Conceptual Analysis – Lecture 8
This transcript was generated automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Representations, Zeno’s paradox, and the concept of speed
- Negative attributes, concepts as objects, and the distinction between a concept and its characteristics
- Definition, essentiality versus uniqueness, and contemplating the idea
- Changing essential properties: Moses our Teacher, Zusya, and the number four
- Conceptual analysis as back-and-forth conceptualization and the example of “multiple intelligences”
- Gittin: from examples to a failed definition, to clarification without a definition
- Quality, Plato, and “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
- Neural networks, training, and an analogy to learning from the Talmud
- Authority, trust, and appreciation: Bava Kamma, Sha’arei Yosher, and Magen Avraham
Summary
General Overview
The text presents an approach to conceptual analysis that distinguishes between the thing itself and its representations and descriptions, and argues that definitions and characteristics are always representations that may mislead. It develops a process of “negative attributes,” in which unsuccessful definitions are stripped away in order to refine an intuitive understanding of a concept, and it distinguishes between essential and accidental characteristics as the basis for definition. It demonstrates how definitions rely on contemplating the idea “with the mind’s eye” rather than on the statistics of actual cases, and shows that sometimes the process of conceptualization ends not with a definition but with an unformulated understanding that still allows for judgment. It uses examples from Jewish law, Western thought, and neural networks to explain training through examples, the limits of definition, and the dependence on trust and authority for such training to succeed.
Representations, Zeno’s paradox, and the concept of speed
The example of speed versus change of place, together with Zeno’s arrow paradox, illustrates that what appears to our eyes is sometimes a representation of the thing rather than the thing itself. The text argues that the common definition of speed as distance divided by time is not necessarily the concept itself, and that speed is better understood as the potential for a change of place rather than the rate of change of place. The text warns against mistakes that come from relating to representations of things instead of to the things themselves, and also brings the chessboard puzzle as an example of understanding through the black-and-white representation of the squares.
Negative attributes, concepts as objects, and the distinction between a concept and its characteristics
The text describes a process of “negative attributes” in which external characteristics are removed in order to arrive at a more abstract understanding of the concept. It suggests treating concepts like objects that have descriptions and characteristics, while also recognizing that there is “the thing itself” being described, so statements and definitions generally deal with characteristics rather than with the thing itself. This distinction between the concept and its characteristics leads to the conclusion that a definition is the collection of a subset of a thing’s characteristics, and that it does not contain all the characteristics but only those that seem essential.
Definition, essentiality versus uniqueness, and contemplating the idea
The text argues that a characteristic that enters into a definition must not only be distinctive but also essential, meaning that it relates to the “being” of the thing and not merely to a trait that happens to appear in it. It illustrates this through the human being: two hands are not essential even if they were unique to humans, whereas speech, intellect, and free will are perceived as essential. The text asks who determines what is essential and answers that the distinction between essential and accidental arises from contemplating the concept itself or the idea, not from looking at concrete objects with one’s eyes. It argues that the method that tries to infer essentiality from what appears in all democratic states is inadequate, because it looks at states rather than at the concept of democracy, and concludes that a definition is the collection of a concept’s essential characteristics as grasped through intellectual contemplation.
Changing essential properties: Moses our Teacher, Zusya, and the number four
The text raises a difficulty about apparent “discrimination” in the fact that Moses our Teacher was born with innate advantages, and answers that the response is logical rather than ethical: if a person were given Moses’ essential qualities, he would not be “himself with added qualities,” but simply “a second Moses.” The text argues that one cannot complain about changing essential properties that belong to the definition, because such a change destroys identity and creates someone else, whereas non-essential properties like beauty or physical fitness can change while the person remains himself. It also illustrates this with the example of the number four, which cannot “be first” without becoming the number one, and ties this to the distinction between essential and accidental properties.
Conceptual analysis as back-and-forth conceptualization and the example of “multiple intelligences”
The text describes conceptual analysis as a process in which intuitive perception precedes definition, and the definition is an attempt to conceptualize the intuition. It points to a possible bug that arises when the formulated definition begins to include cases the original intuition did not include, and illustrates this with the trend of multiple intelligences, which, according to the analysis, was also born partly from a politically correct motivation to equalize the status of Einstein with Messi or LeBron James. The text suggests that this result can be seen as a sign that the definition failed to capture the intuition, but it also presents the opposite possibility, according to which conceptualization feeds back and corrects the intuition, so that both sides improve in an ongoing loop in which concepts and definitions develop.
Gittin: from examples to a failed definition, to clarification without a definition
The text describes how tractate Gittin presents many cases in order to clarify what counts as a valid giving of a bill of divorce, and asks why the Talmud does not simply give a short definition instead of multiplying examples. It presents an attempted definition by Ketzot in Avnei Miluim that begins with physical giving, is rejected by the case of transferring ownership of a courtyard in which the bill of divorce lies, moves to a definition in terms of transfer of ownership, and then fails in the face of the case of “if he wrote it on items from which benefit is forbidden, it is valid,” according to medieval authorities (Rishonim) who hold that one cannot own items from which benefit is forbidden. It describes how Kehillot Yaakov continues with more complicated definitions that add more and more characteristics until the “definition” becomes as long as the number of examples, at which point the explanation has no advantage over the collection of cases and provides no confidence regarding a new case. The text argues that the Talmud gives examples because there is no definition, and that the goal is to train an intuitive feel “in the fingers” for what does and does not count, where the process is an analysis by way of negation that removes possible formulations and leaves a good but unconceptualized understanding.
Quality, Plato, and “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
The text brings in Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” to illustrate a basic concept that cannot be defined: quality. It describes a rhetoric instructor who gives grades to essays but has difficulty formulating criteria that define a good essay, and argues that there is intuitive knowledge of quality even without a definition. It notes that concepts such as poetry and literature work in a similar way, and argues that one can characterize them negatively and clarify them through contrasts and examples without succeeding in formulating a positive definition. It parallels this to Plato’s dialogues on virtue, in which false formulations are dismantled and it is assumed that what remains is an unformulated understanding.
Neural networks, training, and an analogy to learning from the Talmud
The text compares the Talmud’s example-based method to the training of neural networks in identifying letters and handwriting, where there are no explicit rules, only learning from examples and feedback of “right/wrong.” It argues that classic algorithmic software has trouble defining rules for handwriting, whereas neural networks learn the patterns from examples and develop ability even when their decisions cannot be explained as rules. It explains that the Talmud provides similar “training”: a large number of cases trains the learner to recognize a valid giving of a bill of divorce without ever arriving at a formal definition.
