Rambam’s response regarding freedom of will
Hello Rabbi, I have seen the Rambam’s answer regarding the paradox of choice and knowledge many times and I always have the feeling that there is something a little problematic in this answer but I am not entirely able to identify what. I would like to know what the Rabbi thinks about his answer and also about the Rabbi’s attitude there.
This is problematic because he says that God’s knowledge is not like our knowledge, and that means that He truly does not have knowledge in the usual sense. If so, there is no answer there, but he accepts the contradiction and draws a conclusion that God does not know the future of being chosen. This is also what the Shelah wrote in his introduction to the section ‘House of Choice’.
The Rabbi understood that there was no answer in Maimonides’ words, but rather an evasion, and therefore rebuked him for even raising the question of whether he had no answer. As stated, in my assessment Maimonides does provide an answer, that there is truly no knowledge.
And even if Maimonides did not intend this, I still think this is the correct answer, since knowing in advance what will be chosen is a logical contradiction and therefore impossible. See my books on the Newcomb Paradox in the Science of Freedom.
Also on the methodological/educational level, one should discuss whether questions that have no answer should not be raised. For the sake of justice, they should definitely be raised.
To put it in the Rambam is a stretch, in my opinion.
He explicitly writes that ”there is no knowledge as we know it” but not that he does not know, and it means that he has knowledge but that it does not work as our knowledge does.
If so, then he did not answer his question. But I am not interested in clarifying his method or other methods on this subject. The point is to clarify the truth, and the truth is that he probably has no prior knowledge.
The argument that is often made on this subject is that God is a spectator from the sidelines and time does not play a role in His work. In other words, He knows what you will choose in an hour because He has no concept of time, and if you assume that He has a concept of time, then you have made Him limited.
Yes. I am very familiar with these word games. In my opinion, they have no meaning. Search the site under “Knowledge and Choice” there are several discussions about it.
Did the Rabbi backtrack on the "two carts"? (That contradictions of the kind that the Rabbi calls logical may exist) I personally still believe that contradictions of this kind can exist (as opposed to analytic, in the Rabbi's language). As they wrote here. His knowledge is not like our knowledge, it is not that he does not know, but that there is a similarity between it and our knowledge. It is said that his knowledge is more developed than ours and can achieve this, and probably because of two things that are related to each other in a way that I have not yet figured out for myself: 1. That our concept of the future is not really the future in reality itself, which in a certain sense does not yet exist 2. That God is not watching from the sidelines. Part of it (?) is involved in reality itself (a kind of partial pantheism. Now I went to check and saw that some call this intuition panentheism)
No. I agree in principle. The question is what is the nature of the contradiction between knowledge and choice. Newcomb's paradox says that it is not possible.
Regarding the wordplay between pantheism and panentheism, I have already written that I do not understand them and I am not sure that those who say them understand them.
I do agree with the rabbi on his feeling about word games. But my intuition was formed even before I even knew any ism. The feeling stems from the fact that those who invented these words were not philosophers or Kabbalists, but rather they were researchers of philosophy or Kabbalah. They are busy with superficial external categorization of these people (methods). And it seems that they really do not understand a word of what they say for the simple reason that they do not really try to understand the people they are studying. Otherwise they would become philosophers or Kabbalists themselves. My feeling is usually that when I read Spinoza, for example, he sees something that I do not see and I make an effort to see this thing. After I have managed to see it, then I do not call it pantheism but reality. If someone tells me something is different from Spinoza, I assume that he also sees something but from a different angle. After I see what he sees, I try to understand how these two seemingly different views do not contradict each other, and then comes the third and decisive scripture between them. And I understand the complex overall reality with its two seemingly contradictory aspects. At this point, I am, at least in the specific matter I am trying to understand, the greater philosopher of the two philosophers. But philosopher (and also accepted) is a kind of derogatory word. There is simply reality.
By the way, this is a phenomenon that for some reason (I'm just saying this. It's clear why this is so) exists only in the humanities. There is no such thing as mathematicians or physicists (mathematicologists or physicists). There are mathematicians and physicists - people who are made and produce physics or mathematics. For some reason, in the spiritual world, creators (writers, poets, musicians, philosophers and Kabbalists) are absent as such from universities.
