Platonism – Lesson 1
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
- Opening the series and the connection to philosophy and Jewish law
- A reservation about giving a historical description of Plato and Aristotle
- Plato, the world of ideas, and cognition through the soul
- The allegory of the cave and the relation between shadows and reality
- The idea as an existing entity and the world as its realization
- Essence and accident, definition, and the idea as information
- The distinction between a pure idea and a perfect ideal
- Karl Popper, “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” and the critique of idealism
- Projection and the direction from abstract to concrete
- The DNA analogy
- Aristotle: abstractions as a human act and not as entities
- The question of learning, neural networks, and prior knowledge
- Taxonomy: is there truth in classification or only convenience
- The sense of naturalness in classification and the source of Platonism’s power
- Mixed species, the authority of the Sages, and error in taxonomy
- Is this “mysticism,” and the analogy to trusting the senses
Summary
General Overview
The text opens a series on Platonism through the question of abstraction and the status of abstract concepts: do ideas exist as real entities, or are they only intellectual operations in our minds, and what does that mean both for general philosophy and for Jewish law. The speaker clarifies that he is using “Plato” and “Aristotle” mainly as labels for intellectual directions, not as an exact commitment to historical interpretation, and presents Plato as claiming that the soul contemplates the world of ideas while the senses provide only shadows of reality. Later he distinguishes between an idea as a pure object of essential information and an ideal of perfection, addresses Karl Popper’s critique of Plato, and suggests that the central power of Platonism is the sense of “correctness” in natural taxonomies like the distinction between a horse and a donkey, in contrast to an Aristotelian view that treats classification as a useful choice rather than a true one.
Opening the series and the connection to philosophy and Jewish law
The speaker presents Platonism as a question about abstractions and about the relation between “things” and “actions,” and places that question both in the context of life and in halakhic contexts and in the character of the Talmud. He offers examples of halakhic questions about abstract concepts such as taste in the laws of mixtures, nullification by majority and nullification in sixty, and asks whether halakhic abstractions exist in some sense or are only our definitions. He states that he intends to focus on abstract halakhic concepts and the question of their existence, and not primarily on sensory questions of the sort of “what we feel on the tongue.”
A reservation about giving a historical description of Plato and Aristotle
The speaker says that he has been engaged in philosophy for many years, but Greek philosophy is not his field, and therefore he does not claim that his description of the dispute between Plato and Aristotle is fully faithful to what they actually said. He argues that for his purposes Plato and Aristotle function mainly as labels for directions, and that even if there are contradictions or inaccuracies, the main issue is the question itself and not historical precision.
Plato, the world of ideas, and cognition through the soul
The speaker quotes from the Republic and describes a view according to which the soul can focus on a place where “truth and reality shine,” and there it grasps and understands, while turning toward “the world of things that come to be and pass away” leads only to shifting opinions and instability. He presents Plato as claiming that true cognition of general concepts is not the result of abstraction from the sensory world, but the result of contemplating the abstract things themselves, with the soul rather than the eyes serving as the instrument of contemplation. He explains that in the senses everything changes, and therefore one cannot grasp with certainty “what a horse is,” whereas contemplation of the idea of horseness makes a stable grasp of the essence possible.
The allegory of the cave and the relation between shadows and reality
The speaker brings the allegory of the cave from the Republic, in which people are chained and see only shadows cast on a wall, and for them “the truth would be nothing more than the shadows of passing figures.” He gives the interpretation that the cave is the world of the senses, the light of the fire is the sun, and the ascent upward is the soul’s elevation toward “the world of thought,” where the idea of the good is seen only after habituation and effort and is the source of reason and truth for the thinker. He states that the rational human being must direct his “gaze” toward that power, and interprets the gaze as the gaze of the soul rather than of the eyes.
The idea as an existing entity and the world as its realization
The speaker defines “Platonism for our purposes” as the claim that general concepts are beings that exist in some sense, and that our ability to know them comes from the soul’s contemplation of the world of ideas. He describes the relation between ideas and objects in the world as one of realization or projection, in which objects are expressions of the ideas and sensory reality is a “shadow” of ideal reality. He argues that the idea is not the product of a process of abstraction in the brain but the object of contemplation that makes conceptual cognition possible in the first place.
Essence and accident, definition, and the idea as information
The speaker divides an object’s characteristics into essential and accidental characteristics, and illustrates this with a horse, with height, and with examples involving human beings and their being rational. He states that a definition should contain only the essential characteristics, while the rest are a description of a particular instance and not a definition of the concept. He identifies the idea with an object that contains the “set of essential characteristics,” and the definition is a verbal expression of that object, so that the idea is understood as an entity containing essential information rather than an arbitrary convention.
The distinction between a pure idea and a perfect ideal
The speaker argues that describing the idea of horseness as a “perfect horse” is a double mistake, because the idea is not a horse at all but an abstract entity of information, and because the information in it is not “aesthetic perfection,” like the golden ratio, but a distillation of the essential properties shared by all horses. He offers a modern image of an idea as “a disk that contains the information” about the concept, and argues that talk about an ideal horse is an imagined abstract realization, not the idea he is speaking about. He says that the idea is pure in the sense of being free of accidental features, not perfect in a normative sense, and therefore it is not something realizable in a world in which every particular has accidental features such as height.
Karl Popper, “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” and the critique of idealism
The speaker presents Karl Popper and his book “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” and says that Popper devotes the first half of the book to a critique of Platonism and presents Plato as “the root of all evil in history.” He describes Popper’s argument that Platonism sets up an ideal model that people then try to realize in the world, and that striving for utopia involves trampling reality and cruelty, with examples such as communism and “oil for the wheels of the revolution.” He connects this to fear of grand values and ideals, and argues that the meaning Popper is talking about is idea in the sense of a “perfect entity” meant to be realized, whereas the meaning the speaker is defining is idea as a “pure entity” of definition, and therefore he insists on distinguishing between an idea and an ideal.
Projection and the direction from abstract to concrete
The speaker uses the example of a coordinate system to define projection as giving up some components and retaining others, and suggests that mathematically one can think of the abstract as a projection of the concrete when one ignores accidental features and keeps the essential ones. He explains that in Plato the logical relation is presented in reverse, so that the idea is understood as the source from which particulars are produced by adding concrete features. He notes that the analogy describes projection, but is meant to point to the claim that the idea is the original foundation and the sensory world is a world of shadows.
The DNA analogy
The speaker proposes DNA as an illustration of a Platonic idea because it contains essential information from which a human being can be produced, without itself being a “perfect person” or an abstract visual image. He adds that the influence of environment parallels the non-essential features that vary, while DNA parallels what is found in a person “by virtue of his creation” and expresses a distillation of essence.
