Faith and Its Meaning – Lesson 7

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

Presentation of Anselm’s text and its internal line of argument
The role of prayer, prior belief, and begging the question
The distinction between ad hominem and substantive criticism
Definition, tradition, and the claim that definitions are not arbitrary
Conceptualization, multiple intelligences, and the example of convex shapes
The Anselmian argument as an argument in the mind, not the simplistic version
The distinction between “existing in the mind” and “understanding that it exists”
The skeptical critique and the claim about what is “enough” to speak about existence
The point of failure: the assumption that one can conceive of something as existing without it existing
The claim that the move is not ontological in Kant’s strong sense

Summary

General Overview

The speaker returns to Anselm’s proof and presents it as a virtuoso, precise philosophical text, while systematically unpacking the sentences that make up the argument. He argues that the common ridicule directed at the proof often comes from missing critical stages, and he develops a distinction between prior belief and the logical fallacy of begging the question, similar to the distinction he draws with respect to ad hominem arguments. He explains that Anselm opens with a prayer in order to declare a starting point of belief and a non-arbitrary definition of God, not in order to “smuggle in” the conclusion. He then suggests that the subtle Anselmian argument does not directly prove “there is a perfect being that exists,” but rather operates within the space of understandings and images in the mind, while still depending on an essential assumption that weakens its claim to being “ontological.”

Presentation of Anselm’s text and its internal line of argument

Anselm opens with a prayer: “Therefore, You, Lord my God, who grant understanding to faith, grant me, insofar as You know me worthy, to understand that You exist as we believe, and that You are what we believe.” Anselm defines God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” and places opposite it the fool’s claim, “There is no God,” in order to formulate the question of existence. Anselm argues that even the fool understands the expression “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” and therefore the thing is understood and exists in the mind, even if the fool does not understand that it exists in reality. Anselm distinguishes between a thing’s being in the mind and understanding that the thing exists, and he brings the analogy of a painter planning a work as opposed to a painter who has already produced it. Anselm concludes that this “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” cannot exist only in the mind, because then one could conceive of the same thing as also existing in reality, and that would be “greater”; therefore, “there exists, then, beyond doubt, something than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the mind and in reality.”

The role of prayer, prior belief, and begging the question

The speaker rejects the claim that because Anselm prays before the proof, he is begging the question and is not “intellectually honest.” The speaker says that prior belief is a motivation to seek a proof and is not the use of belief as a premise within the argument, and he compares this to investing many years in proving a mathematical conjecture that one assumes is true even before it has been proven. The speaker argues that Anselm places the prayer first in order to put on the table that he is addressing believers, or people who are mistaken in thinking they are atheists, and he describes a logical proof as a process that brings into actuality a conclusion already latent in the premises, similar to studying geometry. The speaker adds that one cannot “prove the existence of God to someone who is a true atheist”; at most, one can show that someone who thinks he is an atheist actually holds belief in potential, a belief that needs exposure and assistance.

The distinction between ad hominem and substantive criticism

The speaker presents a definition of an ad hominem argument as a logical fallacy in which the attack on the person serves as the reason for rejecting his claim. The speaker distinguishes between raising substantive arguments and only afterward drawing conclusions about the person, and using the characterization of the person himself as the justification for rejecting the argument. He compares this to the accusation against Anselm that his prayer is begging the question, and argues that just as personal criticism is not necessarily ad hominem, so too prior belief is not necessarily using it as a logical foundation within the proof.

Definition, tradition, and the claim that definitions are not arbitrary

The speaker presents Anselm’s sentence, “And indeed, we believe that You are something than which nothing greater can be conceived,” as a necessary definition that precedes any attempt at proof. The speaker states that every proof assumes a definition of the object whose existence is to be proven, and that the point of dispute is not the definition but its realization in reality. The speaker argues that the believer has the privilege of defining the terms in a discussion about God, because the atheist denies precisely that concept toward which religious belief is directed. The speaker opposes the view that definitions are arbitrary and presents definition as a process of capturing an intuitive concept and casting it into a sharp framework, so that one can speak of a “correct definition” and an “incorrect definition.” The speaker emphasizes that Anselm does not define “God who created the world” or “giver of the Torah,” but rather aims at “the perfect being” or “the being than which nothing greater can be conceived” as the object of the proof.

Conceptualization, multiple intelligences, and the example of convex shapes

The speaker uses the debate over “multiple intelligences” to show how conceptualization can expand or alter the scope of a concept, and can sometimes look like a postmodern agenda whose purpose is that “we’re all Einsteins.” He argues that arbitrarily expanding a concept like intelligence empties it of meaning, but he also acknowledges that sometimes conceptualization reveals layers that had not previously been noticed, and therefore expanding a concept’s range is not necessarily a mistake. The speaker brings a mathematical example of the definition of convexity: a convex shape is a shape such that every segment connecting two points within it lies entirely inside the shape, and he shows that the proof that the intersection of two convex shapes is convex follows immediately from the definition. The speaker presents a “law of conservation of difficulty” and argues that the difficulty does not disappear but is pushed into the assumption that the mathematical definition is equivalent to the intuitive concept, and that this equivalence cannot be proven absolutely. From there he applies the point to Anselm and argues that Anselm too “sweeps all the garbage inside” in order to enable a logical proof, while the question still remains whether the definition corresponds to the “religious God” in reality.

The Anselmian argument as an argument in the mind, not the simplistic version

The speaker distinguishes between the popular formulation of the proof (“If God doesn’t exist, then you can think of something more perfect that does exist”) and Anselm’s precise formulation, which deals with “something than which nothing greater can be conceived.” The speaker argues that Anselm’s expression is not identical with “a perfect being,” because he is speaking about the limit of what can be conceived and not necessarily about perfection as such. He interprets Anselm’s move as operating within the mind: the fool understands the concept, so it “exists in his mind,” and from there Anselm argues that if it exists only in the mind, one can conceive of it as also existing in reality, which makes it greater and therefore contradicts its being “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” The speaker stresses that the power of the move comes from the fact that it points to the possibility of conceiving of the same thing “as existing,” not to its direct external existence, and therefore it is not vulnerable to the same criticism that says “an existing God” is an invention with no object.

The distinction between “existing in the mind” and “understanding that it exists”

The speaker argues that Anselm is not comparing what is in the mind to what is in reality, but rather comparing two states of consciousness of a thing within the mind. He interprets the analogy of the painter as follows: planning is an imagined picture of the work, whereas contemplating an existing work is accompanied by the recognition that it is an image of something that exists in reality, and the two states differ because a person knows how to distinguish whether he is standing before something or imagining it. He connects this to work in neuroscience claiming that imagination and vision activate similar neurons, but that there is an additional mechanism that marks whether the image is the image of something that exists. The speaker uses the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, is there a sound?” in order to argue that sound and color are phenomena of consciousness and not properties of the world in itself, and he brings in Kant and the distinction between noumena and phenomena to deepen the claim that appearances are always within consciousness.

The skeptical critique and the claim about what is “enough” to speak about existence

The speaker argues that the criticism, “You only proved what’s in the head and not what’s in reality,” is a skeptical criticism that does not obligate someone who is not a skeptic, because most of our claims about the world in any case rely on a correspondence that we do not prove. The speaker offers a practical response to solipsism: if a person reaches the conclusion that something exists, then from his perspective it exists, and casting doubt on that is a skeptical position with no end. He raises the possibility that if Anselm shows the fool that he himself is committed to thinking of God as existing, then the fool is not a “real” atheist, and insisting on saying “but maybe it’s only in the mind” goes beyond the skeptical stance that is not part of the ordinary debate about the world. The speaker notes that the atheist with whom Anselm is arguing is someone who makes the positive claim “There is no God,” not someone who removes all meaning from claims about reality.

The point of failure: the assumption that one can conceive of something as existing without it existing

The speaker identifies the main problem in the argument as the assumption that the fool can conceive of that same “something” as existing even if he thinks it does not exist. He argues that from the analogy of the painter it emerges that imagining something and apprehending it as existing are different states, and apprehending it as existing appears when the thing really exists before the person, or when there is an appropriate marker in consciousness. The speaker suggests that the fool can say, “From my point of view, the greatest being that can be conceived is a non-existent God,” because he cannot conceive of it as existing in the relevant conscious sense. He adds that if in a laboratory we were to stimulate the neural mechanism that marks “this exists,” a person might experience something as existing even if it does not exist, but he presents this as manipulation rather than intentional conceiving, and in the same breath admits that this possibility reawakens the question of skepticism.

