Questions about knowledge and choice
Greetings to Rabbi Michael Avraham.
1) How can an opinion that holds that there is no free choice for a person be consistent with belief in the Torah?
It is known that this is what is written (allegedly) in the Light of God by Rabbi Hasdai Karshakash, and Rabbi Tzadok, and there is also a religious neuroscientist in our day who claims that there is no free choice.
In their opinion, what place is there for reward and punishment? Or for commands, and in general, the world, according to them, is a ‘play’, a fiction, a moving film in which we are all actors, with our own necessity, so how can the world have a purpose? And what is the point of creating such an illusion?
2) How can one say that knowledge and choice are a physical and not a logical contradiction (I understand that you do not agree with this, but there are those who claim so)? Or: According to the Maimonides (not according to the commentary of the Shelah), can God tell a prophet in prophecy what a certain person will do tomorrow or write it on a piece of paper in this world, and still leave a person free to choose? If we say that God cannot, we find that the Maimonides limited him more than if he had said that God does not know at all, and if God can, then it is certainly a logical and not a physical contradiction, because it is written in the paper that a certain person will do A, then he certainly does not have the possibility of doing B.
What I also saw is that it is written in the Rambam’s Laws of Repentance, Halacha 5, Chapter 6:
“And is it not written in the Torah, and they were enslaved and afflicted? For it is written, and this people arose and prostituted themselves after the foreign gods of the land? For it is decreed for Israel to serve as such. And why is it that they are exempted from them, since it is not decreed for a certain person known to be the prostitute, but rather for each and every one of those prostitutes to serve as such. If he did not want to serve, he would not have served. And the Creator did not inform them, but rather the custom of the world.”
And one must wonder why Maimonides did not simply explain, according to what he wrote at the end of the previous chapter, that the fact that God knows what a certain person will do does not contradict free choice, even though we are unable to explain how the two things go together?
If so, even here he could have seemingly said that God truly meant the entire nation, “and this nation rose up and committed fornication,” meaning not just a few of them, and yet the choice was in man’s hands, because God’s knowledge does not force man’s choice.
Why did he need to “reinvent” the foundation and say that “this people rose up and committed fornication” is talking about individuals and not about all of them, and therefore there was still free choice (this without mentioning the question of
The Rabbid on the website).
It seems that one must prove from this that, according to the Rambam, God, blessed be He, cannot announce His knowledge in this world, even though it exists with Him, because then a logical contradiction would arise between knowledge and choice (which, as is known, the Rishonim claim that such a thing is impossible to accept).
What does the rabbi think about my words?
Hello.
Regarding the fundamental question of whether determinism is compatible with Jewish faith – see in detail in the appendix to the books on the science of freedom. My answer is no. I have no interest in offering explanations for opinions that I consider to be unfounded. The problem is much more fundamental than the logic of creating fiction. Determinism suffers from much more serious problems, as explained in the books there.
That’s true. This is the very question the Rabbi asked him.
Thank you very much.
I didn't fully understand whether the Rabbi meant that according to the Maimonides, God Almighty cannot inform a prophet in this world what a certain person will do, because then it is a logical contradiction.
Even without him informing, he simply cannot know. The message to the prophet is only an indication of the difficulty. If he knows, then he can also inform the prophet, and then a difficulty arises. The conclusion is that he does not know at all. Search Wikipedia for Newcomb's paradox. And I have expanded on this in my books on the science of freedom (I think there is also an article on the website about freedom of will).
Perhaps the fact that the Rambam did not justify it by stating that it is impossible to understand strengthens the understanding of the Rambam, that indeed the Rambam meant that there is no certain knowledge.
The Shelah says his words in the manner of Maimonides.
Now I saw that the light is happy on a website that writes as I said. He says that the Rambam could not explain “And they served and punished them” by the fact that knowledge does not force the choice because “the knowledge of the prophets forces (the choice)”. (Thus he rejects the words of the fighter who said that the Rambam could have made the above excuse, but that the excuse would be better).
It follows from this that the Rambam could not have “tolerated” the fact that a prophet in our world knew what so-and-so would do and so-and-so would still have a choice.
From this, we are seemingly faced with two paths: Either the Rambam believed that even though God knows, He cannot bring His knowledge down to the world.
Or is it proven that the light of the light is happy in the Rambam and that his intention is that there is no absolute knowledge, but according to the current situation (but why does he express himself as "knowledge" that the answer to this question is deeper than the sea).
Just two things that I still don't understand.
1) If God cannot inform the prophet what a certain person will do, is there still a logical contradiction or has it become a physical contradiction?
2) How did the Rabbi understand that the Shelah is saying his words within the Rambam's understanding? He does build his words on it, but it doesn't seem clear that he is claiming that this is what the Rambam intended?
