Faith – Lesson 29
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Revealing arguments and theology versus philosophy
- Trust in the senses as an assumption that requires belief in God
- The direction of logical inference: from antecedent to consequent versus from consequent back to antecedent
- Hume, Kant, and the inability to ground the basic assumptions of science
- Kant’s distinctions: a priori / a posteriori and analytic / synthetic
- Laws of nature as synthetic a priori judgments and the problem of induction
- Quantum theory, relativity, and the claim that every theory is a generalization
- The force-acceleration graph: from observations to the law-line and the choice of simplicity
- Actualism and informativism in Ze’ev Bechler
- A Popperian interpretation: you can refute, but you can’t prove
- The claim of empirical decisiveness against actualism through the success of experiments
- Newton’s laws, approximation, and practical correctness
- Extending the problem to all cognition and the parallel to Richard Taylor
- Hugo Bergmann, the lack of a philosophical answer, and the theological claim
- Faith, science, and criticism of “Berland” as an example
Summary
General Overview
The speaker presents “revealing arguments” as theological arguments in the logical sense, where one begins from conclusions that are taken to be true and tries to uncover which hidden assumptions are required in order to justify them, as opposed to “pragmatic arguments,” which are meant to reach convenient conclusions. He argues that trust in the senses and in reason, and especially science’s ability to generalize from observations to laws of nature, requires assumptions that do not arise from observation alone, and he formulates this through Kant and the question of synthetic a priori judgments. Through an analysis of the difference between “actualism” and “informativism,” he argues that science in practice behaves as though laws of nature provide real information about the world and are not merely a convenient organization of data, and that this is a fact that itself requires explanation. He concludes by claiming that the philosophical solutions remain inadequate in Hugo Bergmann, and that in his view belief in God is the only basis that can provide an answer—not as a proof, but as an exposure of the fact that the listener already assumes this.
Revealing arguments and theology versus philosophy
The speaker defines “theological” as a kind of logic, not as direct discussion about God, and cites a joke according to which philosophy derives conclusions from premises, while theology derives premises from conclusions. He presents Anselm as someone who begins with prayer before proving God’s existence, and argues that the move is consciously aware of its circularity and is meant to expose it. He claims that a large part of philosophy in practice also works with theological logic, because it clings to certain conclusions and looks for assumptions that could justify them. He distinguishes revealing arguments from “pragmatic” arguments, which he sees as a derogatory term, and stresses that the conclusion from which he starts is one he regards as true, not merely convenient.
Trust in the senses as an assumption that requires belief in God
The speaker argues that if a person believes the senses reflect reality, then that person necessarily holds, implicitly, a belief in God. He presents this not as inventing God in order to make possible a desired way of life, but as a move that starts from intuitive trust in the senses and asks which assumptions could produce such trust. He argues that only the existence of God can serve as the assumption that grounds the conclusion that the senses are reliable. He defines a revealing argument as an argument that takes a conclusion regarded as true and tries to uncover the unconscious assumptions that make it possible to hold that conclusion.
The direction of logical inference: from antecedent to consequent versus from consequent back to antecedent
The speaker illustrates logical implication in the form “if A then B” and distinguishes between forward inference, in which B is inferred from A, and backward inference, in which not-A is inferred from not-B. He states that both directions are equally valid logically, but the first is a philosophical inferential argument and the second is a theological / revealing argument. He gives a formal example: if without God there is no possibility of trusting the senses, and one does in fact trust the senses, then the conclusion is that there is a God. He attributes to Kant the move of putting this possibility on the table and recognizing that many arguments in philosophy proceed “backward,” from conclusion to assumptions.
Hume, Kant, and the inability to ground the basic assumptions of science
The speaker broadens the discussion from the example of vision to the entire system of cognition and thought, and asks who says the sensory system is not some kind of “Matrix movie.” He presents David Hume, as Kant presents him: principles like induction and causality are basic assumptions that cannot be grounded in experience, yet science depends on them. He describes the collapse of pure empiricist pretension in the fact that empiricism too rests on a rationalist infrastructure that is not the product of observation. He argues that the distinction between rationalism and empiricism turns out to be artificial, because supposedly observational science assumes intellectual principles that are themselves not observational.
Kant’s distinctions: a priori / a posteriori and analytic / synthetic
The speaker presents the epistemic axis between a priori and a posteriori, and the logical axis between analytic and synthetic. He illustrates an analytic statement through “every bachelor is unmarried,” and a synthetic statement through factual claims such as Moshe’s height. He argues that before Kant, the two distinctions were taken to overlap: analytic was a priori and synthetic was a posteriori. He attributes to Kant the unifying formulation of Hume’s questions into one question: can there be synthetic a priori judgments—that is, claims that add information about the world, yet cannot be grounded by observation alone.
Laws of nature as synthetic a priori judgments and the problem of induction
The speaker states that laws of nature look as though they arise from observation, but in fact they are generalizations that go beyond the cases observed. He uses Newton’s law of gravitation as an example of the fact that a general law makes a claim about all cases, even though we have not seen them all. He explains that the move from particular cases to a general law relies on induction, and therefore Hume’s problem of induction is a particular case of Kant’s problem of the synthetic a priori. He emphasizes that a law of nature is synthetic because it does not come out of analysis of the concepts, and it is a priori in the sense that observation alone does not validate its universality.
Quantum theory, relativity, and the claim that every theory is a generalization
The speaker argues that quantum theory does not emerge directly from a single experiment but from generalizations across many experiments, and therefore it is open to criticism like any other general theory. He mentions that Einstein did not believe in quantum theory and that even today not all the problems have been solved, including the lack of a union between quantum theory and relativity. He uses this to emphasize that every theory in the world is a synthetic a priori judgment in the sense that it is a general claim that goes beyond direct observations. He argues that the Kantian question translates into the question whether one can accumulate information about the world and trust the accumulated information, because science lies in generalization and prediction about what has not been observed.
The force-acceleration graph: from observations to the law-line and the choice of simplicity
The speaker describes an experiment in which force is measured against acceleration and one gets discrete observation points, and he emphasizes that the law of nature is not the collection of points but the general line connecting them and allowing prediction for points that were not measured. He asks why choose a straight line rather than a curved dashed line that also passes through the points, and shows that any finite number of points allows infinitely many fitting lines. He presents Occam’s razor as a preference for the simpler theory, because a straight line has fewer parameters than complicated curves. He argues that the preference for simplicity is a statement about the human being and the structure of human thought, and formulates the problem as the question why what appears simple to us turns out to be a criterion for truth in the world.
Actualism and informativism in Ze’ev Bechler
The speaker brings in Ze’ev Bechler and his book Three Copernican Revolutions, and presents the two terms he uses: informativism and actualism. He defines informativism as the position according to which the general law contains real information about the world, and actualism as the position according to which only the actual data are scientific information, while the general law is a convenient organization of the facts by human beings. He argues that Bechler fights actualism in favor of informativism but does not provide a basis that justifies informativism, and mainly explains why actualism is unappealing to him. He describes actualism as the strong claim that there is no justification for holding to a straight line any more than to a curved line when both fit the data.
A Popperian interpretation: you can refute, but you can’t prove
The speaker argues that a new experiment can refute a certain line, but cannot decide what the one correct line is, because there will always remain infinitely many possible theories passing through all the measured points. He links this to Popper’s falsificationism: a scientific theory can be refuted, but it cannot be proved. He emphasizes that on the practical level an actualist and an informativist act in exactly the same way—they perform experiments, throw out failed theories, and continue with a simple theory—and from this the dispute appears philosophical. He adds that he wants to defend informativism scientifically as well, not only philosophically.