Aristotle: abstractions as a human act and not as entities
The speaker presents Aristotle as claiming that general concepts like horseness do not exist, but are abstractions that we create by contemplating concrete objects. He says that according to Aristotle the idea is formed from seeing many particulars, and it is a convenient tool for conceptual work, not an entity in the world. In contrast, he formulates the Plato-Aristotle dispute as two theses: for Plato the idea exists as an object, and one can reach it through the soul’s contemplation and not only through abstraction from the concrete.
The question of learning, neural networks, and prior knowledge
The speaker responds to an example from computer science of image recognition through training on many examples, and compares it to an Aristotelian picture of concept formation from accumulated experience. He points out that in training a neural network one must already attach labels such as “horse” and “dog,” so the question arises how the human being himself knows in advance the distinction that he is teaching the system. He says that this point leads to the question of how we arrive at concepts, and what the relation is between the way we learn and the real relation between the idea and particulars.
Taxonomy: is there truth in classification or only convenience
The speaker presents taxonomy as the classification of objects into groups, and asks how we arrived at our classifications and whether a classification is “correct” in any sense. He compares dividing the world into four elements with Mendeleev’s periodic table, and argues that in an Aristotelian picture there is no notion of truth or falsehood in classification, only different descriptive systems that may be convenient in different contexts. He argues that according to Plato there are correct classifications, because if the idea of horseness exists, then the group of horses is truly one kind, and taxonomy is dictated by ideal reality and not only by the user’s needs.
The sense of naturalness in classification and the source of Platonism’s power
The speaker argues that there is a strong sense that the distinction between a horse and a donkey is more natural and essential than differences between individuals within the same kind, and asks on what basis it is determined which properties are essential and which are accidental. He presents the apparently absurd possibility of dividing creatures by height and calling them “five-foot-eleven-ers” instead of horses and donkeys, in order to stress that according to Aristotle the choice is a matter of convenience and not of truth. He concludes that the argument in favor of Platonism is the feeling that people perceive taxonomic divisions as reflecting truth about the world, and therefore says that “we are all Platonists” in that sense.
Mixed species, the authority of the Sages, and error in taxonomy
The speaker refers to the example of the laws of mixed species, where the classification of species among the Sages differs from science, and argues that one can say that one is correct and the other is not, and one can even say that the Sages erred in taxonomy because of lack of scientific information. He adds that one can distinguish between halakhic commitment to authority and the claim that the taxonomy itself is true, and states that there is no principled obstacle to saying that the Sages made mistakes in matters of science.
Is this “mysticism,” and the analogy to trusting the senses
The speaker answers the claim that ideas are unnecessary mysticism by saying that the same type of argument could also be directed at the existence of a menorah in the world, since “all I know is that I see a menorah.” He argues that there is a basic trust in what we see, and that similarly there is an immediate sense that taxonomic divisions reflect reality and not merely useful conventions. He grapples with an example involving Nazis as people who distinguish between human beings, questions whether their distinction was a natural perception, and emphasizes that he is relying on a fundamental perceptual experience of essential differences. He concludes by saying that the ability to “see” the ideal difference between a horse and a donkey is, in his view, “the contemplation of ideas” that Plato speaks about, and says he will return to it next time.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As I sent in the message, I want to start a series now on Platonism. Platonism, abstractions, how to relate to this kind of thing or this kind of act. Things or acts—that itself is already an important issue here, both in the general philosophical context and also in contexts that maybe touch more on our lives, and also in Jewish law. Jewish law, or in the character of the Talmud—we’ll see this from a few angles. But before that we need to define the concept of Platonism: what exactly are we talking about? Plato, of course, there are many, many sources, he wrote many books, and a great many things can be called Platonic. But it seems to me that this term, in the language that took shape over the generations, has acquired several meanings that are connected to one another, and that basically touch on the question of how we make abstractions, or what the meaning of abstraction is. Do abstractions exist in some sense? Meaning, are they in the world—ideas—or are they basically intellectual acts that we perform, and abstractions exist only in our heads and not really in the world itself? This has many expressions. People talk, for example, about Platonic love, as distinct from another kind of love. What’s the connection between that and the existence of ideas? People talk about Platonism in mathematical contexts, or even scientific, physical ones, and that is more closely tied to this question of the existence of ideas. Yes, the question of whether mathematical and physical ideas really exist, or whether these are abstractions that we make because it’s convenient for us, because it’s fruitful, because it’s useful in some sense, but not something that actually exists in reality itself. In the halakhic context too, of course, one can discuss the existence of halakhic abstractions. Sometimes you can talk about concepts like what “taste” is in the laws of mixtures. Yes, nullification by majority or nullification in sixty. So sixty is because there is no taste in nullification in sixty. Is taste simply what we feel on the tongue? Is taste some abstract concept, an abstraction that we create? Maybe there’s a connection between those two things, but I’m less going to talk about issues of that sort. I want to talk about abstract halakhic concepts—do they exist in some sense, or are these our definitions? So the question of Platonism comes up in the halakhic context just as it comes up in many other fields. Maybe one more preliminary remark: I’ve been involved in philosophy for quite a few years already, but Greek philosophy is really not my field. I’m not expert in Greek philosophy, so when I speak here about Aristotle and Plato, their dispute and so on, I’m not committing myself to the claim that this really describes what Plato and Aristotle themselves said, although in my view it probably is something like that. But I’m not committing to the philosophical information here. I’m using the dispute between Plato and Aristotle in order to discuss the question itself, which is an interesting question. If Plato didn’t say exactly what I’m putting in his mouth, or Aristotle didn’t say what I’m putting in his mouth, that matters less to me. And again I say, I think they did say more or less this, but I can’t commit to it; I’m not sufficiently expert in these materials, and there are some contradictions in the texts as well, so I’m giving that disclaimer in advance. As far as I’m concerned, Plato and Aristotle are serving us only as headings for the directions I want to discuss. All right, so let’s begin, maybe really with what Platonism is. What is Platonism as I define it—not necessarily as Plato defined it, but still, let’s begin with Plato. The things appear mainly in a few places, but especially in his book called the Republic. Look, for example, at this passage here: “Apply this comparison to the soul in this way: when it is focused on the place where truth and reality shine, the soul grasps and understands them, and appears to possess reason. But when it turns to the place mixed with darkness, the world of things that come to be and pass away, it only opines and is somewhat confused, and it shifts in its opinions back and forth. And again, back and forth, and again it seems as if it lacks reason.” What is there in this passage, really? So he says—the soul, he claims that our soul can focus on some place. Let’s understand what this place is, but there is some place where truth and reality shine. There is something very sharp, clear, pure, and there the soul grasps and understands things. Meaning, as opposed to the ordinary outlook, where when we examine a human being looking at the world or trying to understand things, phenomena, and so on—for us, we basically see it as the person looking at the things and phenomena in front of him, and afterward doing some intellectual processing to them—generalizations, analogies, and so on—and arriving at his conclusions, his general insights, laws of nature in the scientific context, it doesn’t matter in which context. Plato doesn’t see it that way. Plato says that our true contemplation, through which we arrive at