Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel’s Thought – Genesis – Lecture 11

Table of Contents

• The separation of male and female as a metaphor for a natural process
• “The human” as the name of the species, not a proper name
• The creation of the human from dust as figurative language and primordial matter
• Sforno, Bereishit Rabbah, and “a living being” versus “a speaking spirit”
• An interpretive difficulty: the creation passage and the Garden of Eden passage
• The development of speech and language as a gradual process
• The image of God: intellect versus will, and the connection to free choice
• A critique of materialism, determinism, and the Turing test
• Evolution, fossils, and angels as divine will in nature

Summary

General Overview

The text interprets the descriptions of creation and the separation between male and female as metaphor and riddle, not as a medical analysis, and identifies them as describing long natural processes of which the human being was unaware. It argues that “the human” in the Torah is the name of the species, not a proper name, and proposes a figurative reading of “dust from the ground” as well. It presents Sforno’s approach to “a living being” as an animal stage preceding the “image of God,” discusses the interpretive difficulty this creates in relation to Onkelos and Rashi, and connects the discussion to the question of evolution and scientific claims about earlier stages. It then develops a philosophical discussion of intelligence, choice, and determinism, critiques the Turing test and materialist epiphenomenalism, and identifies the image of God with judgment that is not compelled. It also adds a discussion of the relationship between thought and language, and of a positive feedback loop in which language develops thought and thought develops language.

The Separation of Male and Female as a Metaphor for a Natural Process

The Torah describes the separation between male and female in terms of a “surgery” as a kind of riddle and metaphor, because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not perform surgery in a hospital and does not need anesthesia. Taking the rib means taking the female side that was within the human being who was created and turning it into an independent creature. The transformation from a bisexual human into separate male and female is a prolonged process like all processes in nature, not an immediate event of anesthesia and waking up. The deep sleep symbolizes that the human being was not aware that the process was taking place, and when he “wakes up” he finds a woman who is purely female and a partner for the purely male, which had not existed before.

“The Human” as the Name of the Species, Not a Proper Name

The statement “And God created the human” does not refer to one person whose proper name was Adam, but to the human species. The text cites Miri Raz’s claim that people are used to thinking that “Adam” is the man’s proper name, but “the human,” with the definite article, is the name of the species, as is also clear from the verse “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea.” It emphasizes that just as you would not say “the Jacob” or “the Moses,” so too “the human” points to a category, not to an individual. It states that this precision is “completely clear,” and that anyone who thinks otherwise is mistaken.

The Creation of the Human from Dust as Figurative Language and Primordial Matter

The description of the creation of the human from dust is metaphorical and rhetorical, and the Holy One, blessed be He, did not take a spoonful of dirt and knead it with water like children in kindergarten. The dust is the material from which animals were also formed, and the water represents the infusion of life into inert matter. The text proposes reading this against the background of the language of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and his four elements, where mixing dust and water describes a transition from raw material to life. It presents this as an understanding that could have been self-evident in earlier periods.

Sforno, Bereishit Rabbah, and “A Living Being” versus “A Speaking Spirit”

Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno says that the human being was first formed together with the animals as “a living being,” meaning a vital but non-speaking soul, the animal level within the human. Afterward, the “intellectual image of God” was placed within him as a spiritual dimension beyond the animal. The text quotes Bereishit Rabbah on “Let the earth bring forth a living being,” in the name of Rabbi Elazar: “A living being—this is the spirit of the first man,” and sets this against Sforno’s reading. It argues that Sforno reached his conclusion from interpreting the verses, without knowing modern biology, and even identifies in this a pattern similar to “evolution”: beginning from an animal creature and progressing until the addition of a spiritual dimension.

An Interpretive Difficulty: the Creation Passage and the Garden of Eden Passage

The text argues that as a matter of interpreting the verse, Sforno’s approach is not convincing, because the Garden of Eden passage comes to add to the six days of creation, not to detract from them. It presents the explanation of Onkelos, followed by Rashi, according to which “a living spirit” is “a speaking soul,” that is, the power of speech and the expression of thoughts. According to this, the Torah is adding that the human being, who was already described as having been given the image of God, that is intellect, also received the ability to express his concepts in a perceptible way through speech. It explains that the living soul of an animal consists of sensation and cries and the like, whereas the living soul of the human also includes the expression of inner intellectuality in a perceptible form.

The Development of Speech and Language as a Gradual Process

The text states that human speech did not arise immediately with the formation of intellect. Rather, little by little, the ability to express conceptual thought in verbal concepts emerged from potential into actuality, and thus language was formed. It adds that the relation between thought and speech is not only one-way, because language itself in turn refines thought. It gives examples from linguistic and cultural research, such as the Pirahã tribe and the claim that a conceptual system within language enables quantitative thought, and connects this to the idea of a positive feedback loop in which the creation of language improves thought, and improved thought creates more sophisticated language. It explains that this is how one can understand the exponential gap between human capacities and those of other animals.

The Image of God: Intellect versus Will, and the Connection to Free Choice

The text presents the claim that Maimonides identifies the image of God with intellect, and brings his earlier claim that in Rav Kook the image of God is will rather than intellect. It then argues that the gap is not as large as it seems, because intellect in the sense of intelligence requires judgment and decision that are not compelled, and that is very close to the meaning of will. It defines intelligence as something bound up with judgment, where given a certain situation there is more than one possibility, and the human decides between options rather than merely reacting in a programmed way. It describes this with the image of “moving electrons without a physical force” and as the ability to “create something from nothing on a small scale,” and that is why this is called the image of God.

A Critique of Materialism, Determinism, and the Turing Test

The text argues that intelligence without choice empties the concept of intelligence of content, and leads to the absurdity that even water or birds would count as “intelligent,” since their behavior can be described by complex equations. It critiques the Turing test and argues that even if one cannot distinguish between a machine and a human being in written conversation, that does not mean the machine has become human. It discusses materialist epiphenomenalism, according to which consciousness is a side-effect that does not cause action, and presents the difficulty of proving consciousness in a monkey facing a mirror if consciousness is not a causal part of the process. It concludes that the essential distinction of the image of God depends on the capacity for decision that is not compelled, whether in value-laden decisions or in scientific judgments between theories.

Evolution, Fossils, and Angels as Divine Will in Nature

The text states that the creation of the human in the image of God is the end of a long process whose beginning lies in a non-intellectual creature belonging to the category of animals, and that the human’s physiological form changes in parallel as well. It says that Darwin’s evidence and that of fossil researchers for the existence of earlier stages appears convincing, and mentions findings of skeletons of bipedal walkers with small skulls whose brains could not have been like the human brain we know. It argues that Darwin’s mistake lies in the overall outlook that evades the question of how the changes were produced, but once one recognizes the divine will operating in nature through the angels, there is no need to deny the description of events as scientific inquiry presents them. It raises the possibility of jumps or missing stages between species, and at least with regard to free choice it describes a jump that is not continuous. At the same time, it sets against this the possibility that even a continuous process can be guided as part of the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, is “in the picture.”