The claim of empirical decisiveness against actualism through the success of experiments
The speaker suggests examining not the content of the results, but the sheer fact that many experiments confirm existing hypotheses at a non-zero rate. He argues that if actualism is correct and the straight line is no more plausible than any other line, then the probability that a future result will “fall” on the continuation of the simple line is zero, and therefore the rate of successful confirming experiments should have been zero. He argues that reality is the opposite, because science progresses, theories hold up, and technologies are built on them, and therefore actualism “takes empirical blows” from the very success of experiments. He concludes that informativism describes a surprising fact: the choice of simplicity is not only convenient, it also “works” with a not-bad probability, and so there is here a “miracle that requires explanation” as to why the structures of our thought fit the world.
Newton’s laws, approximation, and practical correctness
The speaker argues that Newton’s laws are “completely correct” in the domains of ordinary speeds and masses, even if at high speeds they are an approximation that deteriorates. He defines “correct” as a law that correctly describes reality within its domain of validity, and parallels this to the fact that a straight line may be the correct law in a certain domain even though the line “bends” in extreme regions. He argues that the epistemological question becomes sharper: why is simplicity in our eyes a criterion for truth, and why are our generalizations not just shots in the dark even though they are not certain.
Extending the problem to all cognition and the parallel to Richard Taylor
The speaker compares Kant’s question to Richard Taylor’s question about vision, and generalizes it from the eyes to all the senses and to all the principles of reason. He states that human beings bring “from home” cognitive and intellectual tools that are not learned from experience, and yet trust them as if they reflect reality itself—and sometimes it even seems to work. He points to evolution as an obvious possible solution, but postpones discussion of it for later. He formulates the general question this way: why are the ways in which a human being perceives the world and thinks about it reliable, and why is it possible to trust the information one accumulates about the world.
Hugo Bergmann, the lack of a philosophical answer, and the theological claim
The speaker brings in Hugo Bergmann and his book Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, and argues that Bergmann surveys many philosophical answers but remains with the conclusion that there is no satisfactory answer, except to view the matter as an efficient methodological assumption. He argues that this option is similar to actualism and does not fit the fact that science actually succeeds. He presents his own personal claim that belief in God is the only basis that can provide an answer, but stresses that his move does not “prove” God’s existence, but rather “shows” that a person already assumes Him implicitly. He illustrates this through the commitment to searching for a “unified field theory” and the willingness to invest billions out of a belief that there is one unifying law and not just a collection of accidental laws.
Faith, science, and criticism of “Berland” as an example
The speaker presents an objection according to which science removes whatever does not fit reality, whereas a believer reaches a “no entry” sign and explains it away by saying not everything is understood, and he brings a current example of “Berland” and his committee. He argues that criticism of Berland’s followers should not rest on “there is no empirical basis,” because a similar claim can also be directed at scientific laws in the sense that one cannot prove generalizations. He argues that the main difference is that “they are simply wrong,” not that their method is non-empirical, and concludes that there is an element of faith in science as well, one that appears more rational for other reasons. He ends by connecting this to the idea that “there is no hiding of the face,” and by claiming that from trust in what is seen and thought one can “discover the Holy One, blessed be He, behind what we see,” and he states that the continuation of the discussion and the distinction between the philosophical and theological questions will continue next time.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We are now basically at the fourth stage of the move, and that is the proofs—the revealing arguments, the so-called theological ones. The term “theological” in this context is of course not because we’re dealing with God, but because of the kind of logic we’re using. And this is the joke with which I think I opened this section. I said that once I heard someone ask: what’s the difference between theology and philosophy? Philosophy takes premises and derives conclusions from them, while theology takes conclusions and derives premises from them. Right? The theologians, after all, basically begin with the fact that God exists, and then they look for premises that will succeed in proving His existence at their foundation. With Anselm this is right out in the open—we saw it at the beginning of the process, the first stage—that he prays to the Holy One, blessed be He, before he sets out to prove His existence. You can’t assume he wasn’t aware of the circularity of the matter, and so I thought that on the contrary, that is exactly what he was trying to say. In any case, my claim is that a great deal of philosophy also actually works with theological logic. You basically want to hold on to certain conclusions, and you look for premises on the basis of which those conclusions can be justified, and that is what I called revealing arguments. What’s the difference between them and pragmatic arguments—which in my eyes is a derogatory term? A pragmatic argument takes an argument and uses it in order to reach a conclusion that is convenient for me, or self-interested, or suits me, or something like that. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a conclusion that I think is true, not convenient, and I ask myself: okay, if I think it’s true, what does that actually mean that I’m implicitly assuming? So I say: if I assume—if I think that my senses reflect reality, for example—let me mute this here—if I think my senses reflect reality, we talked about vision, but it’s true of all of them, then my claim is that necessarily, implicitly, I believe in God. It’s not that I invented God in order to allow myself to trust the senses, as the pragmatists believe—as they accuse me of, or rather accuse me of pragmatism. As if I don’t really believe in God, I just invent Him so He’ll allow me to live the life I want to live. No. I want to make a different claim. Maybe I’m lying, but the claim I’m making is a different one. My claim says: I really do trust my senses—not that I want to trust them, I think they are reliable. Now I ask myself: okay, if I think they’re reliable, what is actually lying in the background? What assumptions could even lead me to such a conclusion? And my claim is that only the existence of God can lead me to that conclusion. I haven’t yet reached that conclusion—I’ll get to it in a moment—but that is basically the claim, and that is why I call it a revealing argument. This argument takes a conclusion that I know is true and tries to uncover what assumptions I am implicitly making—assumptions I’m not always even aware of—but they must be there, because otherwise I couldn’t hold that conclusion. And again, I hold that conclusion because it is true, not because it is convenient for me or because I want it. I think it’s intuitively true; it’s obvious to me that it’s true, and then I ask myself what background could ground a conclusion of that kind. That is what I call a revealing argument. At least since Kant—it existed before him too, but he put it on the table—at least since Kant, philosophers have been aware that many of their arguments are also theological or revealing arguments and not philosophical arguments. They move from the conclusion and search for the premises that could yield that conclusion. I illustrated this, if you remember, through logical implication: if A implies B. So if A implies B, I can go in two directions: if A is true, then I can prove that B is true, because A implies B. But if A implies B, I can also go in the opposite direction: if B is not true, then I can prove that A is also not true, because if A were true it would imply B, and I in fact hold not-B. So what’s the difference? If I go from A to B, from the antecedent to the consequent, that’s a philosophical argument. If I go from the consequent back to the antecedent, that’s a theological argument, because I basically have not-B and I ask myself: okay, what could be the premise from which I derive the conclusion not-B? The premise can only be not-A. For example, if we make this explicit—let’s formalize it; “formalize” is the Hebrew word here—let’s say that I think the senses are reliable, that they reflect reality well. Now in the background I have an implication that I’m convinced of—namely what? That if there is no God, there is no possibility of trusting the senses. That is, not-B. So if A implies B and I hold not-B, the conclusion is not-A. In other words, it’s not true that there is no God—there is a God. You understand? In other words, going from the end back to the beginning is logically just as valid as going from the beginning to the end. There’s no difference between proving B from A and proving not-A from not-B. Both assume the implication that if A then B. And still, I can go either forward or backward. Forward is an inferential argument: I infer B from A. Backward is a revealing argument. If I hold not-B—and not-B is the conclusion of not-A—then I say: apparently not-A; I am actually implicitly holding not-A. Okay? That is backward movement, and it is logically valid to exactly the same extent. And the first person who put this on the table—the logic of it is of course very simple; you won’t discover it here—but the first philosopher, or the central philosopher, who put this option on the table and showed that philosophical arguments very often actually go backward and not forward, the