abstract insights, is contemplation of the abstract things themselves. Abstract things are not the result of abstraction. The abstract things—our soul contemplates them, not the eyes. The soul. The eyes contemplate the world; the soul contemplates those pure things, yes, those shining things, in some place. He calls it some place where truth and reality shine, and the soul grasps and understands them. Meaning, he sees human cognition, epistemology, as a kind of contemplation of abstract things. There are abstract things that I contemplate, and that’s how I arrive at my abstract and general insights. And when the soul turns toward the place mixed with darkness—so what is the place mixed with darkness? That is, of course, the most disgusting world there is: our world. The world of things that come to be and pass away. Yes, in our world there are certain things, and at some stage they are destroyed, created, changed in form. Nothing is fixed there, everything is mixed up, everything is confused, you can’t really grasp things as they are. Try to grasp what a horse is, when the horse may die on you in another moment, a leg can be cut off, maybe this is one kind of horse, another kind of horse. You can’t really grasp what a horse is or be sure that you’ve grasped what a horse is. But if the soul looks at the idea of horseness, yes, in some place where the pure horse appears—one that never changes, is perfect, always exists—there I can grasp reality, be sure that I’m grasping reality as it really is. Therefore Plato basically says: our true cognition—not the understanding that there’s a phone here or that there’s a computer here, but our essential cognition of ideas, what a phone is, what a computer is, horseness, what a horse is, not the particular horse I’m looking at here—that is the result not of an abstraction we perform, not of a process of abstraction taking place in our brain, in our head, but of observing the idea of horseness, or the idea of the computer, the idea of the mobile phone. Yes, and that’s how we really understand these concepts. If we were looking at our world, then everything changes; you don’t really know what all phones have in common, or what all computers have in common. Who says they even belong to the same kind? How do you know there’s something, essentially, some kind to which all of these are only specific expressions? So that’s one source, and in part—
[Speaker B] That’s the sixth part of the Republic. In the seventh part he brings the allegory of the cave, where—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] where he brings the allegory of the cave. He writes like this: “Human beings live in an underground cave, whose opening is toward the light spreading throughout the cave.” Yes, there is some long cave, and at the end there is some kind of light spreading throughout the cave. “Here they have been since childhood, with their legs and necks bound in chains, so that they cannot move.” Yes, they cannot leave the cave; they are bound inside the cave. “And they can only see what is before them, because the chains prevent them from turning their heads. Above and behind them a fire burns, and between the fire and the prisoners… and if you look carefully you can see a low wall built along the road, like the screen before which puppeteers display their puppets.” Those people, yes, those people living in the cave, see only their own shadow or the shadow of others chained beside them, cast by the fire onto the wall in front of them. Since you can’t move your head, you can’t see the objects next to you. Your head is facing a wall in front of you, the fire is behind you, and the fire creates shadows—shadows that cast all the figures you see onto the wall in front of you. So you know there are people next to you because their shadow is reflected on the wall in front of you. Okay? “And for them the truth would be nothing more than the shadows of passing figures.” This is Plato’s allegory of the cave. The prison, the cave, is the world of the senses. Now the interpretation—he explains the interpretation. The interpretation is that this cave, this prison, is the world of our senses. The light of the fire is the sun, and the ascent upward, out of the cave, is the soul’s elevation toward the world of thought. What is outside is the world of thought, and you try to grasp the world of thought, but you can’t really grasp it. Everything you see with your eyes, you can’t grasp, because the head cannot turn, and everything you see with your eyes is only the shadows on the wall in front of you. The world of the idea of the good appears only at the end, after prolonged habituation, and it can be seen only with effort, and it is the immediate source of reason and truth for the thinker. And this is the power toward which a person who acts rationally in his public or private life must direct his gaze. Meaning, you need—his gaze, of course, not the gaze of the eyes, but the gaze of the soul, as we saw before. Meaning, what you see with the senses and the eyes is basically some sort of prison imposed on you. You are forced to see various objects of one kind or another; they change, they alternate, and you can’t really know with certainty which of them belongs to the same group, how to classify them, whether this is a horse or a large dog or a large mouse or a small elephant. I don’t know—an elephant whose trunk was cut off. Through sensory observation you can’t really understand or know clearly your general insights, even your general concepts. The concepts—yes, elephantness, horseness, the color red, redness—you can’t really understand these concepts, because you only see their shadows. When you want to understand the concepts, your soul has to turn directly toward the opening of the cave. The eyes can’t do that because you are chained. But the soul can somehow overcome this and contemplate the abstract and general things themselves. Not through the shadows—maybe yes through them, it doesn’t matter—but you’re not contemplating the shadows; you are contemplating the ideas that create those shadows. What this basically means, what Plato is proposing here, is what we’ll call Platonism for our purposes. He claims that the general concepts we have are basically another kind of entities that exist in some place, in that world we spoke about in the previous passage. Our ability to know them comes from contemplation of the world of ideas. That contemplation is carried out by the soul, not by the eyes or the senses. What is the relation between the world of ideas and the objects I know in our world? Between horseness and the horse? The various horses I encounter in our world are some kind of realizations of the idea of horseness. Just as a shadow is basically some sort of projection of the object. The fire behind the object creates a shadow on the wall opposite it. So the shadow is some kind of projection—what in geometry we call a projection—of reality. Therefore the reality that we know is only a shadow of the true, pure, ideal, abstract reality that exists in the world of ideas. The whole world we know is basically a world inside a cave; it is shadows, not real things. The real things are the general concepts, the abstract concepts, and the objects we know in the world are projections of those real abstract things. They are not real things in themselves. Okay, that is basically the claim. Now, what does this really mean? What is this idea he’s talking about? Let’s say the idea of horseness, yes? So he claims that the idea of horseness, let’s say, is not an abstract concept that we simply created by looking at many horses, saying what they all have in common, and then understanding what horseness is. Okay? Horseness is probably the set of properties common to all the horses we have seen. And that is how we build the idea of horseness. That is the standard view. Plato says no. The idea of horseness really is that, but we do not build it by looking at concrete horses. We have some capacity to contemplate horseness itself. And maybe that even precedes looking at horses—I’ll get to that in a moment. Now, what is this idea of horseness? This is a subtle point that also raises various paradoxes and problems. The idea of horseness is basically—say I want to describe a horse. So I can describe many characteristics of the horse. It has four legs, it has—its height is such and such, its length is such and such, what its color is, whether it is tame or wild, used for plowing or for riding, doesn’t matter, all kinds of things of that sort. Within these characteristics of the horse, you can divide them into two types. There are essential characteristics and accidental characteristics. Let’s say that having four legs is probably something essential. Even if a horse accidentally had a leg cut off, that doesn’t mean it’s a three-legged horse. That horse has four; it’s just that one leg was cut off. Meaning, having four legs is essential to a horse. And ears, and so on. But being two meters tall is not. There are horses that are two-twenty, there are horses that are one and a half meters. Being two meters tall is an accidental characteristic. It is not an essential characteristic. Okay? There is the essence, the horse’s essence, which is the set of essential characteristics of being a horse, yes? Its characteristics insofar as it is a horse. And there are accidental characteristics: where it is, where it lives, who owns it, what its height is, whether it is tame or not tame, and so on.
