The spinach test
Hello Rabbi,
I have a few questions about David Enoch’s spinach test:
Questions about David Enoch’s spinach test:
- In the spinach example, for example (What a luck that I don’t like spinach…), why does the fact that the sentence is humorous show that there is no objective moral question here? I understood this to show that taste is a subjective matter, but the fact that something is subjective does not make it morally worthless (it may be that liking spinach is actually a moral thing because it is healthy, etc.)
- The question of whether the sentence is funny stems from the person’s position on the subject. In the case of spinach, it will make everyone laugh, but in the intermediate cases that the test is trying to test, the question of whether it will make me laugh depends on whether the question I posed in the test sounds to me like something objective or subjective. For example:
- I tried to understand by the spinach test whether belief in God is an ethical fact, a certain formulation led to the conclusion that it is and another formulation that it is not: 1. How lucky I was not born 2000 years ago because then everyone believed in God and belief in God is nonsense. 2. How lucky I was not born into a secular family because otherwise I would not believe in God and believing in God is good. The first sentence is not funny to me, while the second sentence is somewhat true because anyway if I were born into a secular family the assumption is that I would not think that believing in God is good. Can we learn anything from these sentences?
- Whether the conclusion is that belief in God is an ethical fact or not, I have questions about that.
If there is no ethical fact here, it follows that belief in God and the existence of God is a subjective matter and not an objective fact. This also raises a difficulty with your claim that there is ethical realism, because only if there is a God is morality valid.
If the conclusion is that belief in God is indeed an objective fact, and we add to that that He is the one who validates morality and He gave us 313 commandments (this is not part of the argument in the discussion with Enoch, but it is still part of your perception), does this mean that the commandments have a binding moral value or are they just binding without moral value? Isn’t it worth assuming that everything we observe should have a certain moral value? And if the commandments are moral, how come we don’t always understand this morality? I also remember that you wrote that there is no moral problem with same-sex relationships and yet the Torah prohibits it, there is also no moral problem with lighting a fire on Shabbat, and the Torah prohibits that too…
Thank you in advance.
1. The spinach test is not related to morality. It is intended to help diagnose whether a claim is subjective or objective. That’s all. When you apply it to morality, you discover that for most of us it is objective and not subjective. In my opinion, like Enoch, subjective morality has no validity, but that’s another issue that is not related to the spinach test.
2. Obviously, the direction is from perception to the question of laughability. But the test helps you make a diagnosis for yourself: if it’s funny to you, then in your eyes it’s subjective (because only subjective is funny).
3. It has nothing to do with ethical facts. The spinach test does not determine whether something is an ethical fact, but rather whether it is an objective claim or not. This applies to any field, with no connection to ethics in particular. In my opinion, nothing can be learned from them. In my opinion, none of them are funny either. Obviously, if you were born into a secular family, you would not think that believing is good. This is true for all types of claims. And yet the question is not what you would have thought then, but what you think today about that hypothetical situation.
4. See the previous section.
Indeed, in my opinion, there is no connection between Halacha and morality. To detail this would require an entire essay. I have entire series of lessons on this, as well as columns (15, 541-542).
Thanks.
3. It's a bit funny to argue about what's funny, but still,
Why is the sentence "I'm so lucky I wasn't born into a secular family because otherwise I wouldn't believe in God and believing in God is good, isn't it funny?" It's just like spinach, which is funny because if I loved spinach anyway, it wouldn't be yuck... and why doesn't it mean anything? Isn't it supposed to show whether belief in God is an objective matter (like knowing the theory of relativity) or subjective (like loving spinach)?
Intuition, belief as opposed to knowledge sounds like a subjective thing. On the other hand, the mere fact that belief in God is subjective doesn't necessarily mean that there is no absolute truth to the question of whether God exists.
You haven't defined the concepts correctly for yourself.
Let's start with the concept of ‘subjective’. Every factual claim is subjective in the sense that I think it. When I think that 2+2=4, it is a subjective thought. But it has an objective root. It is objectively true, but when I think about it, it is subjective.
In the essential meaning, ‘subjective’ means a thought that has no root in objective reality. It is not true, but I think or feel it.
In the first meaning of subjectivity, every factual claim is of course subjective. Therefore, the spinach test has no meaning in relation to this meaning of subjectivity. The test examines subjectivity in the second sense. In this sense, factual claims or laws of science are objective, but taste (like spinach) is subjective.
Now we have a general test that passes a claim X, whether it is objective or subjective. I ask myself whether the statement about X: How good that I live in such and such a time because if I lived in another place/time then I would not think/experience X. Is this a funny statement or not. If so, then in my opinion X is subjective in the essential sense.
Now about morality or belief. If X is the moral obligation (like not to murder) or belief in God, and you are laughing, this means that in your opinion these are subjective claims in the essential sense.
If this is so, then it is clear that it is not binding in any way. A subjective claim in the essential sense is not binding. This follows from the very nature of essential subjectivity. Only subjectivity in the technical sense can deal with something binding, because it is subjective in the sense that I feel it but it has an objective root, and therefore it is binding. But the spinach test does not deal with this subjectivity.
Think carefully about what I wrote here before you continue. I feel like you don't always fully examine things before continuing the discussion.
“In the essential sense, ‘subjective’ means a thought that has no root in objective reality. It is not true, but I think or feel it.”
By this definition, there may be nothing subjective in the world. I love my wife. If that is not subjective “in the essential sense”, I do not know what is. And yet, it has a root in objective reality. I exist, my wife exists, my hormones exist, my soul exists, and so on. It is certainly true that I love my wife.
It seems to me that the words “rooted in objective reality” are doing too much work. They leave a lot of room for maneuver. In any case, I do not think this is a good way to think about the distinction between objective and subjective. It sounds like she's making a very common mistake: trying to define the subject as having no “objective” place, such that it cannot be objectively placed in the objective world from an objective perspective. Except that it's trivially wrong.
Wow! Is this the wording you suggest to clarify the picture? I didn't understand a word.
I don't see any problem with my wording. I didn't say that there are no physiological factors for my love for my wife. I said that these factors are subjective (they are personal to me). So for example, if someone else comes and says that he doesn't love her, I won't think we have an argument or disagreement. It's a matter of taste. In my opinion, this definition is simple and clear.
Leave a Reply
Please login or Register to submit your answer