way philosophers deceive themselves into thinking, was Kant. And I’m going to get to that now in the course of our discussion. My claim, basically, was that beyond the example of the eyes, which Richard Taylor used in order to prove the existence of God, I argued that I’m extending this to our entire system of cognition and thought. So I began with the cognitive system and said that this is true not only of the eyes but of all the senses. Basically, who told me that my entire sensory system isn’t some kind of Matrix movie that I’m living inside? Who said that it really is a system that reliably reflects the external reality to me? And after that I expanded it even further and said that these were Hume’s claims, as Kant presented them. He says that basically all the basic assumptions of our thinking—like the principle of induction, the principle of causality, all sorts of foundational assumptions in scientific thinking or in our thinking generally—these are assumptions that there is no way to ground. Not on experience and not in any other way. And still we use them. Not only do we use them, but science—which is supposedly the observational domain that we learn from experience—is actually based on them as well. Without them there is no science. And therefore David Hume, who was an empiricist—right? A scientistic type, not a scientist but someone who believes very strongly in science and only in science, only in observation—suddenly noticed that the scientific method assumes many assumptions that have no observational basis. Like the principle of induction and the principle of causality, which are his two most prominent examples. And then he basically asks himself: wait a second, so what remains of my empiricism? Of my devotion to observation? In the end I still remain with principles that are intellectual, that do not come out of observation. Or in other words, we did not succeed in destroying rationalism. Empiricism tried to destroy rationalism. Rationalism is reliance—rationalism in philosophy is reliance on thought. Empiricism is reliance on observation. Now empiricism replaced rationalism in the first two hundred years of the modern era. After two hundred years, David Hume basically discovers that the emperor has no clothes. That even supposedly observational empiricism sits on some kind of rationalist infrastructure, an infrastructure that is the result of thinking and has no observational basis. And therefore the distinction between rationalism and empiricism is artificial. Now Kant basically formulates Hume’s questions—and this is where I began last time. He basically says this: he wants to include all of Hume’s questions within one argument, and all the rest are merely its private examples. And that is the beauty of the Kantian analysis. That is, he takes all of Hume’s questions, and those of many others, and puts them under one pattern that presents them all. They are all private examples of it. He says the following: I divide this—and I think I said this already—I divide the claims we use in two ways, along two axes. One axis is the epistemic axis, the cognitive axis, right? How do I know that this claim is true? By observation, or rationalistically, or empiricistically—right? By observation, or from thought alone. So that’s the distinction between a priori and a posteriori. Between—yes—between a priori and a posteriori. A priori means I know it without observation; it is prior to observation. And a posteriori means what becomes known to me through observation. That is a division on the epistemic-cognitive axis. And there is a division on the logical axis. The division on the logical axis divides the claims into synthetic and analytic claims. Analytic claims are claims that are the result of analyzing the concepts involved in them. Every bachelor is unmarried. Or Moshe is a bachelor, therefore he is unmarried. What does that mean? I don’t need any observation or additional facts about Moshe in order to understand that he is unmarried. If I know he’s a bachelor, analysis of the concept bachelor tells me that he is unmarried. Therefore this is an analytic statement. Analysis of the concept bachelor is sufficient to give me the result that he is unmarried. So this is called an analytic judgment, an analyzing judgment. A composing judgment, synthetic, is a judgment that requires additional facts in order to reach the conclusion. Say, Moshe is five foot eleven. Moshe the bachelor is five foot eleven. The fact that he is a bachelor doesn’t tell me that he is five foot eleven. In order to know that he is five foot eleven, I need to compose here—to make a synthesis with additional facts besides what is found in the definition of the concepts, of bachelor, of Moshe—facts outside the definition. It is not enough to analyze the concept itself, its definition; I need to add more facts. So that’s the division on the logical axis between an analytic judgment and a synthetic judgment. Before Kant, apparently, these were two independent divisions—one is epistemic and one is logical. One is the question how I know it’s true, and the other is the question of the structure of the judgment: is it an analyzing structure or a composing structure? But until Kant everyone thought, without really giving themselves an account of it because the concepts did not yet exist, but Kant claims that until his time these two divisions were basically perceived as parallel or identical divisions. Every analytic judgment is a priori, and every a priori judgment is analytic. And a posteriori and synthetic, of course. What does that mean? For example, when I say that Moshe the bachelor is unmarried, we said this is analytic, but obviously it is also a priori. What does that mean? I don’t need observation in order to infer the conclusion that he is unmarried. It is enough for me to know that he is a bachelor, and from that definition I already know. So if it follows from analysis of the definition, clearly it doesn’t require observation. Because analyzing the definition, or a process of thought, is enough; there’s no need for observation. Therefore every analytic judgment is a priori. But every a priori judgment is also analytic. That is, a judgment that I know without observation is apparently an analyzing judgment. Why? Because if it isn’t an analyzing judgment, if the facts aren’t contained within the definition of the concepts, then how do I know it? Only from observation—observation that gives me additional facts. But if it is without observation, then apparently it is an analyzing judgment. So there is basically synonymy, overlap, between the distinctions on the two axes: the logical axis and the epistemic axis. Think about it and you’ll see: every synthetic judgment you can think of will be a posteriori, and every a posteriori judgment will be synthetic, and so on. In other words, once you think about it, it becomes very clear that these are overlapping divisions. Now Kant basically makes the following claim. He says that all of Hume’s questions converge into one formulation, and that formulation is: can there be synthetic a priori judgments? That is, a category that breaks the overlap between the two divisions. Do you understand? A synthetic judgment is supposed to be a posteriori. An a priori judgment is supposed to be analytic, not synthetic. But Kant says no: there is a third category, and these divisions are not overlapping. That is Kant’s main innovation. These divisions are not overlapping. There can be judgments that are synthetic on the one hand and a priori on the other. On the logical axis they are synthetic, and on the epistemic axis they are a priori. What does that mean? Let’s take a few examples. Laws of nature, for example. The empiricists live under the illusion that laws of nature are the result of observation. But as David Hume himself, the empiricist, rightly pointed out, that’s not true. Because observations are observations of some cases that I saw, but a law of nature makes a claim about all cases. Every two masses attract each other with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance—the law of gravitation of Newton. We haven’t seen all the masses in the world; we’ve seen a few examples. From that we infer a conclusion: the law of gravitation, or the electromagnetic laws, or relativity—it doesn’t matter, any scientific law you want. Now if this thing follows only from observations of a few particular cases, then that means that observation alone is not sufficient to validate the general law. Observations give me a few particular facts, and then how do I know the general law? I generalize; induction, right? I say: if it’s true in the particular cases, then it’s true in all cases. I’m generalizing, basically. So this is basically Hume’s problem of induction. Kant says: the problem of induction is a particular case of my general formulation, namely that a law of nature is a synthetic a priori law. What does that mean? I can’t ground it in observation. In that sense it is a priori. I use observations, but observations alone do not give me that law, so it is basically a priori. It relies also on assumptions of reason, assumptions of thought, not only on observation. And on the other hand it is synthetic, not analytic. When I say that every two masses attract one another, that does not follow from analysis of the concept mass. That is a fact—a fact that science discovered; it is not analysis of the concept mass. It says—let’s put it this way—it says something about the world. It is not just a definition, or analysis of the definition, or what is embedded in the definition of the concept. So on the one hand, a law of nature is always synthetic, and on the other hand it is always a priori. It is always a priori. And therefore our problem—Hume’s problem—about laws of nature, about causality, about induction, whatever it may be, they are all private cases of one problem: are the two divisions I described earlier indeed not overlapping? Can there be a category of synthetic a priori that breaks this parallelism, or this overlap, between the two divisions?
[Speaker B] I still didn’t understand how he knows—since it’s only something you know from a number of observed cases—how do you really know, how do you make the induction in the end?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re repeating Hume’s question. That is exactly the question.