The claim that the move is not ontological in Kant’s strong sense

The speaker defines an ontological argument as an argument that assumes no factual premises, but carries out a conceptual analysis that yields a factual conclusion about the world. He argues that even if Anselm’s move is persuasive, it rests on an assumption: that the fool is capable of conceiving existence in the required way, and therefore it is not an argument without premises and is not “ontological” in the strict sense. The speaker states that the failure of the “ontological” claim does not turn the argument into a joke, but rather places it as a subtle argument that succeeds only against someone who accepts its psychological-conceptual assumption. He concludes by saying that he is not persuaded by the conclusion, but refuses to belittle the argument, and presents the internal precision of the text as the reason that any serious refutation must identify the problematic assumption rather than settle for mockery.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, last time we began the discussion of the ontological proof. I want to go back for a moment—we only read his text. Now look at it in front of your eyes. All right? Yes. This is the chapter; let’s take another look so we have some overall view. “Therefore, my God, who grants understanding to faith, grant me, insofar as You find me worthy of it, to understand that You exist as we believe, and that You are such as we believe. And indeed, we believe that You are something than which nothing greater can be conceived. But perhaps no such nature exists? For the fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ But surely that same fool himself, when he hears what I have said—that is, something than which nothing greater can be conceived—understands what he hears. And what he understands exists in his mind, even if he does not understand that that thing exists in reality. For it is one thing for a thing to exist in the mind, and another to understand that the thing exists in reality. Indeed, when a painter first thinks of what he is going to make, that thing exists in his mind, but he does not yet think of it as actually existing, since he has not yet made it. But after he has already painted it, that thing both exists in his mind and he also understands that it exists in reality, since he has made it. Therefore even the fool must be convinced that at least in the mind there is something than which nothing greater can be conceived, for he understands this when he hears it, and whatever is understood exists in the mind. But that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived certainly cannot exist in the mind alone, for if it existed only in the mind, one could conceive of it as existing in reality as well, and that would be greater. Therefore, if that being than which nothing greater can be conceived exists only in the mind, then that being than which nothing greater can be conceived is a being than which a greater can be conceived, and that surely cannot be. Conclusion: there therefore exists, beyond doubt, something than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the mind and in reality.” Once again, just as an overview. Now I’m going to take this chapter—we already started—and break it down sentence by sentence and see what each sentence is doing in the course of the argument. Because I told you, in my opinion this is one of the exemplary texts in the history of philosophy. It’s an extraordinarily precise chapter. Meaning, all sorts of people who challenge this proof simply miss parts of the move, in many cases—not always. I also told you that in my opinion, in the end this is not an ontological proof. So first let me summarize what we did last time. He begins with a prayer, right? “My God, who grants understanding to faith, grant me, insofar as You find me worthy of it, to understand that You exist as we believe, and that You are such as we believe.” That is the opening prayer, and from there he now moves naturally straight into the argument. What is the role of the prayer? I talked about that. I said that people often mock Anselm because he prays to God even before he has proven His existence. Meaning, he actually assumed His existence from the outset. So there’s nothing here, he’s not being intellectually honest. But that’s nonsense, of course, because the fact that I think something exists is not begging the question. It’s simply my motivation to look for a proof. I gave the example of Fermat’s theorem—yes, Fermat’s hypothesis. So I must be—or not must, but it’s very likely that I’m convinced Fermat was right if I invest twelve years looking for a proof, right? And the fact that I thought in advance that it was true doesn’t mean my proof is dishonest. Okay? It’s like the other side of the coin. There were arguments on my site recently—two or three of them, actually—where people claimed I was making ad hominem arguments. What does ad hominem mean? Arguments against the person rather than against the issue. I say to someone: listen, you’re stupid, you’re wicked, whatever, you’re a woman, you’re a Gentile, it doesn’t matter—you latch onto whatever the person opposite you is, and you see that as some kind of argument that his claim is false or that his argument is false. So I explained to them that in my opinion there isn’t a single ad hominem argument anywhere on my whole site, because an ad hominem argument does not mean referring to a person as stupid, wicked, a Gentile, a woman—yes, everyone with the insults they prefer. That’s not the point. Rather, it’s where the insult itself is your argument for rejecting the claim. That is an ad hominem. But if I raise substantive arguments to reject the claim of the person standing opposite me, and afterward I say to him, and if you make such a stupid claim, then you’re an idiot—that’s not ad hominem. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy. You can say I’m impolite, but it’s not ad hominem. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy. A logical fallacy is when I take my attitude toward the person and use it as the argument that rejects his claim. That’s a fallacy. That’s ad hominem. Okay? But if I draw various conclusions about him after I’ve given substantive arguments as to why he’s wrong, that’s not ad hominem. And exactly the same thing here, yes, the other side of the coin. Meaning, they accuse Anselm of basically presupposing the faith. Not true—he does not presuppose the faith. He believes even before the proof. But the faith is not a premise he uses as a premise on which he builds the argument in order to arrive at faith. So there is no logical problem here. The fact that he believes in advance—so what? The fact that I think someone is an idiot is also perfectly fine. As long as I didn’t use the claim that he’s an idiot as the claim by virtue of which I reject his position. That would not be fine. Okay? But the mere fact that I think he’s an idiot—so what? Does that invalidate my argument? If I’m making a substantive argument, then because I think he’s an idiot, does that make my argument wrong? What does that have to do with anything? On the contrary, precisely because my argument is right it follows that he’s an idiot—how does he not understand such a simple argument, how does he not understand it? Okay? Same thing here. The fact that Anselm believes—as long as he does not use that itself as a premise in his argument—there is no fallacy of begging the question here. That accusation is simply a misunderstanding. Okay? And I said more than that: Anselm puts the prayer first in order to tell us exactly that, to tell us that of course he believed in advance. That’s not an accusation—he admits it, he puts it on the table. Obviously I believe in advance, even before I offered the argument. I said even more. In fact, the moment I present a logical argument in favor of some conclusion, then that argument, if it is a valid logical argument, begs the question. Right? We talked about begging the question, and I said that a valid logical argument always begs the question. Therefore in a certain sense—not in a certain sense, but always—the conclusion was always hidden somewhere inside the premises. The only thing is that it isn’t always so easy to extract it from the premises. But it’s there. Like in geometry, I said: why do I need to study geometry in class? After all, all the conclusions are contained in the premises, so what do I need the teacher for? What’s the problem? I already knew it in advance. No, I didn’t know it in advance. It was there in potential. But in order to become convinced that it’s true, I need help. After I get that help, I really discover that I knew it all along. And therefore no one argues with the teacher—unless he didn’t understand him. In mathematics there’s nothing to argue about with the teacher. Meaning, either you didn’t understand him or by chance he made a mistake, but if he didn’t make a mistake, there’s nothing to argue about. He’s simply showing you that you yourself thought this from the outset, you just weren’t aware of it. Okay? So I said that you cannot prove the existence of God to someone who is a real atheist, who truly does not believe in God. What I can prove logically is only to show the person that he is not a real atheist. He thinks he is an atheist, but deep down, potentially, he actually already believes in God. He just needs the help of the teacher, or of whoever helps him, to discover or uncover that thing. But if it isn’t there inside him, no logical argument will be able to do the job. Okay? Therefore I think Anselm puts the prayer first in order to explain this point. To tell us: friends, I am speaking to believers, not to atheists. Some of them think they are atheists by mistake, but inside I am going to show them that they are actually believers. And therefore he prays; intentionally he places the prayer before he opens his argument. After that he says—that’s the first sentence. After that he says: “And indeed we believe that You are something than which nothing greater can be conceived.” What is this sentence? This sentence is a definition. Who is the God whose existence I am about to prove? It is a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, the perfect being. Okay? No—in every sense. Great in every parameter in which greatness exists. Also in power, in wisdom, in goodness, morality—in all the positive parameters He possesses them infinitely. Fine, that is more or less as much as one can define such a thing. Now, what does that definition say? First of all, when I come to prove the existence of God—and we talked about this in the introductory classes as well—every proof presupposes some definition, and it proves that object which is defined in that way; it proves the existence of the object defined in that way. And we will see that different arguments or different proofs prove the existence of beings that are defined differently. And we talked about that—the question of whether these are different beings, or whether Ockham’s razor suggests that maybe one can unify them. But first of all he has to put the definition on the table: what, whose existence, am I going to prove? So here is the definition: the greatest possible being, than which nothing greater can be conceived. The perfect being. Okay, that is the definition. Now, first of all, once I’ve defined this thing, now let’s see whether I have a proof that this being exists. What does “exists” mean? Is realized in reality. Meaning, I defined a definition—that’s a concept. A concept is not an existing thing. I want to see—there’s also a concept of a fairy with three wings; that doesn’t mean there are actual fairies with three wings in the world. When I speak of something that exists, it means that the definition or the defined concept is realized in reality. Okay? So I want to take this definition and find an argument that shows that it is also realized in reality. The definition has to be agreed upon; the atheist will also agree to it. We only have a disagreement about whether it is realized in reality. The believer thinks yes, the atheist thinks no, right? But as for the definition, we have to agree, otherwise what is the discussion about? So even the atheist who says God does not exist, I ask him: who does not exist? Explain to me who you’re talking about—who is the subject of your sentence? So he will have to give a definition, and that definition has to resemble the believer’s definition, because after all he is coming to argue with the believer. When you say that God does not exist, you are basically taking the believer’s definition of the concept God and claiming that it is not realized. Right, that is basically the atheist’s claim—or the fool’s, in his language. And therefore there really is here some kind of—not sure I’d call it an advantage—but a different role for the believer and the atheist: the one responsible for the definition of God is the believer, not the atheist. And he takes that definition not from the proof; the proof comes after I have the definition. I want to show that this concept I have now defined is realized in reality. Okay? But where do I draw the definition from? People think that a definition is… I talked about all this; I’m just summarizing. People think a definition is a matter of arbitrariness. Not true. A definition is absolutely not a matter of arbitrariness. You can define things arbitrarily—I can define. But usually we do not define things arbitrarily, not even in mathematics where people think definitions are arbitrary. They are not. Rather, it is some attempt to capture concepts that I intuitively grasp and to try to cast them into some precise pattern. Okay? A sharp pattern. That is what it means to define. Therefore even regarding a definition one can speak of a correct definition and an incorrect definition. I understand. Made the world, creator… No, I didn’t say anything. Nothing. I didn’t say, I didn’t talk about whether He created or didn’t create. The being whose existence I want to prove is the perfect being. That is what I want to prove. I didn’t speak about His creating the world, or His giving the Torah or not giving the Torah, whatever it may be. I don’t care. Okay, so go back to Anselm: he wants to claim that he has a proof for this amorphous thing, for the existence of this amorphous something. Fine, that’s what we’re looking at now. So the point is that we draw the definition from faith. Another reason to place the prayer at the beginning of the matter. He says, friends, I come out of faith. I did not arrive at faith through this proof. On the contrary, this whole proof is built on the fact that I already came equipped in advance with a definition of what God is. And after I… from where? From faith. And after I have arrived at a definition, now I look for a logical way to prove that the being defined in this way indeed exists. Okay? But I do not draw the definition from logic. So where from? From faith, from my intuitive conception, it doesn’t matter. When I define a triangle, is that an arbitrary definition? It is not an arbitrary definition. After all, we have a concept in our heads; we understand that concept, the concept triangle. But for mathematics you need some precise definition of it. You try to take the intuitive insight you have and cast it into words so that it is grasped as sharply as possible. That is called a definition. And you understand that it is not right to treat such a definition as something arbitrary. It is not arbitrary. If it captures the intuitive concept, then it is correct, and if it does not capture the intuitive concept, then it is not correct. Right? Even with a definition one can speak of a correct definition and an incorrect definition. And people even say: what is there to talk about, a correct definition? If you defined it, that’s what is defined—definition is arbitrary. That is not true. There is such a thing as a correct definition and an incorrect definition. Therefore the religious God is the point of departure. And Anselm says: I propose this definition for Him—the perfect being. This is not a fictitious definition, not a definition I invented for the sake of the discussion. This is how I want to define that being in whom I believe even before the proof, before the logical move. All right? I suggest—this reminds me… You know that in recent years, over the past few decades really, there’s been a kind of expansion of the concept of intelligence. Multiple intelligences, right? There’s emotional intelligence, motor intelligence, all kinds of types. Right? Let’s say it’s pretty clear what the motivation is for producing that. Right? The motivation is to show that we’re all intelligent. We’re all Einstein. Fine? True, I couldn’t do anything Einstein did, but I play basketball much better than Einstein. So therefore Maradona is also Einstein, and I’m Einstein too, and Einstein is Einstein, everyone is Einstein. Okay? So that is the social motivation. Fine, motivation is legitimate. The question is whether what you’re doing actually holds water. Okay? So what did they do