On Lame Explanations and Shadow Concepts (Column 229)

With God’s help

In column 226 and 228 I discussed the status of statistical evidence in law. I suggested an explanation for why such evidence is not treated the same way as direct evidence, even though ostensibly it involves the same level of reliability (probability). In column 228 I pointed out that there are two ways to explain an evidentiary policy: either by a rationale connected to the reliability of the evidence in question, or by a practical rationale connected to some concrete consequence (an effect on the social order). If one cannot find a rationale belonging to one of those two types, and if one is also unwilling to give up the view under discussion, what remains is a kind of metaphysical reasoning, what I there called a “legal intuition.” An immediate sense that this is the right or wrong way to proceed, which we have no way of grounding in a probabilistic or practical rationale.

Within my remarks there, I noted that such intuitions are likely to appear mainly in religious legal systems:

At the margins of my remarks I would only note that in the legal context one may perhaps understand this reduction to two types of evidence. If the legal system is intended only to achieve social order and regulate relations between people in the best way, then it is reasonable that its rules of evidence should rely on considerations of reliability or practical utility. Why should our rules of evidence take account of “legal intuitions” that contribute nothing to utility and social order and have nothing to do with the reliability of the evidence? These are mere gut feelings, and there is no reason to distort the legal system in light of gut feelings.

By contrast, I have written several times that halakhic law has additional aims, as does Jewish law generally. The halakhic legal system is not law in the ordinary and accepted sense, but part of Jewish law whose concern is, in the terminology of the Kuzari and the Ran’s homilies, the secularization of the divine matter. In Maharal’s formulation, its purpose is to attain the truth (the meta-legal, or metaphysical, truth), and therefore there may be more room there for legal intuitions. These intuitions tell us that this is the legal truth (even if it is not the factual truth and does not contribute to regulating relations in society).[1]

In an ordinary legal system (a secular one), it is implausible to establish a principle that has no justification in terms of reliability or some legal-social utility. In the religious context, by contrast, there are many laws meant to achieve religious purposes or religious values (the secularization of the divine matter, in the terminology of the Ran in his homilies and the Kuzari). The prohibition on eating pork or the obligation to recite the Shema are such duties. They do not seem to achieve social aims, and of course no probabilistic or factual questions are involved here. It is therefore natural to say that some religious value is being pursued here. By the same token, even in the juridical part of Jewish law, one should not rule out the possibility that principles may appear for which there is no probabilistic or practical explanation, because they too are meant to achieve religious ends. That is what I called “legal intuitions,” and I gave several examples of this (such as the disqualification of relatives from testimony, the inadmissibility of self-incrimination — A person cannot render himself wicked. (‘a person cannot make himself wicked by his own confession’) — and others).

But it turns out that even in secular legal systems one can find principles that do not seem to be based on ordinary legal logic (the first two types of reasoning). These examples ostensibly indicate that even a secular system sometimes resorts to legal intuitions, and that requires explanation. Why should an ordinary legal system operate in a way that has no practical social purpose or factual logic whatsoever (such as probability)?

At the beginning of this column I will present an example of this (from last week’s Torah portion, Mattot), then discuss it briefly, and from there broaden the discussion to a wider one about what I will call lame explanations and “shadow concepts.” These matters connect to quite a few columns I have written in the past, and I will refer to them where relevant.

The halakhic definition of criminality

At the beginning of Parashat Mattot we are commanded regarding vows, especially a husband’s annulment of his wife’s vows. In two places, Rashi cites midrashim of the Sages that address opposite situations regarding a woman’s vow and the husband’s annulment.

On verse 6 he writes:

“And the Lord will forgive her” — what is the verse speaking about? About a woman who took a nazirite vow, and her husband heard and annulled it, but she did not know, and she violated her vow by drinking wine and becoming impure through the dead. This is the one who requires forgiveness, even though it had been annulled. And if those that were annulled require forgiveness, how much more so those that were not annulled.

According to the midrash cited by Rashi, the verse hints at a situation in which the woman made a vow and the husband annulled it, but she did not know about the annulment. From her standpoint the vow was still in force, and yet she transgresses it. In practice she committed no transgression, because the vow had been annulled, but at the level of consciousness she violated He shall not break his word..

On verse 16, Rashi cites a midrash that deals with the opposite case:

“After he heard” — after he heard and let it stand, saying, “I accept it,” and then went back and annulled it, even on that very day.