[Speaker C] It’s not always so clear what counts as accidental and what counts as general, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can agree that it really isn’t sharp, but I do think you can understand what people mean when they talk about essential and accidental characteristics. But I agree, there’s a gray area that isn’t completely sharp. Say, a human being is a creature with intellect. What about a mentally impaired person who has no intellect? He obviously does have intellect, but it’s very low intelligence, depending on the level of impairment, but very low intelligence, to the point that it reaches levels comparable to intelligent animals. So is he still a human being? It’s a little hard to put your finger on exactly where the line passes and exactly what counts as an essential characteristic, but I think it’s hard to argue that being rational is an essential characteristic of human beings. But being six feet tall is not. It could be, for example, that being between five feet and seven and a half feet tall is perhaps an essential characteristic of human beings. Because there are no human beings beyond that or below that. So maybe we can speak about a certain essential range that distinguishes human beings. These definitions are not sharp, but I think they are correct. Meaning, there’s something important in them, even though they are not sharp and not binary, yes or no. So when we talk about the characteristics of a horse, we divided them into two kinds: essential characteristics and accidental characteristics. For example, when I want to give a definition—what is a horse? The definition will have to include only the essential characteristics. Right? There’s no point in defining a horse as something that is seven feet tall, because there are many horses that are not that height; that’s a bad definition. Why? Because it uses non-essential characteristics, an accidental characteristic. There’s a horse in front of me whose height is whatever it is, but that’s not an essential characteristic of horses. So it’s not worth putting that into the definition; it’s not right to put that into the definition. Into the definition go only the essential characteristics, what characterizes a horse insofar as it is a horse. That is called a definition. All the other characteristics are a description of a particular horse, but they are not a definition of the horse. Now, the idea contains only the essential characteristics, those that appear in the definition. In essence, the idea is an object that the definition in some sense expresses. Yes, the collection of the essential characteristics of the horse is the definition in the philosophical-intellectual sense. For Plato, this collection of characteristics creates an object. That object is the Idea of horseness, of which the definition is a verbal expression. Okay? That is the… But he claims that this thing is some kind of existing entity, an object. That. That is the innovation of Platonism. It’s not just a collection of characteristics that I can define as I please; rather, there is such a thing as horseness. That is basically the Platonic idea. Now the information contained in the idea—because this is essentially some kind of object that contains information—that information is the collection of the essential characteristics of the horse, or of the color red, or of the concept cupboard, of dove, it doesn’t matter what. Any concept, like a democratic state. There are abstract entities, there are non-abstract entities, but things can be defined, and the definition will basically be the idea. We’ll still talk about concepts versus objects; that too is an important point. But I just want to clarify a few points that will matter to us later on. Very often—and I think this appears in Plato too—the idea of the horse is described as the perfect horse. It isn’t, but it has four legs, no leg has been cut off, it has a height, the ratio between its length and its height is exactly the golden ratio. I’m just saying, some perfect ratio like that. The golden ratio is some kind of ideal ratio that people find in various classical works of art. The root of x squared plus x minus one equals zero. So the claim is that the Idea of the horse, the Idea of horseness, is basically some kind of perfect, abstract horse that exists somewhere. Somewhere not necessarily geographically; we’ll still talk about that. But I think that may be a meaning people use, but that is not the fundamental meaning of the concept of idea. Because the Idea of horseness, first of all—for two reasons—that’s not correct; that’s not the idea I’m talking about. First reason: the Idea of horseness is not a horse. It’s also not a perfect horse. This idea has no tail and no sex, in the sense of biological sex; rather, it is an abstract object that contains the essential information about the concept horse. Okay? It’s not a horse; it is not itself a horse, not even an abstract horse; it is information. Okay? Therefore, for example, if I want to imagine the idea of horseness—which I think is what leads to that first definition—then in our mind’s eye we see some kind of perfect horse. What will its height be? Maybe the most aesthetic height a horse could have, if there even is such a thing. But that speaks about some abstract horse. But no, I don’t think that’s right. The Idea of horseness—better to call it some kind of disk. It’s a disk that contains the information: what the definition of horse contains, what the essential characteristics of a horse are. It’s not something shaped like a horse; it’s simply information. Today, in the computer age, it’s easier for us to illustrate this. I say it’s the disk. The disk—the disk is already something ancient too. But yes, it’s the disk that contains the essential information about horses. Okay? That is basically the Idea of horseness. One could speak about the Idea of horseness as some kind of abstract horse, but that is a different meaning. That is basically an abstract instantiation, an instantiation not in the world but in our imagination, the concept of an abstract instantiation of the ideal horse. That is something else, but it is not the idea. When Plato says that the idea exists, he means to say that this set of notions is some kind of something that exists; he does not mean that there is some abstract horse sitting somewhere. We’ll soon see later on how this solves various paradoxes, this distinction I’m making now, but for now let’s try to understand it. That is the first reason why the Idea of horseness is not a perfect horse. There is a second reason here too, because even the information on the disk is not really information about the perfect horse. It is information about the abstract horse, and that is not the same thing. As I said earlier, the perfect horse is a horse whose ratio between length and height is the golden ratio. But that is not an essential property of a horse. When I talk about horseness, I mean: what is the set of essential properties that characterize every horse as such. It is not true that the golden ratio characterizes every horse as such; on the contrary, probably no horse has exactly the golden ratio. But to us it appears, in an aesthetic sense, as some kind of perfect horse. That may be the concern of artists. But the Idea of horseness is not the perfect horse. It is some abstraction of horseness, of the essential properties that every horse has as such; it does not include height or length or their ratio or temperament or anything like that, but rather what is common to all horses. The horses I have seen. Therefore I think that to see the Platonic idea as the perfect horse—not a concrete horse, not a physical horse, but some sort of perfect abstract horse floating around somewhere—is a mistake. It is a double mistake, because first, it is not a horse at all; it is not an abstraction of a horse, it is information about a horse. And second, it is also not the perfect horse, but the pure horse. By pure horse I mean cleansed of all the properties that are not essential to horses. Every horse before us also has accidental properties; it has a height, but the Idea of horseness has no height. Height is not included there in the idea; that information is not on the disk. Maybe a range of heights—I said earlier, between five feet and ten feet, I don’t know—but height as such is not an essential property of horses and it will not appear in the Idea of horseness. Therefore, talking about a perfect horse and talking about the Idea of horseness are not the same thing. Now why am I saying this? Because let me jump ahead a bit—we’ll get to this later—there is a book by Karl Popper, the well-known philosopher of science, also a political philosopher, and his book, a thick and very central book of his, is called The Open Society and Its Enemies. There’s a Hebrew edition from Shalem for whoever wants it. A somewhat exhausting book, but very interesting. A book divided into two parts. Essentially, he