Noach (5765)

From the book Mida Tova: Articles on the Hermeneutical Principles by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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With God’s help. Midah Tovah — Sabbath eve, the Noah portion, 5766.

The Questions

1. What is the logical significance of the system of hermeneutical principles?
2. What is the difference between an analytic proposition and a synthetic proposition?
3. Is the distinction between thought and perception sharp?
4. What does this have to do with the three types of kal va-homer?
5. Why is kal va-homer included in the system of hermeneutical principles?
6. The analytic character of modern science and modern academia. Is a synthetic discipline possible?

The Principle

Kal va-homer (an a fortiori inference).

A. Summary from Last Year

“‘In his generations.’ Rabbi Yohanan said: ‘In his generations’—but not in other generations. Resh Lakish said: ‘In his generations’—and all the more so in other generations. Rabbi Hanina said: Rabbi Yohanan’s view may be compared to a barrel of wine lying in a cellar of vinegar. In its place, its fragrance is noticeable; not in its place, its fragrance is not noticeable. Rabbi Oshaia said: Resh Lakish’s view may be compared to a flask of perfume lying in a place of filth. In its place, its fragrance is noticeable; all the more so in a place of spices.”

— Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 108a

“‘In this generation.’ Rabbi Yohanan said: in this generation, but not in the generation of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Rabbi Shimon¹ says: if in a generation wholly guilty a righteous person was found, then had he lived in a generation wholly righteous, all the more so.”

— Midrash HaGadol, Noah

“‘These are the generations [Noah; Noah was a righteous man, wholehearted in his generations].’ What is meant by ‘in his generations’? Some interpret it favorably, and some unfavorably. Righteous ‘in his generations’—but not in other generations. To what may this be compared? If a person places a silver coin among a hundred copper coins, the silver one appears fine; so Noah appeared righteous in the generation of the Flood. Some interpret him favorably. How so? To a young woman who lived in a marketplace of prostitutes and remained decent; had she been in a marketplace of decent women, all the more so. Another parable: a cask of balsam placed in a grave, yet it gave off a fine fragrance; had it been in a house, all the more so.”

— Midrash Tanhuma (Buber), Noah 6

In last year’s essay on the Noah portion, we distinguished among three types of kal va-homer: a reasoning-based kal va-homer, the “if two hundred is included, then one hundred is certainly included” type of kal va-homer, and a rule-based kal va-homer. We asked there why the principle of kal va-homer is part of the hermeneutical principles. How is it different from any other form of reasoning that we use without a tradition given at Sinai? We raised the possibility that only the rule-based kal va-homer is included among the hermeneutical principles, whereas the other kal va-homer inferences function as ordinary reasoning. We noted, however, that rabbinic literature does not appear to support this. First, in the baraita of examples, a reasoning-based kal va-homer is presented as an example of this hermeneutical principle. Second, we find applications of principles relating to kal va-homer—such as, for example, “one does not punish on the basis of an inference”—also with respect to kal va-homer considerations of the other two types.

In the second part, we dealt with the vacuity of analytic-deductive arguments. We presented three accepted forms of inference: deduction—from the general to the particular; induction—from the particular to the general; and analogy—from one particular case to another. We then saw that the necessary validity of deductive arguments stems from the fact that they add nothing new; that is, their conclusions are already contained in the premises on which they are based.

In light of this distinction, we tried to classify kal va-homer, and we concluded that the “two hundred includes one hundred” type of kal va-homer is deductive. This type of kal va-homer cannot be rebutted, because it is necessarily true: its conclusion is already implicit in its premise. The other two types can be rebutted: the reasoning-based kal va-homer resembles analogy, whereas the rule-based kal va-homer is, in essence, inductive, since the reasoning underlying it is derived from a generalization based on two specific scriptural laws.

B. More on the Analytic and the Synthetic

Introduction

The distinction with which we dealt among the different types of kal va-homer is based on a distinction between analytic thought and synthetic thought. Here we shall try to expand somewhat on this distinction and its implications.²

One can distinguish between the analytic and the synthetic on three different planes:

1. An analytic proposition and a synthetic proposition.
2. An analytic argument or mode of thought and a synthetic one.
3. An analytic stance and a synthetic stance.