“And he shall bear her iniquity” — he enters in her place. From here we learn that one who causes his fellow to stumble enters in his place for all punishments.

Here the case is one in which the vow was not really annulled, but the husband tells her that it was. She violated the vow inadvertently (since it was clear to her that it had been annulled). In such a case, the husband, who caused her to stumble, steps into her place for all punishments.

To sum up: in every intentional transgression for which one is punished, there are two components: the act of transgression and the “criminal intent.” In the first case I cited, there was criminal intent but no transgression, and there it is said that she requires forgiveness and atonement (the source is the passage in Nazir 23a). In the second case there was no intent, but the act was done. Rashi here states that if someone caused her to stumble, he steps into her place for punishment, but in the ordinary case of an inadvertent transgression (where there is no one who caused the stumbling), one who transgresses inadvertently must repent, and sometimes also bring a sacrifice.

Which is more severe: the offender of the first type or the second? And more generally, one may ask what is primary in transgressions (and perhaps also in commandments): the intention or the act? We are used to assuming that first and foremost an act is required, and without it there is no transgression. After that, for punishment to be imposed for the act, there is a further condition that there be intent (that it not be inadvertent or merely unintentional involvement, and the like). Therefore an inadvertent transgression is a transgression (for an act of transgression was done), but one is exempt from punishment for it; whereas criminal intent without an act is not a full-fledged transgression.

Attempting a transgression

But on second thought, this is not at all simple. Think, for example, of attempted murder. Reuven made all the preparations and intended to murder Shimon. He aimed the weapon at Shimon, chambered a round, and pulled the trigger. But it turned out that the firing pin was broken, and the weapon did not fire. His plot did not materialize, but for reasons entirely unrelated to him. In such a situation Reuven is thoroughly wicked. He did exactly what every murderer does, except that in addition to his wickedness he is unlucky (a schlemiel). Does that make his wickedness any less? Why should the fact that in practice he did not succeed exempt him from punishment and from the offense of murder? On the face of it, attempted murder ought to be treated exactly like murder itself.

The Talmud in tractate Nazir (ibid.) discusses someone who intended to eat pork and ended up eating lamb. This is exactly the same case: there is criminal intent, but in practice, because of a mishap, the act itself was not done. The Talmud there says that such a person requires forgiveness and atonement. The Brisker Rav, in his novellae there (Chiddushei HaGriz, stencil edition), understands that in such a case (intent without action) there is in fact a full Torah prohibition, but Scripture decreed that one who does this is exempt from punishment. His view fits very well with the reasoning I presented above. Yet the plain sense of the passage implies that there is no prohibition here at all. Be that as it may, there is certainly an exemption from punishment here, and the question is why.

This seems to depend on the conception of punishment in Jewish law. In legal theory people speak of several different rationales that justify imposing punishment on offenders. Some rationales speak of retribution (sanction), channeling feelings of vengeance, atonement, prevention (such as imprisonment), deterrence (of the offender or of others), and so forth. Most of these rationales should not lead to a distinction between attempted murder and actual murder. But some, such as atonement, vengeance, and perhaps retribution, can indeed lead to such a distinction.

The conclusion is that the punishments imposed by the Torah for transgressions are not meant to punish people for their wickedness. If that were their purpose, we would not distinguish between intent without action and intentional action (in both cases the person is equally wicked). It seems that at the basis of the halakhic theory of punishment lies a conception of vengeance, retribution, or atonement, and such punishment is given only if something was actually done (otherwise there is nothing to atone for, requite, or avenge). If the act itself was not carried out, the person requires forgiveness and atonement, but he is not liable to halakhic punishment by a religious court (and perhaps he committed no transgression at all).

And what about punishment whose purpose is to achieve social order, or to requite a person for his wickedness (rather than for the outcome of his act)? For that purpose there should be no difference between an attempted transgression and a completed one. The conclusion is that the Torah’s punishments are not intended to achieve social order and are not concerned with a person’s wickedness. They are concerned with the outcome, and it seems that the conceptions I listed above lie at their root.[2]

What happens in secular legal systems? Ostensibly we would expect there to be no difference between attempted murder and actual murder. The degree of wickedness is identical in the two situations, and therefore he deserves the same punishment in both. From the standpoint of deterrence and achieving social utility as well, there seems to be no reason to distinguish between them. Let every Hebrew mother know that if her son performs acts that lead toward murder, whether or not he succeeds, he will sit in prison for the rest of his life. And yet, it turns out that even in secular legal systems there is a distinction between murder and attempted murder. As far as I understand from those in the know, over the years this distinction has narrowed, but even today there is still a difference between the two offenses (murder carries a mandatory life sentence, without judicial discretion, whereas attempt is only punishable by a maximum sentence of twenty years, though a lesser sentence may also be imposed).