Authority, trust, and appreciation: Bava Kamma, Sha’arei Yosher, and Magen Avraham
The text argues that the ability to learn from the Talmud’s examples depends on full trust in the authority of the Sages, much as training a neural network requires authoritative answers from the trainer. It cites Bava Kamma 20a, the dialogue between Rav Chisda and Rami bar Chama, and Rava’s response, “How not sick and yet insensitive is a man whom his Master helps,” and interprets this to mean that acceptance of what is said is connected to appreciation that leads one to rethink the matter, not to dismiss it immediately. It quotes Rabbi Shimon Shkop in the introduction to Sha’arei Yosher, who asks that the book not be opened without some basic appreciation, so that the reader will think two and three times about things that at first seem strange, without demanding automatic acceptance. It brings Magen Avraham on the permissibility of saying things in the name of a great person “so that they will accept it from him,” and explains that the permission is meant to cause renewed consideration rather than blind acceptance, and explains that forging a “Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim” is invalid because creating a text with binding authority is different from attributing a line of reasoning to a great person when it is not binding.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the previous lecture I talked about—I gave the example of defining dynamic concepts, the concept of speed versus change of place, together with Zeno’s arrow paradox. And through that we actually encountered a somewhat different kind of conceptual analysis. In practice, the way we saw it was that the way something appears to our eyes is not always the thing itself, but sometimes some kind of representation of it. And so, regarding the concept of speed, for example, it’s common to define it as distance divided by time, or how long it takes me to change location, to move from one place, to cover a certain distance, whereas apparently the definition of the concept itself is not really distance divided by time but the potential for change of place. Not the rate of change of place but the potential for change of place. And so we need to be a bit careful about relating to things through their representations. Their representations—or their definitions—aren’t always correct. In fact, I just now wrote a column on the website about mistakes that come from our relating to representations of things instead of to the things themselves. But in the course of the discussion about the concept of speed we also ran into something else, and now I want to expand on that a bit. What I actually did there was a kind of process that could be called a process of negative attributes. A process of negative attributes. Basically, we removed various external characteristics and in the end distilled from them an understanding of the concept itself. Right? We removed the treatment of speed as change of place and were left with some abstract understanding of speed as the potential for change of place. And this process of peeling away, or removing, leads me to talk about another aspect that has two sides. We saw that when we relate to concepts, really—at least in my opinion—it’s right to treat them like objects. Meaning, they have descriptions, characteristics, and there is the thing itself, the thing we’re describing. Right? It’s not the description, but the thing we’re describing. And therefore usually when we say something about a certain object, or when we say something about a certain concept, we are dealing with its characteristics and not with it itself. But characteristics are always some kind of representation, and so that can lead us to various problems, like the example of Zeno’s paradox. We also talked about the chessboard puzzle, where through the black-and-white representation of the squares one could understand something about the nature of the squares themselves. But here I want to sharpen the point a little more, because there is another result of such a process as well. When I distinguish between the concept and its characteristics, its form—that is, the ways in which it is grasped—then, as I said, everything I say about the concept or about the object is a statement about the characteristics and not about the thing itself. Among other things, when I talk about the definition of a concept, the definition too is really just collecting some subset, some part, of the thing’s characteristics. I want to define the concept of a democratic state. So the definition of the concept democratic state is really a collection of characteristics of the concept democratic state, and I said that the concept itself is something further, of which these are characteristics, but it itself is still something beyond them. But of course the definition doesn’t contain all the characteristics. Which characteristics do we put into the definition? Only the characteristics that seem essential to us. Right, I won’t put into the definition of a human being the fact that he has two hands. Because true, it’s true that he has two hands—it’s not false. But that’s not the essential point that characterizes the human being. So I wouldn’t define a human being as a creature with two hands, or I wouldn’t even include that characteristic as part of the definition. That’s not the point. Speech sounds a bit more essential, so it’s often accepted to define a human being as a speaking living being. Isn’t it what distinguishes him?
[Speaker C] What? Isn’t it what really distinguishes him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I’m saying it’s not just that it distinguishes him. Let’s say there were no creatures in the world with two hands except us, only human beings. Okay? Even then I still wouldn’t put the notion of two hands into the definition. And in this case it would indeed be distinctive. Because what I want to claim now is something beyond the fact that the characteristic needs to be distinctive—it also has to be essential. Meaning, it has to be a characteristic related to your being human, and not just something that always appears in humans, but something related to the essence of what it means to be human. Intellect is related to the matter, speech is related to the matter, free will is related to the matter, but two hands—I don’t think so, even if only humans had two hands. And that’s a demand beyond mere uniqueness; it also has to be essential to the thing. But of course we can ask ourselves: who determines which characteristics are essential and which aren’t? How do we know? Even if only humans had two hands, who says that having two hands isn’t an essential characteristic? Why? On what basis do you determine what is an essential characteristic and what is not an essential characteristic? And here I return once again to my claim that when we define a concept or describe a concept, that is really created by our contemplating the concept. Not contemplation with the eyes but with the mind’s eye or intuition, but it is some kind of contemplation. And that contemplation also yields the distinction between essential and accidental characteristics. When we contemplate the concept of a human being—not a specific person, but the concept—we are contemplating the idea. We understand that having two hands is not the essential part of the matter, but having the capacity for speech is, or having intellect, a certain intelligence, is. Okay? In other words, the distinction between essential and accidental characteristics is also based on what I previously described as contemplating the concept or contemplating the idea. And so again, when we talk about the definition of something, we often implicitly assume that the definition does not constitute the thing but describes the thing. Meaning, if I define a democratic state, let’s say, as separation of powers, voting rights for people, periodic change of government every few years, and things like that—perhaps I could also define it by a certain size of territory, and suppose in fact that all democratic states could be characterized by a certain territorial size. Nobody would put that in there. Why not? Because it doesn’t sound to us like something essential. Meaning, by what criterion—what counts as something essential? So either you’re just arbitrarily defining concepts, in which case of course you can define whatever you want, and I gave Borges’ examples, remember, with that strange star? But I think the more correct understanding here is that this is really the result of contemplation. When I contemplate the concept of a democratic state, I understand which characteristics are truly essential to that concept, and which characteristics, even if they exist, are merely accidental and not essential. And again, this is not contemplation of objects. There are those who would say: let’s look at all the democratic states and see which characteristics appear in all of them. The characteristics that appear in all of them—those are the essential characteristics. In all of them and in no other states, right? Then those are the essential characteristics. What appears in only some of them, or appears in all of them but also in non-democratic states—those are not essential characteristics. I want to argue that this is not correct. Because that is the result of looking at democratic states themselves, not at the concept of democracy or the concept of a democratic state. It’s simply looking at the democratic states themselves. It can give me what Shlomo said earlier: the things that distinguish democratic states. What appears only in them. And that can simply be done by looking at all the states and seeing which characteristics appear only in democratic states. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the question of which characteristic is essential to the concept of democracy. And that requires contemplation not of democratic states but of the concept of democracy. And therefore this is not contemplation with the eyes but contemplation with the mind’s eye. So basically I’m saying this: the definition of a thing—definition, and in fact conceptual analysis often aims to arrive at a definition of a concept—the definition of a concept is the collection of characteristics essential to that concept. Once they are essential to that concept, then of course they will also be unique to it. But the reverse is not true. Not everything unique to it is also essential to it. As if, say, only humans had two hands, then that would be unique to them, but not necessarily essential to them. So what is essential will generally be unique. What is unique will not necessarily be essential. Therefore, if I need to define the concept of definition, then I say: a definition is the collection of the essential characteristics of the concept. That is basically what a definition is, and it is the result of what I earlier called contemplation of the concept or of the idea.
[Speaker C] Can it differ from person to person? Or from one group of people to another group of people? This contemplation could lead to…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, differ from person to person? That my contemplation and your contemplation will produce different results? Or that human beings will differ from one another?
[Speaker C] No, that between observers—one will see one thing as essential and the other will say no.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, certainly. There are disputes about that, no question. Yes, there are disputes about that.
[Speaker D] Does the essential have to be unique? Again? Does the essential, according to what you said, have to be unique?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle, yes. Let’s put it this way: suppose I say that for human beings, their essential part is the capacity for speech or intellect. Now animals too have intellect at a certain level, and even a kind of communication, some kind of speech, they have as well. And still it seems essential to us. So you’ll tell me: here’s an example of something essential that is not unique, because they also have it… But I don’t think that’s right. Because when I speak about the essential properties of the human being, I’m not speaking about his being possessed of intellect, but his being possessed of the specific human intellect, that intellect that only human beings have and not animals. So if you call it something else, you could say: your having an intelligence above eighty, I’m just giving an example, right? And not merely your being intelligent. That’s not enough.
[Speaker D] So what about someone with a really, really low IQ?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then indeed there is a defect in his being human, yes. Definitely. According to—I’m saying, if you accept that definition, then yes, definitely.
[Speaker D] Isn’t it the potential? Isn’t it the potential for intellect even though right now…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he has a low IQ, then he doesn’t have the potential either. You can’t increase his potential so that he’ll become Einstein.