At the outset, we shall present these three planes one after the other.

Analytic and Synthetic Propositions

The distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions was born in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, chiefly through Leibniz and Hume, and was formulated in its present form by Immanuel Kant. Kant distinguishes between propositions whose entire content consists in an analysis of the subject of the proposition. For example, the claim “this sphere is round” is analytic, since it is derived from an analysis of the subject of the proposition. Whoever knows what a sphere is can say, without any additional information, that this sphere is round. By contrast, the claim “this sphere is heavy” is synthetic, since in order to state it we need information beyond what is implicit in the definition of the subject of the proposition, namely, a sphere. We combine the information implicit in the definition of the concept “sphere” with additional information in order to reach the conclusion that this sphere is heavy.

Analytic Argument and Synthetic Argument

Following the Kantian distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions, one may distinguish between analytic arguments and synthetic arguments. An analytic argument is a deductive argument, in which the conclusion is already contained within the premises. No additional information is needed in order to infer the conclusion. If all human beings are mortal and Socrates is a human being, then Socrates is mortal. This conclusion is nothing more than an analysis of the premises, without any addition of new information. By contrast, a synthetic argument is one in which the information contained in the premises does not suffice to reach the conclusion. We must combine the information in the premises with additional information in order to reach the conclusion. Obviously, the conclusion contains no more information than the premises—indeed, here it even contains less.

Analogical and inductive arguments are synthetic arguments. If frog A is green and I infer from this that all frogs are green, then I have generalized what is contained in the premises and added information that was not there. The conclusion contains far more information than was implicit in the premises.

Analogy as well—when one infers from the fact that frog A is green that frog B is also green—is not an analytic argument. The conclusion is not contained in the premises, and it includes additional information.

Analytic Stance and Synthetic Stance

The distinction on the third plane is between an analytic stance and a synthetic stance. An analytic stance is a philosophical position that sees analytic arguments as the exclusive tool for arriving at truths. This position denies the validity of conclusions derived from synthetic arguments.

By contrast, a synthetic stance accepts the possibility that a synthetic argument may yield a valid conclusion. Clearly, the term “validity” is not being used here in its strict logical, rigorous sense, but in a softer sense. Still, there remains a difference between the two stances: the analytic stance regards the conclusions of synthetic arguments as wholly doubtful. In its eyes, this is no more than pure speculation. The synthetic stance, by contrast, accepts these conclusions as plausible, even if not certain.

In more general terms, we may say that the root of the difference lies in the question whether one may accept claims without proof. Those who hold analytic positions are unwilling to recognize as acceptable any claims for which we have no proof. Those who hold synthetic positions are willing to accept such claims as acceptable.

Adherents of the analytic stance treat every synthetic argument dismissively. For them, the problem remains open, and every opinion remains possible. They see analogy and induction as tools for organizing information efficiently, not as tools for learning about the world. For example, if all the frogs we have seen so far were green, it is convenient to use the generalization that all frogs are green, at least until it is disproved. But they do not believe that all frogs really are green. For those who hold such positions, scientific generalizations are claims about us, not about the world itself. Ze’ev Bechler, in his book Three Copernican Revolutions, calls this position “actualism”: accepting only claims that are actually present before our awareness.

The Problem of the Synthetic A Priori

Kant dealt with the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions following a difficulty raised by the philosopher David Hume. In Kant’s formulation, Hume’s difficulty may be described as follows: the important propositions of science—that is, its general laws—are all synthetic. In precisely this respect, science differs from mathematics. Mathematics deals only with analytic propositions, that is, propositions derived from an analysis of the concepts with which they deal.³

If so, the general laws of science are claims that require information beyond the definitions of the concepts involved in them. For example, the law of gravitation makes a claim about the mutual influence of masses, but this claim does not follow from the very definition of the concept “mass.” It requires additional information beyond what is implicit in the definition of mass.

