The Question of Knowledge and Choice 4 (Column 303)
Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
(Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of Four)
In the three previous columns I examined four possibilities regarding divine foreknowledge of free choices. I reached the conclusion that the only possibility that exists is the fourth: God does not know. The motto of that column, which appears here as well, is meant to address the feeling that many experience upon hearing this conclusion. In this column I shall continue with the same motto and once again examine the question of whether the first three possibilities are indeed impossible. In fact, I shall focus here on the third and present some doubtful reflections about it.
Another Look at the Third Possibility
As I remarked at the end of the previous column, if one of the first three possibilities seems to someone correct in itself (that is, he does not see it merely as a forced escape route so as to avoid the fourth possibility), then of course one may adopt it. In my view they are implausible, and therefore I tend to think that the fourth is the correct one.
To round off the whole discussion, in this column I wanted nevertheless to examine the viability of the third-type possibility (the “movie theory”). In short, I still do not entirely rule out the possibility that there is no contradiction between knowledge and choice. This is a very delicate and confusing business, and for years I have been hesitant about whether the third possibility is indeed refuted or not (already at the end of Two Carts I raised doubts about this). Let me recall that at the beginning of the previous column, where I dealt with this possibility, I prefaced and wrote:
In this column I shall discuss the third possibility, which is the trickiest of them all. I shall already say in advance that I tend not to accept it, but I am always accompanied by a shadow of doubt with regard to the arguments against it.
In this column I shall try to explain that “shadow of doubt”, namely why I am not fully at peace with rejecting this possibility. In short, I indeed tend to think that it is not correct, but I am not certain of that.
Some of the arguments I shall present here were raised in the talkbacks to Column 301 (in various formulations). There were several discussions there that I had to cut off because the load on the site in those days was beyond my strength,[1] and therefore I could not continue to enter into details and subtleties in several parallel discussions. I apologize to the readers whose discussions were interrupted. I wrote to some of them that in the last column I would qualify my words, and indeed in what I say here you can find some of the counter-arguments that appeared in those talkbacks, which definitely helped me sharpen that shadow I mentioned. Here too the discussion will not be complete, and I shall merely describe the doubts without discussing them in detail (one of them alone requires philosophical and logical twists that are hard for me to carry out fully here).
Between Logical Contradiction and A Priori Contradiction
In the previous columns I distinguished between two kinds of impossibilities or contradictions: logical and physical. An impossibility is a claim that cannot obtain (logically or physically). A contradiction denotes a concept that is undefined (logically) or impossible (physically). A physical impossibility is a statement whose content contradicts the laws of physics, such as: the stone remained suspended in the air, the sea split in two, and the like. Correspondingly, a physical contradiction is a contradiction within a concept, for example the concept of ‘a stone that can remain suspended in the air’ (as opposed to the previous example, which was a statement; this is not a statement but a concept). A logical impossibility is a statement such as the triangle is round, this bachelor is married, or the diagonal of this square is shorter than its side. And correspondingly, a logical contradiction exists in concepts such as ‘round triangle’, ‘married bachelor’, and the like. I argued there that an expression that contains a logical contradiction is meaningless, and correspondingly a statement that contains such an expression or concept does not state anything (nonsense). However, this dichotomy is too rough. There is another category between these two types of contradictions, the logical and the physical, and it is important to pay attention to it: a priori contradiction.
At the end of my book Two Carts I distinguished between two kinds of non-physical contradictions/impossibilities (this is elaborated further in an unpublished article, here): logical contradiction and a priori contradiction.[2] A logical contradiction is a clash between two concepts or principles that directly contradict one another in terms of their very meaning, such as a round triangle. A circle is not a triangle and a triangle is not a circle, and therefore this combination is colorless and meaningless. By contrast, let us consider a concept such as ‘event without a cause’. David Hume taught us that the principle of causality is an a priori assumption and not the result of observation, and therefore asserting the existence of a causeless event is not a physical contradiction. But it is also quite clear that this is not a logical contradiction, since there is no principled bar to thinking about an event without a cause. It probably does not occur in our physical world, but in principle there is no logical impossibility here. An analysis of the concept ‘event’ does not reveal that it must occur by virtue of some cause. Thus, the expression ‘event without a cause’ contradicts a principle that we believe in a priori, but the conceptual combination ‘event without a cause’ is not meaningless. The question of whether such an event exists or not is a different question.[3] Contradictions or impossibilities of this sort I called there a priori contradictions/impossibilities.[4]
Thus there are two kinds of non-physical contradictions: logical contradiction and a priori contradiction. Why is this distinction important? Because I showed in the previous column that a physical contradiction does not bind God, whereas a logical contradiction does, but with respect to an a priori contradiction the situation is more complex. In the case of an a priori contradiction, the conceptual combination in question has meaning. It is not lack of meaning but lack of feasibility of actual realization. Regarding a concept that contains such a contradiction, one can perhaps claim that an omnipotent being can realize it. A concept or statement that contains an a priori contradiction has a well-defined meaning, but we have an inherent (a priori) inability to accept it, and therefore there may be room to speak of God being able to overcome such a contradiction. For example, it is quite clear that He can create an event without a cause (apparently even a human being can do that, at least when he chooses, according to the libertarian view). The creation of the world was probably such an event (regarding other miracles, there may be room to speak of the existence of non-physical causes).[5]
The Nature of the Contradiction between Divine Knowledge and Free Choice
In the previous column I quoted Maimonides in the Guide of the Perplexed, where he describes a situation in which one may hesitate as to whether some expression or statement constitutes a logical contradiction/impossibility or not. Eliezer raised the possibility that this is precisely the situation in our issue. Let us consider the concept of ‘divine knowledge of a future free act’, or the claim that God can know a future free act. Clearly these are not physical contradictions or impossibilities. The problem here is not the result of observation or of any scientific finding. The question is whether this is a logical or an a priori contradiction/impossibility. If I am correct in the conclusion of the previous column, then this is a logical impossibility, since it is a matter of ‘knowing information that does not exist’. How is that different from ‘a stone that the omnipotent cannot lift’, or from a ‘married bachelor’? But this is not necessarily accurate, because here the time axis may be important. The information does exist, for it will be generated at some point in the future and then it will exist. It does not exist now. Some would argue that if God can look at future information, then from His perspective the information does exist and there is no logical contradiction here. But one can formulate it differently: “God now knows information that does not now exist.” Here the problem is more severe, in two senses: first, if the information does not now exist, how can it be known now? And beyond that, once God knows it, it turns out that it does exist now (and we shall spare ourselves, for the sake of brevity, the predictable responses that His knowledge is not like ours and that He knows in a different way. I hope that by now it is clear that this is nonsense). In this formulation, is it not obvious that we are dealing with a logical contradiction?
One may raise the possibility that indeed God knows and the information really does exist now, but this does not contradict our free choice. That is, the information about a future choice does exist now (in the first column I already clarified that it is not very important whether someone knows it). This leads us to the claims in the second column that rejected the third possibility: that there is no contradiction between His knowledge and our freedom to choose. There I advanced several arguments in order to show that there is a contradiction, and now I shall present some doubts that I have regarding them.
Doubts Regarding Yehudit Ronen’s Formalization
Yehudit Ronen’s argument sought to show that there is no contradiction between these two assumptions. In brief, she argued that God’s knowledge entails that I shall do X, but not that I shall do it necessarily. She distinguished there between the claim: “It is necessary that if God knows that I shall do X then I shall do X”, which is true, and the claim “If God knows that I shall do X then necessarily I shall do X”, which is not true. She explained that determinism is equivalent to the second claim and not to the first.
My main objection to her argument was based on the possible-worlds interpretation. According to this interpretation, the term ‘necessary’ means “true in every possible world”. If something is necessary, one cannot imagine a world in which it does not occur. Hence, in every possible world it is true that if God knows that I shall do X, then I indeed do X.
In the talkbacks (see for example with Ariel here) the following claim was raised against me: even if in every such world I indeed do X, the important question is whether I do it necessarily. It is not enough to say that I do something in order to say that I necessarily do it. The whole point of Ronen’s formalization is precisely the distinction between these two situations. They argued that in such a situation there is no necessity in my actions, and therefore my challenge to her is mistaken. I replied that in order to clarify this we must apply the modal interpretation (of possible worlds) also to this very claim. To see whether, when I do something, I do it necessarily, we must examine the truth of the matter in all possible worlds. And indeed, assuming that God knows that I shall do X, then there is no possible world in which I do not do X. If so, it seems that the second claim is also true: if God knows that I shall do X, then necessarily I shall do it. And from here the deterministic conclusion does follow from God’s knowledge. Therefore, if we wish to preserve the assumption of our free choice, there is no escape from relinquishing the assumption that God knows in advance what we shall do in the future.
My shadow of doubt is that indeed there is a sense that even if in all possible worlds a person does X, there is room for the claim that the possible-worlds interpretation does not adequately capture the notion of necessity. According to what I have described here, there is in fact no difference between the two aforementioned claims, even though their formalization is different. Or, in different words: even if God knows that I shall do X, it is still possible that I would do Y, and then, of course, He would also know that I shall do Y. His knowing that I shall do X is not necessary, and therefore there may be a situation in which He knows that I shall do Y. In short, this whole business is confusing and seems somewhat dubious to me, although I am unable to put my finger on the precise flaw in my arguments. Asaf put it nicely and succinctly:
Perhaps I am not understanding or am missing something, but if He knows that I shall travel to Tel Aviv, does that not mean that He knows that I have freely chosen to travel to Tel Aviv? That is, He knows in advance what I shall choose freely, and although I could have chosen to travel to Haifa, I did not. Is there a problem with this way of thinking?
As I replied to him, this is precisely the movie theory that was discussed in the second column (he made this comment after the first column), but this formulation greatly sharpens the shadow of doubt that I am describing here. I cannot dispel the feeling that perhaps I have missed something here.
After the column was posted, Phil sent a talkback that convinced me that I was mistaken. I therefore added this passage to the column and updated it (I hope the site will not enter a loop of redirects). Phil wrote as follows:
According to your view, it seems that God does not even know what I chose in the past. For if He does indeed know, then according to the possible-worlds interpretation it follows that I had to choose that way. The argument is the same argument:
- Today God knows that I chose X.
- There is no possible world in which God knows that I chose X but in fact I did not choose X.
- Conclusion: I had to choose X.
