The Receiver Chapter – Lesson 19

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] for the fact that he was negligent in guarding it. After all, my obligation to pay is an obligation for negligence in guarding. If I was negligent in guarding, I have to pay. What you're really claiming is that even if I view this as an obligation based on negligence in guarding, it's an obligation to compensate you if something happened to you because of the liability of guarding. Or, if I formulate it differently, then I'd say this: if, say, I was negligent in guarding, I left the door open and the animal didn't go out, it's still here, then true, I really am obligated to pay; take the animal, that's its payment. Meaning, this is just a more extreme formulation. You can also formulate what Tzvi said earlier, that basically when I was negligent in guarding and acted against the contract, that obligates me to compensate you—not that this in itself obligates me to make payment. If nothing happened to you, I don't need to compensate you. Another possibility is to say that yes, the very breach of the contract, the very conduct not in accordance with the rules of the contract, obligates me to pay, except that when the animal is here I can take the animal and pay with it. When the animal isn't here, then not. Where would the difference be? What would happen, for example, if I left the door open and the animal had a heart attack? That's it—that's the Talmud there in Bava Metzia. The Talmud had a heart attack—the Talmud, the cow, or the ox had a heart attack. So notice: in that situation I was negligent in guarding, right? I left the door open. That in itself obligates me to pay, except that if the ox is still here between us, I simply take it and pay with it. But it isn't here between us—it had a heart attack. In that case, according to this formulation, I'd have to pay. Right? If I left the door open, then in principle I'm liable, it's just that if the animal is here I can use the animal itself to pay. But it's not here. True, what happened to it has no connection at all to what I did, but it doesn't need to have a connection. I'm paying for the very fact that I was negligent. It's completely irrelevant whether the animal is here or not. True, if the animal is here I can pay with it itself, but not because when the animal is here I'm exempt. I'm not exempt; I'm liable in any case. That is of course an extreme conception, because it's a conception that says my obligation as a guardian to pay is for the very fact that I was negligent, with no connection at all to what happened to the animal, even if nothing happened to it. But if nothing happened to it, I pay with the animal itself. I simply return it to its owner and that's my payment. According to this conception, it becomes his. It's like he laid hands on it. Meaning, the moment he opened the opening, or didn't lock the opening properly, at that moment he was effectively negligent with the animal, the animal becomes his, and he became obligated to pay. Of course, you can also pay with something of monetary value, so he can take the animal as something of value and return it. But that's the conception. We'll see later that this is Abaye's view according to the Rif, according to how Rabbi Akiva Eiger explains it. But that's one possibility for understanding the matter. The more accepted possibility really isn't like that, and the more accepted possibility says there has to be some sort of connection between the negligence and the unavoidable mishap. Meaning, for example, in the case of the shepherds' hut, what we just read. What connection is there there between the negligence and the unavoidable mishap? What's the difference between that and the case of the heart attack? The heart attack would have happened even if I hadn't been negligent. Even if the door had been properly locked, the animal would have had a heart attack and died. There's no connection at all between what I did and what happened to the animal. In the shepherds' hut, true, what I did—putting it in the hut—is not the active or positive reason for what happened in the end, because what happened in the end was that thieves came, and against that it was well guarded. On the other hand, as I said earlier, there is a negative connection. If I hadn't been negligent and put it in the hut, then it wouldn't have been stolen. In that sense, it's not the same thing as the animal that had a heart attack. Here there is a connection between the negligence and the unavoidable mishap. When we talk about a connection between negligence and the unavoidable mishap, we always mean a negative connection. A positive connection between the negligence and the unavoidable mishap is just plain negligence; that's not a case of "it began in negligence and ended in an unavoidable mishap." That's basically the map, and now I'm sketching the whole map. In the full map, we really have four situations. One situation is a case where it began in negligence and ended in negligence—that is, the unavoidable mishap is positively connected to the negligence. I left the door open and the animal went out through the door. That's straightforward negligence; everyone agrees you're liable. The opposite extreme case: I locked the door, and the animal went crazy, broke down the door, and got out. That's a complete unavoidable mishap. There's no connection between the negligence and the unavoidable mishap, neither negative nor positive—because there was no negligence here at all. Therefore it's a complete unavoidable mishap and clearly I'm exempt. There are two intermediate cases, not one as I said earlier—that's what's new now. There are two intermediate cases. In the first intermediate case, I was negligent at the beginning. The shepherds' hut—that's the first intermediate case. I was negligent at the beginning. What happened at the end was an unavoidable mishap in the sense that it's connected to my negligence only negatively, not positively. You can't say that because I was negligent, this happened; you can say that if I hadn't been negligent, it wouldn't have happened. Like in the shepherds' hut. The fact that I put it in the hut isn't the reason that it was stolen, not the legal reason that it was stolen, because all in all, putting it in the hut protects it well. But there is a negative connection: if I hadn't put it in the hut, then of course it wouldn't have been stolen. That's one intermediate case, and regarding it the Amoraim disagreed—Rav Yosef and the "some say" there in Bava Metzia 42, in the case of the shepherds' hut—whether one is liable or exempt. The second intermediate case: I was negligent, and an unavoidable mishap happened at the end—a heart attack. What's the difference between that and the previous intermediate case? Here there isn't even a negative connection between the negligence and the unavoidable mishap. I left the door open, the animal stayed inside, had a heart attack. If the door had been properly locked, it still would have had a heart attack. Maybe it had a heart attack because it saw how negligent I was and that I wasn't following the rules of guarding, but in the simple sense, what happened to it is unrelated to what I did, not even negatively, not just positively. That's the second intermediate case. And in this case, as I said, I'm jumping ahead a bit, but only so that we have the picture in front of us—in this case, according to most views, I'm exempt, because there's no connection between the negligence and the unavoidable mishap. That counts as an unavoidable mishap. There is one view—the Rif in Abaye's opinion—that says I'm liable even though there's no connection between the negligence and the unavoidable mishap. In the second intermediate case, it's a dispute of the Amoraim in Bava Metzia 42, and in practice one is liable, because if it began in negligence and ended in an unavoidable mishap, one is liable. That's basically the full map, you could say.