[Speaker B] Fine, but what’s the answer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no answer—I haven’t yet given the answer. Kant reformulated the question. He says, basically, let’s reformulate the question. But a wise question is half an answer. When you formulate the question well, that already gives a hint toward the answer too—but that’s in a moment. First of all, there is a wise question here. That is, Kant gathers all of Hume’s questions, and other questions too, and puts them into one pattern. It’s still a question; we don’t have an answer. The question is whether synthetic a priori judgments are possible. If yes—if we manage to show that they are—then all of Hume’s questions fall at once. You don’t need to answer each one separately.
[Speaker B] If there’s no answer—if in fact you can’t make induction a priori with certainty—then what Kant says isn’t right. I didn’t understand. If we assume that you can’t, after all if in the end the answer turns out to be that you can’t make induction, you can’t, you can’t know all the cases, you’ll find some mass that doesn’t obey Newton’s law—then Kant’s whole argument falls apart.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the question! It’s a question!
[Speaker B] He didn’t claim anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He formulated the question. You’re mixing up the question and the answer again. Kant still hasn’t given an answer; he reformulated the question. It may be that the answer to this question will be negative—there are no synthetic a priori judgments. Fine. At this stage we’re only reformulating the question. Why is it important to reformulate the question? Because look at what all of Hume’s questions are hiding behind them, and that is the important point for our purposes.
[Speaker C] I have a question. Does it make a difference that I have something like quantum mechanics, where there are laws but nobody understands what they mean? There’s no intuition, no thought—it comes only from observations.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t come from observations. Rather, from observations it emerges that the regular system isn’t correct.
[Speaker C] The proposals—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The proposals of quantum theory are generalizations on the basis of observations, and as such they are exactly like any other theory.
[Speaker C] But another theory—I can kind of understand what gravity is, and in quantum theory nobody understands what’s going on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That changes nothing. If you do the double-slit experiment, the double-slit experiment showed that Newtonian mechanics doesn’t work with small particles. Okay? So we knocked down Newtonian mechanics. Now we’re trying to understand what does work. When we build the “what does work,” we built quantum theory, but it doesn’t come out of the double-slit experiment. It’s a generalization from that experiment and from other experiments, and maybe that generalization isn’t correct. It’s a general theory. And therefore the fact that we don’t understand is true, because our understanding is attached to Newton. So when we knocked down Newton, we no longer understand. But we still formulate a theory for which maybe we don’t have intuition, but it comes out of our generalizations, and as such it can be attacked, and it may turn out not to be correct. To this day there are many disputes about it.
[Speaker C] Einstein didn’t believe in it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Einstein aside—even today it’s not as though all the problems have already been solved and everybody understands everything. No, it’s not clear that this theory is correct.
[Speaker C] It’s clear Newton isn’t correct.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But what is correct—the general theory—we still don’t even know how to connect quantum theory with relativity.
[Speaker C] That’s true of every theory in the world. Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Einstein’s theory also isn’t correct.
[Speaker C] That’s exactly what I’m saying.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Every theory in the world is a synthetic a priori judgment. That’s exactly what Kant already said, even before quantum theory and relativity. Every theory in the world is a general judgment that you know, on the basis of certain observations, that it works. But you can’t know that in general it is correct. It’s a synthetic a priori judgment—that is exactly the claim. So now let’s try to understand for a moment what Kant’s formulation added for us. What exactly does this question now mean? If I formulate it crudely, I would say that this question basically asks me: can information about the world be accumulated? Now suddenly this sounds like a philosophically more interesting question than all these quibbles about synthetic, analytic, a priori, and these word games. Can one accumulate information about the world? That is basically the question. Why? Because when we accumulate information about the world, we basically take, perform an experiment, see that certain masses fall toward the earth or attract one another, and then we infer the law of gravitation, the general law about every two masses. Now, the facts that we saw—we saw them. For that I don’t need science; I saw that it’s true. Science is always in the generalization. Science is always in the statements, in the predictions, in what we say about the cases we haven’t seen. And therefore when I accumulate information about the world, that accumulation is always done through a process of generalization. Because observation in itself is not scientific information. Observation in itself is what I saw and know; that is not science. Science is drawing conclusions from the observations, or in other words the generalization, or the general law. Therefore science, which deals with accumulating information about the world—and the accumulated information is basically formulated through general laws of nature—but every such piece of information is in fact a synthetic a priori judgment. And therefore the question is: can one accumulate information about the world? Can one trust the information that one has accumulated about the world? That is basically the question. Because understand: a synthetic judgment is a judgment that says something about the world. Say, “a bachelor is unmarried”—you’re not saying anything about the world. When you knew he was a bachelor, you also knew he was unmarried. But when you say that this bachelor is five foot eleven, you are making a claim about the world, about this person in this case, right? It’s not only an analysis of what is found in his definition; rather, you add—you make another factual claim about the world. Now the question is: how do you know that this is true? If it comes from observation, I understand; then observation told me it’s true. But science in its essence is exactly what does not come from observation. Because what came from observation is facts that we know because we saw them. Science is inferring conclusions from observations and knowing things about what we did not see. But if so, then how do we know it? These claims say things about the world that are not found in our premises; they are not the result of a definition or of analyzing a definition of concepts, but neither do they come from observation. So how on earth can we believe these conclusions? That is basically the question. And now, suddenly, you see that this question takes on a very, very fundamental significance. That is, how can one accumulate information about the world, or how can one trust the information I hold about the world? That is basically Kant’s question, or Hume’s questions.
[Speaker E] I’m saying it does come from observation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How does it come from observation?
[Speaker E] By negation. As long as the airplane flies and doesn’t fall, that’s a fact that… you haven’t disproved the theory.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You know, by your logic I can also make the scientific assertion that every fairy has three wings. I’ve never seen a fairy that doesn’t have three wings. What—if I adopt everything that hasn’t been disproved, you’ll arrive at a great many absurd scientific theories. For adopting a theory, it isn’t enough that it hasn’t been disproved. The fact that it hasn’t been disproved is, of course, a condition. If it has been disproved, then it isn’t correct. But if it hasn’t been disproved, that doesn’t mean that it is correct.
[Speaker E] It doesn’t mean that, but until it’s disproved, I use it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so you’re basically making a suggestion. We’ll get to it in just a moment. You’re suggesting that it really isn’t true; I use it instrumentally, but I’m not claiming that it’s true. We’ll get to that in a minute. Okay? Okay. So that is basically, that is basically the Kantian question. Now I want to show you a formulation that I once thought of that I’m very fond of, because it tries to illustrate this in a sharper way. Look at this graph. I’m measuring force, F force, right? Where is it… here. Okay? I’m measuring force against acceleration, okay? Now I check: when I apply a certain kind of force, what acceleration is produced. For some reason I made force a function of acceleration; conceptually it should be acceleration as a function of force. Never mind. In any case… because the input of the experiment is always applying a force, and the output is checking what acceleration was produced, not that when there is acceleration I ask what the force was. I measure the accelerations and plug in the force. But no matter, for our purposes it doesn’t matter. I measure this and I discover, say, look at all the empty circles. You see? One, two, three, four, five. Now you see below: one, two, three, four, five. These are the points where an acceleration of magnitude one, say, gives me this force. An acceleration of magnitude two gives me this force. An acceleration of magnitude four gives me this force, and so on, and I plot those points. You see? Imagine that all you have in front of you are those little circles. Those are the results of the experiment. Now, a law of nature is not the collection of circles, right? The collection of circles is the result of the observation. The law of nature is the line. The line basically tells me there is a direct relation between acceleration and force in all cases. Not only in the cases I saw: one, two, three, four, and five. The cases I saw are not science. The cases I saw are the specific observations that I myself saw. Science is the line that I draw through those points. In this case, usually we draw a straight line, right? The straight line that is drawn here. As a result of that straight line, I can now know, for example, what the acceleration will be at point six, or what the force will be—sorry—at acceleration six, the force will be this. At acceleration seven, you see? The force will be this. So the general law gives me predictions about cases I did not observe. I take the cases I did observe, make a generalization—that is, draw a line—and that line tells me what the forces will be at accelerations I did not observe. That’s how science works. Okay? Now I ask myself: why not assume that the line connecting the points I observed is the dashed line? Do you see it? This line.