Although he himself suggested there a possible distinction between forward and backward causality, and I also answered him that this is the distinction, on second thought this is not correct. If the possible-worlds interpretation is applied to the claim that I did X yesterday, then he is indeed right: I did it necessarily. This is a good proof that this interpretation does not adequately capture the notion of necessity. This is a novelty in modal logic and is worth asking mathematicians and logicians about, but I am convinced.
What, then, is our situation now? Indeed, in the sense of possible worlds, it seems that God’s knowledge does not dictate my action. The question is whether the notion of necessity as defined here is really the relevant notion. It actually seems that I really do X of my own will, even though I did not, in fact, have the possibility of doing otherwise. This somewhat resembles the approach called compatibilism, that is, the claim that a person can be considered to act freely even though he has no other option. This is akin to the Talmudic discussion of compulsion and will (in footnote 6 in the second column I brought as an example the Talmudic passage in Berakhot 9 about “and they despoiled Egypt”). As long as this is what he himself wants and decides to do, he is considered free, even though he truly had no other option. I think that such a situation still does not deserve to be called free choice, but at this point I am really not sure of anything here.
Thus far I have discussed Yehudit Ronen’s argument, which shows that apparently there is no contradiction between knowledge and choice, and I suggested various ways to reject it (as stated, I am not sure what the conclusion is). By contrast, Newcomb’s paradox comes to prove that there must be a contradiction between God’s knowledge and our freedom to choose, and here we must examine the counter-arguments that were raised against me.
Newcomb’s Paradox
The paradox shows that if one assumes that the information exists, a contradiction arises, since there are two valid arguments regarding the chooser’s strategy, each of which leads to a conclusion opposite that of the other (either take only the closed box, or take both). In a follow-up challenge (here, at the end) Ariel also raised against this argument a claim similar to the one we saw above: it is indeed true that there cannot be a situation in which the prophet knew in advance that I would do X and yet I do something else, but the causal relation is not from the prophet’s knowledge to my action, but the opposite: from my action to the prophet’s knowledge. He argued that one should not rule out the possibility that the prophet knows in advance what I shall do and also takes into account my final deliberation, and therefore in the end there will indeed be a match.
I told him that he is presupposing here reverse causality, from future to past, and in my view this is unacceptable. Let me recall the distinction I presented in the second column between reverse causality with respect to information, which is impossible, and reverse causality with respect to logic, which is possible. Here we are dealing with reverse causality regarding information, and therefore it seems to me that it is impossible (see more on this below). Beyond that, as long as the prophet knows the information, regardless of the causal direction, I can still point to two contradictory strategies that stand before the chooser, and therefore his knowledge leads to a contradiction.
Phil too raised an argument of reverse causality, and he supported it with an argument similar to the one Ariel raised above, except that this time he applied it to Newcomb’s paradox: he wondered why the possible-worlds interpretation captures the notion of necessity. It may be that the chooser indeed does what the prophet predicted, but does not do it necessarily. To this I shall again say that I think this is impossible, because the possible-worlds interpretation is the correct interpretation of the term ‘necessity’, but the aforementioned shadow of doubt remains here as well. Beyond that, even if the chooser does not do it necessarily, I am not asking what he will do but what he ought to do. The question is what strategy he should adopt, not what he will actually do. In this sense there is a difference between Newcomb’s argument and Yehudit Ronen’s formalization.
Against Ariel and Phil I also raised the question of what they would say about the transparent-box experiment. There the chooser knows what the prophet has decided, and therefore he can decide to act contrary to the prophet’s prediction and turn it into a lie with his own hands. Abstention on the part of the prophet (which Ariel proposed) is not an option, for he is supposed to look at the future and say what he sees. After all, something will happen in the future, and he is supposed to see it. It was indeed argued that this is a situation in which the prophet’s own action influences the chooser’s decision, and therefore there is no room here to speak of a prophet who knows the future. I again argued that if the prophet simply observes the future and sees what will happen, this argument is not relevant to him. He will see what he himself will do and how the chooser will respond.[6] Therefore I do not see such involvement as a problem for my argument.[7]
Ariel Vinograd argued against me that one can formulate this very paradox also with respect to deterministic machines (this will apparently send them into a non-terminating loop). He concluded from this that there is nothing in this paradox that relates specifically to a being endowed with free choice. The very existence of such a prophet influences the future and therefore does not allow prediction or does not allow a winning strategy, even if the chooser does not possess free choice. If so, the root of the difficulty is not the contradiction between free will and the existence of the prophet. Such a prophet cannot exist regardless of the question of free will.
Now I think that if this is so, then my position is even better. If so, it is impossible that God knows what will happen in the future, regardless of the question whether we have free will. This is precisely my claim, and he only reinforces it.
But there I answered him that if we are dealing with a mechanical chooser, there is no problem whatsoever with the prophet’s knowing what this chooser will do. He need only examine the chooser’s software and see what it tells him to choose (and in the transparent-box case he must see what it tells him to do in each situation of the transparent box). Admittedly, one can also put this prophet into an impossible loop by instructing the mechanical chooser to act against the prophet’s prediction (in the transparent-box case, of course). And indeed, after some back-and-forth between us, Ariel Vinograd formulated the final difficulty as follows:
Or, more simply, in the version with the glass box. I instruct the software that if the glass box is empty, it is to take only it, and if the glass box contains a million dollars, it is to take both boxes. Thus in any case the software will foil the prophet’s scheme. We have reached the same paradox, and free choice will not help here (since a computer does not have it).
And to this I answered him:
I think you are making assumptions about the software that pull the rug out from under the question.
The chooser’s software knows that the prophet knows in advance what it itself will do. Therefore it will take what it is expected to take, unless it has the choice to do otherwise. That is what will happen, unless you introduce here a programmer who instructs it to do the opposite, but then you have already indirectly introduced either an assumption of choice [on the part of the mechanical chooser or of the programmer who created it] and/or the assumption that there is no software that knows in advance what I shall do. In any case, in my view the difficulty does not arise.
In other words, you have indirectly introduced here the assumption that the software itself is endowed with free choice or that the programmer has chosen the mode of operation for it. In either case, either no agent with choice is involved here, or such an agent is involved, and then the conclusion is that there is no such prophet. I think the problem cannot be formulated when dealing with a mechanical chooser.
And still, here too I have some sort of shadow of doubt. And I can only conclude with what I wrote to him there at the end of my message:
But I truly am not completely sure, and the whole thing somewhat confuses me (I apologize that I do not have time to deal with this seriously now; the pressure here is terrible). In any case, I shall qualify this argument at the end of the next column.
There is something elusive here that is playing tricks on me, and I am not entirely sure that my conclusion is really correct.
And again, a later addition to the column. After two days Ariel returned and argued against the transparent-box experiment with an argument that convinced me that I was mistaken here as well:
In the case of the deterministic prophet [in my view one can ignore the fact that this is a deterministic prophet. M.A.] and the transparent box – if from now on the opaque box is made transparent, there will be a very clear influence of the prophet on the chooser’s choice, and therefore the prophecy will fail. One must note that the prophet will still know exactly what will happen, but he simply will not be able to put into the box any amount that will come out right. The flaw is not in his knowledge, but in his ability to put money into the box or not to put money into the box, since he surely knows that if he puts the million into the box it will be chosen, and if he does not put it in, it will not be chosen.
As stated, I was convinced that the transparent-box experiment does not prove the impossibility of knowing. It is an experiment that cannot be carried out, which further strengthens the shadow of doubt that accompanies me with regard to the third possibility.
A Note on Reverse Causality and Time Travel
By way of a side remark, my entire discussion assumes that reverse causality is impossible,[8] and therefore that there cannot be information in the present about something that will be done freely in the future.[9] One can add here Yossi Potter’s claim from general relativity, where he proposed a physical possibility of reverse causality or at least of obtaining information from the future without influencing it. I argued against him that this information cannot be transmitted to the prophet (without fixing the future), and therefore we are still trapped in some inability on God’s part. If so, we have not gained much from this proposal. But of course, if he is right, then it is possible that God really does know the future (though even then there is some inability on His part). The fact that we have gained nothing does not mean that his proposal is wrong. The conclusion from his words is that the claim that God does not know is not necessary, even if as a result this information cannot be transmitted to human beings (and in fact cannot be transmitted to any point in time on our side that is located before the time of the act’s performance).
Perhaps I shall add another claim here. I wish to suggest that the theory of relativity deals with physical events. I am not sure that one may use it with regard to choice events. It may be that in a situation in which the information is generated in the future in a non-deterministic way (by a human choice) one is not allowed to apply the theory of relativity to it. Physics assumes determinism, and it may be that this enters in one way or another as a hidden assumption in the theory of relativity. I shall now bring some indication for this claim.
In Column 33 I discussed the deceptive nature of the concept of ‘travelling back in time’. I showed that it involves conceptual and logical difficulties and not only physical ones, and I proposed there a way to solve them (by assuming two time axes). Time travel gives rise to several paradoxes, and one of the best known among them is the ‘killing the grandfather’ paradox. Suppose that in some way one can travel back fifty years in time. I return to my father’s birthplace and a year before my father is born I kill my grandfather. Now my father cannot be born, and of course neither can I. But then, if we continue along the time axis another fifty years, I cannot exist. So who was it that travelled back in time? Seemingly this paradox proves that time travel is impossible. Time travel leads to paradoxes and is therefore impossible.
But note that this paradox is based on the assumption that I have free choice, and therefore I can decide to kill my grandfather. In a deterministic world I shall do what I am dictated to do, and therefore, by definition, I shall not kill him, and in such a situation the paradox, of course, will not arise. Perhaps this can be seen as a hint that the theory of relativity, and in particular time travel within it, cannot deal with beings endowed with free will (assuming there are such beings).[10]
Summary
I still tend to think that the most reasonable conclusion is that God does not know what a being with choice will do in the future (unless He removes its choice and determines the future Himself). Even if the adoption of far-fetched hypotheses of reverse causality in time or interpretations of the logical formalization and Newcomb’s paradox can in some way solve the problem (in light of the comments I have received, I am no longer at all sure that they cannot), it seems to me that the strain involved in them far exceeds the strain involved in the hypothesis that God does not know the future. As I showed in the third column, there is no principled problem with this claim. It does not in any way contradict the assumption of God’s omnipotence.
We must note that every proposal in this area leaves us with some inability on God’s part. In the worst case, we must all agree that even if He knows what will happen in the future, He certainly cannot both determine what will happen in the future and also grant us free choice. That is, our free choice deprives Him of control/ability at some level, at least practical control, even if not control in the sense of information. Therefore, the recoil from the thesis I have proposed here, as though it damages God’s omnipotence, has no substance. Logic will always “limit” His abilities (we saw in the third column that these are not really limitations).