[Speaker D] A person can be in a coma and unable to speak or in all sorts of other states, but he still has the potential.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s something else. Because a person in a coma is only in a temporary condition, but he has the intelligence such that if he comes out of the coma he’ll return to being a normal person. But I’m talking about a person with brain damage. Then he doesn’t have—it’s not potential, he has no potential, he won’t come out of it, that’s how he was born, that’s it. Okay? So here there’s no potential. Our feeling that he is still human is because he is, so to speak, of our kind, only damaged. True, but in a certain sense he really is lacking some of the essential characteristics of human beings. Now one can discuss whether killing him would count as the prohibition of murder. It is commonly thought that it does; I think so too. But then we have to understand that maybe the definition of a human being for the purpose of the prohibition of murder and the definition of a human being for other purposes are different definitions. Meaning, the picture is complicated; it’s not as simple as it looks. But still, I think it is right to say that when I speak about something essential, it will generally also be unique. Not the reverse. Because otherwise it’s not essential to you. What is essential to you is what appears only in you. In other words, a human being breathes; there is no human being who does not breathe—if he doesn’t breathe, he’s not alive. But other animals breathe too. And a human being doesn’t breathe differently from animals. Unlike intellect, where perhaps we have more intelligence than they do, our breathing looks like their breathing. And therefore I would not include the concept of breathing as an essential characteristic of human beings, even though there is no human being without breathing; if he doesn’t breathe he’ll cease to be human. That’s obvious. I think uniqueness is indeed an expression of essence. But not the reverse. Now I want to bring—maybe an example of this matter. Say, I once thought about the following question. From time to time there are people troubled by this, you know—Moses our Teacher was born with “the skin of his face shining,” that’s what we are told, and in fact the verse itself says something along those lines. Meaning, he was born with certain virtues that were innate in him, built into him. It’s not that he worked and toiled and reached those levels by his own efforts, but that he was born that way. And then a question can arise toward the Holy One, blessed be He: why didn’t You give me the virtues You gave Moses our Teacher? I understand that if he worked hard, he deserves credit for the achievements he reached. But why does he deserve virtues that were innate in him while I don’t? What is this discrimination? It’s not okay—I also want to have the abilities Moses our Teacher received. From that point onward, what work I do and what level I reach—that really depends on me, and if I didn’t do the work then indeed I don’t deserve it. But as for inborn things…
[Speaker C] Can’t hear well?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can’t hear.
[Speaker C] Are there communication problems?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Oh, really? You can’t hear me?
[Speaker C] We hear you perfectly. They hear perfectly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a personal problem. In any case, so the question or wonder is: why does the Holy One, blessed be He, act this way, giving Moses our Teacher such special innate virtues and not me? It’s not okay, not fair, discrimination. Okay? It seems to me that the most correct answer to this is that if I had received the virtues of Moses our Teacher, then it would not have been me with the virtues of Moses our Teacher—it simply would have been a second Moses our Teacher. Meaning, this claim is actually absurd on the logical level, not on the ethical level. The answer to it is not an answer on the moral plane, explaining why what the Holy One, blessed be He, did was nevertheless moral. The answer is on the logical plane. That is, if the Holy One, blessed be He, had created me too with all the virtues with which Moses our Teacher was born, then in effect two Moseses would have been born. But one is enough for the Holy One, blessed be He; He doesn’t want more than one. Or in other words, the Holy One, blessed be He, can basically say to me: if I had created you with the virtues of Moses our Teacher, that would not be a kind of benefit that I was giving you, because it wouldn’t be you—it would be someone else. To benefit someone means to improve my condition. I am Miki Abraham, and now I am being made better off than I presently am. But if they change me and instead of Miki Abraham turn me into Moshe Yankel, then Miki Abraham hasn’t gained from that—Miki Abraham simply does not exist; Moshe Yankel was created in his place. What did Miki Abraham gain from that? In other words, I cannot ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to change in me characteristics that are essential—or in other words, my definition. The characteristics that belong to the definition, those essential characteristics, the ones that make me who I am, are not characteristics about which I can ask why You didn’t make me differently. Because if You had made me differently, that would not have been making me differently; it would have been not making me at all, but making someone else. So how can I complain to the Holy One, blessed be He, that He should make me different? That’s not called making me different; it’s simply called not making me. Right? This is connected, of course, to the story of Zusya. So the claim basically is—where can I complain to the Holy One, blessed be He? Why didn’t You make me with better physical ability, or more handsome, I don’t know, just for example, okay? Why? Because those really are not my essential properties. If He had changed those properties in me, it would still be me with better properties. So here I can complain to the Holy One, blessed be He: why didn’t You make me with better properties? But if I ask Him to change something that is part of my definition, something essential, then that is an invalid claim on the logical level, not on the ethical level. Because changing something essential in me is really saying: you will not exist; someone else will exist in your place. So that is an illustration of the distinction I make between essential properties and accidental properties. The properties that belong to my definition are those properties that make me who I am, and therefore with regard to them one cannot raise the claim, why did You give me this property and not another one? Because then it simply would not be giving to me; it would be making someone else. What can I raise the… about? About properties that are not essential. Something that does not belong to my definition—it is my property, but it doesn’t belong to my definition, it isn’t essential. I will still be me even if that thing changes. If I am not me, then who am I at all, as the saying goes. So this distinction basically demonstrates the difference between essential properties and accidental properties. Let me give an example: suppose the number four came and complained to the Holy One, blessed be He, and said: why did You place the number one first? I’m the number four, I want to be first, it’s not fair, it’s discrimi—sorry, discrimination. What’s the answer? That if they had put it first, then it would have been the number one; it would not have been the number four. That would not be improving the condition of the number four; it would be annihilating the number four and creating the number one, or creating the number one twice. It’s not the number four that would gain from that. You wouldn’t gain anything from it; you simply would not exist. Okay? Why? Because your being fourth in the series or in the order of numbers is a characteristic—it is an essential property of the number four, not an accidental property. If you weren’t there, then you simply wouldn’t be the number four. What are you saying, Shlomo?
[Speaker C] It’s like the midrash about the sun and the moon, where the moon came to the Holy One, blessed be He, and complained: why are we both the same? Then she would no longer be herself; she would be something else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, maybe. The question is whether that really is an essential property of the moon or not, I don’t know.
[Speaker C] But because it no longer shines—when there is a sun and it shines—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Already—
[Speaker C] It no longer shines, it’s already something else. And according to the midrash it was supposed to shine, now it doesn’t shine, it receives light, so it’s already something else. Fine, so two doesn’t work out, so you won’t be what you are, you’ll be something else. If that’s what the Rabbi means,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He didn’t do something to the moon, but rather destroyed the moon and created something else. Yes, in a sense. Now what comes out is this: when I look at a concept—after all, we’re talking about conceptual analysis—when I look at a concept, then I have the concept itself and I have its characteristics. And among its characteristics, they too are divided into two groups: a subset of essential characteristics—that is what makes up the definition of the concept, the collection of essential characteristics. And there are accidental characteristics, which are not essential characteristics; sometimes they aren’t unique either, but they’re not essential. These are other characteristics of the concept that are not essential. So we have three components of the concept: there is the concept itself, the bearer of the characteristics; there are the characteristics, which themselves are divided into two kinds: essential characteristics and accidental characteristics. Now the point is that when we want to understand the concept, we will always make use of its characteristics. Right? What does it mean to understand a concept? To understand a concept means to understand what its properties are. To understand the concept of democracy—what does that mean? It means to understand what its properties are: such-and-such properties, other properties. What is a democratic state, what is not a democratic state. Meaning, understanding always focuses on characteristics. But through the characteristics I grasp something about the concept itself. Where does the implication come in? The implication comes in those places where conceptual analysis in the end leaves me empty-handed, with nothing. And I want to speak a little about this because it’s an important point, since it explains the limitation of conceptual analysis—or really speaks about a different kind of conceptual analysis. I’ll maybe give the following example. Look, I once spoke about this in lectures years ago. There’s a very widespread trend over the last few decades to talk about multiple intelligences. There are all kinds of intelligence: motor intelligence, emotional intelligence, intellectual intelligence, and even on the intellectual plane there’s intelligence in the direction of mathematics, and in the direction of literature, and in the direction of philosophy—meaning, there are various kinds of intelligence. How did this whole thing arise, really? In practice, it works like this: let’s say fifty years ago—I’m talking now about