From where is this additional information, which we need in order to arrive at general laws, supposed to be drawn? Seemingly, only experience can serve as a source for such information. Yet one can see—and David Hume already did see—that these laws cannot be derived from experience alone.

For example, the scientific law stating that every two masses attract one another with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them cannot be derived from experience, since none of us could observe all masses and verify that this law is indeed true. The principle of induction, by means of which we derive the general conclusion from particular instances, is not an empirical principle but one that we have posited without any empirical basis. Put differently, induction is a form of human thinking, but it has no external, independent justification.⁴

The same is true of establishing a causal relation between two events. We never see such a relation directly. When someone kicks a ball and afterward the ball flies, we have no way to “see” directly the causal relation between the kick and the ball’s flight. All that can be seen is that the flight always follows the kick. How, then, can we determine the existence of such a causal relation? Seemingly, here too there is an inference made by means of the principle of causality, which is part of our mode of thought. The principle of causality, like the principle of induction, has no external independent confirmation.

Another Formulation: Thought and Perception

But if scientific determinations, most of which are based on the principle of induction and the principle of causality, are merely products of human forms of thought and are not drawn from experience, how can we treat them as propositions that make claims about the world itself? What is the connection between the human mode of thought and the way the world itself behaves?

Put differently: there are two basic human functions—thought and perception. Claims about the world must rest on perception, not on thought alone, because thought is a human characteristic and has no necessary connection to the world as it is in itself. Thought can, at most, process the data that perception conveys to it, but it cannot create new information. Any processing that is not merely an analysis of sensory information but a substantial addition to it—a synthesis—cannot be performed by thought alone.

Thus Hume’s problem is the following: general laws are a product of thought, not of experience. The processing that leads from the particular data observed in the laboratory to such laws is not merely analytic; it includes synthetic components. Yet despite this, we treat them as claims about the world itself. How is it possible that principles of pure thought should generate claims with factual content, that is, claims about the world? Claims about the world ought to be the product of perception, not of thought.

The actualist stance presented above is based on this Kantian problem. Since analytic arguments cannot lead to additional information beyond what is already contained in their premises, there is no basis for regarding the laws of science as claims about the world. Analytic arguments alone could not have led to them, and therefore, according to those who hold the analytic-actualist position, they are invalid.

In other words, since thought cannot generate claims about the world as it is in itself, we must assume that scientific generalizations do not concern the world itself but ourselves. In his book, Bechler cries out bitterly against this position. He accuses it of emptying science of its content and significance. But he does not trouble himself to propose an alternative grounded in a solution to the problem of the synthetic a priori, or to the distinction outlined above between thought and perception.⁵

A Halakhic Illustration

In last year’s essay we saw a legal example from Jewish law of the distinction between analytic and synthetic arguments. A kal va-homer of the “two hundred includes one hundred” type is a deduction. This is an example of an analytic argument in which the conclusion is contained in the premises. For this reason, some later authorities argued that the rule “one does not punish on the basis of an inference” does not apply to kal va-homer inferences of this sort. This is the view of Maharsha (see Maharsha, Mahadura Batra, to Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 49b, and elsewhere). The reason is that there can be no rebuttal of such a kal va-homer, since it is an analytic argument.

By contrast, the other two types of kal va-homer are not analytic arguments. They add information beyond the scriptural data on which they are based. We explained this in detail in last year’s essay on the Noah portion. These kal va-homer inferences can be rebutted, and therefore, even according to Maharsha, one does not punish someone for transgressing laws learned from them.

The Problem: Is There an Alternative to Actualism?

How can one justify the acceptability of synthetic arguments? Seemingly, thought cannot lead us to valid conclusions about the world as it is in itself. On the other hand, as we have seen, the general laws of science are based not on mechanisms of perception but on mechanisms of thought. Is there an alternative to actualism?