Similarly, the silencing arguments raised against me, as if I am relying on my own gut feelings and on their basis coming out against positions accepted in the tradition for generations, have no substance for several reasons. First, in our tradition there are deterministic views, just as there are views that relinquish God’s knowledge (I have brought here only some of them). Second, just as all the sages who shape our tradition used their reason to propose positions and arguments on this issue, I see no reason why I, or anyone else, should not do the same. If everyone were to say only what accords with the tradition, different views would never have arisen. Third, it is completely unreasonable to tell me that even if my mind tells me something, I must subordinate it to tradition. First, because in my opinion there is no such tradition. There is a tradition that He is omnipotent, but regarding His knowledge of the future this depends on the question of whether it can indeed be derived from His omnipotence. In my view it cannot. But even if there were such a tradition, if this is what I think, then I must say it and propose it for discussion, and everyone will decide what to do with it. In particular, as I have written more than once, the claim of formal authority with regard to matters of fact (and the question of whether God knows or not is a factual question) is an oxymoron. If this is what I think, then this is what I think. And fourth and finally, the discussion of this question is far from being cardinal and consequential. On the assumption that we agree that a person has free choice, the question of whether God knows or does not know in advance what we shall do is marginal. Why should it be important at all? It is a theological question that is nice to play with, but the recoil from uttering “heretical” statements with regard to it seems very strange to me. In my eyes it is far more problematic to rule in the laws of Shabbat in a way that deviates from the accepted opinion, something that most great halakhic decisors do not hesitate to do.
In short, each person must think what seems to him most reasonable, regardless of whether it accords with the tradition. I have laid out the arguments and considerations (as well as the reservations) before you, and now everyone is invited to formulate his own position. Whoever has substantive arguments is invited to raise them in the discussion, but claims to the effect that one is forbidden to draw conclusions or forbidden to state them in public are cowardly nonsense. When substantive arguments and reasons run out, people move on to silencing techniques (“this is heresy”, “how can one reject the view accepted by all the great sages of Israel on the basis of gut feelings?”, “this shows lack of fear of Heaven”, and so on). Because such claims were raised against me in the previous columns, I decided to devote the next column to further discussion of the question of intellectual autonomy.
Thank you to all the intelligent commenters who helped me clarify this issue. I have learned from your words here, and it seems to me that now I am indeed exhausted but understand a little better what is going on here.
[1] That week I wrote four columns, all of which were packed with talkbacks to which I had to respond, in parallel to other questions that arose on the site, by email and by phone (there were several hundreds of them in those days), in addition to quite a few classes that I was giving every day. I am spelling all this out because I am uncomfortable about having cut off some interesting discussions. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the writers.
[2] This distinction was mentioned in footnote 2 of the second column.
[3] For example, an event of free choice is without a cause (in my book The Science of Freedom I argued that according to libertarianism its basis lies in teleological reason and not in cause).
[4] Strictly speaking, this is the synthetic-a priori, since if it were analytic then the a priori would be identical with the logical. My claim is that within the a priori there are two categories: the logical and the synthetic-a priori. I tried to see in these contradictions an indication of Kant’s thesis regarding the existence of an intermediate category between the physical and the logical (the synthetic-a priori).
[5] Incidentally, in the commentary attributed to Nahmanides on the Song of Songs (in the collected writings of Nahmanides, Schavel edition, vol. 2) he interprets the midrash in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, “From where were the heavens created? From the snow beneath His Throne of Glory…” as speaking of creation ex materia, for in his view creation ex nihilo is a logical impossibility. As is known, Maimonides in the Guide of the Perplexed apparently understood this midrash in the same way, and therefore wrote that he had never encountered a midrash so strange. I remarked on this in my article on Torah and science (see there around footnote 14. In the printed edition in Tzohar there is also a note by the editor and my response on the matter).
[6] This is not a prophet who calculates what will happen in the future, about whom one could claim that he gets into a loop in his calculation. It is a prophet who observes what will actually happen. Something will happen, and he is supposed to see it.
[7] This reminds me of an article by the economist Ariel Rubinstein, who argued that there cannot be an economic theory that accurately predicts everything that will happen in the future, since the very existence of the theory itself influences the decisions people will make. On this I wrote (to myself; it was not published) two claims: 1. One can speak of an economic theory that is not publicized. 2. One should not rule out the possibility of a theory that also takes into account its own influence on the market. In mathematics one defines the notion of a ‘fixed point’ of a function, where the value of the function equals the value of its argument: f(x=a)=a. If we define the ultimate economic theory T as a function G that takes into account all economic variables, including the effects of the theory T itself, then one should not rule out the possibility that it will still give the correct result: T=G(x,y,z,T). T is a ‘fixed point’ of the function G.
[8] I have already noted that Yehudit Ronen (in her doctoral dissertation) argued that there is no principled problem with such causality.
[9] Note that in this sentence I assumed a connection between the question of whether information about the future can be obtained and the question of whether, when such information exists now, it is still possible that I have freedom to choose. In the first column I explained that these are two different questions, and therefore the claims that God is above time and can obtain future information answer the first question but do not solve our question (which is the second). Now, after the conclusion of the third column, the two questions can once again be linked. If we have free choice, then it is impossible that God obtains in the present the information about the future. If He were to obtain it, we would not have choice. The conclusion from rejecting the third possibility (the movie theory) is that the second possibility as well (that God is above time) falls.
[10] Perhaps one can even say more than this. If I travel back in time, then my very presence there contradicts the reality that obtained then (for I did not yet exist at that time). Thus, regardless of killing the grandfather, such a situation itself is impossible. Seemingly, all that is possible, if at all, is merely to roll the time axis back to the same reality that existed then. But it is not clear in what sense this is time travel. Who is it that travelled in time? But this already takes us back in time to Column 33 and I shall not go into it here.
Discussion
I noted there the apparent contradiction with Ramban in Genesis.
I think one of the things that is confusing in the “movie hypothesis” is that we need to distinguish between “choice” as an act that determines a particular future out of several possible futures (without necessity), and “choice” as a psychological experience. One can easily imagine a situation in which, in all possible worlds, I choose the same thing, but my experience in each and every one of them is an experience of choosing, and so this creates confusion. In such a case, the question would be whether the “experience of choice” is merely an illusion, or whether there is a real act here that can be identified as genuine, and which just happens to occur in all possible worlds. I think that in such a situation the first possibility (illusion) is the correct one, and this is connected to how one should relate to the claim “all possible worlds”: in my view one must distinguish here between multiverse theory, which speaks of parallel worlds, and the more heuristic claim here, which speaks about “is such a world theoretically possible.” According to the first possibility, it may be that physically, even if there are infinitely many parallel worlds, there is no universe in which I chose Y, but that still does not mean that I could not have chosen Y. It simply did not happen in any universe in the multiverse because of technical reasons, or because choosing would require violating the laws of physics within which the multiverse exists, or because in fact in every actually possible parallel universe I chose Y without being compelled to, because in every possible universe I am the kind of person who chooses Y’s in a test situation. But the second version speaks of a situation in which “it is impossible under any circumstances to imagine a world in which I chose Y,” and the description “all possible worlds” is only a conceptual tool to sharpen the point, though here it actually creates confusion instead of sharpening it. In such a situation, where “there cannot in any way be a world in which I chose Y,” then even if my experience is an “experience of choice,” I see no alternative but to treat it as an illusion of choice and not as real choice—because if it is real choice, then necessarily there can be a world in which I chose Y.
(I apologize if what I wrote has already been said in one version or another; if so, that is completely fine—just ignore this or direct me to the relevant post and I’ll find it myself.)
There is another possibility. And it is the correct one.
There is no future—and therefore there is no knowledge of the future. https://mikyab.net/posts/66771#comment-35492
There is no free choice—a person’s desires, choices, and actions are outcomes like all other things.
What does exist in the present—God plays dice. There are potential possibilities. And in some unclear way certain dice are rolled and something specific is actualized.
What does man have—speech. Intellectual understanding. Fear of Heaven.
And the Torah comes to correct man so that he will choose rightly. And the choice is not free. And the will is not free. Therefore people make efforts in education.
And those who want and run and rush about and seek and invent and find how and why and in what way man in general, and they in particular, have choice that is free, are nothing but captives of the evil inclination of pride.
And the preoccupation with the knowledge of the Lord comes from the root of the serpent.
And prophecy is not at all about knowing the future. Rather, it is about correcting man, and what is fitting to do, and what is fitting to be. And a warning about the consequences that will come otherwise. (“And if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die.”)
In your second proof for the existence of God, you maintain that if we have two positions we are inclined to accept, it is better to qualify one of them than to assume that one of them is incorrect (there you qualify the principle of causality to things within our observation and experience). Here you prefer to drop one of them.
I constantly feel that here too there is some loophole in the formulation through which it will be possible to maintain both positions together.
I would say something like this (you’re better at this…) – with God there is no problem of lack of knowledge. Not that He actually knows, because then we run into the definition of knowledge, which necessarily leads to the conclusion that He knows everything before my choice, etc.; rather, all I know is that there is no lack of knowledge in Him—I do not know what there is instead.
And I do not see this as evading the question, because it is only natural to assume that God is beyond our intellect in certain concepts.
I still tend to assume that the key to the answer lies in the definition of knowledge (or the absence of lack of knowledge), and not in such a substantial change. After all, there is a problem here of argumentation. You repeated and said, “It is impossible to answer the concept of ‘different knowledge’ because there is no claim here.” Is the solution not simply to formulate the claim differently?
The assertion that God is subject to the laws of logic only shows what distortions the serpent brings.
A triangle that is a circle can certainly exist. A superposition of triangle and circle. Sometimes perceived as a triangle and sometimes as a circle.
The fact that in dry logical language such a state is problematic is a problem of the thinker and perceiver.
Ordinary investigation will immediately lead to the conclusion that man’s mental reality is full of contradictory concepts. For example, one picture that contains both a circle and a triangle. Or different colors. And so on. These are all contradictory concepts that dwell together, and man in his cunning separates between them and thus supposedly solves the problem.
That’s not “another possibility”; it’s just saying in other words that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know the future (because it does not exist, so there is nothing to know).
An answer on the level of the question.
God certainly knows the word “future.” God certainly knows the concept “future.” And He has certainly heard of the image of “the future” created in the imagination of the one imagining it.