[Speaker A] Fine—if I already said this here, then let me say it; I'll spell it out a bit more. There's a philosophical comment here, okay? Just because I think it sharpens the situations nicely. When we talk about a causal connection between event A and event B, that causal connection has three components.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A philosophical definition of a causal relation between events: three components have to exist. The first component is that event A, the cause, precedes event B in time. That's the temporal component. Okay? The cause happens before the effect. Of course, temporal priority alone isn't enough to define A as the cause of B. The sun rises and then I go to work. Does that mean the sunrise is the reason I went to work? No. It happens earlier, but it's not a cause. Why? What's missing? So the second component is the logical component. The logical component basically says that I can say, "if A, then B," that there is some logical connection between A and

[Speaker A] B.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Makes sense: I kicked the ball and the ball flew forward. So here I see that there is some connection; it's not just temporal priority, there's some linkage between the kick and the ball's flight. But here we need a somewhat subtler distinction. The philosopher David Hume, an Irish philosopher, I think, argued that what exists in a causal relation is only the logical component and the temporal component—there's nothing beyond that.

[Speaker C] Not necessarily. Can't you hear me? That's not necessarily so.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker C] You can imagine a case where there is both a temporal component and a logical component, and still that's not the cause. For example? Winter passed and a person cleaned the yard. He cleaned the yard because guests were coming, not because after winter there was a lot of mess.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that's parallel to what I said earlier with the sunrise. That's exactly what I'm saying—even there there isn't.

[Speaker C] No, it is the cause, because people do clean their yards after winter. It could be the cause; it does make logical sense. People clean their yards after winter. We have a yard at home—we clean it after winter. So that's temporal priority. What? That's the temporal priority. No, no, but every year we clean after winter, for the sake of argument.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it's regular—not only did it precede it in time, in this case winter came before the cleaning of the yard, but always after winter I clean the yard. Meaning that there is some fixed logical connection between these two events.

[Speaker C] But that's not the reason I cleaned the yard on that day, because I could have cleaned it a week later. I cleaned the yard that day because guests are coming on the Sabbath.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, it's a little subtle—it's an even subtler distinction that maybe I want to sharpen. The question is how much to get into this—one second. What happens simply is that the full cause of cleaning the yard is winter plus expecting guests. Together they constitute it. So it is true that winter is half the cause. It's a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. Okay, but let's talk about a situation where the condition is sufficient.