means to criticize communism and set against it an open, democratic society, and basically it’s a critique of communism and the threat it poses to the open society—that’s The Open Society and Its Enemies. Now he devotes the first half of the book to Platonism, and he argues that Plato is the root of all evil in history. Every bad thing that happened in history originates in Plato. Why? Because Plato—basically Platonism in the context he is talking about—sets up some ideal model that I am supposed to strive toward, to try to realize in the world. Now this model could, of course, be in the case of a horse breeder, who tries to breed the most perfect horse there is—the most beautiful, the highest quality, the most muscular, with the best performance, and so on. So he is basically striving to realize in our world the ideal, yes, the conception of the perfect horse. But that’s one thing. What happens with ideas about a perfect social model, like communism, say? There are people who have a perfect utopian model of a perfect society, of communism, where there is equality and everyone receives equally according to need and not according to production and so on. And then people come and try to realize this Platonic ideal in the world. Now our world is resistant. Our world makes it hard to produce perfect situations in our world. Probably impossible, not merely hard. You can’t—in our world nothing is perfect. Nothing. Except imperfection. Imperfection is the only perfect thing in our world. You cannot make any piece of our world perfect. So the horse breeder who wants to raise a perfect horse will often end up abusing his horses in crazy ways just so that in the end, at the end of the process, he gets some perfect horse. Striving toward the perfect utopian model often involves trampling or abusing all the imperfect phases, because you ignore reality and pursue your ideal. Therefore idealistic people are usually hard people. They have good intentions, but don’t be around them, because in order to realize their good intentions, to reach the perfection they are striving for, they are willing to sacrifice victims along the way. Meaning, because they must realize some perfect utopia. And that is what happened in communism. You can argue whether their model was good or not good, but many people think it is good—yes, at least until age seventeen, as the joke goes, everyone thinks it’s wonderful. But the attempt to realize it in reality, not as an abstract model, is an attempt that involves enormous sacrifice. In communist thought there is even a name for it: people are perceived as grease on the wheels of the revolution. As far as they are concerned, let the grease lubricate the wheels and let the people be crushed along the way; it doesn’t matter, because in the end we will reach the perfect utopia, the absolute justice that is always with us, and on the way we will crush everything that needs to be crushed, everything that gets in the way of that. Therefore idealistic people, people who aspire to realize Platonic ideas in our world—that’s why they are called idealists. Idealistic people are people who try to realize ideals in our world. These are people who begin with some vision, a certain ideal, and their goal is to realize it in the world. Now this move is probably impossible, and therefore also very, very problematic. It causes suffering, it causes cruelty, even though the goals may be very good goals. But along the way there is enormous suffering, enormous abuse, because you do not compromise; you live with the utopia, with the Platonic ideal, and you want to bring the world there, and if it does not fit there, you will force it in until it fits. You will abuse reality until it takes on the perfect form—which of course will never happen. So what happens in the end is that you abused everyone, you failed to produce the perfect reality, and all that remains is the abuse and its consequences. And that is what often happens in attempts to create an ideal world. Therefore Popper, and I think a great deal of thought that came a bit before him but mainly after him, are deeply afraid of ideals and grand values. Grand values are a recipe for a cruel path, for abuse, for ignoring reality, for trampling reality in order to produce the perfect thing, that perfect product in reality. Therefore he says: every evil that existed in the world, and especially he speaks about communism, but every evil begins with a Platonic idea. You have some perfect thing that exists in the world of ideas, and once it exists, that also causes you to assume that it can be realized here in this world. It’s not just some thought you invented; it is something real. It exists there, so it was probably meant to be realized in our world. And since it was meant to be realized in our world, now I will not give up until I do it, until I succeed. And that leads to all the cruel and wicked phenomena that appeared in history. That is Popper’s claim, and therefore half of his thick volume is devoted to a survey of Platonism. Because he says that Platonism is the root of all the bad phenomena he talks about in the second half of the book. How does he understand the Platonic idea in his critique? Again, he was a greater expert on Platonism than I am. So I’m not claiming he was mistaken; I’m only claiming that one has to distinguish between the Platonism he is talking about and the Platonism I have defined here. He talks about Platonism as a perfect idea. I want to realize that perfect structure in our world, and then I abuse the world until it fits into the perfect pattern or mold into which it must fit. But the way I described the Platonic idea earlier has nothing to do with that at all. The Platonic idea does not set up a perfect model. The Platonic idea only sets up a definition. What is the definition of horseness? It does not include the golden ratio, even though that would be the most aesthetic horse. Rather, it is four legs, two ears, can be ridden, I don’t know, properties of a horse. This is the difference between an idea and an ideal. I didn’t understand. Maybe the difference is in the words, between idea and ideal. Okay, we need to think about perhaps a pair of concepts that sharpens this distinction, but the fact is that the same terms are used in these two meanings. And therefore it is important to me to distinguish them. We will get to the second meaning as well. Popper’s critique—we will talk a bit about that too—but one has to understand that that meaning speaks of an idea in the sense of a perfect object. What I defined here is an idea in the sense of a pure object and not a perfect object. Pure means distilled of all the accidental, non-essential characteristics, not distilled of all the unattractive or imperfect characteristics. That is something completely different; it is a different process of idealization. The idealization I am talking about is not producing something perfect, but ignoring characteristics that always appear in reality but are not essential to the concept horse. And I don’t think any of the communists claim that communism is the essential characteristic of humanity and all the rest are non-essential characteristics. That is not what drives them. They claim that communism is the perfect structure of human society and other structures are invalid, and therefore must be overcome. The relation between the idea and something else is that the idea is more perfect than the something else. But the idea in the sense I am talking about is more pure than something else, not more perfect. In fact, in the very sense that it is pure, it is clear that it cannot be realized in our world. In our world every horse will have a height; the Idea of horseness has no height. In the list of characteristics there is no height, because height is not an essential characteristic. But every particular horse that comes into existence in the world has some height, no matter what; there is no horse without height. Therefore, to realize the Platonic idea in the sense that I defined it—there is no such thing. It’s simply an oxymoron. The whole point of an idea is that it is not realizable. Any realization of the idea will always contain within it additional characteristics that are not part of the idea. That is exactly the relation between the shadow and the thing itself. You have to understand that the shadow and the thing itself are not related as more perfect and less perfect, say in the allegory of the cave. What is the relation between the person himself and the shadow he casts on the wall? Is the person more perfect? No. Rather, the person is the source, and the shadow is some sort of expression or projection of the source. That’s all. It is not a relation of more perfect to less perfect. It is the relation between the thing and its projections. If you think about what projection means, maybe that will sharpen it more. What is the concept of projection? When we talk about a projection, look. Look here,