Explanations

If you ask jurists why there is a difference between these two situations, you will receive a host of subtle explanations. Perhaps deterrence is more effective when it is imposed for a murder that actually succeeded. Some will explain that punishment is an institutionalized channeling of the feelings of vengeance of the victim’s family and friends (something akin to blood vengeance), and where there was no murder there is nothing to avenge, and so forth. I do not buy all these lame explanations. It is clear to me that they are after the fact, trying to offer a de facto rationalization for an intuitive feeling.

Incidentally, that intuitive feeling is probably connected to vengeance, or to atonement and purification, and therefore when an actual murder occurred there is a need for a more severe punishment. But jurists, and ordinary contemporary people as well, will tell you that there is no justification for a legal system to take vengeance, nor is it supposed to atone or purify. The role of a legal system is to regulate relations among citizens, and nothing more. Again, in a religious conceptual world it is easier to speak in such terms, but in a secular world we would not expect it. It is no wonder that jurists arrive at strange explanations in order to justify these approaches, because it is hard to find a reasonable justification for them in the terms of ordinary legal explanations (like the two types described above). We saw the same thing in column 228 with regard to statistical evidence. There too, very dubious explanations were proposed because of the desire to avoid legal intuitions.[3]

Two ways of relating to such a situation

If these explanations are indeed unconvincing, then two possibilities stand before us. One possibility is to see such phenomena as a religious anachronism, remnants of the ancient religious thinking that once prevailed here (Heaven forfend), and to draw the required conclusion: namely, to change the conception and punish would-be murderers the same way actual murderers are punished. I think this is why, over time, there has in fact been a process of convergence between the punishment for attempt and the punishment for murder. Jurists and legislators implement rational legal thinking and are unwilling to deviate from the customary forms of reasoning it employs. A second possibility is to recognize that this is a legal intuition and to accept that possibility even within a secular legal framework.

To be sure, in the formulation I suggested above, a legal intuition is really an indication of some religious value, and that is impossible within a secular framework. But one can propose a different explanation or source for legal intuitions. It is possible that what underlies them is a legal value. By “legal value” I do not mean legal utility, for that is the ordinary kind of reasoning there. I mean a value, but one that is neither moral nor religious. Therefore it can be called a legal value. My claim is that perhaps this is the proper or improper way to act, not because of side considerations or possible consequences. As with a moral value, it is an end in itself, and there is no need to rationalize it in terms of other values or reasons.

Thus, for example, I have already mentioned the advantage given to the one in possession of the money (The burden of proof rests on the one seeking to extract property from another. — ‘the burden of proof is on the one seeking to extract money from another’). I explained that usually he has no genuine evidentiary advantage, but every legal system in the world accepts this rule. Self-incrimination too is rejected in some legal systems, although jurists usually say that a confession is “the queen of evidence.”

Many lame explanations

I already mentioned that jurists offer various explanations for these principles, and in many cases they do not really strike me as convincing. In the two columns mentioned above, we saw several examples of weak to failed explanations regarding statistical evidence. Several explanations are also offered for the rule of possession (although here, in my view, they certainly do have some logic). Explanations are likewise offered for the inadmissibility of self-incrimination, such as concern over the use of torture in police interrogation (ironically, judges in their rulings cite the halakhic principle A person cannot render himself wicked., and append to it an explanation in terms of concern over torture. In the halakhic context, that makes no sense). Yet I find it hard to avoid the feeling that the basis is a legal intuition that it is improper to convict a person of an offense on the basis of his own confession (which probably also relates to the right to remain silent, for which many intricate explanations have likewise been offered, and they are not very convincing).