[Speaker D] Can I comment here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It also passes through all these points, the dashed line. You see? It goes through this point and then through this point and then this point and then this one and this one, and so on. Okay? But of course that’s a different law of nature from the law of nature given by the straight line. For example, its predictions for accelerations six and seven will give a different force—not this force, but this force here; not this force, but this force. Right? It’s a different law, and it too fits the observations I’ve made up to now, but of course it’s a different law, one that also has different predictions. Now, who says that the correct law is actually—and now I’m translating Kant’s question of the synthetic a priori—who says that the correct law is the straight line and not the curved dashed line?
[Speaker D] Can one say who says that? I can’t hear. I want to suggest to you who says that, what you just asked. It’s said by someone who says that in moving from observations to a hypothesis, you also use a sensible statistical consideration. What is the probability that the line really is the curved dashed line, that that is the correct line, and that by chance the five points where you measured gave the straight line? Look at the graph and tell me, what’s the probability—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that the line is the straight line? So I’ll tell you what the probability is. The probability is exactly the same as the probability that this curved line falls on these five points. What are the chances that these five points would fall exactly on this curved line? You’re not talking about probability; you’re talking about least squares, or yes—
[Speaker D] No, no, no, no, I’m talking about probability. What is the probability that you chose five points on the real curved dashed line and they all fell on a straight line? What’s the probability?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly the same probability as if you chose five points on a straight line and they all fell on this curv… on this curved line.
[Speaker D] Okay, so if you’re saying that the properties of a straight line and the properties of a curved line are equally plausible, then I give up.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s what I’m saying. Because you’re not speaking on the probabilistic level; you’re talking about Occam’s razor. I’ll get to that in just a moment. That’s not probability.
[Speaker C] The razor—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Occam’s razor basically says: I choose the simplest theory.
[Speaker C] The theory—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The simplest theory is of course the straight line. Why? Because with a straight line there are two parameters, right? Y equals ax plus b. So that’s, say, two parameters, or one if you like, just the slope, never mind. Two parameters. In any curved line you need many more parameters. In a parabola you need three, and so on—four, five—you need more parameters. So in the sense of simplicity, the theory of the straight line, as is intuitively obvious to all of us, is the simplest theory, and therefore science prefers the simplest generalization.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, the physicist who chose to measure force and calculate acceleration was not a three-month-old baby; he was, say, a thirty-year-old person who had already gone through a few things in life, and he knows that the heavier a body is… it accelerates more slowly, he’s already experienced that, and now he was just trying to quantify it. When you say that the line—the whole advantage of the straight line—is only that according to Occam’s razor it’s simpler, you’re ignoring the fact that besides being simpler, it also fits intuition perfectly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’ll repeat: it’s not so much intuition as experience. The question of where that intuition comes from is another question, but it’s the result of some implicit experience. But that doesn’t matter, because I could have put on this line all of your past observations too, including the ones you aren’t aware of, and I would still be able to draw through them whatever line you want, curved or straight. Therefore that distinction is not significant. I put five observations here; I could have put ten thousand, and still, through any discrete number of points you can draw infinitely many lines, infinitely many—not even countably many. Okay? Therefore it changes nothing. All you’re saying is that there were more observations than these five. Okay, let’s talk about ten thousand. So I have ten thousand such observations and I can draw through them a graph that will be the law of nature. I can still draw the straight line or curved lines, any ones I want. There’s no escaping the fact that we basically prefer the theory that seems simpler to us. And the straight-line theory is simpler. That is basically the translation of Occam’s razor into scientific thought.
[Speaker C] Now, what is the difference between Newton and Ptolemy’s theory that came before him? In Ptolemy, every time there’s some contradiction I add something else—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Epicycles and deferents—
[Speaker C] More parameters and more parameters.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Epicycles and deferents of Ptolemaic cosmology, yes. So right, what I’m saying is: if you want a general theory, then you have to take all your observations into account, but there are still infinitely many general theories. How do you choose the theory you use? You choose the simplest theory; in this case, a straight line. Now we’re only now beginning to get to the question. Now I ask: what justifies choosing the straight line? Here there can be two possibilities. One possibility is that the straight line is the correct line, and then we have to ask ourselves how I know that. They say: because it’s the simplest. But the fact that it seems simplest to you is a statement about you, not about the world. And the question is: why does the world owe you anything? Why should what is simplest in your eyes also be the correct thing? Therefore the more skeptical claim, let’s call it that, is a theory that says—what was suggested here earlier—the theory that says: no, the straight line is not the most correct one, but I use it until it is refuted. After all, it fits all my observations; the curved line also fits all my observations. So why take a complicated theory if I have a simple theory that also fits all the observations? So that claim basically says the straight line is not the most correct line; it’s no more correct and no less correct than the curved line. But because it’s simpler, I prefer it, because if it hasn’t been refuted, why choose a complicated theory? Both work for now, so I choose the simple one.
[Speaker B] No, you choose the simple one because it helps you in the future, when you predict things you don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second, we haven’t gotten to the future yet; we’ll get to the future in a moment.
[Speaker B] But the curved one—after all, none of the curves you chose helped you for the future.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why didn’t they help me? Of course they helped me.
[Speaker B] Why not? Every time you almost had to invent a new line.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, let me finish the argument for a moment and I’ll get to that. The claim is that basically I choose the straight line because it is the simplest. Let’s leave the future for the future; when I measure the future we’ll see whether it works or not. Right now I have data, and from this data I’m trying to extract the general law. I can extract the law of the curved dashed line or the straight line. Both fit all my data. Which of them will work in the future? I don’t know; we’ll check when we get there. Right now these are my data, and I’m asking what I derive from them. These two possibilities are, on the face of it, equivalent. I choose the simple one because it’s more convenient for me, not because it’s more correct. But since it works just like the complicated one, and since it’s more convenient for me, I’ll choose it. That’s the second thesis.
[Speaker B] Why is it more convenient for you?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because I’m used to thinking in terms of few parameters.