[Speaker C] But I wanted to refute the claim that it's sufficient.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I'm saying: even suppose it's a sufficient condition. Okay? I always clean the yard in winter—always after winter, sorry—even regardless of whether guests are coming or not. I always clean the yard after winter. I claim that even then it still isn't a cause in the full sense. And the point is that there has to be—when I speak of event A being the cause of event B, what I'm really saying is that there has to be some kind of connection. A connection of production between event A and event B. Let me give you an example. When there is a fixed temporal correlation between two things—two clocks, you know what, no, let's talk about one clock and not two clocks. Always five minutes after it shows three o'clock, the clock shows three-oh-five. Is its showing three o'clock the cause of the fact that five minutes later it shows three-oh-five? No. Even though that comes earlier in time and it always happens. Since showing three o'clock is not the event that produced the three-oh-five; it just always comes before it. What's missing here? What's missing is a connection—I call it a physical connection—production. There has to be some causal, productive connection between event A and event B. Let me maybe give you another example. There was an American Jewish logician named Raymond Smullyan. He died just a few years ago at a very advanced age—he was around a hundred. And he did logical stand-up comedy. He once wrote a book called The Tao Is Silent. He defined himself as a Taoist. And there he tried to show and explain what this doctrine called Taoism really is. And there he says: what happens—he tried to defend astrology. Astrology basically says that if the stars are in a certain state, that means something will happen here on earth. Now a common objection to astrology is based on the speed of influence. Meaning, if the stars' present state is some particular way, any influence from the stars to earth takes time—at most it can travel at the speed of light to earth. It can't be that this influence is immediate. And therefore, it can't be that a present state of the stars affects a present event on earth. That objection is actually an incorrect objection, I'll say in parentheses, because clearly the state I see in the stars now is a state that already existed some time ago, of course, and I see it now because the rays of light from that state have only now reached me. Therefore that objection isn't difficult. But let's leave that aside for the moment; I just want to illustrate. So he says that's the objection, and he proposes a solution. What's the solution? The solution is that actually the stars aren't the cause of what happens here on earth; rather, there is only a correlation between what happens in the stars—there's some correspondence between what happens in the stars and what happens on earth—and it's a correspondence that always works. So from whatever you see happening in the stars, you can know that something corresponding will happen on earth. Not because the stars produce what happens on earth, but because there's a correspondence. Now if the point is really the correspondence and not the influence, then you don't need the speed of light to transfer the influence from the stars to here, because there is no influence; it's not the result of influence. But by looking at the stars, I can know what will happen on earth—not because the stars do it, but because the stars are an indication of it. So what is he really claiming here? He's claiming that the solution he offers to that supposed objection is that the stars aren't the cause of what happens on earth, but rather there is only a correlation between what happens in the stars and what happens on earth. Or in my earlier words: there is the temporal connection—what happens in the stars happens at the same time or a little before what happens on earth—and there is the logical connection. Logical connection means you can say: if this happened in the stars, then that will happen on earth. That conditional statement, that logical implication, is a true statement. Always, if this is what happens in the stars, that's what will happen on earth. What is missing for me to see this as a causal relation? What is missing is the connection of production—that the stars produce what happens here on earth, not just that there is a correspondence between these two things. Leibniz once brought a parable about two clocks—that's what I started saying earlier, two clocks. There are two clocks that always show you the same time; in other words, they're synchronized. You have several possible ways to understand the correspondence between them. One possibility is that clock A causes what happens in clock B. A second possibility is that clock B causes what happens in clock A. A third possibility is that there is some third thing that synchronized them to one another—which in the case of clocks is probably the correct possibility. There was a clockmaker who synchronized the two clocks properly, so it comes out that they always show the same time. This means that when we see a correspondence between two events or two occurrences—even a fixed correspondence that always exists—it is not automatically correct to infer from this that the correspondence has a causal basis. Okay? It's not true—not necessarily true—that there is a causal basis here. It could be merely correlation, and there is a difference between correlation and causation. As our statistical cousins always say—they have a lot of jokes about this—there is a difference between correlation and causation. The fact that there is a correlation between two variables does not mean that one of them is the cause and the other the effect. It could be that there is—even if the correlation is significant—there could be a third factor creating that correlation between those two events.

[Speaker F] Can you hear me? Yes. Is that enough? Okay, I'll try to get closer. As far as I know, Hume's claim was that therefore we don't need to posit that there is such a thing as causality. It's just our invention; it's not based on anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, that really is Hume's claim. If I go back to Hume: up to this point I described how we understand the concept of causality in the simple way. Hume's claim was that regarding the third component—after all, I spoke about three components. The temporal component: event A, the cause, occurs before event B, or before and adjacent if you like. The logical component or the correlation: if A occurs, then B occurs. And the physical component: that there is a productive link, that A produces B, that it creates B. Hume argued that this conception, which is indeed all of our intuitive conception, is incorrect. Why? Because he was an empiricist, and he thought that what we can say about the world is only things we learned from observation, and we have no ability to infer from observation the existence of the physical component. When I see someone kick a ball and the ball flies, and I see that this always happens—someone kicks a ball and the ball flies—I can infer from that that there is the temporal relation. I can infer from it that there is also the logical relation, that if one kicks the ball then it flies. But how do you see that there is a relation of production? That kicking the ball causes the ball to fly? What you see is that there was a kick and afterwards the ball flew.

[Speaker F] More than that—it's not even clear what the relation of production

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] he adds here. Who said there is one? Your reasoning. That's what he says—it's not empirical, it doesn't come out of observation, but rather it's a piece of reasoning that says things don't happen by themselves. But that's not the result of observation; it's just a line of reasoning. And as an empiricist he doesn't accept such reasoning. He claims you have to rely only on observation. Observation doesn't give you the productive link.

[Speaker F] So it's not only that; it's also not clear what you mean by a productive link if you can't give it any content in terms of results.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now you've already advanced to logical positivism. I completely disagree with that.

[Speaker F] You don't have to get all the way to logical positivism. Just explain what you mean.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That something causes, beyond the point that it happened before.

[Speaker F] You're using the word "causes" again, so that gives me nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] "Just explain"—that's the same thing as logical positivism. Because what does "just explain" mean? You're expecting me to give you an empirical implication, but there is no empirical implication. How do I know whether something causes or doesn't cause?