There are two interesting phenomena here: there is a multiplicity of explanations, and despite their weakness, people do not so readily give up the principle being explained itself (though there are situations in which the attitude does indeed change, as in punishment for attempted murder). Both phenomena point to a common conclusion: the principle in question precedes the explanations offered for it. People have a sense that this is how one ought or ought not to act, and so they act that way. Only afterward do they offer de facto explanations in order to rationalize it. If we found a good explanation — fine; and if not — not terrible. Only in rare cases is the law or its rules actually changed. This explains the multiplicity of explanations, and it also explains the willingness to make do with such weak explanations. This is exactly what we saw in the two columns above with respect to statistical evidence.

I have already mentioned here in the past what I heard from Rabbi Yaakov Medan: that he knows twenty-two explanations (or, more accurately, excuses) for why the Book of Ruth is read on Shavuot, but only one explanation for why the Book of Esther is read on Purim. Or another association: in the Rosh Hashanah passage they seek a source for the fact that the fruit of a beautiful tree (‘the fruit of a beautiful tree’) is an etrog. Several different and rather strange sources are brought, some of them quite weak, and all reach the same result: etrog. For some reason, no one arrived at an orange or a grapefruit. So too in the Yoma passage regarding the sources for the rule that saving a life overrides the Sabbath. In both cases it is clear that the conclusion preceded the sources (this is supportive exegesis).

Back to the question of supportive exegesis

In the previous column I already pointed out that even supportive exegesis must conform to the rules of midrash. One cannot bring a lame exposition in order to support an existing Jewish law, and likewise it is not right to explain an intuition with weak arguments. Better to leave them as they are: perhaps not understood, but enough that they seem right to us. I do not mean to say that intuition is immune to error or that one can never give it up. Certainly not. When there is a good explanation for why the intuition is mistaken, one should correct it or give it up. And certainly when it contains some contradiction or other problem. But when there is a good intuition, even if we have no explanation for it, perhaps it is enough that this is how we feel to indicate that this is also the proper way to act.

Similar examples from the realm of morality

Take, for example, the prohibition on incest, cannibalism, or polygyny. There is no apparent reason to forbid these things if they are done consensually between adults. And yet almost everyone would be shocked to hear of such cases, and certainly at proposals to permit them by law. These acts are prohibited even by law, not only from a moral standpoint. If a brother and sister, or a mother and her son, want to live with one another as people ordinarily do, who appointed us to forbid it to them?

Not surprisingly, here too you can find the same phenomena. Various explanations are offered, almost all lame and unconvincing, and yet almost no one even entertains permitting this. From time to time a few isolated voices of that kind are heard, but they are dismissed out of hand with contempt and revulsion. Regarding polygyny, you may hear how the decision of these women certainly cannot have been made freely — this despite the fact that some of the women who live this way repeatedly declare before all the world that this is what they want. Our enlightened liberals know how to plumb the depths of women’s minds, and with the help of the military arm of political correctness — namely psychology — they explain to us with signs and wonders why this is bad and harmful, and why false consciousness is involved. The same is true of the modesty practices of Haredi women, which are also the product of false consciousness, as is well known (see columns 203–4). Not to mention marriages between relatives (cf. ‘When Mom and Dad Are Cousins‘).

But to my mind, all these lame explanations are not at all convincing. I have never heard that one forbids the marriage of a foolish woman to a wise man, or the reverse, out of concern that the decision is not free. What I have heard are repeated protests against paternalism and against attempts to explain to another person what he himself thinks and how he himself decides (of course not when it comes to liberal paternalism, such as explaining to Haredi women what is good for them, and the like. See column 203 and elsewhere). I also assume that when a pill is found (or conversion therapy) that prevents the problems caused by marriages between relatives, society will still forbid it. In any case, they can have an abortion (which, as is known, is a most exalted commandment by virtue of a woman’s right over her body), or not have children, so why be worried about their children?!

All these are examples of the same phenomenon I described above: finding lame explanations for a prohibition whose basis is an intuition that precedes the explanations (a lame supportive exegesis). Incidentally, I do not rule out the possibility that in the future there will be a change, and that these phenomena too will indeed gain legitimacy. People will declare that this is a religious anachronism and a process of changing the norm will begin. It seems to me that this is the situation with the prohibition on male homosexual intercourse. In the past it was forbidden in every self-respecting Western society. I assume that we could have found many learned explanations for why (the kind one finds today in religious and conservative literature), but in our day a process of rehabilitation is underway and is now in full swing.