A real answer:
Who are you to speak about God?
And regarding the other possibility, which is the correct one.
It is the possibility that there is neither future nor choice nor determinism.
Has this possibility been raised?
I completely agree with your description. I’m just not sure that this is what is causing the confusion.
I explained why in my opinion it is not.
HaPosek, may he live long, you continue, as is your way, to write your messages with marvelous certitude. So once again I tell you that certitude is not a substitute for argument, certainly not when one is saying nonsense, as happens not infrequently with you.
What does superposition have to do with contradiction? I’m talking about a triangle-circle, not about a “breathing” object—that is, an object that is sometimes perceived this way and sometimes that way.
Superposition describes a state in which two or more states dwell together, that is, behave as one thing. In reality.
That is: reality tolerates contradictory states, contrary to reason.
And a fortiori we learn that if reality is not subject to the laws of human reason, then all the more so God is not.
The problem with you is that you are still dealing with a God who listens to your advice on matters of logic, what He is allowed to do and what He is forbidden to do, and as your logic expands or sharpens, so too the room for maneuver and the limitations of this God you invented. This is a God who is a creature of your imagination and seems to be very much made in your image and likeness.
The God you have created has no connection to the God mentioned in the Torah, who brought Israel out of Egypt and gave them the Torah.
It would be worthwhile to fix the links so that the good people are taken to the said comment and not to the post; that would make things much easier. Thanks in advance.
Tam.
At first glance, just as for the Rambam creation ex nihilo is not among the impossibilities, so too one can say that His knowledge with respect to what is still nonexistent is not among the impossibilities, and I will explain.
With respect to the Creator Himself, we have knowledge only by way of negation. Essentially, every limited perfection known to us is negated, because although the Creator does not lack it, He is “beyond” it since He is not confined by its boundaries. Therefore, as I understand the Rambam, there is value in presenting a positive perfection and then negating it with respect to the Creator, because in this way we do understand, in a hidden way, something about that perfection in relation to Him, but without binding it together with its limitations. But the point is that when we seek to contemplate the Creator’s power and acts with respect to created reality, the Rambam understands that this is bound by a certain orderliness in that it is precluded from impossibilities. We trust what we do know, and therefore the meeting point between the unknown and the known must at the very least be continuous in avoiding illogic.
Nevertheless, the Rambam held that creation of something from nothing is not among the impossibilities. Even though our knowledge is of what exists, and at the boundary where there is transition from nonexistence to existence we have no grasp or knowledge, still we do not find impossibility in that transition.
In the same way, the Creator’s knowledge of something that does not yet exist occurs above the boundary of existence, and even though we have no knowledge of it (or because of that), we do not find impossibility in it. The picture of an impossibility with respect to this reality is due to the conception that once there is knowledge regarding the occurrence/choice of a created being, a relation is formed between the knowledge and the created being that forces a decision between knowledge and choice. But the truth is that the knowledge relates to what is still nonexistent, and therefore we have no grasp of it, and likewise we find no impediment with respect to it.
And in this sense indeed His knowledge is not like our knowledge. What precedes existence is His knowledge, and what is within existence is our knowledge.
His knowledge is unique בכך שהיא תמידית, that is, prior and not dependent on space and time.
Nonsense = Torah and science
Rabbi Moshe Rat – Knowing Faith, what do you think? https://www.knowingfaith.co.il/יסודות-האמונה/ידיעה-ובחירה
The links have indeed been fixed so they lead to the comments rather than the posts.
I don’t have time to read it.
I didn’t understand. Creation ex nihilo is not a contradiction, only something not understood (at most an a priori contradiction, but certainly not a logical one). What does that have to do with our issue? Here there are arguments, and they need to be addressed. Declarations are not enough.
By the way, also regarding the Rambam’s doctrine of negative attributes, in my opinion it is very problematic (in fact it says nothing at all, at least if one interprets it literally).
I’m still slogging around in the basics with Judith Ronen’s argument. I understand her to be saying that only a logical argument is necessary, not just any proposition. For example, it is necessary that A implies A. But it is not true that A implies that necessarily A.
If that is not what she means, then please give me an example of a proposition (not an argument—something generated by a single variable) that is necessary according to Judith Ronen. And if it is correct, then it has nothing to do with divine knowledge here. By the same token one could say that it is true that: necessarily, if I am a deterministic robot, then I am a deterministic robot, but it is not true that: if I am a deterministic robot, then necessarily I am a deterministic robot.
Well, it is indeed not necessary that I am a deterministic robot, but I am in fact a deterministic robot. And that is all that is required to prove. It is likely that I am missing something utterly trivial here, but I would be glad for an explanation.
It seems the matter still hasn’t been fixed—or maybe it works on a computer but not on a tablet?.. ?♂️
I think that generally the links to comments work only from a computer. Also from the “recent comments” page—clicking from a computer takes you to the comment itself (within the posts), while from the phone it takes you to the top of the post.
Cardigno,
Saadia Gaon explained that human actions “dictate” God’s knowledge. If a person chooses to remain silent, then God already knew he would remain silent. And if he chooses to speak, then God cannot know anything else.
Necessarily, if God knew that Yossi was going to remain silent, then Yossi will remain silent.
Cardigno, apparently the rabbi is against smartphones and the like… ??
Shem, I didn’t understand why this message is addressed to me. By presenting Saadia Gaon’s view, are you explaining Ronen’s argument to me? If so, I didn’t understand. Before discussing knowledge and choice, I am puzzled by Ronen’s argument. As I understand her, even an explicit assumption that there is no free choice does not imply that there is no free choice (because from the assumption it does not follow that “necessarily” there is no free choice). Unfortunately I don’t have the book to see her full argument. Maybe I’ll try to get it.
Our master Cardigni, you are mistaken here, both in substance and in terminology. A claim of implication is a claim like any other. The claim “if A then B” is a claim, not an argument. Therefore it is judged in terms of truth or falsehood. An argument is a derivation of one claim (a conclusion) from other claims (premises), and it is judged in terms of validity or invalidity (not truth or falsehood).
Your mistake stems from the fact that one can construct a claim of implication equivalent to any argument. For example, if from premises A and B the conclusion C follows, then the equivalent implication “if A and B then C” (which is a claim, not an argument) is true (not valid).
You probably meant to say that an implication claim can be necessary but not an atomic claim. But even in that you are mistaken. An implication claim of the type “if A then B” cannot be necessarily true except for certain of its contents (that is, not formal truth, not a tautology). But if you take content into account, then an atomic claim too can perhaps be necessarily true. For example, “A being whose existence is necessary exists” (although of course this too can be formalized as an implication: if its existence is necessary, then it exists). Or the claim “either P or not P,” which is also not an implication yet is a necessary truth.
Completely right. But I am still asking what divine knowledge is doing here. Is the claim I presented about a deterministic robot indeed correct? That is, even from the assumption that I am a deterministic robot it does not follow that necessarily I am a deterministic robot? And therefore one can hold the view that I am a deterministic robot but that my actions are not done “necessarily”? This seems to me entirely equivalent to Ronen’s argument.
You can philosophize with words as much as you like; I think it is very confusing and unnecessary. In the end the question is what the timeline looks like. According to those who say that God knows the future and that there is still choice, it looks like this:
_______________(future)
(past)___________(present)_\
/_______________(future)
In the present there is a split into 2 future timelines because every choice leads to a different future.
According to them, God knows the future, and we will mark it as follows:
_____{God’s knowledge}___(future)
(past)___________(present)_\
/_______________(future)
And now the question is what happens to the lower timeline—can it exist or not?
If it can exist, then after the choice the timeline will look like this:
{God’s knowledge}
(past)________________
/(present)___________(future)
That is, God’s knowledge does not match reality, and therefore this is a contradiction. And if you say that His knowledge changes after the choice, namely:
(past)________________
/(present)_{God’s knowledge}___(future)
then in fact the choice changed God’s mind, and He did not really know the future.
We have reached the conclusion that if God knows the future, the timeline must look like this:
(past)________________(present)_{God’s knowledge}___(future)
Notice that there is no branching here in the present, meaning there is no possibility of choice. For if there were branching, then either it would have no meaning (God’s knowledge would change), or it could never occur (a contradiction would arise between the knowledge and reality).
The conclusion – God’s knowledge of the future leaves no room for free choice. It creates a deterministic world with one timeline, in which everything is fixed from beginning to end.
QED.
(For some reason the spaces were deleted, so here is a correction.)
You can philosophize with words as much as you like; in the end the question is what the timeline looks like. According to those who say that God knows the future and that there is still choice, it looks like this:
. _______________(future)
(past)___________(present)_\
. /_______________(future)
In the present there is a split into 2 future timelines because every choice leads to a different future.
According to them, God knows the future, and we will mark it as follows:
. _____{God’s knowledge}___(future)
(past)___________(present)_\
. /_______________(future)
And now the question is what happens to the lower timeline—can it exist or not?
If it can exist, then after the choice the timeline will look like this:
. {God’s knowledge}
(past)________________
. /(present)___________(future)
That is, God’s knowledge does not match reality, and therefore this is a contradiction. And if you say that His knowledge changes after the choice, namely:
(past)________________
. /(present)_{God’s knowledge}___(future)
then in fact the choice changed God’s mind, and He did not really know the future.
We have reached the conclusion that if God knows the future, the timeline must look like this:
(past)________________(present)_{God’s knowledge}___(future)
Notice that there is no branching here in the present, meaning there is no possibility of choice. For if there is branching, then either it will be meaningless (His knowledge will change) or it will never be able to occur (a contradiction will arise between the knowledge and reality).
The conclusion – God’s knowledge of the future leaves no room for free choice. It creates a deterministic world with one timeline, in which everything is fixed from beginning to end.
QED.
(Apparently the site doesn’t like double spaces.)
You can philosophize with words as much as you like; in the end the question is what the timeline looks like. According to those who say that God knows the future and that there is still choice, it looks like this:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _______________(future)
(past)___________(present)_\
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ./_______________(future)
In the present there is a split into 2 future timelines because every choice leads to a different future.
According to them, God knows the future, and we mark it as follows:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _____{God’s knowledge}___(future)
(past)___________(present)_\
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ./_______________(future)
And now the question is what happens to the lower timeline—can it exist or not?
If it can exist, then after the choice the timeline will look like this:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . {God’s knowledge}
(past)________________
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . /(present)___________(future)
That is, God’s knowledge does not match reality, and therefore this is a contradiction. And if you say that His knowledge changes after the choice, namely:
(past)________________
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . /(present)_{God’s knowledge}___(future)
then in fact the choice changed His mind, and He did not really know the future.