[Speaker B] And the other guy is bored and wants to think in terms of many; to him it seems meager that there are only two parameters. Can’t hear? Someone else will say it seems meager to him that there are only two—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —parameters; he likes three parameters. Fine, so he’ll choose the curved line. That is exactly what I’m saying. And my claim is that this law is a statement about me, not a statement about the world. When I gather all the information I’ve accumulated until today, as far as I’m concerned I organize it in the most convenient way for me. According to this approach, the straight line is not a claim about the world; it is a claim about me. It is the most convenient way for me to arrange the facts known to me. If someone else has a different way of thinking, he will arrange it differently. Now these are the two theses. About these theses there is a book by Bechler called Three Copernican Revolutions, Ze’ev Bechler—he was a professor at Tel Aviv University—and he calls these two approaches actualism and informativism. What does that mean? Informativism means that the general law contains information about the world—that is the approach that sees the straight line as the correct line. It contains information about the world, a statement about the world. Actualism means that the only information entitled to be called scientific information is just the empty circles. What is actual, present before my eyes. The whole straight line around them is non-scientific information; it’s an artifact, the result of the way I organize the facts. It just happens that for me this is the simplest way, but I’m not claiming that it is also true of the world. That is basically the actualist claim. Now, his whole book is devoted to fighting actualism—which, he claims, and with some justice, is spreading—and to defending informativism, but nowhere did he show what basis allows me to hold informativism. A whole book, very learned, very interesting—I swallowed it in about three days once when I was hospitalized. Afterward I spoke with him at length, with Bechler, because I think half the discussion is missing from his book. Meaning, he doesn’t explain why informativism is correct, only why he dislikes actualism. The actualist claim is a good claim. You cannot justify holding to the straight line any more than to the curved line. So let’s see what happens in the next experiment, which was asked about earlier—okay, what does this give us in terms of predictions about the future? Let’s say we do experiment number six. We apply a certain force, say this force, and check what acceleration we get. If the resulting acceleration is six, then that confirms the straight line. But if the resulting acceleration is something else—this force gives me two, or three and a half, or three and a quarter—then the curved line is the correct one. Okay? We can check experimentally. But that’s not true. Why? Because if I do experiment six and let’s say I get this result, okay? Then that means the straight line has been refuted and the correct line is this one—but not necessarily. It could be that the correct line is a hundred thousand other lines that also pass through that point. Which means that even after every experiment I do, I will still remain with infinitely many possible theories. I will never reach a situation where there is only one correct theory. I will always remain with infinity, no less. Infinite correct theories—indeed infinitely many, not even countably many, correct theories. And therefore no future experiment will be able to settle this question. It can of course show me that the straight line is not correct or that the curved line is not correct, but it can never show me what line is correct. This reminds you of what we said before, like in quantum theory. You can show why the current theory is not correct—that’s Popperian refutation. You cannot show me why the alternative theory you propose is correct. You can refute a scientific theory; you cannot prove a scientific theory. Okay? That’s what Popper taught us. So therefore the claim is: how does science work? Notice, the analogy between actualism and informativism continues. How does science work according to the informativist? Let’s see. Suppose I propose the dashed theory, okay? I have five results, these empty circles, and I propose the dashed theory. Now I do an experiment and the result comes out here. So the dashed theory has been refuted, and supposedly that confirms the straight theory, the straight line. Right? So I throw away the dashed theory, but of course I can now build another dashed theory, say one like this, passing through this, and then it continues as usual. Okay? And that still fits. Now I’ll do another experiment and it will keep going. All in all this just filters out more and more dashed theories, but I will always remain with infinitely many.
[Speaker E] But that is exactly the difference: between a theory where you can’t make one observation that will again show the same thing, versus a theory where every experiment stays on the straight line.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is that obvious? I haven’t yet seen every experiment; we’ll see in a moment, hold on, I’ll get to the future. So in the meantime I saw one experiment and another and another, and in the end, when I look back at them, I can stitch them together in very many ways. It’s always statistics backward and statistics forward. So the description of the scientific process from the informativist perspective basically tells me: the experiments throw incorrect theories into the trash and bring me closer and closer to the correct theory. In the end I get greater confirmation of the straight line. And therefore I conclude that the straight line is the correct one, as you suggested. Okay? Yes. The actualist will come and say: no, I agree completely with the whole move, but I give it a different interpretation. And the interpretation is: I do not arrive at the conclusion that the straight line is the correct one, but only that the straight line is still the most convenient way among the possible ways to describe the information I have. I still am not claiming that the straight line is the correct one. True, every experiment will knock out theories that don’t fit it, but it knocks them out not because they are incorrect—they weren’t correct from the start either. It knocks them out because now they can no longer be used to organize the information I have. So I’ll use other theories. But the other theories I use, I still do not claim are correct; only that they have not yet been refuted, like you said earlier. And since this one is simple and has not yet been refuted, why not use it? Do you understand? It’s a difference in interpretation, but on the practical level the actualist and the informativist act in exactly the same way. And therefore in practice this is usually seen as a philosophical question, not a scientific one. Because these two pictures describe the scientific process in exactly the same way. You do an experiment, throw a theory in the trash, remain with the simplest theory, do another experiment, and keep going and so on and so forth. Both the actualist and the informativist agree to that. They only give this process a different interpretation. The informativist says: I am getting closer to the correct theory and throwing out incorrect theories. The actualist says: I am getting closer to a theory that gives me an efficient tool—not a correct one, but an efficient one—for arranging all the information I have in the simplest way. Okay? That’s all. But I still don’t claim that the theory is correct. Now, of course, the intuition of almost every scientist—and I think also of those sitting here, and they’ll comment on it—is that informativism is surely correct. Obviously we are getting closer to the correct theory and throwing out incorrect theories. It’s not just a game. But the question is whether and how one can ground that feeling, that intuition. Philosophers, for example, are not in the same place as scientists. Scientists are overwhelmingly informativists. Among philosophers there are lots of actualists. Because on the philosophical level, you cannot defend it. These are two interpretations that both fit everything we do. It’s a philosophical question. Now I want to argue that I can also defend it scientifically, not philosophically. And for that I’ll ask the following question—and I think some of your earlier comments were actually trying to point in that direction.
[Speaker C] I agree with the fact—I know, again going back to quantum theory—there are many physicists who say explicitly that this is not truth. Such a thing cannot be truth. It works because it is the best we have, but it is not approaching truth. Truth must be something completely different.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s no accident that you keep returning to quantum theory. Why? Because unlike the theory of gravitation, in quantum theory the simplest alternative still does not look intuitive to us. In gravitation the simplest alternative does look intuitive to us. Now the informativist says: what looks intuitively correct to me is correct. The actualist says: the fact that something intuitively seems correct to you doesn’t interest me. It’s simply a question of how you are built. It says nothing about reality, whether it is really correct. Therefore they will argue with each other over the theory of gravitation. In quantum theory, maybe everyone will agree that it isn’t correct and that it is only the best approximation we have, or the best organizing scheme we have. Let’s talk about the other theories, the ones where there is a disagreement, not the theories where there is no disagreement. In the place where I have an intuition that the straight line is the correct line. F equals ma. Yes, F equals ma—no one will say that that’s like quantum theory. Everyone understands that it’s correct. Now the question is what that is based on. The fact that you see it as the simplest—fine, that’s a statement about you, not about the world. Another kind of creature would not see it as the simplest. So now I want to propose the following. Look. Let’s try to think not about what was, but about what will be. After all, it is obvious that the two theories—let’s go back for a moment to the theories on the graph—there is the straight-line theory and the dashed-line theory. They will give different predictions in future experiments, right? Some experiment that I do, say here. I put in three and a half. So the straight line will tell me that the force is this, and the curved line will tell me that the force is this. Right? So they give different predictions. Now, let’s do an experiment. Suppose we were after experiments one, two, and three. So we had already drawn the straight line. Now we did experiment four. Before we saw the result, what would you have bet would come out? The informativist would bet that it would come out here, right? Because he thinks the straight line is correct; that’s a statement about the world. So for him, even before he sees it, four should give such-and-such a force on the straight line. The actualist, if he is honest, ought to say: the chance that it will fall here is zero. Because who knows what the correct line is? There are infinitely many correct lines. Right. Now he isn’t excited by the fact that in the end it fell here, because it had to fall somewhere, fine, so it fell here. But from his perspective, a priori—I’m asking now a priori, not after it happened. Before it happened. I ask: what is the probability that it will fall exactly here? And my answer is: zero according to the actualist, and I don’t know, sixty, seventy, eighty percent according to the informativist—not one hundred percent. The informativist isn’t certain that he’s right, but he says this is not a shot in the dark. This is not something that has no connection to reality. I think it is likely that this is reality—not certain, but likely. So let’s say seventy percent. So the informativist claims that his theory has a seventy percent chance of standing up in the next test. The actualist, if he is honest, has to claim that the chance his theory will stand up in the next test is zero. Since he holds to the simplest theory out of infinitely many possible theories, each of which will give a different prediction. If the straight line is no more correct than the other lines, but only more convenient, then there is no reason to assume that the next result will also fall on the straight line.