In all these cases one can see the two modes of response we saw above: generating lame explanations, and sometimes later a gradual abandonment and change of norms (viewing such attitudes as anachronistic), exactly as we saw above regarding the offense of attempted murder. Here too I suggest considering whether one might go in a third direction: namely, to see all these as value intuitions (not necessarily legal ones). True, we would not expect such reasonings to appear within a secular framework of thought, but perhaps these intuitions hint to us that there are other kinds of values, not necessarily moral ones, and perhaps they have validity independent of religious thought.[4]

I hinted at this in column 154 when I spoke about aesthetic values. That feeling of disgust that arises in response to these phenomena does not necessarily point to psychological residue, but perhaps to a layer of value that I there called aesthetic values, or human values (as distinct from moral values). I am not claiming here that this is always the case, that whenever there is some intuition or some feeling of disgust we must conclude that the thing is indeed forbidden. But I do think that this option should certainly be considered as well (that is, it should not be dismissed out of hand, with one being compelled to choose one of the two responses I described).

Lame explanations and shadow concepts in the realm of values

There is another group of phenomena connected to the lame explanations that come to support an existing intuition, and I am undecided whether these are merely examples of a certain kind of lame explanation or proposals meant to serve as a substitute for them. I refer to a phenomenon that I will call here “shadow concepts.”

I will begin with the phenomena described in the last section. When we seek to explain the prohibition on marriages between relatives, cannibalism, or polygyny, there are those who ground it in the feeling of disgust. In column 86 I gave several examples of such reasonings. Jonathan Haidt and many like him try to identify these feelings of disgust with morality. Without noticing it, they turn morality into a kind of manners and etiquette.

On its face this is obviously nonsense. A moral value is a binding norm that does not depend on social agreement (though usually there is such agreement about it; but here the agreement is a result of the validity, not that the validity is born of the agreement), whereas manners are a convention. In a society that agreed on different rules of manners there would be no problem acting accordingly. But a society that decided not to conduct itself according to moral rules is an evil society. In our society, sexual relations between a brother and his sister sound disgusting and repulsive, and so does eating human flesh, or copulating with a dead chicken from the supermarket (one of Haidt’s examples mentioned in column 86). Does that mean there is something immoral here? Not at all. This is a social norm rooted in convention, and one can certainly imagine a society in which there is no such problem (cannibal societies have existed, and there are still a few such societies). But many, many people identify morality with these feelings of disgust.

Why does this happen? How does this blurring occur? In my opinion this is the same phenomenon as those I described above. People have an intuition that such acts are forbidden. When they look for a logical or moral explanation for that, they find none. Therefore two paths are open to them: to find lame explanations (as we saw) or to give up and change the norm. I suggested instead a third path: to recognize intuition as a possible source of values (not necessarily moral ones). But now we encounter a fourth path: to replace the concept we are dealing with by a shadow concept. Everyone understands that morality is a binding norm, and that one who does not behave accordingly is not okay. Now we have a problem with this, because we have no good explanation for why to be moral. So the familiar concept of morality is replaced by another shadow concept that is nothing more than convention. People do not realize that this is not an alternative explanation of morality but a replacement of the concept. Convention is not an explanation of morality. Principles rooted in convention are not moral principles. You can of course deny the validity of morality, but that is precisely what you do not want to do. So instead you ground it in convention (offering it a different explanation), without admitting that in fact you are using the same linguistic term to describe a different concept (as in Maimonides’ parable of the elephant).

A generalization regarding morality and epistemology

This is true not only with regard to the acts I described above (marriages between relatives, cannibalism, or intercourse with dead animals), but with regard to moral principles in general. In the third part of the fourth notebook I explained why, in a materialist and deterministic world, valid values cannot exist. When you ask materialists how it is that they advocate moral values, they immediately pull out evolution as a mechanism that instills altruism in us, or conventional explanations (that is, explanations that make morality depend on social agreements). These are nonsense and folly, of course, and those same people themselves act in ways that clearly show that in their eyes morality is a binding norm and certainly not a mere convention. But in order to ground this, they replace the concept of morality with another shadow concept that uses the same linguistic term. Under the guise of a different explanation for morality, they are really speaking about something else. A “value” rooted in a tendency implanted in us through an evolutionary process cannot be regarded as a moral value, and that is certainly not a reason that makes it valid. It is a tendency, not a value (the naturalistic fallacy tells us that this is a fact about our having such a tendency, and one cannot derive from it the norm stating that this value is binding). We also have a tendency to speak slanderously, so should that too count as a value? The fact that we have some tendency is a psychological fact. What does that have to do with values? Therefore I am inclined to think that here we are not dealing with a lame explanation but with a different mechanism, which I will call a “shadow concept.” The concept of “morality” replaces morality, and now the quotation marks are removed and one can continue as usual.