The description of separation in the Torah, in the form of speaking about the separation between male and female who were separated from a kind of two-sided being—that is, what’s called that they were created two-sided and underwent a separation operation. Fine. The Torah’s description of the separation in surgical terms is in the manner of riddle and metaphor. The Holy One, blessed be He, is not a surgeon in a hospital; He does not need anesthesia. Taking the rib means taking the female side of the human being that was created and turning it into an independent creature. This process of turning the bisexual human being into separate male and female was certainly a prolonged process, like all processes in nature. So what he really wants to say is that the Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t actually do anesthesia there in the surgical sense; rather, this probably comes to describe some process that perhaps was not conscious to the human being, some process that happened naturally in some way, so that it separated into two kinds—some evolutionary kind of separation—from a bisexual being into two kinds, male and female. The growth of the garden in which the human was, and that same separation—”And the Lord God caused to grow from the ground every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food”—was also a prolonged process. The deep sleep symbolizes—he writes here, right, now I remember—the deep sleep symbolizes the fact that the human being was not aware that the process was taking place. And then, as it were, he wakes up and finds that there is a woman, a creature of the human species who is purely female, unlike the bisexual being that existed before, and she is a mate for the creature of the human species who is purely male, which was not the case before. Meaning, the human being was not aware that the process was taking place. The question is why it is important that he not be aware, or why there needs to be this lack of awareness. I think what he means to say is that we are dealing here with some natural process that took a long time, and it’s not that there was one person who was under anesthesia, they performed surgery on him, he woke up, and now there are two kinds of people; rather, this is a metaphorical description of some process that happened to humanity, perhaps before there wasn’t exactly awareness or something like that, until the human species came into being, and when the human species came into being, it was created as a duality: “male and female He created them.”

When the Torah says, “And God created the human being,” it does not mean one person whose proper name was Adam. I’m used to this; I heard this from Rabbi Miri Raz—I mentioned her earlier, she was speaking on the radio. Which rabbi? Miri Raz. Who is that? A Reform rabbi, I think, I don’t know. So she said that we’re used to thinking that Adam and Eve—Adam is the name of the male and Eve is the name of the female. And we’re used to thinking that Adam is a proper name, meaning it’s somebody’s name. Later it became like Frigidaire, like a brand name, but really it started out as the name of… even today there are people named Adam. Huh? Even today there are people named Adam. Right. No, she says it’s like cellphone. Yes, no, no, that’s later, it turned into… there are still actual Frigidaires whose proper name is Adam. Adam, yes, Adam Baruch. So she was talking about “In the image of God He made the human being,” and so on, and they think that means the man. “In the image of God He made the human being” means the whole human species, because “the human being” is not a proper name but the name of the species. Is that right? What? Is that right? Yes, yes. She is not talking about one human being—on the contrary, she is so right that it is completely obvious. I don’t understand how anyone thinks otherwise, but never mind. It does not mean one person whose proper name was Adam. “The human being,” with the definite article, is the name of the species, just as in the previous verse: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea,” and so on. Adam is not a proper name; rather, it is speaking about the human species. And likewise later: “And the Lord God formed the human being from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living soul.” Again, obviously, if we have the definite article—”the human being”—then clearly this is not a proper name. No one says “the Jacob” or “the Moses,” there’s no such thing. When you say “the human being,” then obviously Adam is the name of a species; it is not the name of an individual entity.

The description of the creation of the human being from dust is by way of metaphor and poetic expression. The Holy One, blessed be He, did not take a scoop of dirt and knead it with water the way children do in kindergarten. The dust here is the material from which the animals were also created. And the water is apparently some sort of life-force; putting life into inert matter—that is the mixing of water with dust. Okay? In fact, in the language of ancient philosophers here, of Aristotle—water, earth, wind, and fire—there it is really, I think, the plainest reading. It seems to me that in Aristotle’s time there would have been no need even to write this. It would have been obvious that mixing water with dust means mixing the element of earth, which is the most basic, lowest, most material raw substance, with water, which is the introduction of life or something more living. That is what creates the human being. So it’s not… “And they built palaces in the sand.” Okay. Rabbi Ovadia Sforno says that the human being was first created together with the animals as a living soul, meaning, a vital soul that does not speak. When it says “living soul,” that means the first level of the human being, which is the animal level. All right? So he lives, but he still does not speak—a vital soul; it comes from “living soul,” sorry, let me just take this. A vital soul that does not speak. By the way, in the Tanya, where they distinguish between souls, he distinguishes between a divine soul and an animal soul. A synonym there for the animal soul is the vital soul. And the vital soul is basically—as distinct from the soul—as distinct from those levels, say, that appear in Sefer Yetzirah? Yes, the animal dimension that exists in every person, the animal element that exists in a human being; all of us are also animals. Meaning, a kind of animal. We have the physiology of animals just like anything else. The spiritual dimensions are the thing beyond that. So Sforno’s claim is that “living soul” describes that layer. Fine? And therefore he says, a vital soul that does not speak. In other words, this is before the speaking stage, in the terminology of the Kuzari—vegetative, animate, speaking. This is still animate. Yes, exactly. And therefore he calls it a living soul.

And afterward—of course this is exactly the opposite of Rashi, right? This is a midrash, not Rashi—that “living soul” means a speaking spirit. It’s precisely about speech, yes, that’s what… Anyway, he’ll get to that in a moment. And afterward there was given to him the intellectual image of God, which is the spiritual dimension beyond the animal. And so too in Bereshit Rabbah on the verse at the beginning of the sixth day, “And God said: Let the earth bring forth a living soul”—Rabbi Elazar said: “living soul” means the spirit of the first Adam. Sforno did not know the views of the modern biologists—I just have to, my son may be there in some kind of… sorry. Hello, Shuni? I’m in the middle of a class. At ten, is that possible? At ten? Or is this something that has to be now? Okay, goodbye. My son just has apartment matters he needs to close, etc., so I’m afraid, I don’t want… Okay. So, “And God said, let the earth bring forth”—on the verse at the beginning of the sixth day, “And God said, let the earth bring forth,” again, “a living soul,” the same expression—Rabbi Elazar said: “living soul” means the spirit of the first Adam. Fine.

Sforno did not know the views of the modern biologists, and he arrived at this only from interpreting the verses. His claim basically—what is he really saying? That when the Holy One, blessed be He, made the human being a living soul, what is really happening here? This is exactly evolution. Right? At first there was some kind of animal here that slowly develops, and an additional dimension was placed within it, the spiritual part. So you see that a human being was not created here the way we usually imagine; rather, it begins with some kind of animal and slowly develops into being human—that is, an evolutionary process. So he says, but Sforno did not know the views of the modern biologists; he did not say this because of biology; he arrived at it only from interpreting the verses. The verse troubled him: “And the Lord God formed the human being from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living soul.” But “living soul” is the designation of animals on the fifth day and on the sixth day. You can see in the creation narrative that on the fifth and sixth days they actually use the term “living soul” regarding beasts, regarding animals. So when it says “and the human became a living soul,” once you get that introduction from the Torah—what is a “living soul”?—Sforno says, well, then apparently that’s what it is. When the human was created, he was a living soul. By the way, it’s the same day, Friday morning—before the human, they also made animals. So why didn’t they call him a human soul? What? They created the animals—why call him a human soul? No, it was already an animal that potentially would ultimately develop into a human being; not all animals developed into human beings, some remained animals. So he says, this was that same thing which in the future would be the human being, but when it was created it was still a living soul, not something else.