defining the concept of intelligence—let’s say fifty years ago, or before this whole discussion of multiple intelligences began, if you asked people whether Einstein… now you ask whether Messi is a genius. Or LeBron James. Okay? Are they also geniuses? People would have told you no. They are very talented players, they play excellently, but that has nothing to do with the concept of intelligence. That’s not intelligence; it’s something else. Today people talk about game intelligence and so on, because that’s already part of this discourse about multiple intelligences. But it seems to me that fifty, sixty, seventy years ago, if you had asked people, they would not have attributed that to the concept of intelligence. Okay? So what happened? At some point—this is my analysis, of course, but it seems right to me—at some point people began to feel, as part of the politically correct movement, yes, political correctness, they began to feel that this actually creates unequal treatment of people. Why does Einstein deserve different treatment from LeBron James? So let’s say that LeBron James is also a genius, like Einstein, only he has a different kind of intelligence. And then what comes out is that we’re all geniuses. Everyone is a genius in his own intelligences, and then no one is better than anyone else, and the world looks wonderful and egalitarian and politically correct, and everything is terrific. Meaning, it fits very well with the postmodern agenda, with the PC agenda, to create the concept of multiple intelligences. Now how do you do that? Well, today it already has scientific backing. It’s no longer just PC talk. Today there’s already scientific backing. There is already scientific research on multiple intelligences and so on. How was this concept formed on the scientific plane? I described the motivation for creating it before, but how was it actually done? So look—they looked at Einstein, or at people we regard as having very high intelligence, and they asked themselves what characterizes their intelligence. Why do we call them intelligent people? And they arrived at a series of, I don’t know, five, seven characteristics, something like that—I don’t remember exactly how many. And there is some series of characteristics of the concept of intelligence. And now suddenly people say to themselves: but if those are the characteristics of the concept of intelligence, those same characteristics also exist in LeBron James, and in Messi, and in the neighborhood shoemaker Zvi, who is a genius at repairing shoes, or in all sorts of—not important—there are various abilities or various people with different talents who actually fit that same set of five or seven characteristics. And so there you have it—we’ve found that in fact there are multiple intelligences. There is shoemaking intelligence, basketball and soccer intelligence, emotional intelligence, mathematical and physical intelligence, literary intelligence, whatever you want. And that is how the concept of multiple intelligences was basically formed. But think about it for a second—there is a bug in that process, a logical bug. Because after all, you started with an intuitive understanding of the concept of intelligence; you didn’t yet have a definition, right? Fifty or sixty years ago, if you had asked people to define intelligence, they wouldn’t know how to define it. They didn’t work with a definition. They simply understood that when you look at Einstein, you see an intelligent person. We understand what intelligence is, but we don’t have a definition for it. Now how do we proceed toward the definition? What do we do? We contemplate that intuition that gives us the concept of intelligence, and we try to conceptualize, or distill from it, characteristics, right? And if we succeeded in distilling characteristics from it, then we now say: okay, we’ve found the definition of the concept of intelligence. Intelligent people can do this, okay? So we find the characteristics that define the concept of intelligence. Except—after we define the concept of intelligence, we suddenly find that there are other people whom initially we wouldn’t have regarded as intelligent, and now they actually fit the definition. So look, they too are intelligent, and that’s how the concept of multiple intelligences was born, or the conclusion about multiple intelligences. But I would suggest a different conclusion. If the definition, when I apply it to the people before me, does not give me the same extension of the concept that I had before I had the definition—say, the people who thought about the concept of intelligence in the 1950s would have said that Einstein is intelligent but LeBron James is not intelligent, let’s say, okay? After I went through this process of abstraction and generalization, this scientific-logical process, I reached the conclusion that actually, according to the definition of intelligence, LeBron also fits in, so he too is intelligent. Okay. What does that mean? In my view, what it means is that my definition is not good. Because after all, what was the definition trying to do? The definition was trying to conceptualize what I had previously understood intuitively. But here is proof that I did not succeed. Because my original intuition said that Einstein is intelligent and LeBron is not intelligent. After I distilled the definition, suddenly I got that both are intelligent. What does that mean? That the definition failed to capture the intuitive conception of the concept of intelligence. Because the applications clearly look different. So that means there is no equivalence between the definition and the intuitive conception of the concept. Do you understand what I’m saying?
[Speaker C] Isn’t it because I tried to flatten it, to generalize it to more people? Because I don’t want specifically to single out Einstein—I want to be politically correct?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the conclusion. After I come to the conclusion that basically there was something buggy here, that it didn’t really work right, then I ask myself: okay, so why do people continue with it anyway? The answer is that political correctness found this useful. It suits the agenda of political correctness.
[Speaker E] But apparently there’s no escaping it. Even if you try every time to go through the same process, at first to trust your intuition, in the end if you dig deeper and deeper and deeper maybe you’ll discover that you really were mistaken and only part of it remained.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an interesting comment, and I really do want to pause on it for a moment. But just one second, I’ll get to that in a moment. First I want to make sure we understand what I’ve said up to now. What I’ve said up to now actually means that if, in the end, how do we arrive at the definition of a concept? If I understand that a definition of a concept is not an agreement, not a convention, but rather the result of observation, then that basically means that my grasp of the concept comes before the definition. The definition is an attempt to describe how I grasp the concept. Right? And the intuitive grasp of the concept comes before the definition. The definition tries to conceptualize what I already have in my intuitive grasp. Now if that really is so, then how can it be that after I carry out the process of conceptualization, I get results that differ from the state in which I used the concept intuitively? That means I simply conceptualized it incorrectly. That’s the problem I described earlier. Okay? Now Yaakov tells us: no, maybe that’s not true. Maybe the process of conceptualization helped me notice that perhaps I was mistaken. Maybe my intuitive grasp missed something. And many times, in the process of conceptualization, I’m not only trying to formulate my intuitive perceptions. The formulation itself often sends me back and gives me some kind of feedback on the intuitive grasp and tells me: wait a second, something in your intuition apparently wasn’t right, because after all I think this conceptualization is a good one. And that may be an argument that can defend the concept of multiple intelligences. Because it means it’s not true that this was necessarily a mistake or a politically correct device; it could be that after people tried to conceptualize the thing, they actually found that their intuitive grasp was only partial, not complete, not correct, and therefore both the intuition and the definition need to change. And in a certain sense, when we do this—and this is a very important point—because usually, when I presented earlier the notion of a definition or a grasp of a concept, I basically said: we have an intuitive grasp of it, then we try to conceptualize and define the thing for ourselves, and then we have a definition of the concept. But it doesn’t end there. Because after we conceptualize, we go back to the intuition and correct it. And after we correct it, we go back again and do conceptualization, then return again to the intuition, and this is a process that can continue back and forth for a very long time, through many stages. And therefore concepts—or the definition of concepts—can definitely change and develop. I talked about that in previous classes. In contrast to the view of concepts as things that are the product of agreement, of convention—where you can’t change a concept because that was the agreement. You can define a different concept. But if you understand that there is some concept in reality that you are trying to grasp, then it is certainly possible that you grasp it better and better. How does that happen? When intuition produces conceptualization, the conceptualization gives feedback to the intuition, I grasp it better, I change the conceptualization again, and gradually my definition becomes more refined. I grasp the concept better. Meaning, when I formulate the definition, it’s not only a matter of articulating an intuitive grasp. The formulation goes back and affects the intuitive grasp itself, which then goes back and changes the formulation, and the formulation goes back to the intuitive grasp. Therefore conceptual analysis is a more complex process than what I described earlier. It’s not only an attempt to conceptualize my intuitions; rather, conceptual analysis itself goes back and sheds new light on the intuitive grasp of the concept. It changes the intuition with which I set out. And that really does happen a lot of the time.
[Speaker C] But the example the Rabbi gave with Einstein—like the Rabbi was saying at the beginning, what is essential in a person—so if the most essential essential, the most essential of all, is intellect, then if we… wait a second, why is intellect the essential thing? Says who? That hasn’t been revealed yet. But the result—that he has intellect—doesn’t make him a better basketball player or—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A better soccer player.
[Speaker C] That takes strength and some kind of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. That’s exactly what we discovered after we did the conceptualization: that in order to be a good basketball player, it’s not enough to have strength and coordination and one athletic trait or another—you need intelligence. By the way, LeBron, just specifically, the man is a genius. I have no doubt about that.
[Speaker E] Is there a synonym for conceptualization?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I watch things like that and the man is a genius, no question. You can see it.