So too with determinists. They will explain to you with signs and wonders why it makes sense to punish offenders, and the compatibilists among them will explain to you that in fact we have free choice (because a free person is a person who does not act under the constraint of external forces. He does what he himself decides). But as I explained in my review of Eliezer Malkiel’s book, this is nonsense. They simply replace the term punishment with another term that can be marked “punishment,” or the concept of choice with the concept of “choice”; the concepts of judgment and condemnation are replaced by “judgment” and “condemnation” (that is, feelings of judgment and condemnation, which are entirely subjective), and then the quotation marks are removed from all these and the trick is done. They simply do not tell us that this is what they are doing (they are usually not aware of it themselves, in the sense of The heart does not reveal itself to the mouth.). Under the guise of an alternative explanation for an existing concept, they are really talking about something else, a shadow concept that replaces the accepted concept. Thus many of us do not even feel that in this world of concepts there is no real morality or punishment, no choice and no free will, no morality and no moral judgment or condemnation, because all the statements continue to be formulated in the same way and apparently bear the same meaning. More than that, they have even succeeded in explaining identical psychological feelings that accompany the shadow concepts. People who speak of morality as a conventional fiction allow themselves to seethe with awful self-righteous anger toward those who behave immorally. The feelings of pain and anger are completely authentic, but that does not prevent them from claiming that all this takes place only in the subjective shadow world and has no validity. They will put you in prison because of shadow-feelings of rage and moral judgment against you, even though in their view all these have no real validity. They will wage total wars in the name of their subjective feelings, and so on.[5]

Throughout my book The Science of Freedom I showed that materialist-determinist conceptions construct a world of shadow concepts that replaces our world, and within it all our basic intuitions are presented as illusions. But no problem: one may live according to illusions, especially if one describes them using the same concepts as the real thing.

A similar phenomenon we saw with regard to the concept of causality. After David Hume emptied the concept of its content and turned it into temporal priority and correlation (that is, without a relation of causing), we continue to use the concept of cause in exactly the same ways. The shadow concept (the “cause” that is really not a cause) replaced the original concept. Hume’s problem of induction led people to determine that the laws of nature, which are the result of generalizations, are claims about us and not about the world. And when I ask such people why they rely on them — that is, why they board an airplane — I keep receiving shadow-answers: because I have only my feelings and the information in my possession, and therefore I am living in a movie and aware of it. This is also the answer of skeptics and solipsists who deny the validity of insights or even the existence of an external world altogether, yet continue to live just like you and me. The shadow world is the real world, and they live in it in exactly the same way and with the same attitudes as yours and mine.[6]

A generalization: God and ‘God’ (among others)

In column 155 I began a series of columns on philosophy. My conclusion there was that this is a kind of empirical science, except that its findings are the result of observation with the eyes of the intellect, that is, by means of our intuition. Those who do not accept intuition as a reliable tool regarding the objective world are dragged, whether they wish it or not, into creating shadow worlds. They see philosophy as subjective hallucinations. This is exactly the same phenomenon, and its basis is the dispute over our intuitions. When we have some intuition, does it have validity, or do we view it as a kind of illusion or convention (socially implanted in us)? One who is unwilling to grant validity to intuition is compelled, against his will, to adopt one of the two other responses. And this is exactly what we also saw in the legal context with which I opened (statistical evidence).

Shadow concepts are a powerful tool for living in denial. A person cannot live with the consciousness that there is no world around him and that he is talking to himself. He is also unwilling to live with the consciousness that his scientific insights are subjective claims lacking validity, that there is no morality in his world and no free will, and so on. So he recreates all these concepts as shadow concepts, and now he lives his life exactly as he wants (that is, exactly like me), without needing to give himself an account of why. In this way one can evade the conclusion that if there are values, there is God, or that if we have reliable faculties of perception (faculties in which we place trust. See the first and second parts of the fourth notebook), then there is God. It is all merely subjective, and so there is no point in drawing conclusions from it about the world.

