What is challah?
Amiel asked:
I read the Rabbi’s article ‘What is challah’, and I would like to try to understand more about what the Rabbi meant. The Rabbi devoted a large part of his article to explaining that understanding challah as a concept that exists independently of its implications can explain the existence of contradictory challahs. The Rabbi gave as an example that salt and sugar, although their implications are contradictory (salty and sweet), can exist in the same dish. In other words, we can divide the cases (this is my way of saying the question, but it is difficult even without the example). In the case of sugar and salt, the distinction between the objects and their implications made us understand the objects in a way that they do not contradict each other, because the implications of both are positive implications, salt causes a salty taste and sweet causes a sweet taste. And positive consequences are contradictory only in their collision and not in their actual existence – their causes can exist simultaneously next to each other (as happens in the same stew that has both of them) and they will simply fight until blood is shed.. Admittedly, the consequences of a married woman and a divorced woman do contradict each other on a logical level, and the reason that the distinction between the consequences of the challahs and the challah itself helped us understand why the challahs can exist is by obscuring the challahs as things that we do not have the tools to analyze and as such we do not know that they contradict each other. But this view assumes that it is not possible to understand challahs by their consequences, and from the consequences to conclude anything about the challah itself, because we would conclude from the consequences of a divorced woman’s challah on the challah itself, as far as I understand, the challahs themselves can also contradict (the rabbi has no proof that the objects of concepts cannot constitute a contradiction). If we are unable to draw conclusions from the implications for the halals, then he has no tools to discuss them and they become meaningless to us – we are unable to determine when they exist and when they do not, nor what their implications are. The same question also exists regarding halals of ownership without all the implications that we know to be derived from ownership – this is essentially a determination of our ability to analyze the concept of ownership itself, and so, for example – how do we know that in a sale it ceases and passes to another? I apologize if the question is a little confusing, I am confused too. I would very much appreciate further clarification of the matter.
I didn’t understand the question. Contradiction exists only between properties and not between objects. This doesn’t require proof, just a little observation.
Salt and sugar are two objects with contradictory properties, so I didn’t understand what you wanted to distinguish between them and a divorced woman and a man’s wife. It’s exactly the same thing.
It is clear that there can be no contradictions between objects on a principled level, but the question is whether it is possible for them to contradict each other in the sense that they cannot both exist in the same place [just as a physical object cannot be in the same space at the same time as another object, because the laws of physical objects (the laws of nature) do not allow this, so it is possible for two conceptual objects that cannot exist in the same place – and this is according to the laws of physical objects. In the example of sugar and salt, I intended to show that in sugar and salt the contradiction exists only in their implications, and therefore in their very existence there is no contradiction and they can both be in the same dish, but in the case of a divorcee and a man's wife the implications indicate properties of the object itself, and if we accept the analysis according to the implications as correct, then it seems logical that the laws of their concepts will not allow them to be in the same place. The ways to answer are either to negate the inference from the implications at the individual level (I would be happy if the Rabbi would explain how) or to negate the way to infer from the implications to the concepts, but then it is not possible to discuss them further.
Correction – (line 4) and this is according to the laws of conceptual objects (which cannot simultaneously prevail over the same woman in our case)
It's impossible for two concepts not to be able to coexist. This is logic, not physics. I don't understand what you see in a divorced woman and a man's wife as different from sugar and salt.
I saw a translation for ’ valid’
‘valid’
Not true is also an existing concept – a noun [So, it would be possible for a certain thing to be true and not true at the same time, and if not – then what is the difference between a divorced woman and ‘not true that she is married’ (It is possible that the concept of divorced woman has other things besides ’not true that she is married’, but it also has that]
I lost you.
The term 'divorced woman', if we analyze it according to its phenomena, is a term that contains within it a negation of the term 'married', in other words: the term 'divorced woman' contains within it 'it is not true that she is married'. Does the Rabbi argue with this?
Absolutely. The term divorced is independent of the term married. They have opposing characteristics. This is my argument: the characteristics do not determine the term. Just as salt is not the opposite of sugar. Leibniz thought that a concept is the collection of its characteristics, and I have explained in several places why he is wrong.
I repeat this again and again. You have the right to disagree, but I do not see any argument that I can address. So if no such argument is raised, I end our discussion here.
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