in such a situation? They tried to characterize the concept of Einstein-type intelligence, right, the one from which we started. There is a set of I don’t know how many—five, six, seven—characteristics of this concept, and then suddenly they discover, aha, Maradona has that too. And Picasso too, and I don’t know who, all kinds of people, LeBron James. Okay? There are all kinds of people in whom they discover certain abilities that meet five, six, seven characteristics of intelligence, and suddenly we discover that intelligence is not only what Einstein has, it’s also what LeBron James has. Okay? And the shoemaker in my neighborhood, or a car mechanic, or whoever. Okay? Everybody is basically Einstein, just each one in his own field. But what difference does it make? So he can’t cope with the theory of relativity—so what? Einstein also doesn’t know how to repair shoes. You don’t have a monopoly on the desired perfection, so to speak. That is the intellectual or academic expression of postmodernism. Okay? Multiple intelligences. Now, what bothered me about this move? I had quite a few arguments about it. What bothered me when this concept first started to appear—not all that long ago; I already had my opinions when it happened. At least I had my opinions there. So I started arguing with people. I told them, look, if you want to define a concept of intelligence that fits all people, there’s no problem—definition is arbitrary. Okay? But if you want to claim that the concept of intelligence as we understand it before you defined it also refers to these people and not only to Einstein, then something here doesn’t work for me. Why? Because intuitively I attributed intelligence only to Einstein, right? Not to LeBron James and not to anyone else, and not to the shoemaker in my neighborhood. Okay? Now you take my intuition—from which you started, after all—conceptualize it and define it, and suddenly you discover that it applies to masses and masses of people, in fact to all ten billion people and not just to Einstein. What does that prove? That you conceptualized it incorrectly. That’s all. You took a concept about which I have an intuitive understanding, and in that intuitive understanding it refers only to Einstein. Never mind, yes? The type. Okay? Only to Einstein. Now it underwent conceptualization, and after the conceptualization it refers to all the people in the world. What does that mean? That your conceptualization is unsuccessful. That’s all. No, no—each person is highly talented in some field that you define ad hoc in relation to him. Each person has some set of abilities in which only he is the best in the world. In that combination. Fine. There is no one else who has seventy in physics, eighty in history, fifty in chemistry, paints at a level of ninety-five, even though in painting there’s someone with a hundred, in history someone with a hundred, in chemistry someone with a hundred—but this combination, he is the best in the world at this combination. You can always define that too as a talent. And then no problem—he’s Einstein too. You understand there is something problematic here. Because the assumption is, whichever way you look at it, if a definition is arbitrary, then you’ve done nothing. Call everyone intelligent—what have you done? You haven’t really told me they are like Einstein. You just invented a concept that is true of them too. Okay, invent another hundred concepts. You can also call them “yekum purkan” and call everybody “yekum purkan.” There, everyone is equal. It has no meaning. If you want to show they are equal, you have to show me that they truly have that same intuitive concept of intelligence that I attributed only to Einstein, and show me that I was wrong—it should also be attributed to other people. But that cannot be done by an arbitrary definition, right? It has to be done by conceptualizing the intuitive perception I already had in advance. No, no, you’re taking me to other places, and there maybe I’d agree. I’m talking about the postmodern extreme, the extreme that says everyone is… No, that’s why I’m saying, but there’s no problem—that I would have said even before their conceptualizations. If I see some shoemaker doing unbelievable things, okay, then I would say so. The logic here or the science here is an instrument—it’s not… it’s an instrument in the hands of the agenda. So the claim is that basically, whichever way you look at it, if this definition is arbitrary, then you didn’t achieve your goal, because it is not true that they are similar to Einstein. You can invent a word and attribute it to everyone, but the concept of intelligence in the sense I mean it belongs only to Einstein and to no one else, so you didn’t do the job. What will you tell me? No, no, I conceptualized that same concept of intelligence you meant from the start, I just gave it an explicit conceptualization. Your own eyes can see that that’s not true. You didn’t conceptualize it correctly, because the intuitive concept in fact refers only to Einstein, while the conceptualization you allegedly gave of that very concept refers to everyone—so your conceptualization is incorrect. Okay? Seemingly that’s a death blow to these moves. But actually not. I matured a little after that. Why? There’s something trickier here. Because sometimes I need to do the conceptualization in order to discover additional layers I wasn’t aware of when I thought about it intuitively. That is the value of conceptualization. And when you conceptualize things, you can draw conclusions you could not intuitively, you can see certain aspects that may have been hidden before when you hadn’t yet defined it precisely and were only thinking about it intuitively. Okay? So there really is intellectual value in conceptualization. Now, what happens is that the person says: look, I conceptualized it and something was revealed to me that wasn’t accessible before I did the conceptualization. And true, that concept of intelligence I thought of beforehand—it is the conceptualized concept, it’s the same concept. Ah, how can it be that its extension expanded so much? Because I really wasn’t aware that this concept in fact should apply to more people, not just Einstein. And again, don’t take this too far; I’m willing to stop there or stop in places where it’s more relevant. But still, you can see that a process of conceptualization—the fact that it expands the group to which the concept refers—does not automatically invalidate it. Sometimes I discover things by means of conceptualization. Yes, maybe I’ll give you an example that I really like. I once had a topology book, a popular kind of book for high school, for high school students. I bought it in Boston, something near Harvard where there was that used bookstore—I was there once. So there is a theorem there. He proves a theorem that says: the intersection of any two convex shapes is also a convex shape. Convex shapes meaning shapes with the belly outward. A circle is a convex shape; a banana, by contrast, is not a convex shape, right? Because it has an inward belly. Okay, I’m speaking intuitively right now. Now the mathematical claim is that the intersection of any two convex shapes is also a convex shape—and in fact the intersection of any number of convex shapes, of course; if every pair works then it no longer matters. But let’s talk about two. Okay, that’s the claim. Now how do you prove it? So it’s nice—it’s a popular book, so he doesn’t just immediately give the solution. He says, okay, think for a moment how we might try to prove it. So I sat there, tried, and came up empty-handed. It sounds intuitive, but I tried checking all sorts of edge cases and so on, drew all kinds of convex shapes of this and that sort, and I didn’t find a proof—a proof in the mathematical sense, something closed and airtight, not just being impressed that it sounds reasonable, but a proof like mathematicians like. I couldn’t do it. Fine, I kept reading. The solution appears later in the book, and it turns out like this: he says, let’s start with the definition of a convex shape. What is a convex shape? You have to define it—exactly what Anselm is doing here, what one has to define everywhere. What is intelligence? If you want to work with it, you have to define it; intuition you can’t work with. You have to define it, conceptualize it. Okay, so let’s define the concept of a convex shape. What is the definition? In mathematics one usually defines a convex shape as a shape such that if you connect any two points inside it, the entire line connecting them lies within the shape. Think about the banana: take two points at the ends of the banana, if you connect them with a straight line, part of the line will be outside the banana, right? Because it has a belly—this is a concave shape. Okay, in a convex shape that can’t happen. In a convex shape, in a ball, any two points you take inside it, connect them with a line, the whole line will be inside the shape. No part of it will go outside. That is the definition of a convex shape. Okay, sounds reasonable. Right, also convex shapes. A straight line is also convex for this discussion, yes. A flat belly is also a belly. Meaning, straight is also convex. I’m not defining a circle, I’m defining a convex shape. A circle is an example. Right? It isn’t concave, yes. Now I claim that the intersection of any two convex shapes is itself a convex shape. For example, take a circle and an ellipse. Now their intersection is the part in the middle, yes? It is necessarily a convex shape. It sounds reasonable, sounds intuitive. Think about it—I’m not assuming you’ll be able to prove it. Really prove it. I tried to map all the possibilities of how they could meet, how convex lines could meet. You can map several possibilities and prove each possibility separately, yes, like the four-color theorem, where there were seventeen thousand possibilities. But no, I couldn’t do it. So he says, let’s begin with a definition. The definition of a convex shape is a shape such that for any two points in it, the line connecting them lies entirely inside the shape. Okay? Fine, from here the proof is one line. Why? Let’s take two shapes, and their intersection is the part in the middle, yes? I need to prove—given that each shape is convex—I need to prove that their intersection is also convex, right? What do I actually need to prove? That for any two points inside the intersection, the line connecting them lies entirely inside the intersection, right? That’s the definition of convex. You understand that it is obvious that this is true. Because if those two points belong to the intersection, then they are in this shape and also in that shape. But if so, then the line is in this shape because it is convex, and it is also in that shape because that one too is convex. Well, if it is in both, then it is in their intersection. Which is what had to be proved. Trivial. So why did I get stuck at the beginning? Right, because I hadn’t made a definition. Meaning, the definition managed to bring me to insights I would not have reached with intuition, even though potentially I knew them because they were latent within the intuitive insight. But if I haven’t done conceptualization and definition, I can’t work with it. I can’t arrive at certain conclusions that are true and in principle I could have known them beforehand too, but you need conceptualization for that. Okay? Fine, that’s exactly what happens, I think, with the concept of intelligence. I do partly accept the move that happened there, not completely, but partly: when you conceptualize, you can suddenly discover things you hadn’t thought about before. But after you see them, think—if it is convincing, then apparently you really did discover something new. It’s not necessarily just an agenda, period—an agenda dressed up in logical or scientific form. No, there may genuinely be a move there that adds some knowledge for me. Same with Anselm. What does Anselm do? Anselm does not invent a definition. He takes a concept that comes to him from the tradition—God—tries to conceptualize it, to give it a definition. And the definition is the most perfect being. That is the definition he proposes. Okay? And now he says, fine, once I have a definition, I can show you that I have a way to prove its existence. Just intuitively, that I believe in God—how can I prove His existence from that? You can’t prove on the basis of intuitions. Intuition is not something formulated; it can’t serve as a premise in an argument. Okay? But if you formulate something, then you can try and prove all sorts of conclusions. That’s the whole idea. In geometry too, by the way, every child understands that one straight line passes through two points and that two parallel lines do not meet, and so on. Every child understands that; it doesn’t require fifth or sixth grade, every child understands it. But he has never defined for himself those four axioms with rules of inference, and he doesn’t understand how to use them systematically, and therefore all the conclusions that he in fact knows potentially, implicitly, he doesn’t really know until he learns them in class. Okay? Just one last remark to complete the point—how does this miracle happen? Let’s go back to convex shapes. How does this miracle happen? Well, there are no miracles in the world. What physicists—or mathematicians—call the law of conservation of difficulty. The law of conservation of difficulty means that even if you’ve found some trick to solve the problem, you will run into the difficulty later on. Meaning, you won’t succeed in bypassing the essential difficulty of the problem. Anyone who has done research—scientific research, I think—knows this. It’s unbelievable: every morning you wake up, “I’ve got a trick, I’m finishing the whole thing I got tangled up in yesterday,” you keep moving forward, and at stage seven you meet the same difficulty from here. It attacks you from another direction. So: the law of conservation of difficulty. Here too there is a law of conservation of difficulty. Did we really prove that the intersection of any two convex shapes is convex? The proof I just gave—definitively not. Why? Because what we proved is that two shapes defined mathematically as convex, their intersection will also be defined mathematically as convex. Okay? Now I ask: I have an intuitive concept of convexity. Will it also satisfy this theorem? I think so, but I have no proof. Why? Because I assume that the definition proposed by the mathematician is completely identical to my intuitive conception of the concept convex. That is an assumption; it sounds very reasonable to me. But there is no proof here. Assumptions are not proofs. You want to prove something. You can’t prove—you proved nothing about what happens with what you call convex shapes intuitively. You built some mathematical theory in which all the difficulty you thought you had bypassed, you pushed into the definition. What do I actually need to show in order really to prove it? I need to show that the mathematical definition is fully equivalent to my intuition of the concept of convexity, right? But how do you prove that? There is no way to prove it. So what happens? Basically the difficulty is there. And the art of the mathematician is to take all the difficulties, sweep all the dust under the rug, define a definition that already bypasses all the difficulties, and from the definition onward it’s straightforward. No problem—that’s mathematics. But you haven’t solved anything. If you really want to know something about reality, you have to lift the rug and see what’s with the dust. Meaning, the question is whether the definition you proposed really exhausts the intuitive concept from which you started. And therefore there are no miracles. Meaning, mathematicians cannot really prove something I cannot prove. What they can do is gather all the junk into a definition, hide it inside a definition, and from there onward do mathematics. That’s all. The moment you try to apply it to reality, you’re back in physics. You’re not in mathematics. Okay? Fine, so let’s return to Anselm. So basically Anselm offers a definition. And as I said before, the definition is brought from his tradition, from his faith. Okay? And that is perfectly fine. Because the definition really is not taken from logic, and it is also not arbitrary. The definition is a kind of conceptualization. After all, in the end, what is my goal as a theologian? My goal is to prove the existence of the God in whom I believe, right? Think about it like proving that theorem about convex shapes. My goal is to prove the existence of the God in whom I believe. How can I do that? The God in whom I believe is some abstract something—I don’t know how to define Him, describe Him, it’s some sort of intuition you can’t work with logically. What do I do? I have no choice. I have to take all the junk, sweep it inside, create a definition that I want to believe fits the intuitive concept I had before, and the existence of the concept defined in that way I may be able to prove. That is basically what Anselm is doing. Okay?