[Speaker E] Is there a way to give me a synonym for the word conceptualization? I’m French, I want to understand this better—what is conceptualization?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An attempt to define in words the intuitive grasp. An intuitive grasp is something raw, abstract. I want to put it into words so that I can communicate it to you, so I conceptualize it. I basically produce a concept, define it, and now we both understand our intuition better, and I can also convey to you what I’m thinking. Because an unformulated intuition—I have no way to communicate it to you. Okay? Conceptualization comes from the word “concept.” Yes, I got it—to take the grasp and put it into concepts. Okay. There, I just conceptualized the concept of conceptualization. Okay, so the claim I want to make here is that this process of conceptual analysis is not: I have a ready-made intuition, I do conceptual analysis, and out of it I create a definition. No. Creating the definition sends me back and improves and refines my intuitive grasp. And that can of course keep going further—back to the definition and back again to the conceptual grasp, back and forth. Yes, constantly back and forth, it’s a process that can continue forever, all the time. Now, this claim basically tells me the following: when I want to define a particular concept, I need to conceptualize my intuitions. But that’s not enough, because afterwards I need to examine the result and see whether the result really fits or not. And it may change my intuition and then again change the definition. I’ll bring a more concrete example so it’ll be possible to—yes, conceptualization is conceptualization. The claim—I want to bring an example. Look, where did the penny first drop for me on this issue? I had to write an article for the weekly Bar-Ilan page for the Sabbath; it was on the portion of Ki Tetze. And in Ki Tetze the section of divorce is described, yes: “And he shall write her a bill of severance and place it in her hand and send her out of his house, and she shall go and become another man’s wife.” So that’s the passage from which divorce is learned. Okay? Now, suddenly I thought: in the Talmud, and especially in tractate Gittin, there are many cases that try to describe what counts as a valid giving of a get. For example: the get is in her hand and a string is in his hand; he placed the get in her courtyard and transferred ownership of the courtyard to her; “take your get from on top of the ground”; all kinds of strange and varied cases in which I give a get with both hands, and a get written on something from which benefit is forbidden, and tons of cases—dozens and dozens and many dozens of cases—that try to explain or conceptualize what the giving of a get is. How do you define the giving of a get? Now, the question that bothered me was: why didn’t the Talmud, instead of giving me a hundred cases, just give me the definition and tell me directly what the definition of the giving of a get is? Why tell me all kinds of cases, each of which entangles me and from which I somehow try to extract the definition? If you want to convey a definition to me, then just give me the definition directly. The giving of a get—you need to do such-and-such and such-and-such according to these criteria and those criteria, and that will be the giving of a get. Why bring me a hundred examples from which I’ll try to distill what the giving of a get is? So look, I’ll give just one example that begins this process so you’ll understand what I mean. I’m going to mute here because there’s noise. The Kehillot Yaakov on Gittin has two or maybe even three sections dealing with the definition of what the giving of a get is. But it starts with the Ketzot. The Ketzot, really in Avnei Miluim, tries to define the giving of a get; he says as follows: ostensibly, the giving of a get is simply taking the get and placing it in the woman’s hand—it’s an act of physical delivery. The Ketzot says that can’t be. Why? Because if I place a get in my courtyard and transfer ownership of the courtyard to the woman, that is a valid giving of a get. There was no physical act of giving here at all. This was a legal act of transfer, a conveyance. The get, when I put it in the courtyard, I didn’t give to the woman—the courtyard was mine. Now I transfer ownership of the courtyard, with the get inside it, to the woman. In that way I gave the get to the woman. I didn’t touch the get, I didn’t perform a physical act of delivery with it. So it’s clear that it is not correct to define the concept of the giving of a get as an act of physical delivery. So the Ketzot says: fine, then maybe the giving of a get is a legal transfer, where the physical giving is merely one form of transferring ownership of the get. But whenever you transferred the get—whether by physically handing over the get or by transferring the courtyard in which the get was resting—you gave a get; that was a valid giving of a get. So basically the fundamental definition, as the Ketzot tries to say, is perhaps transfer of ownership of the get. But the Ketzot says: that doesn’t work either. Why? Because for example it says: if he wrote it on something from which benefit is forbidden, it is valid. If he writes the get on something from which benefit is itself forbidden, you can give her the get and the get will be valid. Now there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), but there are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who say that there is no ownership of things from which benefit is forbidden. And so in that case there was no transfer of ownership, at least according to those medieval authorities (Rishonim). So if the definition of the giving of a get is transfer of ownership, then here this should not have been a valid giving of a get. But the Talmud says that if he wrote it on something from which benefit is forbidden, it is valid. So the Ketzot says: you see from here that transfer of ownership also is not a good definition. So after we rejected the physical definition of physical handing-over, we also rejected the definition of transfer of ownership. That’s the Ketzot. Now the Kehillot Yaakov continues this, and he proposes a more detailed definition, one with many more details—that’s what I mean by more detailed. A more complex definition. But each time he brings another example and another example and another example, and each time he attacks the definition he has arrived at and adds more characteristics and more characteristics and more characteristics in order to deal with all the examples he brings. In the end, in the end, he is left with something that you can’t really call a definition at all. In total, he’s left with a number of characteristics equal to the number of examples he brought. After all, what is usually the advantage of a definition over the examples? That with one or two criteria, I can string all the examples together. I give you two criteria, and you see that all the examples fit those two criteria. But if the number of criteria appearing in the definition is equal to the number of examples, then what have you accomplished? Then we didn’t gain anything from the process of definition. We were left with the collection of examples. Alternatively, who says that this definition will work in the next example? I now have a case before me that doesn’t appear in the Talmud, and I want to know whether this is a valid giving of a get or not. I look at the definition I arrived at, and according to it, it comes out valid. But who says? This is just a collection of—maybe if this example had appeared in the Talmud too, you would have discovered that the collection of examples you’ve been given so far is also not enough. Maybe there are still more characteristics that need to be included in the definition, and you can never know that you’re right. I think that’s the reason the Talmud tried to describe the giving of the get through lots of examples and not through a definition. Because there is no definition. There isn’t one. So what is the Talmud trying to do? It’s trying to bring me more and more examples so that I’ll get an intuitive feel in my fingertips for what a valid giving of a get is. Now, how do I get that feeling? I simply do what the Kehillot Yaakov did. I propose a first definition: physical delivery. Then I have an objection: he placed a get in his courtyard and transferred the courtyard to her—that’s valid, so it’s not physical delivery. Fine, maybe transfer of ownership—not that either, because if he wrote it on something from which benefit is forbidden, it’s valid. Fine, then a third definition—and then he brings a third example showing that that doesn’t work either. In the end, in the end, I’m left with no definition at all, but with a good understanding.
[Speaker F] But if there’s no definition, on what basis did the Talmud decide in each case?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, just a second, leave that for a moment—I’ll come back to it. In the end I’m left with a good intuitive understanding, but not with a definition. I don’t have a definition. Meaning all the attempts at definition were analysis by way of negation. It explained to me why it’s not this. So what is it? What it is, is what remains after I’ve rejected all the definitions along the way. This is exactly Maimonides’ doctrine of negative attributes. So I’m left with a good understanding of what the giving of a get is, but an intuitive understanding that never underwent conceptualization. The entire process of conceptualization that happened along the way ultimately collapsed. All the attempts to define the concept fell apart. None of them holds water. But it was a very useful process. It was useful because in the end, somehow, an intuitive understanding got into my bones of what the giving of a get is and what it isn’t. Meaning, many times the process I described earlier is a process that ends with no definition at all. Earlier I described it as though I conceptualize the intuition and arrive at a definition. Maybe afterwards I go back to the intuition, then back again and redefine—but what am I supposed to be left with at the end? A good definition. Right? At the end of the process I aspire to end up with a good definition. Now I’m saying: not always. Sometimes at the end of the process I’ll remain without a definition, but with a good understanding. This process helped me internalize some good intuition; I get a feel in my fingertips for what a valid giving of a get is and what an invalid giving of a get is. Without having a definition. All the definitions I tried and discarded along the way helped me understand what it is not, and I was left with some something that I don’t know how to formulate, but with a good understanding of what it is. That is a good understanding, but not conceptualized. It remains intuition and does not pass into conceptualization. And now a new case comes before me, one that doesn’t appear in the Talmud, and I’ll be able to say about it whether it is a valid giving of a get or not valid, but I won’t know how to justify it. Because I don’t have a definition by which I can explain why I ruled that this is a valid giving of a get or an invalid giving of a get. Rather, I built within myself some good intuitive grasp, and now with that intuition I determine whether this giving is valid or not valid. I don’t know how to justify it. I can’t propose a definition. Meaning, many times this discussion I described earlier, of conceptualization, ends in the end without a conceptual description, without a definition, but rather with some kind of understanding, where all the definitions I tried and discarded along the way, against all sorts of examples I brought, helped me develop within myself a good understanding—but not a formulated one, an unformulated one.