From here he concluded that the Torah is once again recounting the order of the creation of man from the beginning, before the image of God was given to him. However, with regard to interpretation of the verse, this is not plausible. Meaning, he thinks Sforno is not plausible in terms of interpreting the verse. Because in the Garden of Eden passage, the Torah comes to add to what was told in the six-day creation account, not to detract from it. There is the description of the creation of man on the sixth day, and afterward the Garden of Eden passage. Fine? So in the Garden of Eden passage, according to Sforno, we are basically taken back. On the sixth day the Torah says man was created. In the Garden of Eden passage, according to Sforno, we go backward and tell how it happened. So first he was a living soul like an animal, and afterward the image of God. Fine? It’s simply a detailed account of what was described all at once on the sixth day. But he says no, it’s an addition. Meaning, on the sixth day man was created at the first level, and in the Garden of Eden passage that comes afterward there is an addition, not a subtraction. But that first stage is not an animal, because it says there “the image of God.” It already says that on the sixth day. So if you say the Garden of Eden passage does not elaborate what happened on the sixth day but adds to it, what is left for it to add after man already has the image of God? What is stage two? Yes, what is stage two, if you’ve already described everything? That’s what he says: the Torah adds here that this human being, who has already been said to have been given the image of God—which is the intellect, in a certain assumption, we’ll return to that in a moment—already on the sixth day in the creation narrative, there is a description of a human and the image of God, which is already the intellect; that is already, seemingly, the complete human being. And therefore Sforno says: so wait, then what is this “living soul” that appears afterward, and how does that work? Apparently they are beginning to detail anew the whole creation that was described briefly on the sixth day. He says no, these are two levels. On the sixth day there is the first stage, and afterward in the Garden of Eden passage comes the second stage. But the first stage is not an animal, because it says there “the image of God.” So if the Garden of Eden passage does not elaborate what happened on the sixth day but adds to it, what is left to add after the human already has the image of God? That is stage two.

This is what he says: the Torah adds here that this human being, who has already been said to have been given the image of God—which is the intellect—was capable of expressing his concepts and thoughts in a vivid, perceptible form, namely through speech. That is what was added to him. Meaning, at first he had the ability to think, but he did not have the ability to express it in speech. Then the ability to speak was placed in him, implanted in him, and this is Onkelos’s and Rashi’s “speaking spirit.” I’ll come back to these things in a moment. The “living soul” of an animal is its being able to feel and cry out and the like. And the “living soul” of a human being includes also his being able to express even his intellectual inwardness in a perceptible form. “Perceptible” probably also with reflection, meaning being aware of it. It seems that human speech was not created immediately with the emergence of intellect; rather, little by little there emerged from potential into actuality the ability to express his conceptual thoughts in verbal concepts, and thus language was created.

Okay. Now I’ll pause here for a moment and speak a bit about the meaning of these several stages he’s talking about. First of all, the claim is that the image of God created on the sixth day is the intellect. We discussed that at the beginning when we weren’t studying Rabbi Kook. In the year when we studied Rabbi Kook, I said—I claimed—that basically To the Perplexed of the Generation does not come to translate Guide of the Perplexed into our generation but to update it. Not the same thing. To update it, because it is a different Guide of the Perplexed. Because for Maimonides, the image of God really is the intellect, but for Rabbi Kook, the image of God is the will, not the intellect. And in truth, if you think about it—we talked about this once, I think. Sixth day… yes, last class, that in fact it’s the same thing because exactly, right, about that electron that moves without a force. I think I spoke about it last class, I don’t remember anymore. That in fact it’s the same thing because yes, if I spoke about it then I surely brought the example of the—yes, the intelligence of birds. People always talk about the intelligence of birds, how they know how to navigate and solve complicated differential equations—things that intelligent people don’t always manage to solve, and sometimes no one knows how to solve them. Now this is nonsense, of course. Clearly birds have no intelligence, just as a computer has no intelligence. Intelligence has to be something that is the result of reflection and judgment. Only when you look at what the birds do, analyze them, put a mathematical model on them, write an equation, decide on a way to solve it, and do that—you are an intelligent human being. Or if you do only part of that, it’s still some kind of intelligence; everyone has however much intelligence they have. But a bird has no intelligence at all; it simply does what it is built to do.

Wait, but what you just described doesn’t have to be voluntary. What? No, wait… ostensibly this process is a process that isn’t… No, no, no, no. What I said is that it does have to be voluntary. I’ll explain why. If indeed everything I’ve done here is forced on me, as Leibowitz sometimes puts it—that science, scientific cognition, is forced on us—then again it isn’t intelligence. Exactly, then once again it isn’t intelligence. What’s the difference between that and a bird? Then all I’m doing is acting out what I’m programmed to do. Only cognition, only cognition… then that’s not intelligence. So what is it? Just that I also know what I’m doing, but I don’t decide what I’m doing—I merely am aware of it, I photograph with a camera what the bird is doing—so I become intelligent? No, one has to ask… That’s the question. So I’m saying if that’s the case, then there is no intelligence in the world. And what does “knows” even mean? Yes, in that system I don’t know what “knows” means. The Turing test, yes, about a human being—do you know the Turing test, where when there are already machines—he foresaw the future this way—machines that know how to calculate in very sophisticated ways, how will we know to distinguish when it’s a machine and when it’s a human? A machine and a human behind two windows; you send them questions and get answers back. Fine? You don’t see who you’re talking to; everything is in writing, meaning you don’t hear, don’t see, nothing—everything, you get the answer in writing. The moment you can no longer distinguish whether you are speaking to the human or the machine, that means the machines have caught up with us. So the machines have become human. Now, this test misses something very, very fundamental. It misses the difference between a bird and a human being. That is, a human being in the sense of an intelligent creature. It could be that the computer will be able to conduct a conversation even better than a human being. According to materialism it misses nothing. No, of course, it assumes an assumption, fine. I simply do not accept the assumption. We already discussed once that one should not confuse materialism with non-dualism; that is, it is not yet connected to free choice—there could be a spiritual world. A metaphysics of consciousness even without free choice? No, no—I spoke about this last time, maybe you weren’t here. I said that it is basically the same thing: judgment and choice are the same thing. That is, in the end, as long as you are not making a decision about what you say, but are programmed and know how to speak, then you had a genius programmer. So your programmer is the genius. What does that have to do with the computer being human? What kind of nonsense is that? In my view.

But how can you tell the difference? How can one distinguish? You can’t distinguish. But the fact that you can’t distinguish—does that mean it is human? Then I have a problem with the distinction. And a blind person can’t distinguish either, so because of that now I’m a machine and not a human because he is blind? According to materialism, it is human. Well, fine, that’s the materialist assumption, but I’m saying one has to understand that there is a very, very far-reaching assumption here. According to that assumption, even water is highly intelligent, as I said, right? Because water solves the Navier-Stokes equations, which almost no one knows how to solve in any case that is not completely trivial. These are terribly complicated equations, much more complicated than the equations of bird navigation, much more complicated. Okay? So what? Would anyone think to say—the greatest materialist—would anyone think to say that water is smarter than Einstein? Who invented that formula? Doesn’t matter; it’s the equation that describes hydrodynamics. Hydrodynamics, yes, doesn’t matter. So it’s a complicated equation, very hard to solve, okay? Only in extremely astonishingly simple cases do we manage to solve it, the greatest geniuses. In all other cases, no—it can’t be solved. So what does that mean now? That water is smarter than Einstein? Would anyone think to say such a thing? The materialist has to say yes. The deterministic materialist has to say yes. Why? Because Einstein too is compelled to do what he does, and so is the water. No, wait, the materialist difference would be that wisdom is the compelled brain mechanism that performs the process. But what’s the difference? The bird does that too; it solves differential equations, only in its own language; it draws the graph of the solution with its wings. It doesn’t solve equations. Of course it does. Things happen to it that are described by equations. No, what difference does it make? It’s the same thing. That is exactly what Einstein does, exactly the same thing. Yes, but according to the materialist the human is smarter, smarter… No, but that’s what I’m saying—even that is not true. Okay, even that is not true. They both don’t do anything, really they do nothing. But what is defined as wisdom is that you have a brain mechanism that performs—or in which there occur—the operations that carry out the calculation, and not just that something happens to you that can be described by a calculation. What’s the difference? I don’t understand what the difference is. What does it matter? You said the equations of this are more this-and-that, so the water is smarter. I’m saying that according to the materialist, he would be smarter because the equations of everything happening in the brain—yes—that’s far more complicated than the equation… No, not at all sure that it’s more complicated, really not. Why? There’s no definition. Really not at all sure it’s more complicated. Not at all.