[Speaker D] Someone who fully accepts Anselm’s argument will say that he should go on to worship Him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He calls him an atheist, let’s say, just… yes, unless he says that the concept of a perfect God is not the concept that the religious tradition conveys to us. Which of course it isn’t? No, if he says that, I don’t know whether it’s necessary or not necessary. The question is what you think; it doesn’t matter whether it’s necessary or not. If you think it’s not the same thing, then I haven’t proved to you the existence of God. I proved to you the existence of the perfect being. But that’s not God. The religious God, the God religious people believe in, isn’t that. Exactly the way that the convex shape I defined is not the intuitive concept of convexity. So when you want to move from the logical-mathematical world to reality, you want to prove the existence of an object in reality, you always get stuck on the definition. And the question is whether the definition really captures that object correctly. If it does, then you proved it, but the other side can always say it doesn’t. Okay? And therefore, fine. You asked who gets to define. Everyone can define however he wants, what is… okay, so what? Then he defines it differently. Everyone has his own definition. He proposes this definition, the perfect being. Okay. On the basis of the premises. After all, logic, inferential derivation, as I said, therefore certainty, that’s why I spoke about logical arguments and said: my certainty in the conclusion exists only provided that the premises are true. The derivation of the conclusion from the premises is certain. The conclusions are not… the premises, sorry, are not certain. And that is exactly the problem: you can never reach certainty, because the question is what about the premises. What Anselm is trying to do, and that’s what I talked about, is to bypass the issue. He wants to present an argument without premises. There are no premises. And that argument will be necessary. This you will have to accept, because there are no premises at its base. That’s Anselm’s claim. And that’s the concept of an ontological argument. I explained this in Kant’s classification: ontological arguments are arguments that assume no premises at all. They simply take definitions, do conceptual analysis on the definitions, and presto, by some hocus-pocus suddenly a factual claim pops out as a conclusion. Which is basically what happens here. Yes, yes. Meaning, it’s not conditional on any premise, therefore it’s an ontological argument. Okay? And by the way, Kant attacks this argument precisely because of its ontological nature. That’s the main problem he sees in the argument, and I explained last time that in my opinion this is not, this is not a refutation. Meaning, if you didn’t show where the problem is, then you’re just begging the question. Show me where the problem is, and then you can conclude that an ontological argument cannot be correct. You can’t assume that an ontological argument cannot be correct and therefore reject Anselm’s proof. If every step is necessary and you didn’t find any bug, then that’s it, you haven’t refuted it. Fine, so in short, this sentence is the definition: “And indeed we believe that You are something greater than which cannot be conceived.” Next sentence: “Or is there no such nature, for the fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’?” What is this sentence? The research question. Right? We defined the concept of God, the perfect being, and now the question is whether it exists or does not exist. That’s the next stage after we defined it. Now the research question, okay? I want to know. H0: exists, H1: does not exist. Now I want to know which of the two hypotheses is correct. Okay? So that’s the research question. “But there is no doubt,” look how polished this is, every sentence is structured, every sentence in the prayer. At the beginning I explained, after that a definition, after that the research question, and now suddenly look how he jumps to the argument. He moves smoothly, straight into the argument. “But surely that same fool, upon hearing what I said, namely, something greater than which cannot be conceived, understands what he hears.” Here he writes the first step on the board. You, the fool standing opposite me, do you understand the sentence I said? I’m not asking you to agree, not asking you to say whether it’s true or not. The question is whether you understand. Do you understand the sentence I said? “Something greater than which cannot be conceived”? By the way, a comment I forgot to add earlier: I talked about the perfect being. Here he is not talking about the perfect being; he is talking about a being greater than which cannot be conceived. That looks to you like the same thing, and to most of his critics it looks the same, but it isn’t. It’s a more precise expression, what he says here, and we’ll see later why. I’ll maybe tell you before I continue: usually this proof is formulated like this: God is the perfect being. If He did not exist, then there would be a more perfect being—an existing God—who is more perfect than a non-existing God. So that means that the God I assumed is not the perfect being, which contradicts my assumption. There, a proof by contradiction that God exists. Okay? That is—this is basically the ontological argument in its popular formulation. Okay? That is not a correct description of the ontological argument. People make fun of that a lot and laugh about it and things like that. Even though that too is not so easy to laugh at, as I said. But his argument is different, much subtler and more precise, and therefore I want to show you—pay attention to every sentence. Meaning, so right now we’re not talking about the perfect being, but about the being greater than which it is impossible to conceive. The greatest that can be conceived. Okay? That is not perfection. It could be that there are beings more perfect than what I can conceive, I just can’t conceive them. Right? You understand that this is not the same concept, the perfect being and the greatest being I can conceive. Okay? In every possible respect. All positive parameters to infinity. Fine? The best, the wisest, the strongest, the most omnipotent, and every positive trait there is—that was asked earlier. So his claim is that this is the greatest being that can be conceived, one greater than which cannot be conceived. Now he says, first stage, as I said, the first move on the board: you, the fool hearing this sentence, do you understand this sentence? First of all let’s synchronize the concepts. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Seems like yes, right? Why does he think yes? Maybe not? Maybe the fool will say no, I don’t understand what you’re talking about, this concept says nothing to me. There are two possible ways to understand this step. One possibility, more of a logical pilpul, says: look, you say there is no God, right? So you too are saying a sentence whose subject is God. You don’t understand what you’re talking about? After all, you too are talking about God. You think He doesn’t exist, that doesn’t matter, but… you didn’t say anything. That’s the logical pilpul. But in truth a more sophisticated atheist would say, fair enough: my claim is not that He doesn’t exist, but that this is a meaningless concept. One cannot speak about it. That is actually what can be answered to this claim. He won’t say God does not exist, because that is a sentence whose subject is not understandable, meaningless; rather, he will say your sentence is meaningless. The sentence that God does exist is meaningless because its subject, God, is not defined. It has no clear content. So one can evade it that way. I think the claim, the simpler basis for what Anselm assumes here—that the fool understands the definition—is a factual basis. What, of course you understand. Who doesn’t understand? What’s the problem? Every word here is clear. Everything is fine, right? The greatest being that can be conceived. What don’t you understand? Conceived, greater—which of the words don’t you understand, or which combination of those words? You understand all of it. So again, this is not a logical argument but simply a plain fact, right? You can’t deny that you understand this sentence. Everyone understands this sentence. So all the words here are clear. What? The greatest being. Why? Why? The greatest being that can be conceived. The greatest being one can conceive. Sounds perfectly fine to me; what’s the problem? The fact that I don’t know how to write down the list of attributes that answer to greatness, because what is greatness, by what parameter? Fine, but still in a general sense I understand very well what it means. If it’s like—if we go back again to the example, you know the stone God cannot lift? The paradox of omnipotence, what is called the omnipotence paradox. What’s the problem? This paradox embarrasses a great many believers. Of course it’s complete nonsense. Why? Suppose I’m standing opposite the fool—I’m bringing this up so we can see the move here. What?