The Distinction Between the World in Itself and the World as Appearance

Kant proposed a solution to the problem based on a distinction between the world of appearances—the phenomenal world—and the world as it is in itself—the noumenal world. His main claim is that general laws do not concern the world as it is in itself, but the world as it appears to us. The scientific law of gravitation does not deal with mass-bearing objects in themselves, but with those objects as they appear before our awareness, and with the phenomenon of attraction as it appears in our awareness.

Thus Kant explains how claims that are the product of thought alone, without perception, can fit the facts of reality. The “reality” to which these claims refer is not reality itself, but reality as shaped by human tools. Therefore, the behavior of this “reality” is also dictated by human forms of thought and perception. Kant explains that thought can predict, without the need for observations of the world—that is, without mechanisms of perception—what it itself produces.

Many have already pointed out that Kant’s solution is unsatisfactory. Yet we know of no alternative proposed in the history of philosophy to solve this fundamental problem. For a survey of the various possibilities and a rejection of them one by one, see Shmuel Hugo Bergman’s Introduction to Epistemology, chapter 9.

Thought and Perception

As explained in the book Two Wagons and a Hot-Air Balloon, the required conclusion from this dilemma is that we must give up the assumption at its root, the very assumption that creates it: the existence of a sharp distinction between thought and perception.

A basic assumption of Western thought is that one must sharply distinguish between thought and perception. Thought takes place within the intellect and does not involve creating any contact with the world as it is in itself, whereas perception is responsible for drawing information from the world, that is, for establishing contact with it. Eastern thought is different, and there one tends to blur the distinction between subject and object. The knower and the known world are one entity, and the relation between them is not necessarily a relation between two different factors. The thought taking place in the mind of the knowing person is not necessarily a mechanism wholly different and separate from the perception that occurs through the interaction between him and the world.

Thus, in order to solve the Humean-Kantian problem, we propose giving up the sharpness of the distinction between thought and perception. The assumption that thought cannot add information about the world is based on the notion that perception is an entirely different mechanism. But if thought contains perceptive elements, and vice versa, then the Humean-Kantian problem disappears on its own.

Three Examples of Such an Approach

This assumption is deeply embedded in Western thought, and therefore it is very difficult to recognize the possibility of giving it up in order to solve the problem. Even so, one can point to three linguistic indications that there were thinkers who noticed this point.

First, Maimonides, at the beginning of Guide of the Perplexed, defines a concept that he calls “the eyes of the intellect.” It is worth noting that the word “eye” is drawn from the realm of perception, not of thought. It belongs to epistemology, not to logic. By contrast, the intellect is the instrument that serves us for thought. What, then, is the meaning of this combination? Clearly, it assumes a certain blending of thought and perception.

The twentieth-century philosopher Edmund Husserl coined a term called “eidetic seeing.” This is direct observation of ideas. Usually we understand observation as applying only to a concrete horse, whereas the idea of horseness is not given to us in observation but as a generalization produced by thought. Husserl argues that ideas—the products of generalization from the concrete horses we have observed—are not a product of thought but of “seeing” those abstract entities.

A third example is the teaching of Rabbi David Cohen, known as the Nazir. The title of his major work is The Voice of Prophecy: The Auditory Hebrew Logic. The term “auditory logic” likewise points to a blending of perception—hearing—and thought—logic. The Nazir develops this idea explicitly and in detail in his book, which forms the foundation for Two Wagons and a Hot-Air Balloon and also the basic methodological and conceptual basis for the activity of the Midah Tovah Association.

The Nazir attributes this capacity of “thought-that-perceives” to prophecy. Prophecy is a kind of observation of ideas, since it deals with abstract entities that cannot be observed through the senses, yet it does not deal with them in a merely intellectual way, as wisdom does, but by way of observation. It is clear, however, that every kind of thought, both Torah thought and scientific thought, contains such a component, for otherwise the Humean-Kantian problem would prevent progress in every area of thought and science. Prophecy is the pure root of this human capacity, but something of prophecy exists in every kind of wisdom. That is what activates it and enables it to advance.

C. The Character of the Hermeneutical Principles

The Hermeneutical Principles as the Building Blocks of Synthetic Thought

The Nazir argues that the hermeneutical principles are the basic logic of synthetic thought. He does not use this term, but rather the term “auditory logic.”

