum, it may very well be that they won’t study without an exam, and with an exam they will. Again, it is the same dichotomous problem.

Very often when we get trapped in a dichotomy and can’t see how to get out of it, we need to check—that is the second technique. Earlier I spoke about sometimes stepping outside the box and discovering a third possibility. Here I’m saying that often the dichotomy itself is not a true dichotomy, because the concepts are vague concepts and not binary black-and-white concepts, yes or no. The concept itself is a vague concept.

Now I have only a short time, so I’ll do the third mechanism briefly. The third mechanism concerns the contradiction between the two sides of the dichotomy. What do I mean? You know, scientific mythology tells of Newton sitting under a tree when an apple fell on him. He asked himself: why do apples fall on innocent Christians? And then he answered that apparently there is a force of gravitation. Now in this context we can ask ourselves: why didn’t Newton answer himself, the apple fell on my head because yesterday I didn’t turn the other cheek? I committed some sin and God is taking revenge on me. Okay? He was a devout Christian. What bothered him about that answer? Why did he look for another answer? Apparently the theological answer was true in his eyes. But at the same time he thought there should also be an answer on the scientific level. How does this happen physically? Not only why does it happen in the theological sense. Incidentally this is connected to the free-will issue of purpose versus cause.

So we see that there are situations where two opposing positions are not really opposed at all; they simply belong to different planes of discussion. There is a physical plane of discussion, where the answer is the force of gravity. And there is a theological plane of discussion, where the answer is: you got this on the head because you sinned. And therefore you got it on the head. There is no contradiction between those two planes, and you do not need to choose whether this is true or that is true. I say: on the scientific plane this is true, and on the theological plane that is true. “You’re right and you’re right too,” as the judge said.

There is no shortage of examples of this. I’ll conclude maybe with one more. A secular person decides to become religious. Very often his secular friends wonder what crisis he went through. What happened to him? Broke up with his girlfriend? Was abused at home? I don’t know what. Lost someone dear? What crisis did he go through? And what do the new religious friends he has acquired say? Well, he discovered the light, he understood that this is the truth. In other words, the secular people are psychological and the religious people are philosophical, right? The secular explain it on the psychological plane, and the religious explain it on the philosophical plane.

What happens when someone leaves religion? Then the religious say: he wanted to permit sexual prohibitions for himself, right? He was looking for an easy life. Okay? They’re psychological. And the secular say: ah, finally he understood the nonsense he was living in, he discovered the truth. So they are philosophical. And what was on television today? Someone in a computer equipment store tried to sell something, the religious people pounced on him, they lynched him, okay—he left religion. What? Someone in a computer equipment store tried to sell something, the religious people pounced on him, they lynched him, okay—he left religion. So you have a good psychological explanation for why he left religion. You can join the camp of the psychologists.

Anyway—who is right? Who is right? Is the psychologist’s explanation correct? It is correct. But beyond that, who is right on the philosophical level? Both are right. Every step each one of us takes can be looked at from a psychological perspective, asking what the psychological explanations are, and it can also be looked at from a philosophical perspective, asking what the philosophical explanation is. And no person—none of us—is free from environmental and psychological influences of one kind or another. On the other hand, I think that most of us, more or less, also usually find justifications for why we do things. So there are the psychological causes and the philosophical justifications, and there is no need to ask whether this is right or that is right, because these are two different planes of discussion.

You wanted to say something? Planes of discussion? Yes. Exactly. So that only tells us that we are not honest. Both are true; the only issue is that the choice of which of the two truths to focus on is a dishonest choice. In other words, the only thing one can say about all of us is that all of us are not honest. But aside from that, all of us are right and everything is fine.

Okay, we’ll stop here. Thank you very much to Dr. Michael Abraham. Let me remind you—thank you very much from the Beit Midrash for Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan, and also a doctor of theoretical physics, so he enabled us to become educated and wiser. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to you, thank you very much. Listen, I once heard Dr. Micah Goodman when I was at the Israel Museum.