[Speaker B] When we talk about a
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] projection—suppose we make this coordinate system, excuse me, a curved space. This is the coordinate system, and suppose I’m talking about this point, or if you prefer this vector, it doesn’t matter, it’s the same thing. Then it has two components. So this is its X component and this is its Y component. Now the projection of the point or the vector onto the X-axis is this, this segment here. Say X equals two and Y is two and a half. So the projection onto the X-axis is two, X equals two. And the projection onto the Y-axis is Y equals two and a half. What is the operation of projecting? A projection? Projection basically means giving up some of the components and keeping certain components. Right? When I project onto the X-axis I’m basically saying: ignore the Y components and tell me only the X components, or the reverse: only the Y components and ignore the X components. The projection of something basically means ignoring some of its components. That’s called a projection. Now then maybe, in that sense, it’s actually more correct to say that horseness is the projection of the horse, not that the horse is the projection of horseness. Because when I want to move from the horse to horseness, what I need to do—say I project onto the essential properties and ignore all the accidental properties. Suppose Y is its height and X is the number of its legs. So I say: when I move from the horse—this is the horse—to horseness, I say horseness is the projection of all horses onto the X-axis. So for example, if there is this horse whose characteristics are these—you see, it has a different Y because it has a different height, but it has the same X. Why? Because in their essential characteristics this horse and this horse have the same essential characteristics; therefore both are horses, so they have the same projection onto the X-axis. Therefore, basically, the movement from horses to horseness is a projection. It is ignoring some of the properties, the non-essential properties, and remaining with the essential properties. So that is why I call it a projection. So yes, actually maybe it is more correct to say that the abstract concept is the projection of the concrete concept. The idea is the projection of the horse, not the horse the projection of the idea. But in Plato’s view, in terms of the logical relation, it works the other way around. Meaning, the source is the idea, and from the Idea of horseness the horses are produced. How are they produced? By my adding, by making them tangible. They are not abstract like the idea; they are tangible. What does that mean? It means I take the essential characteristics of the horse, but now I need to create a concrete horse. It has to have a height, weight, color, personality traits, so I add all those. They do not belong to the idea; in the idea all those do not appear. And I mix it all together, and thus a concrete horse is formed. So that is not projection; it is the opposite of projection. But it doesn’t matter; the idea is the same. A person. Right? So ostensibly the object—the shadow is the tangible object and the person is the abstract thing, the idea. But the allegory is an allegory in the opposite direction. Meaning, it presents it as a projection but actually means to say that the idea creates the tangible things. It is really the more basic, more fundamental, more original being. And our world is some kind of world of shadows that the ideas created. Whereas in the mathematical sense, actually the ideas are the projection of the tangible objects.
[Speaker D] I have a question. Yes. In the world of computer science, if I have an image and I want to know whether this image is a horse or a dog—what people do today is run millions of trials like that, and I say: this is more similar to all the horses I found than it is to a dog, even if it’s a large dog or something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a good point. I’ll get to Aristotle in a moment. What you’re describing corresponds more to how Aristotle understands categories or abstract concepts. But I’ll already comment here, since you asked, that when we get from tangible objects to the idea, we begin our abstraction from the tangible objects and create the idea from them. But that does not mean that this is the true relation between the things. In other words, Plato claims that the tangible objects are really expressions—they were created by the idea or out of the idea. The fact that we arrive at the idea by observing the tangible objects—although Plato also doesn’t agree with that—but even if we assume it’s true, that still doesn’t mean Plato is fundamentally wrong. It doesn’t mean Plato is fundamentally wrong, because the question of the relation between the idea and the objects—the true relation—is not about from where to where we arrive or how we learn it. Right? Think, for example, about the… well, we’ll get to that in a moment and then I think it will be clearer. Maybe I’ll just make one comment anyway: when you train a neural network to identify what is a dog and what is a horse, then your input—there are other algorithms too—but the standard algorithms are that you feed it input and say: this image, attach to it, this is a horse. This image is a dog. This image is a dog, horse, horse, dog, and so on. Then the network learns, and with the next image it will know to identify whether it is a dog or a horse. But you have to feed the input into the network. And in the input, you already need to know which image is a horse and which is a dog. Meaning, you already know what a horse is and what a dog is, and you’re trying to teach that to the network. And the interesting question is how you yourself know that. Did you also learn that in the way the network learned it? That is what Aristotle claims. And Plato claims not. But I’ll get to that shortly. So now I’m really getting to Aristotle. Maybe one more sentence that I forgot to say: I distinguished between the Idea of horseness and an ideal horse. The ideal horse is maybe—you could call it a horse, admittedly abstract, not tangible—but still a horse. But it doesn’t really exist. The Idea of horseness is not a horse, but according to Plato it does exist. There is something that exists. Maybe an even better metaphor for this, I’m thinking now, is our DNA. Our DNA basically contains all the essential information about us. I don’t know, not all of it, but much of the essential information about us. Okay? Now what is DNA? DNA is not a person—an idea of a person in the sense that it is not a perfect person. Nor is it an abstract person. It is the information of what a person is. From that information you can produce a person. But the DNA is the source, and the person is basically created from the source, or by the source, or out of the source. Therefore I think DNA is not a bad illustration of Plato’s concept of idea, and not some abstract visual person existing in my imagination. That would be a perfect person or a pure person or an image of a perfect or pure person existing in my imagination, but not existing in reality. But the DNA does exist in reality. The collection of information that contains what a person is exists in reality itself. Except that this thing is not a person; it is only the essential information about what a person is. And in our analogy, beyond DNA there is of course also environmental influence. Environmental influence is the non-essential properties that can vary and can turn out this way or that way depending on what happens. The DNA contains my essential properties, what is within me by virtue of my very creation, beyond external influences. So in that sense, I think this is a good analogy for the Platonic idea and for the fact that it contains only the essential properties and abstracts away the accidental properties. Now I want to get to Aristotle. Up to this point, this is Plato. Aristotle relates to things more or less the way we are used to relating to them. Aristotle disagrees with Plato and argues that general concepts, like horseness, do not really exist but are our abstractions. From that it of course follows that Aristotle also understands that the way to arrive at abstract concepts is from tangible objects. I saw many horses, I abstracted, and from that I got the Idea of horseness. So the Idea of horseness, first, is created out of observing horses; second, the Idea of horseness is not really something that exists. It is something I define because it is convenient for me for one reason or another, and therefore I define it in order to work with these concepts, but these are abstractions made by human beings; they are not beings. Now Plato disagrees on three fronts. First, he claims that this being, this idea, horseness, is not just an abstraction but an entity that exists in some sense, even if it does not occupy some definite place in space, but it exists in the world. There