I didn't understand. You say that the Almighty writes that God cannot convey the information to the world. Then you write that God's knowledge is uncertain. That's a different argument.
By the way, his words in my opinion are complete absurdity. If he knows, why can't he tell the prophet? What prevents him? And if he is prevented from doing so, then he is not omnipotent, so why assume that he knows what will happen. Maybe he is not omnipotent in this too (and this is indeed the case in my opinion).
See the Almighty himself explaining his words.
I did get confused in my writing.
The Rabbi says that the Rambam believes that God cannot convey information to the world.
From here I want to bring evidence for the Shlomo method (here I got confused and accidentally wrote O) that in the opinion of the Rambam, God's knowledge is not certain (i.e., there is no knowledge), because if not, we would have to say that the Rambam divided between God's knowledge of the future, which exists, and His ability to reveal it to the world, which does not exist.
If the Rambam did indeed believe this, it is absurd, as the Rabbi says, because we have limited God with a more severe limitation (that He cannot convey information to the world even though He knows it).
Therefore, it is more clear that the Rambam meant that there is no knowledge at all, and this is according to the understanding of the Shelah.
That is, I use the understanding of the light of joy regarding the transmission of information to the world (unlike the Mishnah and the Rabbah) in a more expanded form than his words, in order to prove that it turns out that knowledge itself does not exist according to the Rambam.
The importance of this view is that it allows us to understand what led the Shelah to insert his words into the words of the Rambam, even though it seems that this was not his intention.
According to my words, it is clear where the Shelah took his words from.
Sorry in advance if I'm invading a discussion that's not for me...
Yair, I don't understand your question. Maimonides' answer to "And they enslaved them and punished them" does not address the problem that he knew in advance that they would do so, but rather a different problem, which is that he decreed for them to do so (and a kind of problem with Pharaoh's hardening of his heart). And if by "knowing" it is possible to explain that he can know without it having a causal impact on those about whom he knows, and therefore in principle, even if it seems strange, he can also inform someone of this without it having a causal impact on the future. When it comes to decree, this is of course not possible, because the whole idea of decree is that he determines in advance what will happen, and therefore Maimonides needed other excuses... and the excuse explains why they were punished.
David, I have indeed pondered this for some time, and the conclusion seems clear to me that although the Maimonides' language is "it *was decreed* for Israel to work like this", it is quite clear to me that he does not mean a decree in the usual sense, that he decided that this would be the case, for two reasons, which are three:
1) What made the Maimonides think that God decreed for Israel to work like this? Where is it written in the verse? God is basically telling Moses that this is the future reality, where does it say that he decided and determined that this would be the case? (The same applies to the Egyptians, although there is room to argue that there this cannot be a hypothesis (how can one hypothesize such a thing? It is not like saying that there will be wicked people among the people of Israel, which is a very plausible hypothesis), and so on).
2) If it were as you say, Maimonides could make an excuse as in section 1. (In section 1 I argue that the question does not even begin).
3) Maimonides wrote in his reply: “The Creator did not announce it, but rather *the custom of the world*. Why is this similar to saying that this people will have righteous and wicked people among them? Not because of this, he would say that the wicked person is already destined to be wicked because he announced to Moses that there will be wicked people in Israel”, seemingly here Maimonides does answer the reply from section 2 that it is not a decree but rather a declaration of the inevitable reality of what will happen in the future. If so, it is not clear why Maimonides wrote earlier: “Since he did not decree a certain person who is known to be a prostitute,” why is this necessary? After all, we have already said that he did not decree at all, but only announced a future reality, and if he announces a reality, then he can certainly announce a specific and certain person who is the sinner (because knowledge and choice go together, because “the answer to this question is long,” etc.).
Due to these points, I wrote what I wrote, and apparently this is how the Rabbi (who wondered why the Maimonides did not explain it as in the previous chapter, that the two things go together and we cannot understand), and the O’Sh (who disagreed with the Rabbi and said that the Maimonides could not explain that knowledge of God does not compel choice, because here we are talking about knowledge of the prophets and “knowledge of the prophets compels (the choice)”), and the Laham (who wrote that the Maimonides could explain it this way, but gave a different answer).
If God does not know the future, how could He make promises that depend on God's knowledge? For example, He told Moses that Aaron would go to meet him. He knew that the sin of the Amorites had not yet been completed, but that it would be completed in time, and that there would be many more priests.
There are situations where he says what would have happened if there had been no choice, and there are situations where he takes the reins and takes away our choice so that something will happen.
Z.A. (except for the choice, which is apparently very unusual) are his statements about the future purely statistical?
Indeed. But even statements about the future are quite rare. Incidentally, this is what the author writes in the introduction to his book.
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