By the way, brain researchers say that everything is calculations, yes, not intelligence. No, obviously—we’re talking about this. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The whole book is… So now the point is that this claim basically empties the concept of intelligence of all content. If you take it to the absurd, then you really have to assume that water has intelligence. We don’t know how to define precisely—even not precisely—various human concepts such as thought. No, I’m not talking about the inability to define what intelligence is. Of course I don’t have a definition either, obviously not. But then how do you answer intelligence tests? Supposedly, yes, goes the joke. So certainly there’s a good chance that we’ll build a computer that will answer, that will do the psychometric exam. But it will do the psychometric exam because you built it that way. It won’t do it on its own. In the end, when I sit opposite this machine and I say this is a machine, this is a human, this is a machine, this is a human… You won’t be able to distinguish. So I won’t have proof. Of course not. Then why do I say this one is a machine and this one a human? Because I feel it intuitively. What is intuition? I don’t know. He can’t say either. So I’m saying: regarding the Turing test, I agree that in the end it could be that we won’t know how to distinguish. What I do not agree with is that the stage at which we can no longer distinguish means that the machine has become human. That I do not agree with. Those are two different things. Maybe yes and maybe no. It’s an interesting question. If you’ll always find a question he doesn’t know. Then he won’t pass the Turing test, but I’m saying: assuming he does pass the Turing test. Suppose—and it’s not far-fetched at all—that could happen. We are already not so far from that even today, by the way, with learning systems, neural networks. You’re already not so far from that. You can already see it on the horizon, that it’s going to happen. Okay? So, then—but I think that, so it could be that the Turing test really won’t… that is, the machine will pass it.

There is another difference connected to intelligence that maybe we can’t define precisely, but even without free choice—I’m trying to say that intelligence without free choice, that a person has the ability to know certain things that are true even without—that is, those first principles or things, this perception of what is right and what is not right, like the principle of simplicity, or things that some other mechanical thing cannot do. And the bird knows how to do that—what do you mean? How does it know how to fly exactly to Australia? It solves a differential equation with Occam’s razor; it chooses the simplest equation and solves it. The bird now works according to a sequence of causal events. No, and so do you. Not true. There are things I know are true… those first principles… You’re mistaken. I’m not mistaken, because there are things I know are true without some causal event having happened and causing me… There is no such thing according to the materialist view. No, so hold on, I’m not talking about materialism; I’m talking—but that’s not what I said. I’m talking not about materialism, I’m talking about something else that is… No, deterministic but not materialistic—same thing; you’re still mistaken. Why? Because if it’s deterministic, then it means that basically you are driven exactly like the bird. There is no difference whatsoever. There is no difference; you didn’t make any decisions here. Rather, what? You’re aware… Right, I didn’t make a decision. You’re aware of the mechanical process you’re doing, like a bird. Not just awareness, not just awareness. I didn’t make a decision, but there was still a non-causal process here. Entirely causal. Not physically causal. No, entirely causal. Physically causal. You are mistaken again. Mistake. I’m telling you, we talked about this last time. I’ll explain. I brought that example, right, of the monkey in front of the mirror? Now I’m just remembering when I spoke about it. The monkey in front of the mirror. So there was that thing I sent to Sompolinsky, right, where they put some stain on its forehead and stood it in front of a mirror and it removed the stain, and the researchers claim that this is an indication that it has self-awareness. Okay? Because they see that when it sees in the mirror that thing, it understands that it is itself, that it’s not another monkey, and therefore this causes it to clean off the stain, and it sees that it gets cleaned off, and then it stops. So they see that it has awareness—it understands that it is itself—so that means it has self-awareness.

Now I asked Sompolinsky whether in his opinion such an experiment proves there is self-awareness. It may be yes, it may be no—I’m not even talking about whether it’s true or not—I’m asking whether the experiment proves the conclusion that there is self-awareness. According to Sompolinsky, unequivocally no. He didn’t answer me on that, of course. He answered, but he didn’t really give me a genuine answer. But according to Sompolinsky there is no proof. Do you know why? Because according to his materialist view… yes. And deterministic. Now what happens according to his view? What happens according to his view is what is called epiphenomenalism. That is, why does the monkey move its hand to clean the paint? Exactly the same as a human, by the way, it doesn’t matter. Suppose someone punches me and I punch him back. How does the materialist explain this? He also knows there is consciousness and I think and decide and get angry—of course, he agrees to all that. But what? That all that is epiphenomenal. Meaning, all of that accompanies the mechanical process that makes the decisions independently of it. Meaning, I received a punch, that punch transmits a pulse to the brain, the brain processes it according to its structure, whatever, and as a result a pulse goes out to this hand—punch him back—and so I punched him back. And there is the sensation of consciousness. Exactly. Now consciousness accompanies that. Meaning, we also have some kind of… now that consciousness is to a large extent an illusion, because part of that consciousness is also the feeling of decision. It is not just awareness of what is happening; we also have some feeling which, according to them, is an illusion—a feeling of decision. But that decision doesn’t really cause anything. It is an illusion that accompanies the processes. So I said to him: according to your view, the monkey standing there in front of the mirror undergoes the whole process I undergo, right? Only the mechanical part. What evidence is there that a consciousness also arises in it that looks at this? After all, you do not agree that consciousness causes the movement of the hand and the cleaning of the… it only accompanies. So what evidence is there that it accompanies? Maybe it doesn’t accompany; maybe yes, maybe no, I don’t know. There is no evidence at all. Rather, what? It has a… it is built like us; the light from the mirror hits here, so it moves a hand to clean the spot. Fine? Now I… What? It could be like the riddle with the hats, figuring out what hat is on your head from what others… But you look at others and therefore you… meaning, it looks there and thinks maybe I also have… No, it thinks nothing—that is exactly what I’m saying, because according to Sompolinsky it’s all a mechanical process. It’s only that alongside this mechanical process there is also consciousness in a human being, and regarding the monkey you have no evidence at all that this accompanies it, because the process itself you explain. So what evidence do you have that consciousness accompanies it? Now of course, this is not a refutation of him. He could say: correct, you are right, the whole story is nonsense. Fine. He just didn’t say it, and I tried hard to bring him there.