In the first essay last year, we pointed out that he certainly does not mean that the hermeneutical principles are supposed to replace Greek-logical thought, since the latter is shared by all human beings, and no one is exempt from it. Rather, synthetic thought is meant to be a kind of second story above deductive logic. The crux of the matter is that the hermeneutical principles are intended to reject the analytic stance, not analytic thought. They do not cancel the need for, or the validity of, deductive logic, but they teach us that it is not sufficient. One who recognizes only analytic claims as acceptable will be unable to advance at all, not in science and not in the interpretation of the Torah. There will always be a human component involved in that interpretation, even in those laws that we regard as written explicitly in Scripture. When the Torah speaks of principal categories of damages, such as an ox that gores, we generalize this to a dog that bites as well (see Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 15b). Is the liability of the owner of a biting dog a correct interpretation of the Torah? Certainly yes. But it is plainly not an analytic argument. In other words, interpretation is a clearly synthetic system, and the hermeneutical principles are its building blocks.

Our principal difficulty in adopting the hermeneutical principles, beyond the fact that some of them are unfamiliar to us and not fully understood—we have no tradition concerning them—is rooted in the very fact that synthetic thought is steadily receding from us. We are becoming more and more analytic in our mode of thought, that is, moving farther away from prophecy.

Kal Va-Homer as a Hermeneutical Principle

As stated, in last year’s essay we divided the various kinds of kal va-homer into types. In the “two hundred includes one hundred” type of kal va-homer, it is difficult to see a hermeneutical principle. This is a necessary mode of inference, an analytic argument, and no tradition from Sinai is required in order to employ it.

The rule-based kal va-homer, like the reasoning-based kal va-homer, is synthetic at its root, and therefore only these can constitute part of the system of hermeneutical principles. Admittedly, it is not entirely clear why a reasoning-based kal va-homer differs essentially from any other reasoning, which is not included in the system of hermeneutical principles.

It is possible that all forms of reasoning, both plain-sense interpretation and interpretive derivation, are developments of the synthetic building blocks contained in the system of hermeneutical principles. Even analogical reasoning is what is called a paradigm-based derivation, and as we saw last week, kal va-homer too can be seen as a certain kind of comparative reasoning.

These claims require elaboration and development, and this is not the place for that. In any case, the conclusion that emerges from here is that every use of non-deductive interpretive reasoning rests, in one way or another, on the hermeneutical principles through which the Torah is interpreted. According to Maimonides, as we saw in last year’s essay on the Yitro portion and elsewhere, all these interpretations would have the status of rabbinic law. Let us note that, in light of this proposal, the distinction between plain-sense interpretation and interpretive derivation becomes very blurred, and it fits mainly those approaches that see interpretive derivation as a tool for clarifying the plain meaning of Scripture. This claim is problematic, and we shall not expand on it here.

The Goals of the Midah Tovah Association: Developing a Synthetic Discipline

Both the use and the study of the hermeneutical principles must contain non-analytic components. The primary goal of the Midah Tovah Association is the development of a synthetic discipline that will meet standards of quality and operate according to critical criteria for evaluating the results of research.

Such a goal is almost a contradiction in terms. The standards currently accepted in the academic and scientific world are analytic-objective in character. A synthetic argument is subjective by its very nature, and one may accept it or dispute it. As a result of the tendency toward analyticity, several built-in problems arise in modern research. In the social sciences, for example, there is a critique that has led to the emergence of qualitative research, which is essentially a synthetic method.

Our assumption, however, is that it is mistaken to identify the synthetic with the subjective. Therefore, precisely from such a conception, the goal is to develop a synthetic discipline that will still count as a discipline. We are trying to work in Jewish studies, and in the humanities generally, in a manner parallel to qualitative research in the social sciences.

This point is explained at greater length in the second book of the Two Wagons and a Hot-Air Balloon series, and it is what underlies the activity of the Midah Tovah Association.

Footnotes