We have reached the conclusion that if God knows the future, the timeline must look like this:
(past)________________(present)_{God’s knowledge}___(future)
Notice that there is no branching here in the present, meaning there is no possibility of choice. For if there is branching, then either it will be meaningless (His knowledge will change) or it will never be able to occur (a contradiction will arise between the knowledge and reality).
The conclusion – God’s knowledge of the future leaves no room for free choice. It creates a deterministic world with one timeline, in which everything is fixed from beginning to end.
QED.
Desire got the better of me and I just ordered the book.
I claim that there is also no logical contradiction between the Creator’s knowledge and our choice. His knowledge relates to something that is not, and therefore we have no intellectual tools to grasp it in such a way that we can object: if it is known, how is it only a possibility for choice? There are not two “existents” contradicting one another; the knowledge relates to nonexistence, and therefore we do not understand it, but neither do we find a contradiction or anything impossible.
My explanation at length above was really meant to explain why the mind inclines to this picture, on the basis of the Rambam’s approach to grasping the essence through negative proofs. Negative proofs are the Rambam’s way of pointing to absolute and complete positivity in all kinds of perfection (the Infinite…), and the tendency to answer “yes” to every possibility of perfection, ability, and knowledge with respect to the Creator is founded on this approach (and that of the Kabbalists), so long as it does not involve limitation and so long as it is not impossible. And as stated, knowledge of a thing that in itself is not, does not contradict the fact that its realization is only a possibility in the world of existence. Although it is not grasped by our mind, it is not impossible. (In the same way that creation ex nihilo is not impossible and we incline to it by virtue of tradition—in our case, the conception and intuition transmitted among Israel by tradition. Perhaps even more than that…)
I hope you went to a distant place and wore black.
I didn’t understand the claim. You are describing an implication whose validity is formal (if A then A), whereas she is speaking about an implication whose validity is material. Her claim is that while the proposition “divine knowledge implies performing the act” is necessarily true, the proposition “divine knowledge implies necessarily performing the act” is not necessarily true.
As I wrote, I tend to accept the conclusion, but I think you reached it because you assumed it in the very way you formalized it.
You place the knowledge on the branch that is known, but the opponents’ claim is that the knowledge is located in the past, before that branch.
It should count in my favor that since I published this here in public (for no good reason), I am exempt from going to a distant place, by the law applying to “one who blesses over ill-gotten gain.”
Exactly what I didn’t understand. Where does the content enter into the matter in her argument? In the second column you set A=knowledge and B=choice. I can set A=no choice and also B=no choice, and everything is still fine. That is, we get: there is no choice, but it is not necessary that there is no choice. The truth is that I’m rather embarrassed to ask such simple questions, which is why I ordered the book, but if there are private lessons here, who would be such a fool as not to lend an ear?
She only wanted to show that even if we have reached the conclusion that necessarily if A then B, it does not follow that if A then necessarily B. Therefore, even if it is necessary that God’s knowledge implies the choice (that is reached philosophically, not logically, because it is tied to the content), one must not confuse that with the conclusion regarding determinism.
May the master forgive me and grant me favor this time, but by the same token, even if necessarily determinism implies determinism, it does not follow that if determinism, then necessarily determinism (and therefore what?). My perplexity is doubled as above, and if I continue not to understand, I will wait patiently until the book arrives, since it is clear to me that I have not understood the argument.
Of course, this is only the way of presenting it.
The knowledge itself is present throughout the entire time range. Its appearance on the branch symbolizes what it is, not where it is located.
I understand that it is present in both the present and the past, but that does not matter for our purposes.
Instead of dealing with the specific question whether one can choose while God has knowledge of the future, I looked at it in the broader sense and showed that knowledge of the future entails the formation of a deterministic timeline, and from that one can understand the answer to this specific question.
I will say it again.
The claim that if there is knowledge, then necessarily there is choice is a philosophical claim. It has nothing to do with Judith Ronen’s formalization. What she tried to show is only the following: that the philosophical argument leads to the claim “necessarily, if there is knowledge there is choice,” and not to the claim “if there is knowledge, necessarily there is choice.” She only showed logically that these two are not equivalent. That is all.
Despair emoji. What you wrote here I also understood from the previous explanations. I’ll think about it some more, and in due time I shall return here in the fullness of life.
I think the following argument has already come up here before, but I still haven’t understood what your answer is.
According to your view, it seems that God also does not know what I chose in the past.
Because if He does know, then according to the interpretation in terms of possible worlds it follows that I had to choose that way.
The argument is the same argument:
1. Today God knows that I chose x.
2. There is no possible world in which God knows that I chose x but in fact I chose not-x.
Conclusion: I had to choose x.
It is clear to me that here the causality is not reversed, and therefore this is possible. But I think the argument I raised is enough to show that the possible-worlds interpretation regarding the question of choice is mistaken. In other words, even if in every possible world (which resembles our world in the other details) my choice is the same, this still does not teach that I was compelled to choose it.
With your permission, I would like to return this discussion to its beginning. (What a pest—seems to me you could extract a great deal of money in a lawsuit from the Ahithophel who advised you to practice complete freedom of speech on your site….)
It is told that once the Austrian emperor asked R. Jonathan Eybeschütz: “They say you are very wise. I am setting out on a hunting trip—which gate will I enter the city through when I return?”
“That is not a fair question,” replied R. Jonathan. “For whichever gate I name, you will enter דווקא through another gate.”
“You are right,” answered the emperor. “If so, write your answer on a sheet of paper, fold it, and place it in an envelope that will be sealed with the royal seal and deposited in my archives until I return from the hunt.”
R. Jonathan agreed (what choice did he have?), the sealed envelope was placed in the royal archives, and the emperor set out to hunt. On his way back he deliberated through which gate to enter, and a brilliant idea occurred to him—to breach a new gate in the city wall and enter through it. “The Jewish rabbi surely did not think of that,” he mused with satisfaction.
After he returned to his palace from the hunting trip, the emperor summoned all his ministers and advisers, as well as R. Jonathan, and ordered the envelope brought and the rabbi’s answer read aloud. To everyone’s astonishment, it turned out that the sheet contained just a single sentence: “The king … may break through to make himself a way, and none may protest” (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 2:4).
Let us set aside the question of the story’s historical reliability. What matters is not whether it happened, but whether it could have happened, and it seems to me that there will be no dispute about the very possibility of it. If so, there can be information deposited in the king’s archives about the gate through which the emperor will return from the hunt, even before the emperor mounted his horse, and nevertheless, presumably the emperor acted with completely free choice.
Of course you will argue that R. Jonathan did not know what the emperor would do, but merely made a successful guess, and just as well could have been mistaken (or there was divine intervention to spare the rabbi the embarrassment). Put differently, R. Jonathan selected from among all possible futures the one that seemed most likely to him, similar to an ideal chess program that knows how to map all the possible board positions resulting from every move and chooses the most likely response move. (Such a perfect program does not currently exist in human hands, but there is no reason not to assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, has such a program.)
But even a guess is a kind of information, though not certain, and successful guesses are bits of information that exist today and predict the future. There are also “scientific” guesses (they are called by the grandiose name “forecasts”), and you may be surprised, but contrary to what many think, most professional economic forecasts (as distinct from the chatter of studio commentators and the popular press) are fairly accurate. An economic forecast, unlike a weather forecast, predicts the behavior of markets run by human beings with free choice. Advanced models can also predict irrational behavior, etc., and this too is impressive and steadily improving, without contradicting anyone’s free choice.
On the assumption that the Holy One, blessed be He, has abilities no less than those of R. Jonathan Eybeschütz, and that more advanced models are at His disposal than even those known to me (such as that ultimate “chess program”), He is apparently able to know even a future that depends on free choice with such great precision that the errors are negligible and their probability infinitesimal. (Perhaps this can be read into the words of the Raavad and the Shelah? Further analysis is required.)
And despite all this, I am not at all sure that the logical contradiction matters. As I noted, I respect logic very much, but I do not place absolute trust in it. Why and for what reason—we can argue on another occasion.
You answered yourself. Indeed, there is no possible world there in which it could have happened otherwise, because it is in the past. But as I wrote in the post, that confuses me too.
You answered yourself. It was a successful guess. By the way, I know the story about Rabbenu Tam during the Crusades. And indeed I also heard it about R. Jonathan Eybeschütz, but that’s no great feat, because all stories are about him..
With God’s help, 16 Iyar 5780
There is a substantial difference between the explanation of Rabbi Isaac bar Sheshet Perfet (the Rivash) and the discussions of Judith Ronen and Newcomb. They are trying to understand a situation in which, naturally, an observer located within the natural system can observe the future without influencing it, such as a parapsychologist (whom Judith Ronen discusses) — and on its face there is an inherent failure here, for if someone in the present can observe this information now, that means that the cause of the future change already exists now.
By contrast, the Rivash speaks only of the divine observer, who is not limited by the constraints of time and place, and He alone can observe the future without turning it into the present. No prophet can, by his natural power, see the future in the present unless he has received a message about it from the Creator, and therefore a prophet’s ability to state the future proves that he received a message about it from the Creator, who alone can foresee the future.
And by way of wordplay we may say,
just as a creature limited by the boundaries of nature cannot produce a Perpetuum Mobile — so a creature cannot attain the consciousness of Berfetum Mobile 🙂
With blessing, Shatz
I retract. On second thought, you are right. I am updating the post. Thank you very much.
Honored Rabbi.
If Phil is right, and there is no influence from God’s knowledge to the choice, then I am not regarded as coerced, not even as coerced while wanting it; and if so, if there is an influence that brings him into a state of coercion, then he is compelled.
Therefore it seems to me that there is no way to escape the question according to Judith Ronen’s formula, because in the end, even if we do not see causality in His knowledge, but rather something else that is hard to define, we still have not escaped the inability to choose. However we call it, there is no way to change the knowledge that already exists now.
As a yeshiva student I heard many times the wonderful story about Rav Shach, that בעקבות a question from one of the students he announced the next day that the general lecture he had delivered the night before was fundamentally mistaken.
I confess without shame that I doubted the reliability of the story, and now God has granted me to see with my own eyes an example of that same wondrous deed from back then.
Blessed am I that I merited it.
Indeed, I wrote that it may have been no more than a successful guess, but I added two claims:
(a) Even a guess, and especially an intelligent guess, is a kind of information (though not certain).