[Speaker F] I'm asking that in order to understand what "causes" means.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because Hume argues that when you

[Speaker F] say "causes," you mean priority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand, but again I'll answer: it may be that I won't be able to explain to you what it is, even though I think I don't need to—you understand it perfectly well. But it may be that I won't be able to explain it to you, and that doesn't mean it doesn't exist; it only means there's a limitation in the explanation. I'll give you an example of what I said earlier. For example, the fact that you need the speed of light in order to talk about the relation between cause and effect—that's an implication of the productive link. Because production can't occur faster than the speed of light, but correlation can. There can be a correlation between two simultaneous things—they happen exactly together. Since when there is something physical, a physical event doesn't move faster than light. That's a rule in physics. So that's, for example, a physical implication of the issue. Let me perhaps give you another example so you can see the—this is perhaps a bit more related to David's earlier remark, but just as an anecdote, since we're already dealing with this. Yuval Steinitz—yes, the honorable minister—wrote a book called Tree of Knowledge. And he's a lecturer in philosophy by training, from his former profession. And there, in three articles he published in philosophical journals, the middle article deals with causality, and there he discusses the question whether a cause has to be a sufficient condition for the effect, or a necessary and sufficient condition for the effect. That's a dispute among philosophers. True, no philosopher thinks it's enough for the cause to be only a necessary condition. That's not a cause; clearly that's not a cause. There are two schools about what is a cause: either it's a sufficient condition, even if not necessary, or it has to be a necessary and sufficient condition in order to be called a cause. But a necessary condition—merely necessary, not sufficient—is certainly not a cause, okay? Now he brings a proof in favor of the view that says a sufficient condition is also a cause. It doesn't have to be necessary. It's enough that it be sufficient; it doesn't have to also be necessary. What's his proof? He calls it the paradox of conditioning. He says: let's assume we have some causal chain—A causes B, B causes C, C causes D, and so on. According to the interpretation that this is a necessary and sufficient condition, that a cause is always a necessary and sufficient condition, that means that A is necessary and sufficient for B, B is necessary and sufficient for C, C is necessary and sufficient for D, and so on. Now, a necessary and sufficient condition, as the logicians taught us, has two properties. One property is that it is reversible and symmetric, and the second property is that it is unique. A necessary and sufficient condition is unique. There can't be two conditions that are necessary and sufficient. Because if there are two—if there are two such that each of them on its own is necessary and sufficient—then one of them is sufficient, but it isn't necessary, because the other one can also produce the result without the first having happened. That means the first is not necessary, okay? So there can't be two conditions that are necessary and sufficient. That's the uniqueness property of a necessary and sufficient condition. There is also the symmetry property of a necessary condition. What?

[Speaker C] Can I ask about that? I can't be heard? Can I ask about that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, why not.

[Speaker C] Because it doesn't sound right to me. Where is the mistake in my understanding here? Because that doesn't sound correct. After all, there are many necessary and sufficient conditions that are simply—the whole idea of equivalence. You can have many equivalent conditions, and they are necessary and sufficient conditions, and they're not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A necessary and sufficient condition and equivalence are not exactly the same thing. In a second I'll come back to that point. Steinitz's claim is basically this: when I say that A is necessary and sufficient for B, then first, there cannot be a C that is also necessary and sufficient for B. There is only one necessary and sufficient condition. Second, it is symmetric. If A is necessary and sufficient for B, then B is necessary and sufficient for A. Which is obvious, because as you know, if A is necessary for B, then B is sufficient for A, and if A is sufficient for B, then B is necessary for A. Sufficiency and necessity are inverted; they reverse direction. If you think about it, it's fairly easy to see, but never mind—that's a simple logical fact. Now if you combine these two properties, you'll see that a causal chain cannot exist. Think about a causal chain: A causes B causes C, and every such causing is necessary and sufficient. What does that mean? It means, after all, that if A is necessary and sufficient for B, and B is necessary and sufficient for C, then because of symmetry C is also necessary and sufficient for B. If B is necessary and sufficient for C, then C is also necessary and sufficient for B. But then, because of the uniqueness property, it follows that both A and C are necessary and sufficient for B, but that contradicts the uniqueness property. Because a necessary and sufficient condition has to be unique. There can't be two necessary and sufficient conditions. And therefore, says Steinitz, this is a refutation of that thesis that says a cause has to be a necessary and sufficient condition—meaning that a sufficient condition is not a cause. He says: if every cause were a necessary and sufficient condition, there would be no causal chains. Causality would stop after one step. A would be the cause of B, period. B couldn't be the cause of C after it. That's his claim. Where is his mistake?

[Speaker F] It's all one cause.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I can't hear.

[Speaker F] That in fact the whole chain—if there is a causal chain A, B, C, D—then A, B, and C together are a necessary and sufficient cause of D.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, and I'd say even more than that: A, C, and D are a necessary and sufficient condition for B. But we're ignoring the temporal dimension at the moment, okay? And therefore, I think this is what you meant earlier, David. This leads me from a necessary and sufficient condition to equivalence. What you're really telling me is that A—always after A comes B, after B comes C, after C comes D. After all, you remember there's also the dimension of time in causality. The time dimension isn't reversible. So if A is the cause of B, then B can't be the cause of A. After all, B appears after A. So the temporal condition isn't met. This means that beyond logical equivalence, the temporal condition also has to be met. But beyond that, logical equivalence by itself also isn't enough, because there also has to be physical production. And physical production, of course, is expressed in time. A can cause B if it comes before it. B can't cause A, right? Because B appears after A. It can't cause A. Therefore what Steinitz really—what confused Steinitz, it seems to me, is that he reduced causality to logic alone, like David Hume. He didn't notice that there is also time and physics. There are two more components. Now when you look at it this way, you see that even in logic he was mistaken. What confused him was that he looked only at the logic. But once you understand time and physics, you see that even in logic itself he was mistaken. Because in logic itself, when I say that A is necessary and sufficient for B, and B is necessary and sufficient for C, that really means that the necessary and sufficient condition for B is A before it and C after it. That's the necessary and sufficient condition for B.