[Speaker C] That’s also on the assumption that He is

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] perfect.

[Speaker C] Because if He is omnipotent

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s like saying perfect in a certain sense, though it’s narrower than perfect. Omnipotent means only perfect in His capacities, not necessarily in His morality, say, or His goodness or something like that. In any case, omnipotent. So let’s say I’m standing opposite the atheist, and the atheist is trying to convince me that there is no God. He says, look, the assumption that there is a God who is omnipotent—again, the definition always comes from the believer. The atheist too, when he denies, denies the God the believer defined. So he says, your God is omnipotent, right? Let me show you that He cannot exist because the assumption that He exists leads to a contradiction. Because if He can create such a stone, then there is a stone He cannot lift; if He cannot create such a stone, then there is something He cannot do. So either way there is something He cannot do, and therefore He is not omnipotent. That’s the claim. What’s the problem with this claim? That it is meaningless. When you come to me, and I’m a believer and I think God is omnipotent, and now you come and ask me, tell me, can God create a stone He cannot lift? Explain the concepts you’re using to me; these concepts are meaningless. What do you mean, a stone that the omnipotent cannot lift? Before I answer you whether there is such a stone or not, explain the concept to me. I don’t understand the concept. What is a stone that the omnipotent cannot lift? And notice: the definition of God is that He is omnipotent. The definition is always a religious definition. Even the atheist, when he denies God, denies God as the religious define Him. Therefore the religious person has the privilege of giving the definition in every such discussion. So now you understand that this is actually what the atheist can answer to the first claim. What I say to that atheist, I as a believer say to that atheist: before I answer your question whether God can create such a stone or cannot create such a stone, explain the question to me. I don’t understand it. It is composed of concepts that do not connect for me. So you’re simply asking something like blah blah blah blah, a collection of meaningless words. What do you want me to answer? Yes, exactly. It’s like asking whether God can create a square triangle. There is no such thing as a square triangle. If it is triangular, it isn’t square; if it is square, it isn’t triangular. So what should I tell you—whether He can create it or cannot create it? Explain the question to me; it is a meaningless question. I can answer neither yes nor no. It’s like if I asked you, tell me, which is greater: kindness in people or water in the ocean? Which is greater? You don’t go into all kinds of Zen koans, right? What is the difference between a rabbit? Maybe one can somehow measure kindness too, I don’t know, but clearly it’s not the same metric. You can’t compare them, right? The question is meaningless. And if I asked you such a question—if yes then this, and if no then that, and therefore I would prove something to you. Neither yes nor no; the question is meaningless. Meaningless. Many times one can answer a question; often these kinds of illusions are built on the assumption that every question must be answered either yes or no, or else the excluded middle. There isn’t any other option, right? Either yes or no. But no. Sometimes I can tell you the question is meaningless; I cannot answer it either yes or no. There is no answer because there is no question. I didn’t understand anything. What are you—I don’t understand. It’s like asking me in Chinese. What do you want me to answer? But this is Chinese on the logical level, not on the linguistic level. Okay? You simply said something nonsensical. So if the atheist—or if Anselm—assumes that the atheist understands this because of the argument that if you say God does not exist, then the subject of your sentence should be clear to you as well, that is not a strong claim. Because he can say fine, I’m not saying He doesn’t exist; simply that He cannot exist because there is no such thing. I simply don’t understand what you’re talking about. That’s actually what I mean to say. I think therefore Anselm is talking about something else. What he means to say is: this is a collection of words that come together into a reasonable, proper sentence; there is no reason to say that you don’t understand this collection of words. And therefore it seems obvious that the fool too understands this concept. Okay? Moving on. So that is the first sentence. And he says, “something greater than which cannot be conceived, understands what he hears.” Meaning, the fool also understands the concept, right? That is the first step in his argument. Moving on. “And what he understands exists in his mind.” What does that mean? Yes, right. If I understand something, that means it can be present in my consciousness or in my understanding, right? In my mind. I understand it, so it is present in my mind. Like the author of the Tanya writes in the early chapters there, he says that when one engages in Torah, studies Jewish law, the desires of the Holy One, blessed be He, then it is like embracing the king in his garments. It is like embracing the king himself. When you embrace the king but you’re holding the garments because he is wrapped in garments. It doesn’t matter; that is called embracing the king himself, only I’m grasping his garments. Okay? So you hold it in the mind. And to study Torah, he says there, to study Torah is to hold the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the mind. And since He and His will are one, then maybe—as the author of Nefesh HaChayim writes actually, not the author of the Tanya—since He and His will are one, then it is basically like being with the Holy One, blessed be He, in some kind of union or some kind of cleaving, because He and His will are one thing. And when I study Torah, then the desires of the Holy One, blessed be He, are inside me. And since that is so, then He too is inside me, and therefore that is cleaving. Yes, it’s this kind of metaphysical argument. Fine, in any case, back to us. So, “what he understands exists in his mind.” Okay? In the fool’s mind. So it exists in his mind. “Even if he does not understand that the thing itself exists in reality.” That is true, even if he understands the concept without assuming that it exists. He merely understands the meaning of the concept, yes? We are speaking with the fool, who is an atheist. He does not believe in the existence of God, but he understands the concept of God, okay? According to the definition proposed here. He sharpens that point—a very important point. Okay? And notice, fool, I am not assuming that you think God exists. No, no, I’m not assuming that. All I want is for you to tell me whether you understand the concept. You think it doesn’t exist, but do you understand the concept? Yes, you understand the concept. One can understand the concept even without thinking it is instantiated in the world, right? So he says like this: “For it is one thing for a thing to exist in the mind, and another thing to understand that the thing exists.” Notice, what is this distinction? This sentence is very important. It sounds as though he is repeating himself all the time; there is not one sentence in this chapter that repeats a previous sentence. Every sentence here rejects one of the refutations raised against Anselm’s proof. Notice: what is the difference between the thing existing in the mind and the thing existing? Seemingly the intention is existing in reality, presumably