[Speaker C] Which means there is no actualist in the world. Everyone throws a ball and makes an analysis—exactly—I assume everything will work.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. That’s what I want to argue. And therefore I claim that actualism is nice words; nobody really holds it. More than that, I want to claim that actualism is empirically refuted all the time. This is a scientific claim, not a philosophical claim. It is a scientific claim about gravitation; it is a scientific claim about the way science conducts itself. This is the science of scientists. What does that mean? Let’s do an experiment. In the science of scientists—not in gravitation. How do we do an experiment? Let’s check how many of the experiments we’ve done confirmed the existing theory. I’m not talking about at the university, where you torture the experiment so that it fits the existing theory and then hand in the lab report. I’m talking about real research, okay? Real and honest research. So in real and honest research, I ask: how many experiments confirmed the hypothesis they were meant to test? Say for the sake of discussion—I don’t know how many—but say for the sake of discussion fifty percent, forty, seventy, I don’t know how many—something like that, right? But not zero. It is not zero. There are definitely quite a few experiments that confirm the existing theory. The actualist will not be able to explain that. Because from the standpoint of the actualist, this should almost never happen. The chance that it should happen is zero. Now I look—notice, the trick I’m proposing here is not to look at the future. It’s to look at the past. But to look at the past in terms of how it saw the future. In other words, I ask myself: when people stood here and did experiment number two, what did they think the chances were, looking ahead, that the result would come out here? The actualist says zero, and then—boom—it happened. Then, what are the chances as we continue, experiment number three? What are the chances that it falls here? The actualist says zero, and it happened. Experiment number four, the actualist looked ahead and said zero, and then—boom—it happened. What does that mean? It means that actualism keeps taking empirical blows over and over again. Because every successful experiment, one that confirms the hypothesis it is testing, is a blow to actualism. And therefore there is actually empirical proof that actualism is mistaken. This is not a philosophical question. It is an empirical question. Not from the results of the experiments, but from the very fact that the experiments succeed. For me, the success of an experiment is the result on the graph, not what it says. The question is binary: did it succeed or not? Okay, within the margins of error, of course; it’s not exactly binary. But it’s an experiment, and the question is whether it succeeded or not. According to the actualist, if I look at all the experiments ever done in the world, the percentage of successful experiments should have been negligible. But it isn’t negligible, because if it were negligible we would still have the science of Adam. We would not have advanced anywhere. Every theory would collapse. No theory would have endured and progressed with us until today and enabled us to build rockets to the moon. Therefore it is clear that actualism is a position that does not stand the test. And what informativism tells us—notice—what informativism is actually telling us is that the scientific generalization that says: I take the simplest theory, the simplest theory, is not only the most convenient generalization—which is certainly true—but astonishingly, it also turns out to be the most correct one. Not with certainty, but with a pretty decent probability, it is also the most correct one. In other words, it works.
[Speaker C] Now the question is: I take Newton’s laws. Everyone in the world works with Newton’s laws, even though we know that isn’t true?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it is true.
[Speaker C] True for low speeds—that it doesn’t work,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But no, no—
[Speaker C] It’s true for what we do in our world. We work with Newton’s laws. It’s really not true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Newton’s laws are completely true in the speeds and circumstances in which we operate. It’s true that at high speeds it turns out to be an approximation that gets worse and worse, but at the speeds we encounter in everyday life and with the masses we encounter in everyday life, Newton’s laws are completely true.
[Speaker C] That’s not true; that means it’s a very good approximation. What is a good approximation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Every law of nature is an approximation. Every law of nature may be only a very, very good approximation and not the correct law. To me, that is what is called correct. Newton’s laws are correct laws. I’m sure that if you test them tomorrow at a speed you never tested before, they will come out correct, so long as it is a low speed.
[Speaker C] It’s a very good approximation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—and to me that is a correct law of nature. A correct law of nature is a law of nature that describes reality correctly. This line, this straight line, is the correct line—that is my claim. Meaning, every speed, every acceleration you test, you’ll get the correct force. The fact that here, when you go very far in accelerations, yes, in this area, there will suddenly be deviations—fine, because that’s relativity or quantum theory or whatever it may be—but I’m saying that here, when I’m talking about this range, the straight line is the correct law. And therefore it doesn’t work by accident; it’s not like here, yes? Think of “incorrect” in the sense of the dashed line. Incorrect in the sense of the dashed line means that these hits on these circles are accidental. It’s just chance; it isn’t really correct at all. Here I’m claiming no, it is correct; these hits are not accidental. It deviates here. The line actually curves here. Here it starts curving; it does not remain straight. Fine, but here it is still straight. Do its Taylor expansion here: the first term is enough for you. Just the linear term. Fine, that is basically the correct law. Now, what are we really seeing here? What we are seeing here, if I translate this into our language, is that the problem of the synthetic a priori is really asking me why what seems simplest to me turns out to be correct. Do you understand the translation I just gave of the question? Scientific generalization is basically choosing—since there are infinitely many generalizations for any set of results—scientific generalization means choosing the generalization that seems simplest to me. Occam’s razor. And it turns out that this also works. It is also correct. Now, the actualist is apparently right. The fact that it seems correct to me—why should that mean that it works? The fact that it seems correct to me, that it seems simple to me, only means that my brain is built in such a way that a linear line is simpler than a parabola or an exponential or whatever. But that is only a statement about me. Why, in the end, does it turn out that it also works in the world? That simplicity is a criterion for correctness. That is really the question. Why assume that simplicity—or rather, why do we see that it is true—that simplicity is a criterion for correctness? That is really Kant’s question of the synthetic a priori. Now as for this question, I just want to add a few more sentences to close the circle so we’re not left halfway through; I’ll elaborate a bit more later. This question is really, throughout the history of philosophy, the most fundamental question of epistemology. Yes—why do our forms of thought fit the investigation of what happens in the world and produce good results in investigating what happens in the world? Of course, “good results” does not mean that we are always right; some of our theories have fallen. But on the whole, we progress. Meaning, on the whole we are not wandering like blind people in the dark. We are progressing. Which means this is a tool that is not just a shot in the dark. It is not one hundred percent correct, but it is not a shot in the dark. We can progress with it. A bit of experiment, a bit of generalization, another experiment, another generalization, and we advance, getting closer and closer to the correct theory. The question is: why? This is a kind of miracle that demands explanation. Why does our mental or intellectual structure, which tells us this theory is simpler than that one or more plausible than that one, also fit what happens in the world itself? Evolution. Wait—we’ll get to evolution later. But you understand that this is completely analogous to the question about the senses that I asked earlier with Richard Taylor. Richard Taylor asked: why assume that what I see as reality is really reality in the world itself? The fact that my eyes show it to me—so what? My eyes show it to me because that’s how they are built. Why do I assume that this also has a correlate, yes, a parallel or source, in the world itself? Why do I assume that if I see a chair here, then out there in the world itself there really is a chair, and not that this is some image arising from the way I am built? So I am now basically generalizing the question and saying that this question exists not only about the eyes but about all the senses. Not only about all the senses, but about all the assumptions of our reason, including the assumptions at the basis of science, such as causality and induction and everything else. All of these basically tell me that the cognitive and intellectual tools I bring with me from home—I did not learn them from experience, I bring them with me from home—it turns out that I trust them. I assume they reflect reality itself, and that apparently also works in practice. And the question is how that happened. Now, evolution is of course the obvious solution; I’ll get to that later, but this is where I’ll stop, because this is really the formulation of the question in its broadest sense. At this stage I’ve reached the full extent of the question. The question is why the ways in which I perceive the world and think about it—both thought and cognition—work. Why, or why do I trust them? Why do I think they are reliable? Okay, and this now applies to thought and cognition and all the forms by which I can interact with the world or accumulate information about the world, or how I can trust the information I accumulate about the world, if I ask this in the broadest possible way. This is Kant’s question about synthetic a priori judgments, basically translated. And the answer to this, in my view—I’ll say it in one sentence so you can see where I’m heading—there is a book by Hugo Bergman called Introduction to Epistemology. In chapter nine of the book he surveys all the answers that were given throughout the history of philosophy to this question. He doesn’t present it exactly this way, but that is really the question he is dealing with there. And in the end he concludes that there is no answer. There is no answer; no philosophical answer that has been proposed really provides a response—except for the claim, and this is his conclusion at the end, that it is simply an effective methodological assumption. In other words, actualism. It is not a claim about the world; it is an effective methodological assumption. But as we have just shown, that option is not correct. It works—it’s not just an assumption about the world, a methodological assumption. And then the question returns: fine, so what is the explanation? Why is it that this works, and how do we know to trust it? Two different questions: the theological question and the philosophical one. But I’ll get to that next time. I claim that belief in God is the only basis that can account for this.