[Speaker F] I don't think, according to what you're explaining very well, that he was mistaken at all. Really there cannot be causal chains. That's the conclusion according to what…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true! Of course there can be. Why? There can be an infinite causal chain.

[Speaker F] So what? In that chain there is only one condition and one result. The condition is everything you said—causality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but when you look at the world, you'll see an infinite chain of events.

[Speaker F] In the strict sense, none of them is a cause; all of them together are the cause of one of them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That's Steinitz's claim. Never mind! But no! Then there is no difficulty.

[Speaker F] The difficulty is correct, but his logic was correct.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that's exactly the mistake. There are no chains? There are chains, only the chains are not logical but causal. The pairing of logic with causality—that's the mistake.

[Speaker F] Again, you're arguing with him about the definition of cause, and for him it's the producing factor, okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His logic was what? He's mistaken. I'm not arguing with him—he's mistaken. Because if according to what he posits, then there is no difficulty. The moment he sees this as a difficulty, he identifies the logical relation with the causal relation, and that's the mistake. It's not just a different definition, because if it were just a different definition, then he could define it however he wants, but there wouldn't be a difficulty here.

[Speaker F] I think there is a difficulty, but fine, you're arguing over the premise. He really assumes that the causal producing factor doesn't exist, and then his logic is not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, what's the difficulty? He says—his difficulty was: how can there be an infinite chain of causal events? Right? What does it mean? Say I strike a match, the friction of the match creates fire, the fire catches in wood and ignites it, that ignition sets the house on fire, and suppose for the sake of discussion that each such thing is necessary and sufficient, okay? Meaning there couldn't be something else that did it. He claims this can't be, and I say it can be even according to his definition.

[Speaker F] According to his definition, in which cause has no component of production?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, regardless of which definition. Under any definition whatever, there is no refutation at all of the existence of such a thing, even according to the thesis that a cause is a necessary and sufficient condition.

[Speaker F] On condition that there are no chains.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there are chains.

[Speaker F] So how do you explain that without production, without looking at the concept of production?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously there are chains, and the necessary and sufficient cause of B is A before it, C, D, E after it. But the chain of events is an infinite chain over infinite time.

[Speaker F] That's not a chain; that's one event causing…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that's just words.

[Speaker F] The event that causes D is A, B, and C together.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again we're back to the same thing—that's just words. You can define it that way; I have no problem with that. It's a definition. But what's the difficulty?

[Speaker F] Everything is defined that way; otherwise it's not

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] None of them is

[Speaker F] a cause. But what's the difficulty? There's no difficulty at all, but he

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] raises a difficulty about the existence of a chain. He brings it as a paradox that refutes that thesis.

[Speaker F] Because if you assume there is such a thing as causal chains…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What exactly are the causal chains he assumes? Describe them to me.

[Speaker F] A causal chain means a cause that is completely a cause in its own right—A causing B…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that's nonsense—but that's nonsense. No one ever said that. After all, he's attacking existing views. Those existing views didn't say that. It's just an artificial definition; you're attacking a straw man.

[Speaker F] Maybe, but the logic isn't flawed, in my opinion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The logic is completely flawed; it's simply a mistake. Anyway, in short, for our purposes, what's important is not the philosophical discussion but the illustration of what components have to be in a connection in order for it to count as a causal connection between A and B. Now let's return for a moment to the picture I described earlier. I now want to make the following claim. The event in which I left the door open and as a result the animal went out, or I put the money in the forest and a fire happened—not theft—this is a situation in which the negligence is the cause of the result. What? So yes, it's a cause. Again, let me sharpen it. You're right at the logical level. I'm now moving to the legal plane, so this involves a certain translation. And what I want to claim is the following: on the legal plane, when there is an event against which I was supposed to protect, I didn't protect, and it occurred, my failure to protect is seen as a cause that produced the result. Legally, not physically. Physically that's not a cause, because it could have not happened. Okay? It's not a sufficient condition for that to happen. It's perhaps a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Say leaving the door open is a necessary condition; without that the animal doesn't get out. But if I left the door open, that's not sufficient—it may be that the animal ultimately decides not to go out. But legally, legal responsibility sees me as the one responsible. If I identify the concept of responsibility with the concept of cause, then what I'm really saying is this: on the legal plane, my negligence was the cause of what happened in the end. Okay? It's viewed as though this were a necessary consequence of what I did, or a natural consequence of what I did. Here the three conditions are met: my act was done before the result—that's the time parameter. The logical condition is met: if I do this, then that result occurs. And of course the production—ascribe responsibility to me—meaning that leaving the door open caused what happened, or putting the money in the forest caused the money to burn. All right? The assumption basically is that a fire in the forest will obviously happen, and if I put the money in the forest, that means I myself caused the burning of the money. So all three causal components exist there. What happens if the physical component is missing—physical of course in quotation marks, meaning the legal one—and only the logical component remains? We arrive at the case of "it began in negligence and ended in an unavoidable mishap." Why? I put it in the forest, in the shepherds' hut, but what happened in the end was that it was stolen, not burned. The theft isn't seen as a result that I caused, right? Legal responsibility—there is no legal responsibility for putting it in the forest with respect to it being stolen, because on the contrary, putting it in the forest is good guarding against theft. So I can't be seen as the cause of what happened. That's what generates the dispute here. What is present here? The logical connection. If I hadn't put it in the forest, it wouldn't have been stolen. So I'm not responsible in the sense of positive production; the negative production I identify with the logical connection. Meaning, again, the production I'm speaking about here is of course legal responsibility; it's not production in the physical sense. Because it could have not burned even if I put it in the forest, but legally, someone who put the money in the forest is viewed as though he burned the money, because the fire in the forest is a given, and if you put it in the hut, then you yourself produced the result. That's called full negligence. What happens if I put it in the forest and it was stolen, there was no fire in the forest? Then you can't say that what I did caused the result—caused in the physical sense. What you can say is that the logical conditional can still be formulated: if I hadn't put it in the forest, then it wouldn't have been stolen. The if-then, the if-then, exists here.