I have a basic question. According to materialism, what is consciousness in the first place? What is consciousness? After all, there is physicalism, there is only physics, forces, fields. What is consciousness? They claim it is a property of a physical whole. What does that mean, a property of a physical whole? What kind of property? That is their claim. But if it is a property of a physical whole, then it is a physical property. A property of a physical whole. But a physical property of the things? No, no. Liquidity is a physical property. This is not that. They say liquidity yes, but they say this is not that. So what is it? A property—a material whole constructed in a certain way gives rise to a property. But in materialism there is only matter, there is only… Ah, obviously. Therefore it is only a property of something; consciousness is not an entity, it is a property. But it is not a physical property of things; it is some other property of things. I don’t know. Again, I agree with you, you know—but that’s what they say. No, now I return to what I’m saying. A basic remark. I’m trying to say that even without free choice, you know there are processes that are not materialistic-causal, and that can also be without free choice. What does that mean? Doesn’t matter. But those processes—why should I care? If they are deterministic, then why should I care whether it is physical or not? What difference does it make? It is built into you and you actualize it. What difference does it make whether it is physical or non-physical? But it’s not built into you; it may simply be necessary that it happen. Fine, then built into the world, so even worse. Then even worse—it’s built into the world and not into me. Then I’m not intelligent at all. Fine, I’m not a determinist either. I’m only saying that would still be the difference between you and the bird. There is no difference whatsoever. No difference. In the bird there is the same thing built in, and it solves the equation. The bird is just particles acting with forces. No, what difference does it make? And in you there is something else called will. But it only accompanies—it’s exactly, again I’m saying, it takes no part in the process. It happens automatically. So where’s the intelligence here? What difference does it make whether the machine is made of light or made of iron or made of… I don’t know what. What difference does it make? As long as it’s a mechanical machine, what difference does it make? It’s a difference, it’s a difference. No, it is not a difference. Then I’ll say, you know what, the bird has intelligence and water doesn’t because the bird also breathes. Fine, I can point to many differences; it also has wings. That too is still all matter. That too is not an essential difference. No difference whatsoever between something that is not matter and something that is not… with regard to intelligence, none. None. With regard to intelligence as you define it? Obviously—with regard to intelligence as all of us understand the concept of intelligence. You mean with regard to intelligence defined by something voluntary—that’s not… With regard to intelligence as all of us understand the concept of intelligence. It changes nothing. You can define intelligence however you like, but I’m saying: in everyone’s conception, including the greatest materialists, the way they understand intelligence is exactly the way you and I understand intelligence. And in that definition, reflection—or the fact that it is spiritual and not bodily—is irrelevant; it doesn’t matter at all. What difference does it make? The essential thing in intelligence is that it involves judgment. And judgment means—and here I return to will and intellect—that given a certain brain state and a certain input to the eyes, or some sight I see or something like that, there is more than one possibility. Exactly. I consider which of several possibilities I choose to decide, to go, to behave, whatever, depending on what kind of decision we are talking about. That is called intelligence. If that thing is forced on me, there is no intelligence in it at all. It is like water.

Rabbi, suppose he decides whether to attack from the right or from the left, so he has two possibilities—he necessarily uses judgment. No, if it is forced on him. He makes an automatic calculation; it is obvious to him; his brain is already trained in such a way. He sees there is a mountain here, so it isn’t worthwhile to attack from there, so he attacks from here. But he is not thinking that it isn’t worthwhile and is worthwhile. That is my language. No, my language is to say worthwhile and not worthwhile—I’m describing it that way. I’m trying to understand where a human being’s judgment is here. So I’m saying then a human being’s judgment too is that he just flows according to the situation. The materialist claims that this is true: the human being too is like that. Now to decide whether this is right or that is right… okay, that’s what I’m saying. If the human being really decides, then I’m willing to talk about his having intelligence. Therefore I say the bird has no less intelligence than the human being—that’s a common mistake. The bird has no intelligence, period. Zero intelligence. Zero IQ. Even though it knows how to do things. Unless it chooses. Exactly, yes. If by bird I mean a bird as we usually understand it, under the assumption, say, that it does not choose—I really don’t know, not sure. On what basis do you say that? No, on the basis of the definition of the concept of intelligence. He is defining it now. The concept of intelligence is not… It could be that it chooses. It could be that it chooses. Let’s suppose for the sake of the discussion that the bird does not choose. Fine? I don’t know whether it chooses or not. Let’s talk about water. Or water, yes, doesn’t matter. Even that I don’t know, but I assume water does not choose, okay? Now my claim is that water doesn’t have a little intelligence, just as the bird doesn’t have a little intelligence. They have zero intelligence. This is not a quantitative difference. Because intelligence does not mean what tasks you know how to perform. Those are all the supervisor’s jokes, right? Give a soccer player… then twenty-two hooligans, exactly. So what is he actually trying to say? He is actually trying to say that as if—how did I get here?—there is no intelligence. It is not an expression of intelligence. Yes, exactly, meaning you don’t decide. Meaning, he doesn’t see it as some action that contains a dimension—I disagree with him completely, by the way. He does not see—exactly. I’m more in the basketball camp on this one. “The player who succeeded in scoring a goal against his opponent is not a happier human being,” said Leibowitz, “but rather a more cheerful beast.” Okay, maybe, yes, he knew how to express himself. That may be a kind of nastiness to say such a thing to soccer players, for whom that is their profession. A strong line. Wonderful, wonderful. It won’t happen. What? Was he a materialist? No, the opposite. The opposite. If he wrote about the psycho-physical problem—no, he was definitely not a materialist. He wasn’t a materialist? Of course not.

In any event, what I want to say is that the concept of intelligence or intellect—say Maimonides identifies the form of man, the image of God in man, with the intellect—even he basically starts from a point where a certain electron travels without any physical force acting on it. Because you need judgment; that is the meaning of judgment. The meaning of judgment is that the way you think or behave is not programmed into you, but that you decide it. And here I am not talking about choice in the sense of values or moral choices or things like that; I am talking about judgment even in science: choosing a scientific theory, deciding that this theory seems truer to me than that theory. If it is forced on me, then I am like water or a bird. If I exercise judgment, then I have intelligence. Okay? Now judgment—the rabbi talked about this, that in places where there are value judgments there is the moral context, and therefore I am now saying: no, in all the contexts we discussed about the Libet experiment, it is a decision about what to do. I’m saying that in decisions about what to do, there are things that seem to us like choices but really are just how we are built, and the only places where—pressing the button. But in a place where you have judgment, like between scientific theories. Right, that’s what the rabbi was talking about—it was in places of decision. I don’t know what I said then; I’m telling you what I think now. Maybe once I thought differently, I don’t know. I’m telling you what I think now. What I think now is that it’s the same thing. Maybe values—or more value-laden—that’s free will. Intellect is something… you can deliberate anywhere there is real deliberation, meaning where there are two sides and one must make a decision between them. It can be deliberation between two values or deliberation between two scientific theories; that is, it changes nothing. It’s not similar, but that isn’t enough. If value choice requires intelligence, that’s the minimum, because one needs to understand and one needs to exercise judgment. Yes, exactly—to exercise judgment and decide on one of several options. But a decision on one of several options that is not forced on me means that I move the first electron. Not a physical force. Because the given state does not dictate where the electron will run in the next stage. I now decide whether it will run here or run there. So what does that mean? Who moves it? The first one. After that my hand moves and delivers a punch and so on, but who moves the very first electron at the beginning? I do. Meaning, my soul, my will, my intellect. Therefore I said that intellect and will—the model of Rabbi Kook and the model of Maimonides—really converge in a certain sense. It is not exactly the same thing, but it is the same point—that is, the advantage of man over beast, or the image of God in man, is the ability to move electrons without physical force. To create, to create something in the world, to create processes. Exactly, exactly.