[Speaker D] that’s what exists, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Seemingly. But it seems to me that he means something else. He says one thing is that something exists in the intellect, and another thing is to understand that the thing exists. Not another thing that the thing exists. He means to say that there are two ways something can be present in my mind, and he’s not talking at all about the thing’s existence in reality itself. That’s not the point at all. What he’s comparing here are two concepts that exist in my mind. How? There is a concept that exists in my mind potentially; I understand the concept. And there is another possibility: I stand before an existing thing, but still what I have in my mind is only an image of that existing thing. The thing that exists exists in reality itself, not in my mind. And when I observe it, then in my mind there exists an awareness of an existing thing. Notice, this is a comparison between two awarenesses that are inside me. There is awareness of a non-existing thing, and there is awareness of that very same thing as existing. We are not talking at all about the thing’s existence in reality. That is a third matter altogether. We are talking about two possibilities for a thing to exist within my intellect. All right? And then he brings the example. And really, to clarify this distinction more, because it’s very easy to miss it, and many commentators missed it—and that’s most of them—indeed, when a painter first thinks about what he is going to create, that thing exists in his mind. But he still does not think of it as something actually real. When the painter plans the painting, let’s say he sees in his mind’s eye what the painting will look like in the end, suppose. I’m not sure painters actually work that way, but suppose, okay? And afterward he paints the painting and now he looks at it. Now the image of the painting in his consciousness is not the painting itself; it is the image that exists in his consciousness. Seemingly that is the same thing as the image that existed in the plan. What difference does it make whether what generates it is an existing painting or an idea, a plan? He says no, it makes a difference. These are two different awarenesses. What is the simple proof of that? After all, we know how to distinguish within ourselves whether we are looking at an existing painting or imagining a planned painting. We know how to distinguish between those two conscious states, right? When the painter planned the painting, it did not occur to him that the painting existed, even though he saw before his eyes an image of that painting, right? But the painter who looks at the existing painting, he too sees an image of the painting in his consciousness. But it is also clear to him that this image is the reflection of something that exists in reality itself. Meaning, there are two ways of holding this painting in my consciousness, within consciousness. This is not a comparison between the existing painting and the painting as a concept in my consciousness. It is a comparison between two conscious concepts. One conscious concept is the painting as such, and the second concept is the reflection in my consciousness of the existing painting. There is a reflection—that’s what he says here. When the painter plans the painting, he sees a painting before his eyes; it could even be exactly the painting as it will exist; he sees it before his eyes. But that is not a reflection of an existing painting; it is a plan. Yes. Right? But you do not think it exists, that planned thing, right? When you have an architectural plan before your eyes, do you think you are standing before a building? A real one in the world, in reality? No. You understand that it is a plan, right? And if you are standing before the building, still what you have is your consciousness with the image of the building in your consciousness. A building in reality is a building in reality; what you have in your consciousness is an image of it that exists in consciousness, right? But that is not the same thing. And the proof is that in the first case you do not think you are standing before a building. In the second case you understand that you are standing before a building. So that means your awarenesses are different awarenesses. The awarenesses are different. It is not a difference between the awareness and reality. Well. When you are planning, you do not think you are standing before the building, right? If I ask you, is there a building in front of you? you will tell me no, right? You know there isn’t. But you have an image of the building before your eyes. Now when the building has been built, now you are looking at the building. Once again, all you have is that same image before your eyes. But now I ask you, tell me, are you standing before a building, is there a building in front of you? and you will say yes. What does that mean? That before your eyes there is not the same thing in the two cases. Yes, the brain here—I’m talking now about the brain’s seeing; the eye doesn’t see at all, the brain sees. Or the intellect sees; not even the brain, the intellect sees. It just uses our perception. Now the question is whether there is something external here or whether it is only imagination that I am imagining, or my plan. And Anselm’s claim—and by the way, today in neuroscience there is a great deal of work on this—is a correct claim. This claim basically says that there is a difference between two types of awarenesses. It is not a difference between the object and its image in me, but rather between two images that are in me. One of them is the reflection of an object, and the second is an image of imagination or a plan or something like that. These two images are different from one another, and the proof is that when the second stands before me, I will tell you I am standing before a building; when the first stands before me, I will not tell you that I am standing before a building. I understand that it is only imagination, that it is not the building itself. That means something accompanies this image in my consciousness that tells me: this is an image that is a reflection of reality; it is not just an image I imagined. There is some neuron responsible for telling you this—you know, in neuroscience today they already know this—when you imagine some figure, say your grandmother passed away and you imagine her before your eyes, exactly the same neurons are active as when you actually see her before your eyes, exactly the same neurons. And still, when the person stands before the image of his grandmother, he understands that it is imagination, and when he stands before his grandmother, he understands that she is present. So how can that be? There is some additional neural department somewhere in our brain that signals to us: this thing is an image of an object from reality. And there we do not have—it, that neuron, does not operate. So there it is an image, but I do not assume that it is the reflection of something that exists in reality. I’m describing this generally, because I myself do not know exactly what operates there and what does not, but it is clear that there is something like that operating there. There is a lot of work on this in neuroscience; that much I know. But it is not important for our purposes, because that is only the question of how this is implemented neurally. I am speaking now about the principle. The principle is that I can be in two different conscious states. Now I want to sharpen this point more, because it is an essential point in the argument, the most essential point in the argument. You know, there is the famous question—today we’re with all sorts of koans—the famous question: when a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, is there a sound? What do you say? Obviously not, right? Obviously not, there is no sound. It depends on nothing. If no one is there, there is no sound. Why? What is there is an acoustic wave. The air moves. But sound is a conscious phenomenon. There is no sound in the world. Sound exists only inside my consciousness. When an acoustic wave strikes my eardrum, there is produced in my brain or my intellect an experience of sound, or a perception of sound. If there is no eardrum there for that acoustic wave to strike, there is no sound. People laugh at this, as though obviously there is sound—what is this skepticism? That is a complete mistake. Obviously there is no sound. There is no sound at all if nobody is there. Sound is not a phenomenon that exists in the world at all. Sound is a conscious phenomenon. But that is what activates the—you do not apply it to sound; you apply it to an acoustic wave. That is not sound. No. An acoustic wave that strikes your eardrum creates in you a sensation of sound. In the world there are acoustic waves; there are no sounds. If your ear were connected to the visual center, then you would see acoustic waves, not hear them. You would see sounds, like at Mount Sinai. There is no problem doing that, no problem at all. Today you can do it. Take the ear—an oscilloscope does that. What does an oscilloscope do? Feed a vibration into an oscilloscope, here, like this, plug in an oscillator, and you’ll see some sine wave on the oscilloscope. What does that mean? It is a translation; it converts the sound, the acoustic wave, into a visual wave. What? Right, colors too. Bertrand Russell in his book The Problems of Philosophy explains there, he says when people are asked what the color yellow is, they say: it is an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength. Nonsense. There is no such thing as the color yellow in the world. The color yellow exists in our consciousness. When there is an electromagnetic wave of a certain wavelength that strikes my retina, since my brain is structured this way and I have a division into seven colors and so on, I translate it into an appearance of yellow. But if that were connected to my ear, I would hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. And I would not be less right, nor more right. There is no right or wrong here. Because these phenomena are purely conscious phenomena. Sounds, appearances, colors—these are phenomena only in our consciousness. In the world itself there are no appearances, no sounds, no colors, nothing. What there are are the physical causes that our perception—yes, our sensory system—when it receives them, translates into sounds, colors, appearances, and the like. The same is true of touch, taste, all the senses. It is all the same thing. Yes, things in the world have no tastes. Taste is a property of us, not of things in the world. So therefore the point is that even when we speak—and this is Kant’s distinction—when we speak about science or about phenomena in the world, we are not really talking about phenomena in the world. Rather, we are talking about conscious phenomena that are the reflection of things happening in the world. He wanted to solve the problem of the synthetic a priori this way, never mind; in a parallel lecture I spoke about that. But this is the Kantian distinction between the thing in itself and the thing as it appears to us, the noumena and the phenomena. Noumena is the thing in itself, and phenomena is the phenomenon, how it appears to us. Now the whole world of colors, sounds, and so on belongs to the world of phenomena. In the world of noumena there is none of that. What there is in the world of noumena is some physical phenomena that I have no way of describing, by the way. Even wavelength and height and amplitude and all that—those too are all our descriptions. I have no way of speaking about what happens in the world except in a language that is my language, my conscious language. There are all kinds of things in the world, and their reflection in me is in the internal language of my consciousness. So what does this mean, essentially? That when I speak about this painting, the appearance of the painting is in any case not the appearance of the painting truly existing out there somewhere. Appearance is always something conscious. Therefore in any case even the distinction between the object and its image in me is a philosophical distinction, because the object itself has no appearance. Appearances exist only in my consciousness. And therefore there is a distinction between two kinds of appearances here in Anselm. One appearance is an appearance that arises from imagination, this kind of conscious image but with no root in the real world; it is an imaginary image. And there is an image—the very same image—when the object exists, as in the case of the painting here, its image too is a conscious image. But the fact that I distinguish between these two things means that something in my consciousness marks that here I am facing a painting and here I am not. It is not that the painting itself has an appearance; it has no appearance. But the appearance of the painting as I perceive it comes with a signal attached to it, a kind of warning note: pay attention, this image you are seeing is the reflection of something that exists in reality; it is not an imaginary image. That is basically the difference Anselm is talking about. Now he says: after the painter has painted it, the thing also exists in his intellect and he also understands that it exists. Notice, in neither of these two possibilities does he say that the painting exists. That does not interest him at all; he is not dealing with that. It is not that after I painted it the painting exists—that is not what he is talking about. Rather, after I painted it, the image of the painting in my consciousness is accompanied by the understanding that there is a painting that exists. But still, the subject of the discussion is the image in my consciousness and not the existing painting. This is a very important point, because most of those who refuted, who raised refutations against Anselm, missed this point. Now we continue. Yes, it also exists in his intellect; “exists in his intellect” means as an imaginary concept, and it also exists in his intellect in the sense that he understands that it exists in actuality. And again, this is about the fact that he understands that it exists, not that it exists. That it exists, fine, that is an ontic fact in the objective world. Everything Anselm is doing here is all inside our heads. All the distinctions he makes are all inside the head; nothing has to do with what is happening outside. Now he says: therefore even the fool must be convinced. So far just fine distinctions, right? Now look, in one stroke of the sword he reaches the conclusion, directly. This is a philosophical crescendo. Therefore even the fool must be convinced that at least in the intellect there is something than which nothing greater can be conceived, for he understands this when he hears it, and whatever is understood is in the intellect. That is what he said before, so it exists in his intellect, this concept. “That than which nothing greater can be conceived,” this concept exists in the fool’s intellect, right? That is what we saw earlier. Now look: but that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived certainly cannot exist in the intellect alone. Why? Because in truth, if it existed in the intellect alone, it could be conceived as existing in reality, and that would be greater. What is he saying? He says, suppose now that you are the fool, and in your head there is a concept. That concept is the greatest being that can be conceived. We still do not know whether it is realized in actuality, whether it exists in reality, but we do know that the fool holds this concept in his intellect, right? That we know. Now I say: let us examine this concept in the fool’s intellect—does it really have the status of the greatest concept that can be conceived? If we assume it does not exist, as the fool assumes, let us suppose it does not exist—then now I ask the fool: you know what? Imagine something else. Imagine that very same thing, only existing as well. Do not assume it exists; imagine that it exists. Can you imagine that it exists? Why not? One can imagine that it exists, right? If you imagine that it exists, then the image in your head is fuller than the earlier image that was in your head, because an existing thing is more complete than a non-existing thing. And if so, then what you were previously holding in your head was not the greatest being that can be conceived. Here, I have shown you one greater thing that can be conceived. And that means the assumption that that being does not exist leads to a contradiction. Right? You assume it exists in your head. Now you say: let us assume it does not exist. No problem—you, the fool, think it does not exist, but in your head you agree with me that it exists, right? Now I say: can you conceive of it as an existing being? It does not exist, but can you conceive of it as an existing being? Seemingly yes—why not? Just as I can conceive of an existing painting, so too I can conceive of this being as existing. But if you can conceive of it as existing, then that means there is something greater than the being that was previously in your head. Because the being that was previously in your head was the perfect being that does not exist. The perfect being that also exists is greater than the perfect being that does not exist. And after all, you can conceive of it. Therefore, the first being that was in your head was not the greatest that can be conceived, which contradicts the assumption. That means that if we assume it does not exist, we have reached a contradiction. So apparently it exists. Notice, the claim here is not—how did I present the argument to you earlier? I’m shortening the range here because I want you to hold the picture. That is, how did I present the argument earlier? What I said earlier was: this is the perfect being by definition. If it did not exist, then if it did exist it would be more perfect. And therefore it is not—exactly—but there is nothing more perfect, therefore it must also exist. Because if it does not exist, then there is something more perfect than the perfect being—how can that be? That is usually how they present it. That is not the correct argument. It is not the correct argument because that perfect being, if it exists, indeed is more perfect—but who said it exists? That is precisely the dispute. In contrast, here—that is the whole point. The whole point is that his argument is not talking at all about the perfect being in reality, but about the most complete being I can conceive. Everything is in my head. All the—yes, it is like that movie, “It’s All in Your Head,” what is it called? There is such a movie, right? All those characters in the head. This is Anselm: the fool and everything—it is all in the head. All his imaginings and all the distinctions he makes, it is all between images in the head. Nothing touches what happens… what exists in the world. He is not talking about the perfect being. He is talking about the greatest being that can be conceived. That is a conceptual notion, not a claim… not a notion in the world itself. No, no, wait, wait, wait, just a second—I only want the argument to be understood before the refutations. So what… why is this argument much stronger? Because here he says: after all, you can conceive of this being as an existing being. Not that it exists, but you can conceive of it as existing. Right? But if that is so, then the being you earlier conceived was not the most complete one, was not the greatest one, which contradicts the assumption. Therefore you must conceive of it as an existing being. Which you could not do if you were speaking about the object itself. And what… how do they usually present the argument? Usually they say: the being… God is the perfect being. Fine? Since he is… if he is the perfect being, if he did not exist, then there would be a more perfect being—he himself, but also existing. So that contradicts the assumption that he is the perfect being, therefore he must exist. That is nonsense. And people rightly laugh at that. Why? Because who said there exists a more perfect being? That being that also exists—there is no such being, it does not exist. So what… what kind of trick is that? It is completely foolish. But Anselm never even dreamed of making that argument; that is not his argument at all. His argument is not talking about the perfect being, but about the most perfect being that can be conceived. What is the difference? Here he has a good claim. He says: after all, you can conceive of the painting as existing. Anything you have in your head, you can also conceive of as existing, right? There is no reason to assume otherwise. So here it is no longer vulnerable to the same refutation I raised before against the argument in its simplistic formulation. Because here the claim is good: after all, you can conceive of it as existing, so that means that if you conceive of it as non-existing, then it is not the perfect being. So you did not conceive of the perfect being. Therefore you must conceive of it as the perfect being, as existing, sorry. Except—exactly—this is where the flaw comes attached to the deal. What does that mean? You did not prove to me that it exists. You proved to me that the greatest thing I can conceive is an existing being. Fine, I can conceive of it, but who says it exists? After all, if the whole game is in my head, your goal is to prove something that exists in reality. So far you have proved something about what exists in my head. So what? Why should I care what is in my head? The world owes you nothing; it was here before you, so to speak. But that is not correct, or at least it is not as simple as people think. “Not correct” is too strong, but it is not as simple as people think. He proved to me that in my head there exists a concept of the perfect being that also exists, right? That is, the perfect being that exists is there. Meaning that as far as my mind is concerned, it exists. So now why assume that it does not exist in reality? After all, what is the difference between a painting that I perceive as existing and an image of a painting that I do not perceive as existing? When I perceive the painting as existing, there really is a painting standing before me. Therefore I perceive it as existing. Someone who says to me, look, you think the painting exists, but it is just solipsism—what do the solipsists say? Solipsists are those who say there is no external world; everything exists in your head. Okay? Idealists, solipsists. So what do they say? You imagine that the painting exists; there is no painting and nothing at all—it is all only in your imagination, in your consciousness. Okay? That is basically a skeptical question, right? You assumed, you conclude, that something is true or that something exists. Very nice—that is your conclusion. Who says that it is true in the world? Right? That is the claim. What do you answer the solipsist? You are a skeptic; I am not a skeptic. If I conclude that something exists, then as far as I am concerned it exists. If I think something is true, then it is true. You say, maybe you think it is true and maybe you are mistaken? True, maybe I am mistaken, but I am not a skeptic; that is my conclusion. So if Anselm proves to us that we think God exists, that is good enough. Because if he has proved that we think God exists, then why assume that God does not exist? That is just a skeptical claim. A skeptical claim comes to a person and says, look, I think, I have concluded that there is a law of gravity. Someone comes and says, look, maybe that is just your imagination; who says there really is a law of gravity? What do you answer such a person? There is no answer. You cannot really answer him. What do you answer yourself to that question—not to the skeptic, because to the skeptic you will not be able to answer anything. What do you answer yourself? That I am not a skeptic—what do you want? If I think it is true, then as far as I am concerned it is true; I have no doubt. I do not cast doubt on this parallel between what happens in my head and what exists in the world. Otherwise I am a skeptic. Whoever is not a skeptic does not cast doubt on that. Now if I have proved to you that in your head God, the perfect being, exists, then basically I have proved to you that you believe that he exists. So now to say, yes, but really he does not exist—that is just a skeptical claim. I have proved to you that you too believe that he exists. Not only I do. Now you say, yes, but maybe I am mistaken. So what if you are mistaken? Yes, but maybe I am mistaken—that is what you will tell me. I have proved to you that you too believe that he exists. Not only I do. So you say, yes, but maybe I am mistaken. Then you too are mistaken, not just me. Fine, so he exists in the same sense we are both talking about. Do you understand? You become a solipsist. You become someone for whom all claims about the world are really claims about what happens in our inner consciousness. That is just skepticism. But you are not a skeptic. Meaning, if the poor man, the atheist, is a skeptic, then fine, he is a skeptic, then there is nothing to talk about. There is no point talking with skeptics. We are speaking with an atheist who is not a skeptic; he makes a positive claim—he says there is no God. Not skepticism. He makes a claim about the world. He too perceives the world like I do. The table exists, the phone exists, things exist—he is not a skeptic. He just thinks there is no God. If that is who stands before me, then if I show him that he himself believes in God’s existence, I’m done, I rest my case. Or, I case my rest, something like that. I got him with this argument. Why? There, I proved it to him. Not convinced? What does “not convinced” mean? Tell me what is wrong with the argument. What does “not convinced” mean? He will say that you came to me as though