In relation to Prox Newcomb, my feeling is that prophecy (at least that from the Bible) globally is not simply a prediction of the future. It is related to the actions of people and their choices. For example, Jeremiah predicts what will happen if they do not repent and what will happen if they do (“God never repented of anything good except for….”) but he never predicts the actual choice itself (as the Newcomb paradox does). In fact, prophecy is not detached from future reality (describing from the outside) but participates in its creation. Jeremiah predicts that we have chosen good. And he does not simply describe what will happen if we choose good or evil. And he is not an oracle at all. (Although there was a concept of a seer, and this is indeed a bit of a question for me). In this sense, prophecy pushes reality itself towards the people choosing good, but again, not forces it. And there is an almost mechanical mechanism of reality acting on itself (Yirmiyahu and Ami are part of the same organism and not just people who do things). This is my basic observation and I have no way of proving it to a rabbi.
In the humanities, it seems that they “talk about” instead of “doing.” In the sense of “he who cannot do teaches” (in English, it sounds better). There are “lecturers” instead of “teachers” (in the sense of a “teacher” in martial arts, for whom there is no difference between doing and learning, and at the high level one must start teaching in order to develop by doing, and at the low level one learns while doing, not through frontal lectures, and this is also true wherever they do what is called an internship, and also explains why in every workplace experience is preferred over education). In other words, the humanities are on the left, in contrast to the natural sciences, which are on the right or in the middle.
Ayalon, I think you are mistaken. First, in mathematics and physics too there are teachers who teach and do not create. It is true that universities (as opposed to colleges and schools) only have those who also do research.
But in fact, even in universities the analogy does exist, since physics and mathematics (at least in my opinion, and I think you agree with me on this) were created by God. Therefore, researchers at the university are also only researching something that someone else created. In the humanities, the creations are by humans, and therefore there is a category of creators beyond researchers.
See on this subject my articles This one:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94-%D7 %94%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%95%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%97%D7%A7%D7%A8-%D7%9E%D7%97%D 7%A9%D7%91%D7%AA-%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C-%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%93%D7%A2/
I read the article. Apparently the difference between studying God's creation and that of man is fundamental. First of all, it seems that in order to study nature, one needs creation. It is not just discovery, but there is a preliminary process of creating abstract mental categories. Many consider general relativity to be a scientific masterpiece. Hamilton called Lagrange's analytical mechanics "scientific poetry". Maxwell's equations are considered "the most beautiful thing in physics". (I still enjoy reflecting on them to this day). Apparently, this can also be true in the study of Agnon's poems, but for some reason I have not heard of a masterpiece by Kurzweil. (Although, by the way, I really enjoy reading the commentary of biblical scholars Yehuda Kiel, Amos Hacham, and Mordechai Zer Kavod in "Da'at Mikra." There is undoubtedly a lot of wisdom in this field, but I would not even use the term masterpiece.) In addition, in the creation of poetry and music, there is also a search for truth, and the musician searches for the best means of expression for that truth. He does not simply "bring up what is on his heart" (Unless the rabbi meant that what is in his heart is also reality. But musicians and poets spend a lot of time polishing and perfecting the raw materials that come to their minds. It's not just what comes to the poet - he writes). The creators (at least the greatest of them) in the spiritual world are considered conduits to our world through which a higher truth descends that comes from a place higher than our world. Mathematicians and physicists (again, at least the greatest of them) are also considered creators, not researchers. Albert Einstein is not considered a physics researcher. He is a physicist - physics is part of his essence. If you were to ask him what his profession is - He would answer you that he has no profession. (He feeds on the waste of the tables (tables of relativity))
Secondly and closely related to the first claim. Genius. There is no genius in the world of humanities research. I have never heard of a researcher of music, literature, the Bible or Jewish thought who is a genius (unlike musicians or philosophers or writers, for example). This is of course not accidental. It stems from the courageous relationship between creativity and genius (if they are not the same thing).
All of this no longer seems like a fundamental difference to me. In fact, the analogy is completely there, except that there are the usual differences between the humanities and the natural sciences (the degree of talent required, the degree of precision and depth, etc.). We're back to the usual discussion, with which I of course completely agree.
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