[Speaker G] Is there an example of that in the Western world? Not in the halakhic world, because the halakhic world is full of this kind of thing. Really full, because they rely a lot on expert people.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Western world also has plenty of examples like this. In fact, the most basic concepts are like this. What is—again, I mentioned—I’ll give, maybe I’ll bring it as an illustration, I was reminded of it not long ago. There’s a book—when I was in the army it was a cult book—Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Well known. And that book tells of a rhetoric lecturer at some American college, who is called in the book Phaedrus—yes, that’s the name of a Platonic dialogue—who sets out on a motorcycle journey across the American continent with his son, Chris. He has all kinds of philosophical conversations with him, along with philosophical reflections of his own, and a large part of the book is basically a series of philosophical essays presented as discussions he has with himself or with his son on various topics. The basic point he is trying to deal with is this: after all, he teaches rhetoric, and the students write essays for him, and he gives them grades, he evaluates the quality of the essay. And at some stage he asks himself: according to what am I doing this? What are my criteria? How do I determine the quality of an essay? Is it worth ninety, eighty, sixty, ninety-five, a hundred? According to what? After all, I have no criteria. Now yes, in school they always taught us how to build a good essay: there’s an opening and a conclusion and you bring examples—all true. Of course that’s a very, very external framework. If you use those definitions, you won’t succeed in grading what counts as a good essay. In order to understand what a good essay is, you need some intuitive feel; when you encounter it, you know it’s a good essay. But I have no way to write out some set of criteria that determine what good rhetoric is and what it isn’t. And therefore, when Phaedrus in the book searches for the criteria or the definition of the concept of quality—quality not only of an essay, but also quality of an artistic creation, a literary work, yes? The concept of quality. How do you define the concept of quality? At some point he has a flash of insight, an “illumination,” yes? His eyes are suddenly opened. Why? Because he basically understands that there is no definition of this concept. There is no definition of the concept of quality. But that doesn’t mean there is no such concept. It doesn’t mean there isn’t better and worse quality. It doesn’t mean—it doesn’t mean that you can’t grade essays. Of course you can. There’s just no criteria. There’s no definition. Because the concept of quality is a concept that cannot be defined. Does anyone in the Western world—or is there anyone, really—the postmodernists deny this. But in classical thought, in standard Western thought, everyone agrees there is such a thing as quality, even though no one knows how to define it. Not to mention concepts like poetry, literature. How do you define those concepts? I once gave an entire series on that, and on my website too there’s a series of columns on the subject. What is poetry? Again, a concept you can’t define. I can characterize it in a negative way, as I said earlier—what it is not. I can set it in contrast to other things. I can, I would say, clarify it, but not define it. To say about it—
[Speaker F] Something positive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To clarify—that’s what I was talking about earlier—is something negative. To clarify is more to explain what it is not, and from that it already becomes clear to you what it is. But you won’t be able to formulate it. You’ll check it against examples and understand what it is not and where it fits with the examples, where it doesn’t fit with the examples. In the end, in the end, you’ll remain with some insight that you won’t be able to put into words. But it’s a good insight—you understood the concept. That’s what’s called clarifying instead of defining.
[Speaker B] I have a question—is this like Plato’s dialogues about virtue?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely. Not only about virtue—all the Platonic dialogues are like that.
[Speaker B] Yes, as one example, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And what they are basically—exactly—that’s what they’re trying to do. They try to challenge people’s conceptions through counterexamples, but they don’t propose the definition of what it is instead. Rather, they try to break without building. Why? Because the message is basically that the building happens by itself. The building is what remains unformulated after you’ve thrown out all the possible formulations that failed to capture the concept properly. After you’ve thrown all those out, you’re left with a good understanding.
[Speaker F] It’s a bit reminiscent of machine learning—based on lots of examples, basically you don’t know exactly what the algorithm is. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not just a bit reminiscent—it’s exactly that. Meaning, for example, those who know computer science know that there are, broadly speaking, two kinds of software. There are classical programs, yes, if-and-then: do this, then that. According to certain rules, you teach the computer algorithmically what to do. And then there are neural networks. That’s generally what people use today with thinking machines. A neural network is basically some kind of program—again, without getting into details, because I’m not an expert in this either; I only understand at the conceptual level how it works. A neural network is a program built in a way that is completely unintelligible. You don’t understand how, in the end, the program makes its decision. For example, image recognition or handwriting recognition is often done this way, and the program has to decide which letter it sees in front of it: the letter A, the letter B, the letter C. Now understand that the letter A can be written in many forms. Everyone has his own handwriting, and somehow we manage to recognize it very well. We can read handwriting even though everyone’s is different from everyone else’s, because we somehow understand what is nevertheless common to all the A’s in all handwriting. But if you try to define that, you won’t succeed. And therefore a classical handwriting-recognition program doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. A computer can’t recognize handwriting that way. But neural networks are already getting very close to very good recognition. Why? Because they don’t work according to rules, but through examples. How do you train a neural network? You give it an example of the letter A, you wait for the network’s response. If it says this is the letter A, you tell it: correct. If it says this is the letter B, you give it feedback: incorrect, change something inside, because here you made a mistake. You don’t tell it what to change; it somehow reorganizes itself. Now you give it another example, and again: if it’s right, fine; if not, it reorganizes itself. After it has seen many examples, and on all the examples where it failed it reorganized itself, its ability to identify the letter A rises dramatically. By the way, this happens after relatively few examples. Meaning, after a few examples the ability rises in an amazing way. Of course, to keep improving the abilities a little more and a little more, you already need lots and lots and lots of examples. For the small errors you already need many examples, but the basic ability to recognize the letter—after a few examples the system gets it. Without your giving it any rule for how to do that. Which is exactly a representation of what I’m talking about here. Because basically, if afterwards you inspect the system that knows how to identify those letters, or images, or whatever it is, you won’t succeed in understanding according to what rules it works. There are no rules there; it doesn’t work that way. The logic is entirely different. I don’t want to explain because that’s a whole discipline in itself, but it doesn’t work by rules. If there are such-and-such and such-and-such and such-and-such, then it’s the letter A. If there are such-and-such and such-and-such and such-and-such, then it’s the letter B. It doesn’t work like that at all. It works in a completely different way. Okay.
[Speaker F] Back to the get issue—so how did the Talmud determine all the cases?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I can’t hear.
[Speaker F] Back to the issue of the examples of the get in the Talmud. How did the Talmud determine the cases?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now I’m coming back to that. Basically—so I’ll say one more sentence and then I’ll come back to it. Meaning, what I basically want to say is: what the Talmud did for us here is training. What we do to neural networks. The Talmud basically gave us hundreds of examples so that each and every such example would train our neural network to identify what counts as the giving of a get. In the end I’m left with a correct neural network, not with a definition. I don’t have a definition. Because if there were a definition, there would be no need to do training. You could just write the program or give the definition, and by that we would identify what is a valid giving of a get and what is not. Now of course the question arises that Ben asked here just now: but how did the Talmud itself know? The Talmud is training us, but it itself had to decide about every example whether it was a valid giving of a get or not. In the Torah it only says: “And he shall write her a bill of severance and place it in her hand.” The Torah does not define what “giving” is. The sages began with an intuitive grasp. The intuitive grasp preceded this entire process. And now they applied it to various examples, and there is give-and-take in the Talmud about these examples and those examples, and there are disputes, so the sages first of all trained themselves by raising discussion around various examples. But in the end, the final decisor was their intuition. Their intuition, in the end, decided what counts as giving a get and what does not count as giving a get. And those insights they tried to convey also to us, future learners, through examples. And they gave us the discussions they had on examples, and also bottom-line conclusions on examples, on the assumption that we too would undergo the same training and in the end arrive at the correct understanding of what the giving of a get is, without our having a definition. Just as the sages of the Talmud have no definition, we too will have no definition. We don’t have a definition. Every definition you try will fall apart. No definition stands up against all the examples. But all the definitions we tried and which fell apart helped us build within ourselves some good grasp of this concept, the giving of a get.