[Speaker B] it exists inside his head, but you did not tell me that it exists in reality. You only told me to think that it does exist.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You cannot think that it does exist. That is what he is claiming. Can you think that it does exist? No. That is it. So if you think that it exists, and that is more complete than thinking of it as non-existing, then what is the problem? Yes. As I asked, right. But you do manage to imagine. No, I did not say that you think it exists. Do you manage to imagine it as existing? Then the most complete being is an existing being. So God as the complete being—and you understand the existence of the complete being that is in your head—then he also exists in your head. Because otherwise he would not be complete. The challenge I can raise—and I will continue what you said—is stronger than what you said. Who said I can imagine him as existing? Where does that assumption come from? If something stands before me, then I perceive it as existing because it triggers that neuron in me that marks for me: know that this is not an imaginary image. This is an image that is the reflection of something existing in reality. But can I? Now I say to the painter: you have a plan of the painting in your head. Okay? I say to the painter: come, imagine that this painting really also exists. Imagine it as existing. When he imagines it as existing, and I ask him, tell me, but does it really exist? he will tell me no. So that is not really imagining the painting as existing, because someone who imagines the painting as existing—if I ask him, tell me, is there a painting before you?—he will say yes. Do you understand? I think the problematic assumption in Anselm—and that is why I said I do not accept his argument—but it is far trickier than the way everyone mocks it. Much trickier. And this argument is a brilliant argument. There is a point here that is not at all easy to put your finger on. And I think that is the point. He assumes that a person can imagine an imaginary object as existing after he himself has distinguished between imagining that object and perceiving it as existing. And that is done only when it really exists before me. Well, so now you are trying to dance at two weddings. You assume that the fool can imagine this object as existing even though he thinks it does not exist. No, impossible. If you think it does not exist, then you do not imagine it as existing. It simply cannot be done. This sentence—“you can imagine it as something that also exists”—is simply not true. He is using a false assumption here. No, I cannot imagine it as existing. All right? Therefore notice, the challenge is not that you proved only existence in the intellect and did not prove existence in reality. Because that is a skeptical challenge. Meaning, if I proved to you that you believe in God, then I proved to you that there is a God for all practical purposes, yes? As for skeptical possibilities—who says what I think is also true—not interesting. You are not troubled by them and neither am I. The problem comes from somewhere else. If all the assumptions are correct, then I proved to you that God exists in your head. But one of the assumptions is not correct. And that is the assumption that you can indeed imagine God as existing even though ontologically you think he does not exist. Not true. I cannot imagine him as existing. Simply not true. In my view, the most complete being that can be conceived is a non-existing God. In my view as the fool, yes? The greatest being that can be conceived is a non-existing God. That is it. It is impossible to conceive of a greater being than that. Huh? No, a concept, never mind. If you are a Platonist then concepts also exist, but another important remark. When I introduced the different modes of proof, I said that Kant classifies them into three kinds: ontological proof, cosmological proof, and physico-theological proof. The cosmological and physico-theological proofs are proofs that assume certain factual assumptions—that there is a world and that there is a complex world, each in its own way, yes—but they assume something about reality and from that they reach the conclusion that there is a God. The ontological argument assumes no assumption. It performs an analysis; it assumes a definition. A definition is not an assumption. I define a concept: the perfect being. Okay? Out of an analysis of the concept, suddenly a factual claim pops out. Some kind of hocus-pocus. And this is what Kant says cannot be. An ontological argument simply cannot be a priori. It cannot be that you define something and from the very fact that you defined it some claim about the world comes out. We spoke about Descartes’ cogito and other attempts throughout history to prove things in this way; they all fail. You cannot prove such a thing. But I said, that is not an argument, because you need to show me where the bug is in Anselm’s argument. You cannot give an example and say, no, such an argument cannot be, therefore it is not true. Here, he showed you that it can be. I told you, yes? When people say that something cannot be conceived, they say it only about things that actually can be conceived, right? “It cannot be conceived that someone would do such-and-such.” When do people say that? After someone did such-and-such. Right? Nobody ever says “it cannot be conceived that someone would do such-and-such” when it truly cannot be conceived that he would do such-and-such. That is obvious. It is like saying of someone that he is a total gentile—it is always when he is Jewish, right? Nobody ever says of a gentile that he is a total gentile. “This Jew is a total gentile.” The claim is that you cannot really conceive such a thing. And if so, then basically notice that the first thing we discovered here is this: suppose I do reach the conclusion—suppose I do accept this assumption that the fool can conceive that this being exists. Fine? Maybe yes, maybe that assumption is correct. It is not necessary, but maybe it is correct. Someone can come and say, yes, to me that sounds reasonable, yes, he can conceive of it. Then the argument is good. Then I have proved to him that there is a God, if that assumption is correct. But it is not ontological. Because an ontological argument is an argument without assumptions. Only definitions and conceptual analysis, only definitions and logic, with no assumptions at all. So even if Anselm were right, and this assumption that the fool can conceive of the existence of God as existing, of God as existing, were correct—even if that assumption were correct, it still would not be an ontological argument. Because it would be an argument that has an assumption: the assumption that he can conceive of God as existing. That is an assumption. So it is not true that this is an argument without assumptions. Or in other words: first of all, whether this argument is correct or incorrect, this argument is not an ontological argument. Now you need to ask: if you accept this assumption that the fool can conceive of God as existing, then fine, then I have really proved to you that there is a God, fair enough, then the argument did the job. It proved to you that there is a God. If not, then not. But fine, with any argument you accept the conclusion only if you accept the assumptions. It is not a defect in an argument that it needs assumptions. Every argument requires assumptions. That is not a defect in an argument, right? I spoke about begging the question? Begging the question is not a fallacy. So therefore the problem with this argument is not that it has assumptions. The problem with this argument is that the assumptions, at least to me, sound unreasonable. But if someone says, look, in my view—say an atheist comes and says, you know what, I think God does not exist, but you are right, I can imagine God as existing; in that sense I do accept your assumption. If he agrees, then I will succeed in convincing him that God also exists. He is simply mistaken when he thinks he is an atheist; he is not an atheist. Okay? But for me personally, I do not think that assumption is reasonable; I do not accept it, therefore I also do not accept the conclusion. And the important point in this whole move is that Anselm’s argument is not that it is incorrect, but that it is not ontological. And it is indeed an argument based on an assumption. It is not an argument without assumptions, because what is the power of an argument without assumptions? An argument without assumptions forces all of us to accept the conclusion, because you assumed nothing, so you cannot argue with it. If I am right, then the conclusion is forced on all of us because it depends on no assumption that I make. That is what he tried to do. Meaning, he tried to construct an argument that depends on no assumption, and therefore everyone must accept it. In that he failed, because there is an assumption here. Still, someone can come and say, look, this assumption sounds reasonable to me. To such a person Anselm really can prove that there is a God. Fine? So it is much subtler than the usual mockery of this whole “perfect, not perfect, therefore he exists” business. People always laugh without really formulating where the problem is. Very few people really do the work in order to discuss this seriously. Usually they mock, like Dawkins and all the professional atheists and so on. They are simply babbling; they do not understand what they are talking about. It is true that this argument is an argument whose conclusion I personally would not be convinced by, but I am far from dismissing it. I mean, its precision is amazing. I do not think you can conceive of God as existing if you think he does not exist. And he needs that assumption for his move. Meaning, when I bring this painting before my eyes and see it as existing, that is only because it really exists before my eyes. That is exactly the difference. Meaning, if I imagine this painting, I know it does not exist. Meaning, the ability to conceive of it as existing is only in a world where it really does exist. Meaning, if you assume it exists, then of course it can be conceived as existing, and the conclusion is that it exists—and you have begged the question and done nothing. But if the atheist does not assume that it exists, then why do you think he can conceive of it as existing? By the way, I can make this harder for you—I can make it even harder. I can—and it is also doubtful whether he can conceive of it as existing; that doubt will always accompany you. But I can make it harder. Suppose I take you into a neuroscience lab now and stimulate this neuron that marks for you the thing as existing—suppose I stimulate it artificially with electricity. This neuron that determines whether what I am seeing is imagination or something real, and I stimulate it—then the person really will think it exists, right? Yes, of course, that can easily be done. Things like that have already been done, thousands of experiments have been done. So you conceive of it—right, exactly? And that is the whole catch in Anselm’s argument, that he distinguishes among three things, not as everyone thinks. Now understand: if that is so, then I actually can conceive of something as existing even if it does not exist—if I stimulate that neuron, right? So what… exactly. The question is whether such a thing is called conceiving it. That is not called conceiving it; I manipulated you. Therefore I think that “conceiving,” in the sense he is talking about, has to be something I do deliberately. Not manipulation, but I really conceive it, not that I stimulate a neuron. All right? But understand, it is very tricky. Because now this addition I just made makes it even harder, and actually strengthens Anselm’s argument even more. Why assume that it cannot be conceived? There—stimulate the neuron and you have conceived it, even though you are an atheist. And if so, then the argument is completely fine. Right? Again, it has an assumption. But now the assumption is a correct assumption, and therefore I also accept the conclusion. It is not that it has no assumption.