(b) The Holy One, blessed be He, can make guesses no less successful than R. Jonathan’s, and with incomparably greater precision, since He is capable of “calculating” the entire “game tree” of this world, and choosing from it the most probable “path” (to use the jargon of game theory people). (Or in the language of chess players, He can map out the entire game tree of chess and “guess” the specific line that will be played from here on.)
Therefore, practically speaking one can say that the Holy One, blessed be He, “knows” even a future dependent on choice to a satisfactorily certain degree, even if not with 100% certainty. If belief in His very existence cannot be proved with absolute certainty (and you wrote an entire book about that), then for my part this degree of divine certainty in “guessing” the future is enough for me to regard God as knowing even the future that depends on choice. I won’t quibble with Him over epsilon… (and in that merit He too will “smooth over” a few fouls of mine, may it be His will…)
And I still wonder whether these ideas can be read into the language of the Raavad and the Shelah, which requires further analysis.
All this, of course, if we accept your logical conclusion that the Holy One, blessed be He, indeed cannot know a future dependent on choice with certainty. (I note this again for the sake of fairness; however, as I said, I am not 100% convinced, but prefer not to enter that dispute in these turbulent days.)
P.S. I believe the Crusades story is about Rashi and not Rabbenu Tam. In the Austrian branch of my Austro-Hungarian family they insisted that the story I brought is about R. Jonathan Eybeschütz and the Austro-Hungarian emperor, and with Austrian Yekkes it is dangerous to argue…
Perhaps according to the ‘theory of relativity’ there is a situation in which two people can simultaneously be in different times, as described in the ‘twin paradox,’ where only a few years pass for the twin flying in space, while for his brother “proceeding slowly” on earth, decades pass.
At first glance, the brother in space could observe his brother on earth and see his future, without this affecting the decisions of the brother on earth.. If I understood correctly, Yossi Potter pointed this out in his response to one of the previous posts, so perhaps even among human beings there can be a reality of observing the future that does not influence it..
In any case, in a discussion of God’s abilities there is no need to find parallels among human beings, for it is obvious that the Creator is not limited by the constraints of place and time..
With blessing, Shatz
You don’t need the theory of relativity for that.
There is nothing to prevent placing consciousness at the beginning of time or at the end of time or at any other time. But that is only if consciousness is the end of causes—the final result—and does not itself constitute a cause of anything.
And regarding relativity. It is much easier to imagine a situation in which a person is near a black hole, where he too sees the entire future passing very quickly. But this has no causal consequence from future to past. And it is not clear what you are trying to infer from that. (Maybe you should ask when one needs to put on tefillin in such a situation.)
If the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know what will happen in the future, what place does petitionary prayer have?
I think that perhaps there is a division between the two kinds of prophets that I proposed last time, and I will try to spell it out here. In my opinion it both, on the one hand, removes the apparent contradiction in the deterministic explanation of Newcomb’s paradox, and, on the other hand, removes the apparent contradiction between foreknowledge and choice:
1. The deterministic prophet who knows only the present – this prophet has not the slightest ability to “draw” information from the future into the present; all the information he has is only present information. But in the present he knows everything—he knows all the laws of physics (and therefore also psychology), and he also knows the exact state of affairs in the world at the moment of the prediction.
Such a prophet can know exactly what the chooser in Newcomb’s paradox will choose, and all his considerations, and therefore he will always succeed in placing or not placing the money in the opaque box. Since everything is causal, and he knows the present causes and all the laws, he can derive from them the chooser’s decision.
2. The omniscient prophet who also knows the future – this prophet does not rely on knowledge of the present, but is able to pull bits of information from the future. This prophet will succeed even in a case of free choice in knowing the future, because although the causes of the choice do not exist at the stage of prediction, he can pull the information from the future. So the “cause” of his knowledge is the future choice, and not the other way around.
In both cases, everything works properly when the prophet does not affect the chooser in any way. The moment the prophet affects the chooser, the choice is compromised. In the case of the omniscient prophet, if he hints in any way at the future choice, the choice may be negated (whether the chooser indeed acts in accordance with the choice, or whether he does the opposite on purpose and chooses against it). But so long as he keeps the choice to himself, there is no causal chain leading from his knowledge to the choice, and therefore the choice will be completely free.
In the case of the deterministic prophet and the transparent box—if the opaque box were now to become transparent, there would be a very clear influence of the prophet on the chooser’s choice, and therefore the prophecy would fail. One must notice that the prophet would still know exactly what will happen, but he simply would not be able to put any amount in the box that would come out right. The deficiency is not in his knowledge, but in his ability to put or not put money in the box. For he certainly knows that if he puts the million in the box, she will choose, and if he does not put it, she will not choose.
With God’s help, 17 Iyar 5780
To R. Mordechai – greetings,
Regarding R. Jonathan Eybeschütz, there is historical information about his conversations with Christian scholars. In his books he mentions things he asked scholars of the academy in Prague. Such connections also existed in Prague with R. Jonathan’s predecessors, and the connections of the Maharal of Prague with Tycho Brahe are known.
One may assume that in the generations after the Renaissance there was greater openness to intellectual ties of this kind than in the France of the Crusades. Then there were more disputations in which Christians tried to prove to the sages of Israel the truth of Christianity from the Holy Scriptures. These disputations contributed to the great labor of the sages of France, Rashi and his students, in explaining the plain meaning of Scripture, in much of which there is engagement with Christian arguments.
With blessing, Shatz
By the way, concerning Maharal and Tycho Brahe—in Netzach Yisrael the Maharal explains why דווקא among the chosen people of Israel sin is more prevalent, by means of the idea that when force is exerted in one direction, an opposing force is exerted against it. An idea that Newton would later turn (he, the student of Kepler, the student of Brahe) into one of the basic laws of physics.
By the way, regarding note [5], a short Torah thought: it is customary everywhere to cite the words of R. Eliezer as support for the view that the world was created from existing matter, even though this has always puzzled me, for the plain meaning of Scripture points to creation from existing matter and not creation ex nihilo, as in the accepted interpretation. If you pay attention, in the creation narrative (all of chapter 1) the word “earth” appears several times in three different senses. One meaning: “earth” in the sense of dry land only, as in verse 10: “God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of the waters He called Seas.” A second meaning: “earth” in the sense of dry land and sea together, meaning everything below the firmament, as in verse 17: “And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” A third meaning: “earth” in the sense of the entire universe, as in verse 2: “And the earth was tohu va-vohu, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” According to these senses, one can see that in the first verse the word “earth” comes in the second sense, since heaven and earth are mentioned together in the verse. Therefore the first verse serves as a kind of heading or opening to the whole chapter, and not necessarily as dealing with the actual process of creation. That is, the first verse proclaims and declares to the reader that the one responsible for the creation of the heavens and the earth as they now stand before us is God. The actual order of creation really begins in detail only from verse 2. And this verse itself states that the “earth” (in the third sense, that is, the whole universe) already existed, only the “earth” (the whole primeval universe) was in one great mess, and God brought order into it. And that is indeed what God actually did: He separated, distinguished, arranged, and introduced organization into all the primordial chaos. Some claim that the word creation (“In the beginning God created…”) itself means ex nihilo, while the word formation means from existing matter, but there is nothing to this, because in verse 21 it says: “And God created the great sea monsters…,” and likewise in verse 27: “And God created man…,” and these were made from existing matter. In fact, there is not even the slightest hint anywhere in chapter 1 that the world was made ex nihilo. The plain meaning of Scripture is that the universe is primordial… there is no hint of primeval matter from nothing; Scripture simply assumes that this matter (“the earth” in verse 2) already existed. It is interesting finally to understand that the authors of Scripture simply held that the world was produced from existing matter; that is the plain meaning of the text. Admittedly, the interpretation that the world was created ex nihilo has established itself (not justly) as the correct interpretation, because the idea of “something from nothing” fits better with the idea of the abstract and necessary monotheistic God. It does not fit so well with a God alongside whom the universe is primordial. In short, דווקא the words of R. Eliezer are more in line with the דעת of the authors of the biblical text. And this is a very common error in biblical interpretation: to change the interpretation according to changing times so that it fits the current approach of the interpreter, whereas in most cases such interpretations are mistaken. Even the Rambam’s well-known puzzlement over the words of R. Eliezer suffers from this deficiency. It is hard for the Rambam to “swallow” the fact that the authors of Scripture simply thought the world was primordial. If there are this or that philosophical contradictions in that, nu, they simply did not notice… Many interpreters are constantly interpreting the text in such a way that it does not contradict their modern opinions, and therefore biblical interpretation changes so much.
Phil.
Is your claim only about the rabbi’s conclusion regarding Ronen, or also about the implication for free choice?
Because in my opinion it is still difficult even if we do not see the causality; in the end a different outcome is not possible.
Phil, I heard that he backed down in the middle of the lecture itself. Truly, I am too insignificant to grasp the hem of his robe.
Indeed, I was mistaken. It really is about Rashi.
I do not think that foreknowledge at a very high degree of certainty, however high, leads to determinism. The philosophical question is not a practical one. It deals with the question whether we have choice. So long as it is not 100% airtight, there is choice. A good psychological prediction does not contradict choice.
Shatz”l, I mentioned in the post that Yossi Potter raised that possibility here. And I answered him.
I did not understand the question. You ask and He will do. What does that have to do with predicting your own actions (those done by choice)?
I’m no longer keeping my head straight. Are you talking about a deterministic chooser? If the chooser is not deterministic, how will the deterministic prophet know what he will choose?
And regarding the omniscient prophet, I ask what the correct strategy of the chooser is in such a situation. There are two correct answers here that contradict each other.
I had hoped I had written in an orderly and concise enough way to be clear. To the best of my judgment I addressed all the reservations you wrote, and it seems to me that my approach is coherent. But I understand there is overload, so it is hard to get into depth here.
I am not sure I understand the questions, but I will answer:
When I wrote “the deterministic prophet,” I meant a prophet within a deterministic worldview, with a deterministic chooser.
As for the chooser’s strategy in such a case, clearly he has no way to get both sums, and therefore it is certainly preferable for him to choose the opaque box, because he cannot beat the prophet who knows how to penetrate the depths of his psychology and do his calculations better than he can.
I didn’t understand what the problem is with my argument.
I do not see a problem, but neither do I see any added value. It is the same argument I made. It does not solve the problems that were raised against it.
So we’ve come back to the beginning. Why shouldn’t he take the second box? What is in the first one is already there. We are going in circles, though as I wrote, I myself am not sure here.