[Speaker F] There's no doubt that the logical conditional is not enough for legal responsibility. I don't think that's what the dispute is about. I didn't understand. No one would say that the fact that this logical if-then condition exists is a reason to obligate me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You have to add something more: that what I did in the first place was negligence.

[Speaker F] Exactly—that's the point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The only point—not the only point; in a moment we'll get to why it isn't the only point; there are more cases coming in a moment.

[Speaker F] Okay, for the moment that's the root of the dispute in my eyes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, in a second we'll get there; just let me sketch the map. So I'm saying this: if I put it in the forest and in the end it was stolen, I claim there is no causal connection, there is a logical connection. I can't say that what I did produced the result, because the theft doesn't stem from what I did. What I did doesn't constitute a cause of the theft; on the contrary, what I did protected against the theft. It happened despite what I did, not because of what I did. What you can say is that there is a logical connection—what? If I hadn't done it, then it wouldn't have been stolen. Now Binyamin is right that according to this principle, even if someone who is not a guardian had put it in the forest, you would have had to obligate him, because there is a logical connection here according to the one who says that if it began in negligence and ended in an unavoidable mishap, one is liable. But no—someone who isn't a guardian, we don't obligate him. Why not? Because his initial action isn't considered an act of negligence. But the claim is that in order to obligate you for an act of negligence, that isn't enough. The action has to be an action of negligence and there has to be a logical connection between it and the result—a logical connection. That's the opinion that says if it began in negligence and ended in an unavoidable mishap, one is liable. And the opinion that says if it began in negligence and ended in an unavoidable mishap, one is exempt, requires a full causal connection. A logical connection isn't enough even if your act is negligence. Now the third case is the case of dying of a heart attack. Yes—I left the door open and the animal died of a heart attack. What exists here? Here only the temporal component exists. I was negligent first—I was negligent, I left the door open—and afterwards it died. There is neither the causal connection—of course what I did isn't the cause of what happened—nor even the logical connection. You can't say that if I hadn't been negligent and hadn't left the door open, then the heart attack wouldn't have happened, because in any case it would have happened. Okay? So here there is neither the causal component nor the logical component, only the temporal component. It turns out, astonishingly, that the Rif in Abaye's opinion claims that even that is enough to obligate. Meaning, it is enough that my negligence happened before what happened there in order to obligate me; I gave the explanation earlier. But the accepted view is that this doesn't obligate, and in practice the Rif also agrees that it doesn't obligate. The Rif only claims that there is such an opinion of Abaye, and the other medieval authorities (Rishonim) also disagree with this. You claim that even Abaye doesn't think so—it can't be said—but this is exactly the third case in which all that remains is only the temporal parameter out of the three parameters. What happens when none of these exists? For example, I left the door closed… no, actually that's unrelated. If the animal died before I closed the door, that's irrelevant. If the animal dug under a closed door, for example, or forced its way out through a closed door, here too the temporal relation exists. Meaning, my act happened before… not my negligence, my act happened before the final result, but my act wasn't negligence, and therefore there is no reason to obligate me. Okay? So basically I think that the map I've drawn here—at least the first three situations: it began in negligence and ended in negligence; it began in negligence and ended in an unavoidable mishap where there is a connection; it began in negligence and ended in an unavoidable mishap when there is no connection—they are really distinguished from one another by the three components of the causal relation, when I translate this of course into the legal plane, because this isn't causality in the full sense, as I said earlier, but on the legal level, if I was negligent and in the end what was supposed to happen happened, I'm seen as causally responsible for what happened. And in a case where it began in negligence and ended in an unavoidable mishap, my act is seen as a condition for what happened—a logical condition, not a cause. Okay? And if there is no connection between the negligence and the unavoidable mishap, then it's neither a logical condition nor a cause, but only a temporal connection, only temporal priority. Okay, good—Binyamin, did you want to comment?