[Speaker C] But that means we have to be…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker C] Sorry. That means we have to be critical about how I learn the Talmud, and not say, if the sages of the Talmud said it then it must be so. Because that makes me even more critical.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no, that’s not correct. On the contrary. After all, the whole training—when you train a neural network, when you do training—training means practice in English, yes—when you train a neural network, you basically give it an example, the network is supposed to identify whether this is the letter A, and now you give it feedback. You were right, you were wrong. Now you can ask: how do I know whether this is the letter A? How do I give the network feedback? After all, I need to give it authoritative answers. What I tell it, it accepts as law given to Moses at Sinai, and it uses that to update itself, to improve itself. But it needs to have full trust in what I say. If I said this is the letter A, it can rely on that; and if I said this is not the letter A, it can rely on that too. Meaning, the very possibility of training someone is built on full trust that I have in the trainer. So on the contrary: precisely because I have trust in what the sages of the Talmud are conveying to me, I believe every determination they make about every example—whether it is a valid giving of a get or not valid—and precisely because of that I can train myself. Because if I had no trust in the sages of the Talmud, then what good are all these examples to me? I see that in this example the sages of the Talmud said it is a valid giving of a get, but I think it’s invalid. So what good did that do? What good did the information the sages of the Talmud transmitted to me do? I’m left at the same point where I was. My whole ability to train myself exists only because I place trust in what the sages of the Talmud said. You know, in the introduction of Rabbi Shimon Shkop to Sha’arei Yosher, in the introduction to the book, he brings a Talmudic passage—a passage in the second chapter of Bava Kamma, the topic of “this one benefits and that one does not lose.” And there the Talmud says—come, maybe we can see it inside. It says—
[Speaker C] That doesn’t allow me to test, to try to investigate whether it is or isn’t; I have to go by what the sages of the Talmud determined.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. That’s why the authority of the sages of the Talmud is very important in this matter. If I don’t grant them authority, all the examples are worth nothing.
[Speaker C] Until when—until the time of the Talmud? After all, Maimonides says that even after that—until when? I can’t hear. After all, Maimonides says that the authority of the sages of the Talmud is total until the end of the Talmud.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And maybe after that too? I’m talking about the Talmud. The authority given to the medieval authorities (Rishonim) is limited authority—meaning, their words carry weight for us, but they are not binding. The Talmud is binding. But this is a discussion about authorities; I don’t want to get into that now. In the Talmud in Bava Kamma 20a, maybe I’ll share the Talmud. It says as follows: Rav Chisda said to Rami bar Chama, “You were not with us at twilight in the boundary, where we raised excellent matters.” Yes, Rav Chisda says to Rami bar Chama: you were not in the boundary with us when evening fell—it was Sabbath eve—and you missed out, because you were outside the boundary, you couldn’t come to the study hall. You missed out; there were wonderful things, excellent matters, in the study hall. He said: what excellent matters? Meaning, what are these wonderful things you learned? He said to him: one who lives in another’s courtyard without his knowledge—must he pay him rent, or must he not? Meaning, they discussed the topic of “this one benefits and that one does not lose,” yes, one who lives in another man’s courtyard without his knowledge, without permission—must he pay him for that? The Talmud says: what are the circumstances? If you say it is a courtyard not ordinarily for rent—this whole discussion of “this one benefits and that one does not lose”—but look at the continuation. The truth is, the whole discussion is related to what I want to say here, but I don’t have time so I won’t go into all the details. So he says—he answers there some answer—he said to him: it is a Mishnah. So he says to him: what, that’s an explicit Mishnah? Those are the “excellent matters” you learned there in the study hall? That was the conclusion you arrived at after all your discussion? It’s an explicit Mishnah. So he asks him: which Mishnah is that? We didn’t think of that—which Mishnah is it? “Which Mishnah?” Yes, it’s here. He said to him: “When you attend on me.” So he says to him: if you attend on me, I’ll tell you which Mishnah it is. “He took his scarf and wrapped it for him”—yes, he dressed him with his garment and attended him, served him. He said to him: “If it benefited, it pays for the benefit it received.” What does that mean? The Mishnah is that Mishnah in Bava Kamma about the animal that fell into a garden bed—not important now—if it benefited, it pays for the benefit it received. There your law is written in the Mishnah. Rava said: “How little a person senses that his Master helps him, for even though it is not similar to the Mishnah, he accepted it from him.” Rava says: what nonsense did he tell him? It’s not similar to the Mishnah at all. He says to him: your law is written explicitly in the Mishnah. Rava says: what kind of nonsense is this? It’s not similar to the Mishnah at all. What kind of heavenly help he had from the Holy One, blessed be He, that he said such nonsense and Rav Chisda accepted it from him. Rami bar Chama said it, and Rav Chisda accepted it from him. Now then he explains why it’s not similar to the Mishnah. I claim—and afterwards I’ll get to Rabbi Shimon Shkop, because that’s Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s continuation—but I want to show it to you in the sugya itself. I claim that it is similar to the Mishnah. And Rava didn’t catch it because the similarity to the Mishnah is similarity in the law. And that is exactly why Rami bar Chama said to Rav Chisda: I won’t tell you where it’s written in the Mishnah before you attend on me. Why? Because someone who attends on me… if someone attends on me, that means he values me, right? First of all I want to see that you value me. Once you show that you value me, I’ll tell you in which Mishnah it is written. And why? Because someone who doesn’t value me—after I tell him that this is what is written in the Mishnah, he’ll say, come on, you’re talking nonsense, it’s not similar to the Mishnah. Now I know—I’m not an idiot—I know it’s not similar to the Mishnah, and nevertheless I claim that from this Mishnah you can derive that law, because the similarity is in the law. But in order for you to accept that from me—Rava, for example, who did not attend on me and does not value me, he dismissed my words outright, saying: you spoke nonsense. But I knew very well that this is what was going to happen. Rav Chisda, for example, accepted it and remained silent. And Rava said: what an idiot Rav Chisda is; there was heavenly assistance for Rami bar Chama that Rav Chisda accepted that nonsense from him. That’s not true. Rav Chisda accepted that “nonsense” from him because he valued him. And he thought again and again how nevertheless it is written in the Mishnah, because after all he’s not an idiot and he understands that it is not similar to the Mishnah. And because he valued him, after he thought, he understood why it is similar to the Mishnah. And Rava, who did not attend on him but looked at it from the side, says: what, it’s not similar to the Mishnah, it’s something completely different—because he didn’t trouble himself to think again and again, because he didn’t suspend his estimation of Rami bar Chama. And now I come to what Rabbi Shimon Shkop says in the introduction to Sha’arei Yosher. Rabbi Shimon Shkop brings this Talmudic passage and asks: why did he ask him to attend on him? And then he answers: because he wanted to make sure that he truly valued him. He didn’t make all the inferences I made here in the passage, but it seems to me that it is really stated explicitly in the passage, what he says. He simply said it. He said: I want him to attend on me in order to make sure he values me. And then he went on to say this: you, the one who comes to read my book—after all this is the introduction to Sha’arei Yosher—he says: if you do not value me, I ask you, do not open the book. Don’t open the book—why? Because many of the things written in the book are strange things. Things that at first glance seem illogical. And if you don’t value me, then you’ll say I’m speaking nonsense and move on. If you value me and know that I’m not such a great idiot as it may seem to you, then you will think again and again about what I said, and if you think again and again, there’s a good chance that you’ll discover the logic in it. But that only happens if you value me, because if you don’t value me, you won’t bother to think again. And so that’s why I brought this issue up for us, because I think that our ability to learn from the examples in the Talmud exists only if we have some basic estimation that what the Talmud says is correct. By the way, Rabbi Shimon Shkop also says there: the fact that you value me does not mean you have to accept my words automatically. But I do want you to think twice and three times before you decide that you disagree with me. And that you will not do if you don’t value me. Meaning, he does not ask for esteem so that whatever he says the readers will accept automatically. He does ask for esteem so that the readers will think again and again before deciding that they do not accept it. He wants them to give him that credit. In the end, in the end, you’ll decide what you decide. I’m not asking you to accept what I say. I am asking that when you study me, give me the credit of not having spoken nonsense. Think a second and a third time, and after that decide what you decide. You can accept what I say and you can disagree with what I say. And I see we’re already getting near the end, so I’ll just bring one more anecdote related to this issue. This is all in parentheses because of the question of whether this means we’re not supposed to accept the words of the Talmud. I want to argue the opposite. This whole thing is built only on the fact that we do accept what is written in the Talmud. There is a very strange Magen Avraham in siman 156—151, 156, I don’t remember—in that siman where he brings all the… there are all sorts of Jewish laws that don’t appear in the Shulchan Arukh, and the Magen Avraham piles them all together, and in the Shulchan Arukh it says afterwards, “afterward let him go and earn a living,” at the end of the laws of the morning prayer. So it says there a siman with one סעיף, “afterward let him go out to”—laws of gossip?