The first Gaon who addressed the issue was not mentioned, and I feel the need to bring his words, which clarify the matter.
Saadia Gaon argues that if divine knowledge were the cause of things existing, there would indeed be a great difficulty here. But if it is not—God’s knowledge is only a sign that the thing will happen, and therefore the difficulty is more open to solution.
The continuation of his words resolves the difficulty of knowledge as a sign that a person will choose in a certain way: he says that if a person were ultimately to choose the opposite, then afterward we would say that God knew he would do the opposite. And it seems to me that his intention is that in actuality there is no existing divine knowledge in the world of what the person will choose; rather, only after it happens do we say retroactively that God knew it, and therefore one cannot say that there exists in the world some knowledge that is a sign that the person is not truly free.
(Of course when something is said to a prophet, one must explain why that does not negate choice—like the Rambam’s and Raavad’s solutions regarding the Egyptians. But regarding knowledge that has not been revealed, the difficulty is not so great.)
The Rambam, by contrast, says explicitly in the Guide that God’s knowledge of the world is the cause of its reality, and therefore this whole direction does not fit his view.
And by the way, regarding Phil’s words that convinced you—one can also give the credit to R. Judah Halevi: “For knowledge of what will be is not the cause of its being, just as knowledge of what has been is not the cause of its having been, but rather proof of it” (“proof” – what I called a sign. The Kuzari continues in Saadia Gaon’s path).
And regarding the concept of necessity as opposed to “all possible worlds”: necessity is created where there is a causal connection—if because God knows that I will perform a commandment, then in every possible world I perform a commandment—then one can say that in every possible world it is equally necessary, because the knowledge caused it, not logically but in practice (it is what prevented a non-matching world). But if we have only evidence that this is what will be, there is no factor here that contradicts the possibility that the thing was done by choice—as with respect to the past (the other worlds were not ruled out by the knowledge).
I would like to sharpen the paradoxical nature of the new argument (in red), and I quote it for that purpose –
“According to your view, it seems that God also does not know what I chose in the past. Because if He does know, then according to the interpretation in terms of possible worlds it follows that I had to choose that way. The argument is the same argument:
A. Today God knows that I chose X.
B. There is no possible world in which God knows that I chose x but in fact I chose not-X.
C. Conclusion: I had to choose X.”
I think the inference here is problematic, and I will illustrate by a different formulation –
A. Today God knows that the world is round.
B. There is no possible world in which the Holy One, blessed be He, knows it is round, but in fact it is flat.
C. Conclusion – it is necessary that the world is round.
That is certainly not true…. Therefore I think that when we relate to the past, the necessity is really this: God knows X if and only if X is true. In other words, line B is really just saying that there is no possible world in which God is mistaken.
But with respect to the future, if we assume choice, then there simply is no truth or falsehood (because the information does not exist). And if He did know it—that would indeed contradict choice.
Yes, I answered that—the deterministic prophet knows all the recesses of the person’s thoughts and will succeed in predicting any type of consideration he may make.
I also think I completely pulled the rug out from under the problem of the transparent box when I argued that the deficiency is not in the prophet’s knowledge but in his ability to place or not place the money in the box. Since in any case he will know what the chooser will do, even if it is impossible for him to express this by means of the act of putting money in.
Could it be that we are approaching agreement on something? (Did the Holy One, blessed be He, foresee that?…)
That is, do we agree that even on your view, the conclusion that the Holy One, blessed be He, “does not know” the future that depends on choice is too hasty. He may not know it with 100% certainty, but 100% minus epsilon—you “allow” Him even that? (And He surely thanks you…)
As stated, this is on your view, which I am not convinced of, as I noted, but now it sounds much less radical and provocative. Apparently one can read this intention into the language of the Raavad; regarding the Shelah it is less clear, and further analysis is required.
And by way of association, about two years ago (I think) someone proposed a “quantum” electric switch for Shabbat. (The idea was that pressing the switch activates the electrical device with a probability less than 1, based on a quantum mechanism. I am not expert in the details since I am not a physicist; perhaps you know that idea.) Rabbi Asher Weiss rejected the idea emphatically, and his main claim was that even a certainty “very close” to 1 is enough to regard activating the switch as a full-fledged psik reisha.
In light of what was said here, the conclusion is not necessarily that He does not know. He knows, and yet that still does not compel the choice. This is the movie theory. According to that, one could also tell the prophet without harming the freedom to choose.
Indeed. But such credits are a delicate matter. People often make a correct argument without being aware of all the folds within it and all the arguments and counterarguments that it itself resolves.
Again, this is the claim that came up here. See my addition in red.
I don’t see the claim. Indeed, the argument about the world being round parallels Phil’s argument, and this really is proof that the possible-worlds interpretation does not capture the matter of necessity. You are only repeating Phil’s argument.
Regarding a deterministic chooser, it seems to me I answered. He is observable even by me (one does not need to be a prophet for that).
Regarding the transparent box, I understand. I think you are right. I am adding another correction to the post. I am already exhausted by all this, but thanks to all the commenters who helped me clarify this exhausting and confusing issue. 🙂
That is of course possible, but in my opinion not correct.
I never claimed anything about the likelihood that He will be right in His prediction of the future. On the contrary, I consistently argued that this is not important at all, and I say that now as well. Just as I argued in my book on free will, that even if in Libet’s experiment you predict the future action with 99% probability, that says nothing about the question of free will.
In the same way, people get confused and think that if the future cannot be predicted because of technical difficulties (chaos), that has something to do with free choice, but it does not.
At most one can say that we never had a disagreement on this subject. We both agree that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know the future, but only estimates what it is likely to be.
Regarding the quantum switch, I had not heard of it, but I disagree with Rabbi Weiss. The question is not one of probability, but of the probabilistic mechanism. One must distinguish between a classical action with a 90% probability and a quantum action with a 90% probability. It seems to me that this is related to the well-known dispute between the Taz and R. Akiva Eiger regarding a doubtful psik reisha. In any event, either way, it does not touch our present issue.
As far as I am concerned, if the Holy One, blessed be He, were randomly drawing answers about what will happen in the future, and what came out was always correct, that still would not count as His knowing. Predicting is not knowing. Knowing includes predicting, but not vice versa. Certainly not when the prediction is not 100% (and it makes no difference how much less).
Line A makes an empirical claim – reality is X.
Line B makes an a priori claim – God knows X, which implies that X is true.
It does not follow from this that reality is X “necessarily.” If line A had been different, line B would also have been different. The combination of the premises only teaches us that reality “right now” is necessarily X – because that is simply an existing fact.
But with knowledge and choice this does not work – because in that situation line B (the assertion that X is true) precedes line A (its empirical realization), and therefore line A cannot be different, and becomes necessary.
I apologize if I am ruminating; I confess with shame that I did not read the entire food chain here…
And just a side note for maintaining the site, may it prosper – given the nature of the comments here, which at times run longer than the average talkback, perhaps it would be appropriate to allow bold/italics/underline, and other effects.
In your opinion, would such a quantum switch be permitted? That is strange—how can an action whose purpose is to desecrate Shabbat be permitted just because it will not necessarily happen? Psik reisha is a rule concerning something *unintended*, but in our case, where one does intend to turn on the light, it is obvious that it would be forbidden even if the probability is 0.0001 percent.
You are of course right. From Rabbi Weiss’s reasoning I understood that the case was one of an unintended action, and about that I said that one should distinguish between a quantum and a classical probability. If it is an intentional action, then it has nothing at all to do with an unintended act. Perhaps one could see it as grama (there are views that certainty of the result is included in the definition of grama—one of the Ramban’s views in Kuntres Dina de-Garmei, among others).
Divine providence served me up, at a very interesting time, the following video, in which the view of R. M. A. is mentioned, and the flaws in his position.
Let the judge judge.
With God’s help, 33rd of the Omer 5780
The lectures of Rabbi Dr. Doron Ledwin:
A. “Free Choice in Light of Brain Research” (to which “Tam” linked)
B. “The Brain as a Quantum Computer” (at the “Science and Consciousness” conference of Bar-Ilan University)
And a concise review: “The physicist Doron Ledwin: Free choice at the quantum level”
can be found on the ‘Ratzio’ website.
With blessing, Gal Quantin [nicknamed: Shatz”l = Two Sides to Reality]
1. I read the posts with pure delight; your words are a balm to the eyes. I from the outset was heading in this direction, and I am glad for the sources you collected, especially the words of the Shelah. I would explain the Rambam as trying to resolve the imperfection in God that would result from the absence of His knowledge, and therefore he explains that human and earthly knowledge is not at all among His attributes, and so a defect in it does not impair the perfection of God’s attributes. By contrast, heavenly knowledge is the essence of His very being, and all creatures are its results, and therefore He knows all the possible scenarios, though He does not know which of them will actually come to pass.
2. What is your view regarding the choice of animals? The Shelah, for example, could argue that only regarding human beings, where we have necessity because of the system of reward, is God’s knowledge lacking with respect to their choice. But regarding beasts, who are indeed neither punished nor rewarded, God does know the future because they have no choice. If we do accept this, then clearly God knows more about the leaf that falls and shades the worm a hundred years from now than He knows about my situation tomorrow, because God’s abilities in analyzing the data from which various future situations necessarily follow are beyond doubt. After all, even though according to the medievals’ view providence exists only with respect to man and not with respect to the worm and the leaf—the future knowledge is stronger there, whereas providence is a living, ongoing maneuver with man. (At least in the past, according to your view?)
3. I would be glad if you could give me some logical explanation, according to the principle of charity, of the Rambam’s words in chapter 8 of his Eight Chapters, where he argues that although the individual is not compelled at all, God can foresee the sins of the collective, because it cannot be avoided that some of the collective will sin. It seems to me that this is a mistake, but too blatant a one for the Rambam. If every individual can choose not to sin, how can the collective sin with certainty?
With blessing
1. Thanks.
2. I don’t know. But clearly, if they have no choice, there is no obstacle to knowing what will happen to them in the future (except for what man will decide to do to them).
3. It is similar to his words in Hilkhot Teshuvah 6. I explained this in my book Mada’ei HaFreedom, that there can be a collective that is bound to sin even though no individual is compelled. Your question is what the Raavad asked against him there, but the law of large numbers says that one can predict what the collective will do with very high probability (almost 1), even though each individual acts freely. Just as with a die roll, each roll is random, but if you roll many times, the outcomes will distribute 1/6 to each face.