So that is what he says: that the image of God is the intellect. And I said that Rabbi Kook says it is the will. And now I say that this is not as different as it seems. Because why, why—yes, I really did say that. At the beginning of To the Perplexed of the Generation, that is really how I thought. If you’re talking about then, I agree. Now I’m reconstructing—it was already some time ago, and I’m not even sure the book itself came out that way. Okay, maybe, I don’t remember, because then I went on to do a second edition. In the context in which I spoke there, I indeed said that I identified more with Rabbi Kook in that dispute, because animals also have intellect, just less. They know how to do things, less sophisticated things than we do. But will means free choice. Free choice, in an essential way, exists only in the human being—at least it is commonly thought to exist only in the human being and in nothing else. Therefore, if you are looking for the image of God in man, I really would put the emphasis on the will. But now, after this insight, I say: true, back then I certainly really thought that way. What happened afterward I no longer remember. But now I suddenly understood that indeed something changed for me. But now I really think it is the same thing. Because it is the same thing: intellect and will are ultimately the same thing. No, not the same thing. A similar mechanism. Not the same thing. It’s making choices, not… distinguishing. That may be the problem, perhaps, that it is hard to relate to it as a choice. Why? To decide between two theories is a choice. It is judgment. Choice has a connotation of values, so I prefer to say judgment. Fine, call it whatever you want—the bird does not choose. No. Again, if it has free choice—and I don’t know, maybe it does—but under the assumption that it doesn’t have free choice in our ordinary sense, then what the bird does, it does not do out of judgment. It does it because that is how it is programmed to do it. That’s all. Like water flowing. Does water exercise judgment? It flows this way or that way? Does it perform a potential calculation? Where the potential is lower, there I’ll flow? No—it simply flows there. That’s all, because the circumstances take it there. Why do you think it’s like that? Because if you don’t feel that way, there’s no other reason that here it would flow there and there it would flow here. But water too—if there is a mountain here it will flow there. So what are you saying, does it think or not think? There’s a mountain here and a valley there, so it will flow to the valley. Why? Because the circumstances take it there; it’s a physical force. Water is something compelled. Everything else—if the bird is basically the same thing, then it too is something compelled within it; it does not choose. It could be that everything is compelled. It could be that the monkey chooses too; it could be that the water chooses too. Do you believe that water chooses too? I’m saying what is most plausible. Inanimate, vegetative, animate. So what’s the difference between them? A biological difference. What? A biological difference, I think. No, they say in development too, in all philosophy they talk about a difference between inanimate, vegetative, and animate. I don’t see an essential difference. There is some biological difference that I don’t know how to define. Maybe I don’t understand biology well enough, but nothing essential. Okay, the difference can still be essential at the technical level. A monkey has twelve muscles in the hand and a human has a hundred muscles. No, I’m talking about inanimate and vegetative. So that makes the human… what is essential and what is not depends on how you perceive the human being. Without a human being, what is essential and what is not is already… Inanimate, vegetative, and animate—there are differences between them. Right. Essential differences. There are also differences within the inanimate and within the vegetative. Right. Are you saying plants are more intelligent than stones? Who said that? Okay, the question is how you define intelligence. Again, I’m saying, in the accepted definitions of intelligence, it seems to me at least that if people aren’t confused, then neither the vegetative nor the animate has intelligence. In my opinion. Unless animals also have free choice—maybe, I don’t know that. If they too have real judgment as we do, then fine; then they too have intelligence, and then it makes sense to speak of intelligence and levels of intelligence.

Is there a definition of intelligence? There is no definition of intelligence, but I’m speaking now not in the scholarly literature. Usually when people say there is no definition of intelligence, they mean we don’t know how to define what kinds of actions express intelligence. Okay, wait. No, no, no. One second. So that’s one discussion. The question is whether Messi’s marvelous dribbling is intelligence or some other kind of ability. Maybe, I don’t know—people have marvelous abilities in areas that are prosaic, multiple intelligences, I spoke about that too once. But that is the dilemma of whether one can define the concept of intelligence. Yet all these dilemmas are on the level of descriptions, on the phenomenological level. Meaning: what kind of thing I encounter, what kind of behavior I encounter, can count as intelligence? I am asking a different question. I am asking what it has to indicate in order to count as intelligence. I claim that a bird can perform sophisticated actions, and on the phenomenological level you will define them as intelligence, and I will tell you: that is not intelligence. This is a problem on a level prior to the problem that people usually formulate as the definition of intelligence. Because I am saying a computer can perform super-intelligent actions if it was programmed by intelligent people. The truth is that dribbling ability is no different from the bird’s ability. Not necessarily, not necessarily. There could be decision-making there, and it is quick—not necessarily. A soccer player’s talent is in physics, just as there is talent in physics. Einstein has talent in physics—is that not intelligence? Why is that not intelligence? Some of the things your brain does are sophisticated calculations done quickly. If it is a talent for making decisions—I’m not talking about a talent for making decisions. But it is only a talent for making decisions; in soccer too it is a talent for making decisions. Who told you otherwise? A worse player would attack this way and not that way. I’m talking about the technical ability. The technical ability of dribbling. Not talent in decision-making at all. Maybe not. But I’m talking about the ability to play soccer, not technical ability. Messi in action makes decisions. I only watch basketball. But look, the same exists in soccer. More or less, but it is of the same kind. Okay. To shoot to the basket or pass to a teammate. Yes, people say there are people who make… Again, you can say he is basically programmed for it and then he acts like a bird. Maybe—but I am not at all sure of that. Listen, a human being does think during the game. Franz Beckenbauer—those who remember him; younger people know him less—he was known as a genius in soccer. What was his position called? Playmaker? No, no, not playmaker. He was a defender. Romero? Rogero? Libero, libero. He was a defender. A defender? Yes, but a defender facing forward, not just a stopper. He was the architect of the game. Again, I didn’t understand enough then to… but that’s basically what people said about him. There at least, the common perception was that there was decision-making there, there was intelligence. Okay? Listen, you do see intelligent people among players. It’s not true that… there is intelligence there. There are intelligent people there, yes, but not in soccer. No, it’s the same thing. It’s very hard to know. Cruyff was a genius. Cruyff too, right. Yes, there were people who… No, but I think with Beckenbauer that was the definition. The definition was that he was this kind of genius because he was an architect. There are those who make good and quick local decisions. The man apparently saw things—game vision. Yes, something really clearly connected to intelligence. There was someone who coached one of the NBA teams or something, Pat Riley or a similar name, who wrote a book called The Winning Team. Pat Riley. He left basketball, turned it into a program, and became an organizational consultant for all kinds of companies and businesses. The methods by which he turned five… He was a legendary coach. Yes. Okay, so sometimes there is that. Yes, obviously there is. To me it is obvious there is.

Anyway, therefore I say that in the end the identification of the image of God with intellect and with will is actually very similar. Because at the foundation of both these processes sits something one can call choice or judgment, it doesn’t matter, but some decision that you make not because you are programmed. If you are programmed, then again it loses its meaning. And that is your image of God. Your image of God is that just as God created the world, you can create something from nothing on a small scale. But still, you create something from nothing. That is why it is called the image of God. And therefore the conception that it is intellect and the conception that it is will are not really all that different from one another. Because in both places, in order to call that intellect intelligence, you have to assume that something new is created there. It is not a required or programmed result of what existed before. And clearly human beings have talents that allow them more or less to do this. And that raises a somewhat complicated question: how do you subtract those talents in order to distill what pure intelligence is? Because if you were born in such a way that you are programmed to do this better, then one must somehow remove that from your intelligence measure. I don’t know, it’s a bit complicated. I don’t know how to define it fully, and certainly not how to calculate it fully. But I think the principle is clear. And it isn’t connected to the question of what intelligence is, which is what people usually ask. That’s what I want to say. Because they ask it also about birds, they ask it about apes—it has nothing to do with that question. There the question is: what kinds of actions or abilities deserve to be called intelligence? And I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about where those abilities come from. Because if there are abilities that deserve to be called intelligence but they are operated by birds or water, then in my eyes that is not intelligence.