[Speaker E] No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he finished praying—at the end of the laws of the morning prayer, 151 or 156, I don’t remember anymore.
[Speaker E] Yes, the Mishnah Berurah also brings it there in the name of the Magen Avraham, I think.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. So the Magen Avraham brings, in that סעיף of the Shulchan Arukh, a long list of various Jewish laws for which he has no other place to bring them. One of the Jewish laws he brings—yes, someone here already wrote it in the chat—a law that I’m actually fond of, that you’re allowed to say things in the name of a great person, ki heikhi delikabelu minei—so that they’ll accept it from him. You’re allowed to say that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said something, even though he didn’t say it, in order that they should accept this Jewish law from you; you’re allowed to ascribe it to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. The urban legend says that once—what was the name of the Jerusalem preacher, come on—Rabbi Shalom Schwadron. Rabbi Shalom Schwadron once told his audience that he heard in the name of the Chazon Ish that one is allowed to say things… The Magen Avraham brings this Jewish law. Now on the face of it, this Jewish law is very puzzling. Any ignoramus can tell me an incorrect Jewish law, tell me that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said it, and cause me to desecrate the Sabbath. And Rabbi Moshe Feinstein never said it; that’s your invention. How—how can it be that one is permitted to do such a thing? My answer, and I’ll say it briefly, is that you’re allowed to do that only because the assumption is that even if you tell me this in the name of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, I still won’t accept it. Because if I automatically accept what you tell me in the name of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein,
[Speaker C] Then—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] then it’s forbidden to say such a thing. Obviously it’s forbidden to do such a thing. The whole permission to do such a thing exists only because of the assumption that even if I hear something in the name of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, I won’t accept it. So now you’ll ask: then what’s the point of the permission to say it in the name of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, if in any case I won’t accept it?
[Speaker C] What is the permission for?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The permission is meant so that I’ll think about it again. What is this permission for? If a person says something, offers some argument or some halakhic ruling, and he feels that people are dismissing him, they’re not seriously considering at all what he said, and he feels he’s right, then he says, “You know, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said this.” What happens now? Now people will think again about his argument, and again, because we can assume that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein does not say nonsense. In the end, they still may decide that they don’t agree with him, but at least they’ll relate seriously to the argument he is making. That’s what this permission is meant to achieve. This permission is not meant to make you accept what I’m saying, but rather that you reconsider it, and reconsider it again, before deciding whether you accept it or not. That is exactly what I said in the name of Rabbi Shimon Shkop from that passage in Bava Kamma. When I value someone, I will reconsider what he says again and again. That doesn’t mean that in the end I will necessarily accept what he says, but I won’t dismiss it out of hand. Rather, I’ll invest more thought before deciding whether it is right or not. In the end, I may still decide according to what I say, what I think, but I will give him that credit. That’s the meaning.
By the way, and with this I’ll finish—there once was, and this too is really a long parenthesis, I’ve gone a bit off track, but these are interesting and important things, I think—there was once a well-known story that someone forged the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim. It was in Lithuania, I think, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Someone—for after all, there is no Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim. We do not have a Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim. Now he forged one; he claimed that he had found a manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim. He wrote his own novel insights on Kodashim, but wrote them in the style of the Jerusalem Talmud and claimed that he had found a manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim. And there was a very large controversy among the scholars of that period: is it authentic or forged? Is it really a manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim or not? The story goes that the Rogatchover claimed it was not genuine because there is a rule in the Jerusalem Talmud that in every chapter there appears a sage who had not appeared before that chapter. And he identified that there this was not the case. Interesting, because the Rogatchover had astonishing mastery, but that was the claim. No matter. In the end it turned out to be a forgery. But the question is: what is the problem? That should be perfectly fine—one is allowed to forge things in the name of a great person so that people will accept them; that’s the Magen Avraham. So that’s what this person did. Why were people angry at him? What’s wrong with doing that? The answer is very simple: because the Talmud has authority. What is written in the Talmud, I am obligated to accept. Now if you forge Talmud, that is forbidden, because here you are forging something such that when I hear it in the name of that great authority, I will be required to accept it. That is forbidden. When did they permit forging things in the name of a great person? Only when it is a great person such that even if I hear the statement in his name, if I disagree I still will not accept it. I will only reconsider it again and again because a great person said it. But in a place where you tell me something in the name of someone such that I will certainly accept it, there certainly is no such permission of the Magen Avraham. That is my claim. Okay, I’ll stop here. If anyone wants to comment or ask, that’s possible.
[Speaker E] So basically you’re saying—first of all, I really enjoyed it, thank you—you’re basically saying that every concept, in its essence, cannot be grasped by a human being.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say every concept. But at least there are concepts—fundamental concepts, complex and fundamental concepts—that are hard to formulate, hard to define, and therefore what one should do instead of giving a definition is give a clarification. By the way, that’s what I did in the previous lecture with the concept of speed. The definition of the concept of speed as distance divided by time—I argued that it is incorrect. But it helped me clarify the concept of speed. After I rejected that definition, we were left with a better understanding of what the concept of speed is, but not with a definition. I don’t have a definition. But I was left with a better understanding, or clarification, of the concept. That’s basically what I did in the previous lecture.
[Speaker E] So basically, when you delimit the space in which the definition that eludes you might be found, you have more power or more ability to manage with each and every concept.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. You also delimit where it is not found, not only where it is found.
[Speaker E] Yes, yes, yes. You make a boundary. A boundary is from here to here, of course. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is the concept of clarification. The concept of clarification is basically the doctrine of negative attributes. You bring examples and show that no definition holds up, but after you’ve thrown out all the definitions, you are left with some unformulated understanding, which is a good understanding. That’s what remains with you. Sometimes that journey ends and you are left with a formulated definition. Sometimes, yes. But sometimes you will not manage to be left with a formulated definition; you’ll be left with a concept that you understand, but not with a definition.
[Speaker E] What kinds of things can one actually arrive at an absolute definition of? Are there such things? A triangle, you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] can define. Even that you can’t.
[Speaker E] Even that—it depends on the question of whether it can be
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] defined or not.
[Speaker E] What? You can define what it isn’t, what cannot be defined.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? A triangle, I
[Speaker E] know how to define a triangle.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can define what it isn’t? A polygon with three sides—that’s a triangle. What’s the problem?
[Speaker E] That’s what it is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, not what it isn’t.
[Speaker E] In its essence? No. Why? A polygon with three sides.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You tagged a purely geometric form; you didn’t say what it is in its essence.
[Speaker E] That is a triangle. A triangle is a geometric form. Yes, that’s a very superficial layer of a triangle.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking to you about the essence. That is a triangle. What do you mean? That’s the definition of a triangle. A polygon with three sides, that’s all. In many things we define. We have definitions that remain with us, and they are formulated definitions. But I’m saying that many times, especially with fundamental, abstract, and complex concepts, in the end we are left—after throwing out all the definitions because they don’t stand up to scrutiny—but it was not a pointless path. We threw out all the definitions in order to build; we are basically building—actually, you know what, in the Talmud there is what is called engraving by hollowing. Sometimes you write something directly, and sometimes you create something by removing everything else, and what remains is the letter. A definition through hollowing-out—that is clarification. Fine. Yes. Okay, anyone else?
[Speaker C] Yes, I wanted to ask the Rabbi how I get the link for the conference lecture on Monday?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? It appears in Moodle. Where? In Moodle. You’re not—you’re not a student, so you don’t have access to Moodle. So here there is the table for pensioners and for the people who aren’t students; there is a table on the institute’s website, and in the table there is the list of lectures. For you, in what is accessible to pensioners, it should be there, and for each lecture there is a link that you can click on and enter. In any case, by the way, this is the link you are in right now. This is my permanent link. You can always enter through it.
[Speaker C] Excellent, thank you, thank you very much.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, more power to you. Well then, goodbye, all the best, Sabbath peace.
[Speaker C] Sabbath peace, goodbye.