All my life I settled the question in accordance with the Rivash, like the third possibility you presented together with Judith Ronen and others among the commenters here. Newcomb’s paradox was not difficult for me; I understood it this way. The timeline and the causal line are not necessarily the same thing (yes in the physical world, but not necessarily). The choice is what caused the divine knowledge, and therefore it is free. Newcomb’s paradox arises because the causal line becomes a loop (he knows what I choose, but I choose because he knows), and causality has no beginning. In literature this paradox is explored in Robert Heinlein’s excellent story “All You Zombies,” or in the film based on it (also excellent), “Predestination.”
Some time ago I encountered the litmus test for this view. The first verse in Parashat Beshalach: “And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, though it was near, for God said: Lest the people regret when they see war, and return to Egypt.” The Gur Aryeh asks there: how can it say of the Holy One, blessed be He, “lest”—implying that He does not know? According to this view, that is of course obvious. The Holy One, blessed be He, knows the choice in advance because it has been chosen and has caused His knowledge. According to this, He has no way of knowing a hypothetical choice—what I would choose were I to do such-and-such. Such knowledge is indeed something that contradicts choice, because it requires that there be some substantive thing that makes the choice knowable, and therefore it is not choice.
Seemingly this is confirmation of this view from an explicit verse, and there is no need for the Gur Aryeh’s pilpulim. The thing is, the verse opens Newcomb’s paradox for God Himself. When did He choose not to take the Israelites by the way of the land of the Philistines? Necessarily He always knew that this would be His choice, since He knows that He does not know what the Israelites would do if He were to take them by the way of the land of the Philistines. If He knows that He does not know, then He already knows in advance what He has chosen. One could say that His choice and His knowledge come together as one, and there is no difficulty here because we are discussing the Cause of causes. A causal loop in itself, and so this is small change for Him. Still, the verse is somewhat puzzling, because it presents a process of decision-making. I do X because of Y, and that is a bit problematic in the plain meaning of the verse. Here at least there seems to be an indication in the direction of non-knowledge, or at least of Scripture revealing that.
In Guide of the Perplexed III:20 the solution in Hilkhot Teshuvah 5:5 was explained. And it is indeed a solution.
The meaning of “knowledge” with respect to God, who creates, sustains, and governs the world, is that everything that is done is by His power. He created the laws of nature and psychology, and therefore all the billions of possible combinations of human actions were foreseen in advance (“everything is foreseen”), and the response to them was planned in advance and is built into the world. In that sense they are within His knowledge.
The discussion about God assumes that we have a priori knowledge of a divine being, and we are clarifying its details. But that is not so. The starting point for the human conception of the Creator, blessed be He, is an aggregation of the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, and religion, which yields a unified conception of a supreme transcendent being above the world. In our context it is clear that such a being has knowledge.
If it is still not clear, Judith Ronen’s formalization is precisely the formalization of Alvin Plantinga, brought at length in Rabbi Moshe Rat’s detailed article on the subject on his website. The delay was due to a malfunction in the time machine.
Newcomb’s paradox with the transparent boxes, and what Ariel remarked about it, reminded me of the halting problem in computability (computer science https://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%99%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%94 )
Is there a program that can say, about every other program in the world, whether it will eventually halt? The answer is no, and the proof is very simple and similar to the case here.
In the proof, one tries to see what will happen if a program that does the opposite of its input receives itself as its input (will it do the opposite of itself? How is that possible?)
Similarly here, the prophet basically has to do the “opposite” of the chooser (if the chooser chooses both boxes, then put in 0; if he chooses one, put in a million), but the chooser does the opposite of the prophet, so the prophet has to do the opposite of himself, which is impossible; therefore the prophecy will fail.
I didn’t understand Ariel’s words when he says that the prophet would know what will happen (but didn’t the prophecy fail?). And of course he also will not be able to put the correct amount in the box, because he does not know the future, since the prophecy failed.
What am I missing?
Who is Ariel? Do you expect me now to go through this whole thread and locate whom you are talking about and what you mean?
If you have a question, please formulate it fully here, and then perhaps it will be possible to discuss it.
Ariel, whom you edited into the post in blue.
I’m sorry, but right now this is too much for me. It is hard for me to enter now into all this complicated give-and-take.
Generally speaking, I will say that indeed it seems that the halting problem definitely plays a role here in the background, if only with respect to the possibility of the prophet knowing what the chooser will do. The prophet is supposed to compute the result of the chooser’s computation and know what it will be. But note that if the prophet sees the future, then this has nothing to do with the halting problem, because the prophet is not examining the chooser’s program—which may not be possible for a prophet who is a Turing machine—but rather directly observing what he will do in the future.
Regarding Phil’s contradiction:
Today God knows that I chose (in the past) X.
There is no possible world in which God knows that I chose (in the past) x but in fact I chose something else.
Conclusion: I had to choose X.
This reminds me of logical determinism. For example, a person has 2 possible ways to act: to do action X or action Y. Now let us replace “God knows that I chose X” with “God knows that the truth-value of the proposition ‘I chose X’ is true.” We get the following claim:
Today God knows that the truth-value of the proposition ‘I chose X’ (in the past) is true.
There is no possible world in which God knows that the truth-value of the proposition ‘I chose X’ (in the past) is true, but in fact the truth-value of the proposition ‘I chose X’ is false.
Conclusion: the truth-value of the proposition ‘I chose X’ (in the past) must be true; that is, I had to choose X. This is of course the well-known argument of logical determinism, which you refuted in several posts.
To sum up, the very knowledge of an act done in the past changes nothing, because this is essentially an argument similar to logical determinism. By contrast, knowledge regarding an action that occurs in the future is different, because here the information about the future action does not exist, and that nonetheless leads me to accept the claim that God cannot know our future action (and not to accept the claim that there is no contradiction between knowing the action in advance and free will).
(The topic is complicated and I am not sure how precise I am, so if anyone has comments, they are welcome to write.)
The paradox of knowledge and choice stems from the assumption that He is omnipotent, in which case He would seemingly also have to be omniscient, and if not, then He is not called omnipotent. And behold, you concluded that He does not know the choice, which is in a certain sense a kind of impairment of His omnipotence. And similarly, seemingly, there is a “paradox” in the very creation of the world, which shows that apparently He is not omnipotent, since He needed / had some need for the creation of the world, some need that without creating the world He could not have achieved. Seemingly, the conclusion required by this situation is the same conclusion you drew from the paradox of knowledge and choice—that He does not know the choice. And although I know you will say that it is unrelated, because God’s subjection to the laws of logic does not impair His omnipotence, or some other explanation that you will give.
So I will say that this very thing, God’s subjection to the laws of logic, is a kind of “paradox,”
as Robin puts it in his book “What God Can’t.”
“It is clear that the problem is far from trivial, and both possibilities raise severe philosophical and theological problems: a plague on both my houses. On the one hand, subordinating God to the laws of logic and mathematics means that something was already there before God, and exists even without Him—a nightmare for every monotheistic theologian. Beyond that, the pretension of a limited human intellect to determine what the infinite God can and cannot do arouses immediate unease, and this becomes sharper especially in the modern age, in which it is increasingly recognized that even the most basic laws of thought are nothing but categories of subjective human cognition. How can one accept in such a situation that God is subject to the laws of logic and mathematics in the human mind, which He Himself created? We may therefore be tempted toward the other side, but upon examination it too appears quite problematic. If God is not subject to mathematics, then what is the meaning of the basic monotheistic belief—the unity of God? After all, from God’s point of view, 1=2 could also be a true proposition, so why insist on one God specifically? Moreover: if God is not subject to logic, then even P and not-P may both be accepted as true regarding Him, and if so there is no point in insisting even on God’s very existence, since from His standpoint He does not exist even when He exists, and exists even when He does not exist. In general, the more we exempt some object from the yoke of logic, the faster we discover that we are unable to say anything meaningful about it. Throughout the entire book, therefore, we move between these two impossible possibilities.”
Correct me if there is some error in what I have said, or if you disagree.
Thank you
I have explained this countless times. The fact that Robin declares that there is a problem here does not change the situation that there is no problem here at all. The laws of logic are not laws, and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, is not “subject” to them. That is simply a misleading formulation.
Okay.
In any case I did not understand how one can say that the Creator does know the future while the choice of a person He does not know.
After all, the two depend on each other; He can be mistaken, since the future can change according to the choices of billions of beings with free choice.
Perhaps your intention is that He determines the future—that is, some specific future, say that the Messiah will come whenever He wishes. Fine, that is clear, because He can do anything, even cancel choice. But apparently to say that He knows the future even though He does not know what billions of choosers will choose—that does not seem plausible.
If you disagree, I would be glad for an explanation of this.
He knows everything that does not depend on human choice. He can also know whatever is dictated by the law of large numbers, meaning the collective behavior of a large group of people, while each individual has freedom to choose. That is what the Rambam and the Raavad discussed in Hilkhot Teshuvah chapter 6, and I elaborated on it.
Where did you elaborate on this? I would appreciate a reference.
Because in this response there is no contradiction / answer to what I wrote.
Because it still is not called knowing the future.
Because He can be mistaken.
Because after all, it is a future that in the end depends one way or another on the choices of billions of people.
Say, can He know what will happen to a certain tree that is not a chooser? Not exactly, because a chooser may decide to cut it down or not cut it down. And how would He know that?
Did the Creator know that people would reach the moon? After all, that is their choice.
Did He know there would be a Holocaust or October 7? After all, that depends on people’s choices.
So what does He know?
Whether a certain ant will die? Over that He does not even exercise providence.
Did He know that Bibi would have so many terms? After all, that depends on people’s choices (in both senses of the word).
If we have already concluded that there is choice and that He does not know, then what is the problem with saying that He knows nothing of the future at all? After all, what is there to fear—that if Russia decides to destroy His world, since He knows the present at any given moment, He can at that same moment either stop the pressing of the trigger or catch the missile in the air. And even if it is many missiles and from several countries, הרי He is omnipotent; He has no physical limitation. Why should He or we be under pressure to know the future, since in any case, as stated, He cannot.
As a second point: in the end you and all of us admit, according to the Or HaChaim, that it is only by His will that He does not know the future, because after all He can cancel choice and thereby know the future. Do you disagree with that?
A. Everything was explained. There is no point in repeating it.
B. No. I wrote about this too in the posts on knowledge and choice.
Regarding note 5, you can see in Ramban in several places (including in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah) that he holds that at first the Holy One, blessed be He, created only primeval matter, and then all the rest of creation is existence from existing matter.