And this is what he says: the living soul of an animal is its being able to feel and cry out and so on. And what does he mean by “feel”? Again, he means reflection: that it has awareness, reflection, it grasps itself, and so on. And the living soul of man includes also his being able to express his intellectual inwardness in a perceptible form. And here we come to the next stage, which is the relation between speech and thought. I think I mentioned this once. It is commonly thought that this is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim): do we think verbally or do we think non-verbally? There is a Rashba in Berakhot. There are people like this and people like that. There is a Rashba in Berakhot. The Rashba says—the Talmud says there—that from “Hear, O Israel,” regarding the Shema, we derive: let your ear hear what your mouth utters; you also need to make your ears hear—let your ear hear what your mouth speaks. I don’t remember the exact wording. That’s Rabbi Yose there. And besides that they also say… No, you derive that one need not make it heard to one’s ears, and you derive that it may be in any language. Rashba asks there: how do we learn two things from the same verse? Usually the Talmud says that if this verse is already assigned to one matter, then for the second matter you need another verse. So how do we learn two things from the same verse? So Rashba says that these are not two things; it is the same thing. That is, if there is something that need not be heard to one’s own ears, then it would not make sense that it must be specifically in a certain language—say, in the holy tongue and not in any other language. Because thought is not done in a language. Meaning, if you do not have to make it heard, if you do not have to speak but only think, then I do not care in what language the thought is done—there is no language in thought. So the assumption of several later authorities (Acharonim)—the Hazon Ish raises such a possibility, and a number of others as well—is that Rashba assumes that thinking is not done verbally. By contrast, there is Tosafot in Shabbat on page 40—the Rashash comments on this—if someone thinks in a bathroom, is it permitted to think in the holy tongue? So Tosafot discusses this there, and the Rashash comments that according to this it turns out that there is speech in thought, and that somewhat contradicts Rashba. It seems to me there is a dispute between Tosafot and Rashba about whether thought is done verbally.

Now clearly the truth is that thought also takes place verbally, but it seems to me that at the basis of verbal thought there sits some earlier thought whose verbal expression is only the expression of the thought, not the thought itself. Okay? Therefore I think that the dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) is not about what really goes on in my head—everyone understands that I can think in Hebrew or in English—but rather about what is decisive. Exactly. Which plane is the decisive one with respect to thought. I think that is the dispute, at least that’s how it seems to me. In any case, for our purposes, there was that book Descartes’ Error by Damasio—there it’s a pair of researchers, husband and wife, neurophysiologists, brain researchers. There is a book of his translated into Hebrew, Descartes’ Error. He talks a lot about this, about verbal and non-verbal thinking and the relation between them. In any event, on the other hand, it is clear that the relation is not one-directional. The description here is one-directional, what I described until now. That is, there are primal thoughts in the head, and they have verbal expressions. Meaning, verbal thought is nothing more than a form of expression of the primal thought, that’s all. There are even studies about this, and I think I also once spoke about this. There is a tribe in Brazil called the Pirahã tribe, if I’m pronouncing that right—yes, exactly, the one-two-many system. There are several—there are also in… Polynesians, I think, and there are also in… there are a few such tribes in other places too that cannot count beyond one, two, many. That is what they know. Now it turns out that when you give them—when you give them the counter… You count numerals, not numbers. No, but a computer also counts in base two… It counts in base two and it also counts higher than two. Here it’s the same thing, except then it’s many. What? Which many? Exactly. So researchers began to ask them. They report on this in Nature. They put before them a very simple exercise: say, five batteries and three batteries, and asked them where there are more. They didn’t know how to answer. They found it very difficult to answer. They trained them and so on, and in the end they managed. But how did they know to take the five? How can one survive in nature without such an ability? Exactly, how do they know to take the five? I don’t know. I’m convinced that if you told them take one of them, they would take the five. What does “one of them” mean? Like one of the piles. He would take, I don’t know why. No, apparently not. Apparently it isn’t that simple. Maybe not. Seriously, that’s the report. I don’t remember the details. I suggested a different interpretation of that experiment there; we had an argument about this on Atzor Kan Hoshvim. I suggested a different interpretation there. What? It seems to me animals know how to do this. There are questions of a type that you don’t… I assume they know how to distinguish on the animal level too. But when you ask them a question that touches on quantity, I no longer remember the article exactly—I’m talking about ten years ago already or something—then they couldn’t do it. Now clearly they had the intelligence for it. But after they were taught, they did these exercises, they knew how to do it. But the point is that when you don’t have it in the language—that’s the question. And the fact that they taught them is still not proof, because you can teach a monkey too. Yes, no, but with a monkey you won’t succeed in teaching more than very basic things; you won’t succeed in teaching… Oops, give me enough time… No, apparently they haven’t succeeded all that much. With all the time they’ve had, they haven’t succeeded. It’s still years—not the same thing. Theoretically the brain doesn’t usually work either. Yes, I don’t know. But what I’m saying is the potential—you aren’t talking about potential. No, but they didn’t need to be taught; they didn’t need to be taught. There was some ad for a high-school-completion school, and they taught the monkey there how to extract roots. Really? So it had x squared under the root and it wrote x. I remember this was at the Technion, and everyone said no, that’s wrong, it’s the absolute value of x. It was like those guys with the integration limits, that joke about integration limits. They ruin everything. The monkey too really knew it was absolute value; it just didn’t want to reveal that so they wouldn’t make it work hard.

What’s the joke about integration limits? You don’t know it? A guy finishes a bachelor’s degree in physics. No, he even finished maybe a doctorate… Fine, he has no choice, he has no livelihood, so he decides to go. All his friends swear him to secrecy: don’t reveal that you’re intelligent, they don’t like intelligent people there, don’t reveal anything, you know nothing, come like a block of wood. Fine. He’s standing there; there are lots of job seekers. The person in charge stands there explaining about the crane: look, there is a crane, it has an arm, and it turns, goes down and up, and so on. Let’s say the arm is ten meters, I don’t know, x, doesn’t matter how much. It makes a full turn—what is the circumference of the circle? The circumference? The circumference. Otherwise the joke doesn’t work. No, wait, wait. You calculate circumference with an integral too. A line integral, not an area integral. You calculate circumference with an integral too. So he asks if anyone knows the circumference; everyone is silent. The guy, of course, is dying to say 2πr, but he is silent—they told him, they swore him not to reveal that he is intelligent. Everyone is silent. He asks again, he’s stunned. Listen, this is a high-school problem. Nobody knows? Nothing. After five times of asking, the guy can’t hold himself back and says: minus 2πr is the circumference. So the manager asks him, fine, but minus—what is that minus doing there? And everyone shouts: because he reversed the integration limits.

Okay, so that monkey—you forgot what they called him. No, I think they sent that company a letter. It was an ad for some school. And they put it in the ads, and the guys there, you know, took everything seriously, and sent a letter saying, heaven forbid, to be accepted to our school that teaches mistakes. Or Shainerman, I think that was her name. There was such a school. Right, so she made the ad and appeared in it, and it was the preview in the cinema there in Netanya. And I remember when they screened it everyone said, what do you mean… probably that’s why we don’t hear about her anymore. I sent you something about that, about the golden ratio. In short, the point I want to learn from these Pirahã is that the relation is two-way. Thought comes to expression in the form of speech, but on the other hand speech itself comes back and refines thought. And if you don’t have enough words to express something—these are Whorf’s studies too. Also a very interesting figure. There is a book translated into Hebrew—I forgot its name—by Whorf. The Tao of…? Not Tao, no. Whorf is research, a book. The Tao of Pooh, no? No, absolutely not. The Tao of Pooh is something else entirely. It’s a book of linguistic studies by someone who didn’t study linguistics, by the way. He is one of the most important scholars in that field, and everyone cites him. And he never studied formally; he studied only informally. He had no formal degree.