[Speaker C] Just an observation: part of this is belief. There’s what’s called unified field theory, that all the forces are connected somehow, and gravitation if it’s outside—and all kinds of people are working to show that it’s included too. Why should it be included? They believe there has to be one law and not two laws. Why? Just because.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s a good example, because really, if you think about it from the viewpoint of an actualist: the actualist basically says, you are built in such a way that one general law seems simpler and more plausible to you than two, three, or five different laws. Now the question is why you assume that that is really reality. The fact that you are built in a way that makes it seem simpler to you—that’s your problem. Now, if you are an actualist, you’ll say fine, I don’t assume that; let’s check, maybe it’s true and maybe not. I ask: how many billions would you pour into that attempt if you didn’t really believe it had a chance? I think not many. And the fact that so many billions are poured into it, and people are so devotedly convinced that it will ultimately succeed, means they are not actualists.
[Speaker C] Okay, but that’s at the level of belief or something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They hope and believe that there will be one law. Correct. In fact, the theological argument is built precisely on that. I’m not going to prove to you that it’s true, that there is a God. I’m going to show you that you believe in Him. Maybe you’re mistaken, maybe it isn’t true, but I’m going to show you that you believe in Him. Do you understand? That is exactly the point, exactly the sting of a theological argument as opposed to a philosophical argument, or an exposing argument as opposed to an attaining argument. I’m not claiming that within this argument I will prove to you that there is a God. What I’m showing you is that you assume there is a God. Maybe you’re mistaken in that assumption, but don’t tell me you’re an atheist—you’re not. Fine, I’ll clarify that more next time.
[Speaker E] The point is that, as we said, science makes observations, does tests, and whatever doesn’t fit reality, it throws out. So there’s no such theory. In contrast, the believer reaches some kind of dead end, and then he says, okay, we don’t understand everything, what can you do, we don’t understand everything. And forgive me if I drift into the events of the past few weeks: anyone who watches television and sees what is happening with this Berland and his group, that thousands of people are capable—I’m not even talking about women who threw themselves at his feet. But a man goes at three in the morning, brings his wife, God forbid, like a sacrifice, brings her to the rabbi, waits in the next room, and thinks, yes, yes, surely, there must be something to it. But these are Hasidim, but this is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What proof is that? We do not bring proof from fools. Fine, there are many fools in the world—what can you do.
[Speaker E] But that is only within the framework of faith—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Science—
[Speaker E] Whatever doesn’t fit, it throws out; the believer, if it doesn’t work out for him, says—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m showing you now—I’m showing you now that the scientists too, whom I assume you do not think of like Berland’s followers, also believe, in exactly the same way, on exactly the same basis.
[Speaker E] As long as there was no contradiction, as long as they didn’t run into… okay, as long as they didn’t run into…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Into what? Those people sacrificed all their wives and the messiah is about to come—they did not run into any contradiction.
[Speaker E] There is a contradiction. Here they tell them, gentlemen, go put on blinders so heaven forbid you don’t see a woman, and here they tell them, look—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The righteous man takes it and brings the messiah through sleeping with your wife—that is their belief, so what’s the problem? It’s a belief like any belief.
[Speaker E] I’m saying, that’s the danger in belief when there isn’t—what is knowledge? Take knowledge, ignore the eye, ignore your eye and stay with knowledge, which is belief without any—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can open this up into a discussion about Berland; on that issue I’m in your camp. I’m trying to show you that this route won’t get you very far. If you argue against Berland’s followers that they have no empirical basis, you won’t succeed. Because I can make that same claim about the laws of science. My claim against Berland’s followers is that they are wrong, not that they have no empirical basis. That is not the same thing, and that is exactly the point. Therefore, the fact that it is not empirically grounded—that is what I’m trying to show you—even science is a belief not grounded on an empirical basis, and still it seems more rational to us than that. That means that empirical grounding is not what is playing the decisive role here; there is something else at work.
[Speaker B] So, Rabbi, if what the Rabbi is saying now is true, then we go back to the first lecture in the series, and this belief is not rational, it is not empirical.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] After I finish this whole move, I’ll go back to the question of the relation between this and faith. I also talked about this in the previous stage when I discussed the physico-theological proof, and I tried to show what the relation is between that and inference to a scientific law. And I said that it is very similar to inference to a scientific law, but it does not stand empirical testing—this reminds you of what we discussed there. I’ll come back to that at this stage too, after we finish this move.
[Speaker B] But if Kant is basically right, that we have no access at all to reality itself, and all we deal with is our own categories and our own cognition, then we really have no genuine claim about the world. It could definitely be, and in my opinion it’s even reasonable, that we’ll wake up in some other world and all of this was a dream and was as if… It even sounds reasonable and logical.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is exactly the claim of actualism. And the question is: if you’re an actualist, then you’re an actualist. But if you’re not an actualist, the question is how you answer that question. Exactly the question you asked.
[Speaker B] An actualist is an empiricist with an asterisk all the time. He says: within the framework of reality, I function.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With an asterisk? No. An asterisk means that it might turn out that I’m not right. No, the actualist says it’s obvious that it will turn out that I’m not right; the chance that I’m right is zero. So you’re not an actualist. The question is why not, but you’re not an actualist. The chance that I… could I be mistaken? Of course. Every informativist understands that he might be mistaken; he isn’t sure that he’s right. The difference between him and an actualist is that he’s not certain that he’s right. From his perspective, it’s not a shot in the dark. I said seventy percent, fifty percent, but not zero. Okay, we’ll get to that some more later.
[Speaker F] We’re getting very close to the claim that there is no hiding of the divine face. We actually—if we believe what we see—our conclusion is that we discovered the Holy One, blessed be He, behind what we see.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Holy One, blessed be He, we don’t see Him, but behind what we do see, it seems to me, there has to be an assumption of His existence. That’s what I think. But again, we’ll talk about that.
[Speaker F] And that basically means that we can understand that there is a Holy One, blessed be He, from what we see. There is no hiding of the divine face; rather, reality is revealed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that was also my claim in the previous stage, by the way. Now I’m making it from a different angle, and I’ll come back to the parallel between the two stages, the physico-theological one and the current one.
[Speaker E] Okay, Shabbat shalom,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shabbat shalom,
[Speaker E] See you, Shabbat—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Bye, thank you very much, thank you very much.