are other things, by the way, that do not occupy a place in space but do exist—from the Holy One, blessed be He, to a photon. There are things that exist even though they do not occupy a definite place in space. So the fact that it has no location in space does not mean it does not exist. The idea is something that exists—that is the first point on which he disagrees with Aristotle. Second, he claims that when we arrive at the idea, we do not arrive at it by abstraction from tangible objects, but the soul looks at the idea itself, and that is how it understands what horseness is. In other words, according to Aristotle, you cannot understand the idea except through tangible objects, because there is no such thing as an idea detached from tangible objects. Not only because I lack the ability to see the abstract thing—he could have disagreed with Plato on Plato’s second thesis and said: true, there is some abstract thing there, but I have no way to reach it except through observing tangible objects and abstracting. But Aristotle argues that there is no such thing as an idea at all; it does not exist, not merely that I have no way to see it. Plato disagrees with him on all three fronts: first, it does exist; second, I do have a way to get to it. I, the soul, can see the abstract thing; it does not need to look at tangible objects in order to abstract from them and produce the abstract idea. Okay, that is the dispute between Plato and Aristotle. I’m talking about my Plato and Aristotle; I’m not committing myself regarding the… And as I said earlier too, it could be—not just could be, I assume—that Plato agrees that observing tangible objects helps me grasp the idea. He also understands that people make abstractions. He only claims that that is not the whole story. If we had no ability to make contact with the idea itself, if the soul could not see the idea itself, we probably could not do it through observing tangible objects either. And I think this is the most fundamental point of dispute between Platonism and Aristotelianism, and that is what I want to explain now. On the face of it, it is very unclear why one should assume what Plato assumes: first assumption, that the idea exists; second assumption, that I have a way to contemplate it not via tangible objects. My soul can grasp what horseness is. Two theses; Aristotle disagrees with both. Now in simple terms Aristotle is right—why invent this kind of mysticism when there seems to be no need for it? It does not fit our intuitions. Why invent such a thing? It seems to me that the source of this issue is the following claim. Think for a moment. Think for a moment about a taxonomy we create of objects in the world. Taxonomy means classification, yes? We divide the objects in the world into groups, kinds, species, classify them, build some taxonomic tree on which we sort the objects we know in the world. For example, we have all objects with mass, which are divided into animate, plant, and inanimate, and if you like, speaking. Speaking, animate, plant, and inanimate—four categories. Each of these categories is divided—yes, the inanimate into liquid, solid, and gas, just throwing things out now—and animals into land animals, sea creatures, birds, fish, mammals, the whole biological taxonomy. And human beings too are divided into different races, different continents, different traits. There are all sorts of divisions within these species and kinds. So we’ve created a taxonomy, a classification of all the objects in the world. Now the questions are: first, how did we arrive at it, and second, is this classification correct in some sense? Is it correct? Suppose someone says: you know, in Greek philosophy all the objects in the world were divided according to four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. Okay? Or dust, if you prefer. And the different objects differ from one another in the proportions, the mixture among these four elements. It’s a vector with four slots, and in each slot there is an amount between zero and one of earth, air, water, and fire. Every vector of four such numbers is a kind of object, or a kind of substance if you want. Okay? So iron contains a lot of earth and little fire because it is very heavy. Water of course contains a lot of water, and so on. Right? So the division of objects is according to the mixture of these four elements. Now compare that to Mendeleev’s periodic table. Okay? Those are the chemical elements. Today we divide substances in the world according to the chemical elements, according to which mixture of elements creates each substance. So is one of these classifications more correct than the other or less correct than the other, or are they just two classifications and each person should use whichever is more convenient? In the Aristotelian conception, there is no correct and incorrect here. There is no one who is more right or less right. This is one way of looking at the world: I divide the world in a four-dimensional space and every substance is a four-dimensional vector telling me how much air, how much water, how much earth, and how much fire there is in the thing. And again, if you perform a chemical analysis you will not find earth, air, water, and fire there, but no one meant chemical analysis there. Therefore it is not a mistake. Chemical analysis is meant to isolate Mendeleev’s elements, while there they were talking about a conceptual composition—call it metaphysical composition, if you like—not chemical composition. It’s a different way of looking. So who is right here? There is no right and wrong here. It is simply a conceptual system; perhaps this one is more convenient to use, perhaps that one is more convenient. It may be that in some contexts this one is more convenient and in others that one is more convenient. But there are no concepts of true and false here. In that sense, in the Aristotelian picture, when you speak about taxonomy, classification of things, and you say all horses are one kind and all donkeys are another kind—that is not a claim about the world. There is nothing here that is essential to the world. It is simply more convenient for me to divide animals into horses and donkeys. Fine. If there were another creature that did not see the world in that way, then the concepts donkey and horse would not exist in its lexicon. It would divide the world differently. Therefore I am not more right or less right than someone else. It is convenient for me to work this way. Maybe not even that—it’s not certain; maybe someone will come and create a different division and suddenly it will turn out to be more convenient. There is no right or wrong here. According to Plato, there are divisions that are correct, because if there is an Idea of horseness, then the collection of horses really is one kind. They are all realizations of the Idea of horseness. And the Idea of donkey-ness and the Idea of sheep-ness, yes? And so on, or fish-ness. So every such object is basically classified—the taxonomy according to Plato is a taxonomy imposed on us; it is correct. It is not a tool for our use. If I say that all horses belong to one group, one kind, and that kind is called horses, that is because I see—I saw or encountered the Idea of horseness, which caused me to understand that all these horses have something in common. Now understand: this is not just scholastic hair-splitting. Think about seeing donkeys and horses. We have some sense that there is something in horses that is not in donkeys and vice versa. In other words, this seems to us a natural division. Is the naturalness of the division merely a function of how we are built? Or is it in reality itself a natural division? A very tricky question. Because if you think about it, why distinguish between donkey and horse? Four legs, two ears, very similar, they make somewhat similar noises, you can ride both. There are of course features that distinguish the donkey from the horse. But there are also features that distinguish one donkey from another donkey. Why do you decide that the features distinguishing donkey from horse are an essential distinction that creates kinds, while the features distinguishing one donkey from another are accidental, non-essential features? There is no way to justify that in the Aristotelian picture. In Plato there is some natural justification, since the Idea of horseness tells us that horse is a distinct concept, and I see in this idea what the essential properties of the horse are, and therefore I understand that all the other properties are accidental, incidental. And the same with donkeys. So I understand that donkeys are one thing and horses another; that is a correct division. Whoever doesn’t see that is blind. It’s not that he is simply built differently from me; he is blind. He does not see correctly. According to Plato there is truth and falsehood in taxonomy. Now understand—and with this I’ll finish, because we really need to stop, but just one question.