The fourth notebook is devoted to grappling with these conceptions. In the second part I point out that our trust in our faculties of perception (our epistemology) tacitly presupposes belief in God. In the third part I show the same thing regarding the validity of morality. In both contexts, the main counterclaim is that these are indeed illusions, and when I ask why, then, you conduct yourself according to them, the defensive atheist develops shadow concepts that, without noticing it, replace the concepts in their accepted meaning.

Incidentally, a shadow-God is also an option. If you live as I do, you can — and perhaps even should — draw the same conclusions as I do, only on the plane of shadows. Thus, for example, the physico-theological proof claims that if our world is ordered, it presumably has an orderer. So even if the order (= the laws of nature) exists only in my shadow world, then put the orderer (= God) in there too. That is, adopt belief in God in exactly the same way as belief in the laws of nature, only note that everything is in your own subjective world. But for some reason very few people do this. Rav Shagar, for example, also brought God and faith into his skeptical shadow world. This is a subjective God that he created for himself, who gave a subjective Torah to a subjective person, and thus he dances in the circle of religious differences together with the rest of his postmodern world. This is a necessary conclusion of shadow-life and of the fictive conceptual worlds that the people of shadows create for themselves.

In short, my claim is this: either way, if in your eyes the shadows are an adequate substitute that allows, and perhaps even requires, one to continue living and thinking as usual, then put all the conclusions in there as well (including God, Torah, and the like), and then you must live as usual (as though all this were real, that is, behave as a believer and even observe commandments). And if this is not an adequate substitute (and it indeed is not), meaning that you understand that shadow concepts do not truly replace the real concepts, then why create them at all? To help you live in denial? Remain skeptical and do nothing (do not judge and do not condemn, do not speak of morality, do not believe science, do not punish when there is no solid reason for doing so, and so on).

Example: the concept of gratitude

These thoughts were stirred in me over the last week from two different directions. First, from my discussion in the two columns dealing with statistical evidence. At the same time, this past Sabbath we studied in class a passage from Rav Kook’s book Ein Ayah, on tractate Berakhot, section 78. I want to touch on it in order to show another example of a shadow concept. The Talmud in Berakhot 7b states:

From the day the Holy One, blessed be He, created His world, there was no person who gave thanks to the Holy One, blessed be He, until Leah came and gave thanks, as it is said: “This time I will thank the Lord.”

On this Rav Kook comments as follows:

There is a difference between blessing and thanksgiving: a blessing may also be said for any good that comes through a particular cause, even if it was not done with the specific intention of bringing this about, as in, “Blessed is He that this one was born; blessed is He that this one grew up.” Thanksgiving, however, is offered specifically for good that comes from free will, where one could either bestow good or refrain. Therefore, before Leah, there had been no person who took the trouble to make known that although He, may He be blessed, is the true cause of everything, things do not proceed from Him by way of necessity, as some philosophers held, but rather by free will, which is fittingly acknowledged with thanks. And do not reject this by saying that if everything followed from necessity, then there would be no place for divine service, reward, and punishment—for the Patriarchs had already learned that in truth this is not so. For it is possible that the Holy One, blessed be He, bestows all good and all existence in all its particulars through wondrous providence, to the point that even the order of human perfection, which is included within existence as a whole, proceeds from Him. And since human perfection requires that a person engage in sacred service in order to elevate his soul and refine his character, it follows from His perfection that whoever is righteous will be granted perfection and true success, and similarly everything else could also be understood as proceeding by necessity. But the truth is not so, for the power of thanksgiving, whereby a person gives thanks to his Creator, stores within it a great part of morality and the exalted stature of the human soul, and it cannot be absent from existence. And this perfection cannot exist unless the governance proceeds from the freedom of the will, without any necessity or compulsion. Therefore Leah came and gave thanks, to make this true view known. And upon this foundation was built the obligation of the thanksgiving-offering, whose stature is exalted and which will not be nullified even in the future, as our Sages said. Understand that even prayer could exist even if the divine flow proceeded by necessity, for since a person is perfected through his prayer to his Creator, the divine perfection would require that prayer have significance and also attain its purpose, and that none of the realities that enable and elevate the value of prayer be withheld from existence. But thanksgiving—this perfection would necessarily be lacking were it not for the true view that divine governance is without necessity, that is, by His blessed will: “life is by His will.” And man’s perfection, which comes to him specifically through freedom of will, is for us an everlasting faithful witness concerning his Creator. Therefore leaven is found in the thanksgiving-offering, indicating the contrary tendencies of the good powers from which freedom of will emerges—not so if all the powers had been prepared only to do good..