[Speaker F] Yes, meanwhile I’ll say what I want to say as an additional suggestion. I don’t understand why we needed to connect this discussion to the philosophical discussion, because once you translate the issue into legal causation, which I’m not entirely sure what that is, then it seems that the whole topic is a topic of legal responsibility, and I want to try to suggest that that’s the entire dispute. The only question is: when I am negligent, what kind of responsibility does that impose on me? When I’m negligent and behave improperly and don’t guard the animal as the rules require. One possibility, and this is Abaye’s extreme position, is that it imposes full responsibility on you, even if afterward the animal died from some other cause—you are responsible. That’s your penalty for not guarding properly. That’s what I said before. Right, right, right, but I want to argue that this is the entire dispute; beyond that there’s nothing. And now all the views on the spectrum are arranged around this question. The opinion that is a bit less extreme than Abaye says: no, you will be responsible for what was actually caused by your negligence—and here I’m moving to the issue of causation. And another opinion is that an additional condition is needed in order for you to be liable, not just what was caused.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I accept everything you’re saying, but in my view that doesn’t contradict what I’m saying, because that’s what I said earlier.

[Speaker F] No, and then you don’t need the terms…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, and I claim that the description I gave here is altogether a description—let’s call it phenomenological—or a description of the situations, where what lies behind them is these conceptions. Meaning, I’m saying how I define the situations in which I see you as responsible according to each approach. So I say: the Rif’s approach in Abaye’s view, whose logic is what you said earlier—but what has to exist there? Only negligence and temporal priority. That’s a definition: what do I need to define, what is the situation regarding which the Rif, or Abaye according to the Rif, would impose liability. It’s not an explanation, it’s a description. The explanation is what you suggested and what I also said earlier. I’m only saying that the indicators—if I want to know when this exists, when that exists, and when that exists, how I distinguish between the situations—I think it is convenient to think about it in terms of the three components of causality.

[Speaker F] I think that won’t help. In borderline cases it won’t help at all, because here we’re not talking about the components of a cause.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m waiting to see that borderline case in order to distinguish it. I think it helps a lot, but again, everyone according to, of course, how he is made—whether it helps or doesn’t help. Everyone will decide for himself. I feel that it gives a good explanation or a good indication and characterizes the situations on the spectrum very well, phenomenologically, the situations on the spectrum. Now, why impose liability here or exempt here and impose liability there, or exempt even here and impose liability only there—those are the three opinions we saw: the Rif in Abaye’s view, the one who says that if it began with negligence and ended with an unavoidable accident he is liable, and the one who says that if it began with negligence and ended with an unavoidable accident he is exempt. In all three of these opinions, the explanations are what you said earlier or what I also said earlier. But the characterization of when we are dealing with each case—it seems to me very convenient to see it in terms of these three components of causality. Fine, but of course everyone will decide for himself whether that is convenient for him or not.

[Speaker F] Okay, suppose you can do that. The question is, what if some Humean comes to you, someone who adopted Hume’s conclusion, and says there is no such thing as causation—would he have some problem learning our passage?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle he would have no problem. At most, I would have a problem explaining it to him in these terms, because he doesn’t have that terminology. That’s why I say: it’s not an explanation, it’s a description. I might not be able to sharpen for him in this way the difference between the situations.