In any event, his claim—and he dealt with this quite a bit too—is that being equipped with a conceptual system also comes back and improves your thought, because if you don’t have concepts you can’t think about things. So the development is not in one direction, not from the ability to think toward language. Rather, from the ability to think you create language. You created language—that improves your ability to think. And the improvement of thought creates more sophisticated language, and language creates thought—a kind of positive feedback. Which, by the way, is one reason, I think—even in an evolutionary view—that the intellectual gap between a human being and the next animal after him is exponentially much larger than between that animal and the one after it. Much larger. And why? Because there is some mechanism of positive feedback here and it explodes. Meaning, once you accumulate a small advantage and succeed in creating language, that language improves thought, but the improvement of thought creates more sophisticated language, and language creates thought: positive feedback, and it explodes. It becomes exponential. Remember we talked about computers—that once they succeed in improving themselves automatically, then that’s it, from there on… Exactly. So I’m saying when there is a mechanism of positive feedback—and the point is that you need two-way influence in the feedback—then you develop a huge gap. Okay? Otherwise it continues polynomially; it becomes a growing gap, but one that grows at a reasonable rate.

Anyway, so that’s what he says here: human speech was not created immediately with the emergence of intellect. But on the other hand it’s not correct to say that the intellect was complete and only in stage two was speech created. Clearly speech expresses a stage that afterward comes back and also improves the intellect. Meaning, it is something that builds itself. That regarding Sforno’s difficulty. But regarding his basic conception—that the creation of man in the image of God is the end of a long process whose beginning was in a non-intellectual creature belonging to the category of animals, progressing until the human intellect was given to it, and in parallel also the physiological form of the human being familiar to us—it seems that this is a correct description. Meaning, that is not the plain meaning of the verses, because it is not correct that chapter 1 describes this and chapter 2 describes this, but it is true that this was the process: that man was created in… not out of a forced interpretation of the verses, but from our scientific knowledge, according to which we know such things take a long time and happen gradually, and likely the Torah too, when it describes this, should be interpreted that way. But that is true also about the animals, isn’t it? It’s also true about the animals, but the Torah didn’t describe it that way regarding the animals. Fine, with regard to man too it didn’t describe it that way—here he already disagrees with Sforno. With regard to man too it was not described that way, and still it is true, because scientifically it is true.

Now he adds: Darwin’s and the fossil researchers’ proofs for the existence of such earlier stages seem convincing. As if once it seems convincing, then it’s true—meaning, there is no reason to assume it isn’t true. Like Maimonides said—we also talked about that—that when Maimonides says that if he were scientifically or philosophically convinced of something, then he would already work out the interpretation with interpretive tools; he is not willing to impose his religious dogmas on scientific conceptions. Okay. Darwin’s mistake, he says, according to Breuer, lies in the general view of things, which evades the question of how the changes came about. But with recognition of the divine will operating in nature through the angels—wait, I’ll come back to this—but with recognition of the divine will operating in nature through the angels, we have no need at all to deny the description of events as scientific inquiry presents them. There are findings of skeletons of bipedal walkers with small skulls, whose brains cannot be like the brains of the human being familiar to us. By the way, here I’m not completely sure this is correct in today’s terms, because once there was—I forgot what that theory was called—that tied intelligence to brain size. That is not true; it’s already been refuted. And of course it’s not politically correct either, but it’s also simply not true. There are many counterexamples. So brain size—I’m not sure it is a measure. The human being about whom it was said, “Let us make man in our image,” is the final stage of gradual progress.

Now here there is a point—what does he mean by the angels, and by saying Darwin’s mistake is in the general view of things? So what do you want—after all, Darwin fits the Torah perfectly. So what’s the problem? What is Darwin’s mistake? He still insists that Darwin has some kind of mistake. It seems to me the process is managed. What? Whether the process is managed or random. I don’t think Darwin himself said the process is not managed. Those are later interpretations by people who came after Darwin. True, but that is something he says. Yes, I think what he means—at least it seems to me, I’m really not sure, because it’s vague here—I think he means the problem of missing stages, or the problem of jumps in the origin of species. There are two disputes between neo-Darwinians and creationists. There are those who deny the evolutionary process altogether, and that’s nonsense. But there is a harder question, where the neo-Darwinians may be a bit too confident. I’m not sufficiently expert, but I suspect that that confidence is somewhat exaggerated: that new species can also emerge from previous species, that there can be a species-level change. Now the definition of species-level change is of course problematic—we spoke earlier about the question of what intelligence is, and inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking—because the definition is a definition, of course, in the eye of the beholder. But there is a claim that there is a limit to the process of natural variation. Meaning, there is something that cannot come out of what preceded it, even though there is indeed an evolutionary process, but one species does not come out of another species. Why? There is such a claim because the gap is… Why? Because also in the field they don’t see what… that also in the field they don’t see it, and because it can’t be, since the probability is such that it is impossible. After all, the evolutionary changes are small changes. Now in order for a species to emerge, their claim is that there is no continuous transition from one species to another. Somewhere there had to be some major change all at once. In the field this is not… What? Also theoretically, not only in the findings. The claim is that also theoretically… No, they say there isn’t one. A strange gap—why shouldn’t it be continuous? No, they say there isn’t one even theoretically. There is no theoretical continuum that would do it—or that it isn’t plausible? No, there is some gap, some leap between species. There is no continuum. For example, in the formation of the eye. It’s not only findings; the claim is also theoretical. Of course there are various claims, but there are also theoretical claims. It is a bit strange—why shouldn’t it be continuous? Because it isn’t continuous. There is some leap here that is not… You can’t go from an animal to a human, or from a plant to an animal, say according to the creationists’ view, because it’s a different type; it’s something that cannot pass continuously, because it’s not quantitative, it’s something else—it’s a different kind. Usually they define it as things that cannot reproduce with one another, but I’m not sure that here even that definition is relevant.

Now here it could be that what he means to say is that precisely when there is a problem of missing stages—or whatever they call these things in various ways—and here he says that if the Holy One, blessed be He, sends some angel to move evolution through one stage, and now it continues onward as well, then there is no problem. We see that everything happened evolutionarily, little by little; only angels solved for us the problem of the gaps, of the missing stages. It could be that this is what he means here. I’m not sure. The final stage certainly is such—so actually that could support the claim a bit. What does that mean? That we received free choice—that certainly did not happen through a process. If there is… those who deny free choice, fine. But whoever thinks there is, then that actually may somewhat strengthen the claim that… Here, for example, is something that, at least from a non-deterministic and non-materialistic perspective, involves some leap that is not continuous. Before, either you have free choice or you do not. There is no little free choice and much free choice. Either there is or there isn’t. Either you deviate from the laws of physics or you do not deviate. Meaning, there is no continuum of transition here. So perhaps that is what he is talking about. I’m not sure we need to get there. It is entirely possible that there is a continuum, and the whole question is really only whether it is managed or not. And it could be—and maybe, what you said, maybe that really is what he means, I’m not sure. But I’m only saying, on the substance of the matter, independently of what he means, it is definitely possible that the whole story is true, including the jumps. It could be there are no jumps, that it is continuous. And still it is managed. Meaning, it does not mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not in the picture; it only means that He operates in that way or through those means. Okay?