[Speaker E] What is the reason for distinguishing between what I perceive as existing and what exists? Oh, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is a correct principle, you are right. Because now you have raised the question of skepticism, yes or no. Because the moment—maybe this strengthens the manipulation claim. That is, why are manipulations not considered conceiving something? Because after all the whole assumption is that I do not distinguish between conceiving something and making a claim about reality, if I am not a skeptic. Right? If in my mind I reached the conclusion that God exists, then as far as I am concerned he exists. I am not troubled by skeptical questions. But if it is possible, by stimulating neurons, to conceive the existence of things that do not really exist, then I cannot ignore the skeptical concern. Then the fact that I reached the conclusion that he exists does not mean that he really exists. And then the problem arises, right? Fine, I proved to you that you believe, but the fact that you believe does not mean that he really exists. All right? So it is tricky. At least this much, I think you have to admit: it is not simple. Okay. You can try to conceive of the fact that I’ve driven you crazy.

Faith and Its Meaning – Lesson 7

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

Presentation of Anselm’s text and its internal line of argument

The role of prayer, prior belief, and begging the question

The distinction between ad hominem and substantive criticism

Definition, tradition, and the claim that definitions are not arbitrary

Conceptualization, multiple intelligences, and the example of convex shapes

The Anselmian argument as an argument in the mind, not the simplistic version

The distinction between “existing in the mind” and “understanding that it exists”

The skeptical critique and the claim about what is “enough” to speak about existence

The point of failure: the assumption that one can conceive of something as existing without it existing

The claim that the move is not ontological in Kant’s strong sense

Full Transcript

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Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

Presentation of Anselm’s text and its internal line of argument

The role of prayer, prior belief, and begging the question

The distinction between ad hominem and substantive criticism

Definition, tradition, and the claim that definitions are not arbitrary

Conceptualization, multiple intelligences, and the example of convex shapes

The Anselmian argument as an argument in the mind, not the simplistic version

The distinction between “existing in the mind” and “understanding that it exists”

The skeptical critique and the claim about what is “enough” to speak about existence

The point of failure: the assumption that one can conceive of something as existing without it existing

The claim that the move is not ontological in Kant’s strong sense

Full Transcript

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