[Speaker D] I
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] just want to sharpen this and say: you need to understand that this is a very strong argument in favor of Platonism. Because I think very few people would agree to say that the division between donkeys and horses is merely our division. I think we all feel that there is something essential in horses that differs from donkeys, even though each individual horse differs from every other horse in all sorts of traits as well. We just say: no, those are non-essential traits, accidental traits. Why? By what authority do you determine that? Maybe all creatures that are six feet tall should be of the same kind—whether they are donkeys or horses? And we’ll call them six-footers. And there will be six-foot-three-ers and five-foot-eight-ers, and that will be the relevant division. Why do we choose the division between donkeys and horses and not between six-footers and six-foot-three-ers? Because it seems to us that the properties of horseness are more essential properties and height is not an essential property. That’s just a matter of definition. Why shouldn’t we say that height is an essential property? So Aristotle would say: because it is more convenient for us. It is simply a more fruitful classification, but it is not actually correct. And I don’t know if he said this, but he would have to say it according to his position. Plato would say: what are you talking about? There is no possibility of another classification. Look at the ideas and see. And I think you’ll admit, anyone who looks inside himself for a moment and asks how he really perceives the classifications we make—we are all Platonists. Even though Platonism looks like some strange mystical thing at first glance, when you examine how you look at objects in the world, at their division into kinds, at the taxonomies we create, we are all Platonists. Therefore I think Platonism is not just some ridiculous mystical hallucination. There is something very Platonic in our way of looking at the world. Maybe it is our illusion, but it seems to me that if we examine ourselves honestly we will discover within each of us a little Platonist.
[Speaker D] Is there a question? Yes. We look at the Jewish laws of mixed species. There are two species in the Sages, and in science it’s completely different.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, the same question.
[Speaker D] But you can’t say that one is right and the other is not right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can say that. You absolutely can say that.
[Speaker D] You can say it, but someone who issues halakhic rulings about the Jewish laws of mixed species can’t say it. But okay, for an agnostic it isn’t right to derive the Jewish laws of mixed species that way. Why?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not true. He can say that the Sages were mistaken, and that mixed-species law applies between these species and not between those species because they were mistaken in their taxonomy. What’s the problem? He can say that. Maybe I am bound by the determination of the Sages because they have authority, but that doesn’t mean their taxonomy was correct. Or it doesn’t mean that there is no such thing as a correct taxonomy at all. Okay? It doesn’t necessarily force me to say that taxonomy is an arbitrary matter. On the contrary, I do not think taxonomy is arbitrary, and therefore I am inclined to think that if I discover something like that, I would say that the Sages were simply mistaken, because they were not equipped with the relevant scientific information. Maybe—you have to examine each case on its own merits—but there is no impediment to their having made quite a few mistakes in scientific matters. Okay, I’ll stop here.
[Speaker F] I still don’t understand where this mystical thing comes from. Rabbi, you asked it so beautifully—where does this mystical notion come from, to go and invent that there is really some strange something? Why say it at all? After all, you can manage without it, you can manage without it. If we couldn’t manage without it, then there’d be no choice. But you can manage—say there are all sorts of creatures in the world,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] electronic ones and…
[Speaker F] Let me ask you a question, let me ask you a different question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I look at the reality in front of me and I see that there is a lamp here. Where does the mysticism come from that there really is a lamp here? All I know is that I see a lamp. Who said that in the world itself there really is a lamp? That’s some unnecessary mysticism—why invent it? Such a strange metaphysics. Because I trust what I see, right? I don’t know how to explain it, but I trust it; I understand that what I see reflects reality. The claim I want to make is that when we look at horses and donkeys, we simply see that there are different ideas here, different realities. And therefore, for me, that is enough basis to say that horses and donkeys are different from one another and belong to different ideas. And this is ostensibly mysticism, as you said, but exactly like the existence of the lamp. I simply see it the way I see it. And anyone who examines himself honestly, it seems to me, will discover that he really does understand that donkeys differ from horses more than one donkey differs from another donkey, or one horse from another horse. There is something real in this division; it is not merely a useful division. And if we discover this within ourselves, that means we simply see that there is an ideal difference between them.
[Speaker F] But if you—if a person is a nominalist, and he can distinguish between one horse and another horse, and say this is really a different essence: this horse is full of kindness, and that horse is terribly forceful—he really sees different entities. He says: true, there is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He can, he can, but go and see that he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t do that; nobody does that. Nobody argues, nobody proposes a taxonomy different from the accepted taxonomy.
[Speaker F] But suppose a lion comes to prey on a horse or a donkey. It could be that it doesn’t really see the big difference. Maybe it sees pieces of meat here, protein, and I devour them—it doesn’t make that much difference.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, I don’t know what the lion sees. I don’t know how to communicate with it; there’s no anthropos for lions, as they say. What I do know is how to talk to people. People tell me what they see, and my impression is that people see this the way I do.
[Speaker F] Yes, but clearly people—when I don’t want to say “we,” to make a distinction—when a convinced Nazi saw human beings, and saw a Jew and next to him saw a person, he said: these are two different creatures. It seems to you that it’s the same thing, but it isn’t.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I doubt it. I very much doubt it. Maybe you’re right, but I very much doubt it. The fact is, yes, all the stories, the well-known tales that before shooting Jews they would drink wine and get drunk in order to make the hard experience easier for the Nazi—why? Because they did not see the Jews as something different. It was only the ideology they pumped into them that somehow tried to wash that out of them—not very successfully. So I don’t, I don’t agree with your description, at least in general. No, there’s something very powerful here. Now, you can say that this powerful thing is entirely an illusion, that all of us are built in this illusory way and it’s still an illusion, even though we all feel this way. But you can say the same thing about the eyes. We all think that our eyes reflect reality, but that’s an illusion. Why invent a metaphysics that there is a reality? But if we trust our eyes, and the indication is that everyone sees it and everyone feels this way about the eyes—that’s only an indication, it’s not my proof. It’s an indication. My proof is simply my immediate sensation. So that same immediate sensation exists for me with our taxonomic distinctions. And therefore I don’t see this as mysticism. I see it simply as decoding my basic perceptions. That’s how I perceive reality: I see that here there is a horse and here there is a donkey. What I see is not mysticism—I simply see. And that is the contemplation of the ideas that Plato speaks about. I see the idea of horseness. All right, we’ll come back to this next time. Goodbye, have a peaceful Sabbath. Have a peaceful Sabbath.
[Speaker B] Have a peaceful Sabbath.