His claim is that a blessing or a prayer can and should be recited even in a situation where good came to me not through an agent who intended to give it to me. Gratitude, by contrast, is meant to respond to a conscious benefaction by an agent who freely chose to benefit me. Therefore, before Leah, there was no one who gave thanks to the Holy One, blessed be He, because the prevailing conception was that the Holy One does not act out of free decision but out of necessity (stemming from His inner nature; It is the nature of the good to do good., in Ramchal’s terminology). Leah introduced the conception that the Holy One acts out of free decision, and therefore she introduced the concept of gratitude (This time I will thank the Lord.).

It is clear that the technical act of giving thanks can be performed, and in fact is performed, even in a deterministic world. The determinist thanks the one who benefited him and acknowledges the good done to him (he even condemns one who does not do so). But on his view this act is a mechanical result produced by his nature, just as the benefaction he received was a mechanical product of the nature of the person who benefited him. Thus, gratitude here is really a shadow concept. It is not gratitude but “gratitude” (as though a robot were to say in its mechanical voice to the electricity-generating turbine that it thanks it for feeding it electric current). Real gratitude is a response to real benefaction, and just as the benefaction comes from a free decision, so too does the gratitude. The actual conduct of the two groups of people will be very similar, and they will even use the same conceptual system to describe it. But the meanings are utterly different. Exactly as the determinist chooses and talks about choice, and does everything a libertarian does, but on his view all these are mechanical acts devoid of essential meaning.

[1] On this conception of Jewish law, see my articles: Jewish Law and Hebrew Law, The Halakhic Laws of Property and Liability to Pay for Damage Caused by One’s Property.

[2] At the margins of these remarks I would add that according to the plain sense of the Nazir passage (not like the explanation of the Griz), in the absence of an act not only is there no punishment, but there is no transgression either (no prohibition was violated). According to the same logic, it seems that the prohibition in the Torah also does not speak about the person but about the results of actions in the world. Therefore, when there are no results, there is no transgression.

The Ran, in his homilies, in homily 11, speaks about the purpose of the Torah’s laws in general. He explains there that the Torah’s laws are meant to achieve the secularization of the divine matter, that is, they have certain religious purposes. Social order and moral justice are not the aim of Jewish law and the religious courts that enforce it, but rather the role of a parallel legal system run by the king. This is a novel idea that raises quite a few questions and disputes, but it seems to me that here one can see a good example of the Ran’s conception. Liability to punishment, and perhaps even the prohibition, are defined not according to the person’s wickedness but according to the outcome of his act (wickedness is only a condition for conviction for the act that was done, but by itself, without an act, it does not incur punishment). The prohibition is meant to prevent certain things from happening in the world, and the punishment is meant to atone for or repair what happened. Preventing criminality and achieving social order are the concern of the king’s law, not of Jewish law.

[3] I will only mention that in column 226 I proposed an actually probabilistic explanation, not a legal intuition. But here, for purposes of the discussion, I will assume that from a probabilistic standpoint there is no difference between these two kinds of evidence, as all the writers in the field assume (mistakenly, in my opinion). For our purposes here, that is enough.

[4] To the extent that values have any validity at all within a non-religious framework. In my view they do not, as I explained in the third part of the fourth notebook.

[5] This of course brings us to the discussion of implicit (or unconscious) beliefs, for in my opinion the materialist-determinist is not really such a person. Deep down he truly believes in God and in morality, and his materialist-determinist feeling is only an outer shell. His actions and attitudes prove that he is an implicit believer. See about this in columns 191, 194 and 199.

[6] Another example of such a shadow world we saw in column 35, where I dealt with the concept of intelligence. Researchers in the field of artificial intelligence define it as a shadow concept, and therefore are willing to see in a machine, an animal, or even an inanimate object a being with intelligence. I explained there why this is a shadow concept, since intelligence is bound up at its core with decision-making and free choice (judgment).