[Speaker F] But there is still a difference, right? That’s your claim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying more than that. I’m claiming that I could explain it even to Hume. Because even Hume intuitively understands what causation is. He only claims that this—it doesn’t contradict what he said either—he only claims that it is a concept we are born with and did not derive empirically, and therefore he claims there is no such thing in reality. But I have no problem using that term when I want to explain situations to him. I don’t need to assume anything about the world. I only want to distinguish between different situations. And in that sense there is no problem at all using a conceptual framework that Hume understands, even if he claims it does not describe the world. Therefore I think this does not depend on whether you are Humean or not. I used this in order to show where the difference lies, but for me anyone who understands the concepts—that is enough. There is no need to assume anything about the world, especially as I said earlier, since I moved from the physical plane to the legal plane. When I speak here, say, about full causality in negligence, I’m speaking about full causality—clearly this is not physical causality. When I leave the door open, that does not mean that it is necessary and sufficient for the animal to go out. It’s not even sufficient. At most it is necessary, and even on the level of necessity that isn’t true, because it could tunnel out even with a completely locked door. So it isn’t even a necessary condition. In other words, it is so far from being a cause that even according to those who don’t define a cause at all, only a necessary condition—even that is not fulfilled here. But I claim that on the legal level I do think people see it that way. Essentially what they are telling you is: if you left the door open, that is the meaning of failure to guard. If you left the door open—sorry, if you put the coins in the hut—then as far as I’m concerned the fire is already burning in them. If you put the coins in the hut, you burned them with your own hands. What you did causally produced—legal causality—what happened. If you want to enter into philosophy and determinism and say that the fire broke out altogether in a deterministic way, then it broke out anyway and in fact that is given, so it could even become actual causality, physical causality. But I don’t want to get into that. Maybe someone lit the fire and chose to light it, so it did not have to happen, without committing myself to philosophical determinism. Okay, so that is regarding the different map of the matter. The next stage, actually, is a comment I want to make. Maybe I really don’t have much time left, so just a comment. When I discuss ‘it began with negligence and ended with an unavoidable accident’ in the laws of bailees—sorry, in torts—the question is whether the dispute in the laws of bailees is also supposed to find expression in a dispute in tort law. Apparently not, because negligence in the laws of bailees does not necessarily require that it be negligence in tort law. This is somewhat connected to the first lectures I gave at the beginning of the first semester: are the levels of guarding required of a person over his property so that it not cause damage the same levels of guarding as those of a bailee who receives a deposit? But on the conceptual level there is no connection between them, and therefore if I define something like this as negligence—or something like that as negligence—I do not have to say that if one who began with negligence and ended with an unavoidable accident is liable in the laws of bailees, then he will also be liable in torts. Now, there are several medieval authorities (Rishonim) who connect this. Rashi in our passage brings the dispute of ‘it began with negligence and ended with an unavoidable accident’ in the laws of bailees as the source for the opinions mentioned here regarding torts. And Tosafot in Bava Metzia, which we will still see, also connects the two things. So that is an interesting question—why is it connected? If it is connected to the question whether something like this is called negligence, then if it depends on the contract of guardianship, what does that have to do with the discussion in tort law? There it could be—at least could be—completely different. Maybe not, but it is not necessary. If it is connected to the unavoidable accident, maybe that is easier to understand. Because you are telling me: look, if this is not considered an unavoidable accident in the laws of bailees, then regarding tort law as well it will not be considered an unavoidable accident, and the exemption in torts is only if you were under compulsion. If in a case like this you are not considered under compulsion, then you are not exempt. Yes, the question whether such a thing is considered an unavoidable accident or not, of course, brings us into all kinds of topics that, by the way, I did not find anyone connecting to the topic of ‘it began with negligence and ended with an unavoidable accident,’ and that is an interesting question—why not. Topics like putting oneself into a situation of unavoidable accident. A person—the Talmud both in Sabbath and in Eruvin on page 97—speaks about situations where a person puts himself into a situation of unavoidable accident. For example, someone did not heat water for a circumcision, and he needs to circumcise on the Sabbath. Now, the assumption of the Talmud is that hot water is a matter of saving life. You need to heat water. But you could have done it before the Sabbath and you didn’t. Now the question is whether you are under compulsion: is it possible to permit you to heat the water on the Sabbath because you were under compulsion, or not? After all, you brought yourself—let’s say even intentionally—into a situation of compulsion. Are you called under compulsion or are you not called under compulsion? These are discussions. So postpone the circumcision to Sunday? No, it’s a situation… but you are at fault for it, so you can’t say that you were under compulsion. You have no permission to heat water on the Sabbath; only if you are under compulsion do you have permission. Certainly according to Rabbi Akiva, who says that anything that can be done before the Sabbath was not permitted on the Sabbath itself either. Rabbi Akiva is brought there, in the passage about Eliezer on circumcision. Even when they permitted you to desecrate the Sabbath for certain needs, that is only if you had no choice and could not do it before the Sabbath. If you could have done it before the Sabbath, then no. Maybe there is room to connect this dispute to Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiva, but we won’t get into that. Now here you see that the discussion there really is about the question whether such a thing is called an unavoidable accident or not. Do you have an exemption of unavoidable accident, because in the end you are in fact at fault, since you yourself brought yourself into the situation of unavoidable accident? If the question is whether an action like this is called an unavoidable accident, whether it carries an exemption of unavoidable accident or not, I would have expected them also to connect it to these topics of putting oneself into a situation of unavoidable accident, or all kinds of things of that sort. If it is not connected to the question whether an action like this is called an unavoidable accident, whether it carries an exemption of unavoidable accident or not, then I don’t understand why they connect the laws of bailees with tort law. The laws of bailees are their own thing—it is the contract of guardianship, and each type of bailee separately—and tort law is its own thing; guarding against damage is a passage unto itself. Unless we say that there is some reason or source or logic to say that somehow guarding against damage is supposed to be like guarding a deposit. And that is what we discussed at the beginning of the first semester, when I spoke about guarding against damage as opposed to guarding a knife, the dispute of the Tannaim there, and how that connects to the levels of guarding of bailees. So this is only a comment that I am placing here; we will still deal with it later. Whoever has time, I’ll stop here. Whoever has time, look at the file I sent on Dropbox. Whoever hasn’t looked can look—there is a page there with source references and guiding questions. You can look further at the Rif and at the passage in Bava Metzia page 36. See the source references there and think a bit further about the continuation of the passage. In the next lecture I’m still dealing with ‘it began with negligence and ended with an unavoidable accident’ in the laws of bailees. I hope I’ll finish it in the next lecture; I’m not sure. After that we’ll move on to torts, as I said at the beginning. Okay, does anyone want to comment or ask?

[Speaker A] Yes, David, you wanted to? Ah, okay. So goodbye.