Faith, Doubt, and Certainty – Lesson 2

Table of Contents

• [0:08] The adolescent rebellion and childish dogmatism
• [1:32] The response of a skeptical adult to the teenager’s questions
• [2:45] A dialogue of the deaf and the need to educate toward the stage of maturity
• [4:16] The third stage – synthetic maturity
• [6:29] Synthetic maturity – integrated, non-deductive thinking
• [9:27] The role of non-deductive tools in the process of cognition
• [13:47] The physico-theological proof and Kant’s critique
• [25:26] A priori synthesis and trust in the senses
• [31:08] The sign in Scotland and non-random intuition
• [33:04] Belief in one’s eyes versus a theological argument
• [34:49] The problem of induction and physical examples
• [39:10] Actualism versus informativism in the natural sciences
• [44:14] Scientific proof for informativism and the probability of the straight line
• [52:53] The sorites paradox and the paradox of the bald man
• [58:37] The conception of belief as a tool of proof and as the basis of science
• [??:??] The difference between emotion and intuition and the definition of belief (NONE)

Summary

General overview

The text presents a model of intellectual maturation in which the rationalist teenager demands deductive proofs and interprets any unproven acceptance as a regression to childish dogmatism, while the non-skeptical adult offers a third possibility: a kind of rationality that is not rationalistic. It develops a distinction between analytic thinking and synthetic thinking, and argues that belief is not absolute certainty but a degree of compulsion and plausibility based on intuition and non-deductive tools such as induction and analogy. Through an argument by Richard Taylor about trust in the tools of cognition, and then through the problem of induction and the debate between actualism and informativism, it argues that all human knowledge rests on non-absolute trust in the tools of cognition, and that an education that demands certainty as the test of belief creates a false crisis in people who think they do not believe.

Adolescent rebellion, dogmatism, and non-skeptical maturity

The teenager attacks the adult from within a biographical experience of moving from a dogmatic childhood to a rationalist position willing to accept only things that are proven, and he does not recognize the stage of maturity, so he interprets the adult who says that “not everything needs proof” as reverting to dogmatism. The non-skeptical adult is seen by the teenager as someone who has given up and retreated, and so their conversation becomes a dialogue of the deaf that tends not to succeed during adolescence, but is still worthwhile as long-term education that helps guide a person toward a constructive position. The skeptical critique argues that there really is no “third stage,” because acceptable and proven are synonymous terms, and therefore acceptance without proof is simply dogmatism.

Rational but not rationalistic: synthetic maturity

The text places at the center of the debate the question whether it is possible to create a third state that is neither childish dogmatism nor Western enlightened rationalism, but something rational that is not rationalistic. It distinguishes between rationalistic thinking as seeing logic as the whole story, and rationalism as working with logic as one tool among others. Non-skeptical maturity is presented as “synthetic maturity,” which accepts non-analytic claims as valid, using logic but not as the exclusive instrument, and placing additional tools in the toolbox beyond deduction.

Richard Taylor’s argument: Scotland, the eyes, and trust in the tools of cognition

Richard Taylor’s argument tells of a train passenger who sees a sign made of stones saying “Welcome to Scotland,” and argues that if he assumes the arrangement is random, then he has no indication that he is in Scotland, and so he cannot both assume randomness and pack his suitcase on the basis of the sign. The parable is applied to the tools of cognition, and especially to vision: if the complex structure of the eye was formed through a blind and random process, then there is no way to justify trust in what the eyes report, because all indications pass through that same system, which has no external verification. The text sharpens the point by saying that the stronger claim is that trust in the senses, and perhaps also in reason, rests on the assumption that the tools of cognition are not arbitrary, because if they are a blind product then it is impossible to believe anything they yield.

Kant, the physico-theological proof, and Taylor’s reversal

Kant divides the proofs for the existence of God into three types, and the discussion here focuses on the physico-theological proof based on the complexity and purposiveness of the world, as found among medieval authorities (Rishonim) such as Duties of the Heart, although the text says that Kant rejects these proofs and that the speaker does not accept his rejection. The main objection to the physico-theological proof says that complexity and purposiveness can arise by chance, given an enormous number of attempts across time and space. Taylor accepts, for the sake of discussion, the possibility of randomness, but asks a different question: even if there was one successful trial, who says you are living in that one, and therefore you have no way of knowing that your tools of cognition are reliable if you attribute their emergence to chance.

The skeptical way out and what the argument actually proves

The text states that there is no answer to Taylor’s argument except a consistent skeptical position that says, “I really don’t know,” and does not trust the senses or the tools of thought, and this part is presented as the built-in price of the argument’s advantage. It claims that such a person cannot be forced, and whether he is sincere is a matter of “the heart knows its own bitterness.” It formulates the point by saying that the argument does not prove that God exists, but proves that a person who believes in his own tools of cognition in fact already holds a belief in some directing factor, so this is more a proof that exposes an existing belief than one that converts atheists.

Philosophy and theology, and logic as exposure of assumptions

The text brings a distinction the speaker heard between philosophy and theology, according to which philosophy takes assumptions and derives conclusions from them, while theology takes conclusions and derives the assumptions from them, and it illustrates this with Anselm, who opens the ontological argument with prayer. It argues that this distinction is an illusion, in the sense that the philosopher too is a theologian, because logical proofs do not add information but only reveal that what was in the conclusion was already implicitly contained in the assumptions, as in the example “Socrates is mortal.” The tools that advance genuinely new knowledge are non-deductive tools, and that is where the question of justification is focused.

The problem of induction: infinite lines, actualism, and informativism

The text presents the problem of induction through the example of measurements that lead to drawing a straight line as a general law, while in fact infinitely many curves can fit the same finite set of points, and therefore there is no proof that the simple straight line is the correct one. It formulates a “good but wrong” answer according to which we choose the simple line because it is convenient to work with, and then the law is not a claim about the world but about us; this it calls actualism, following Scheffler, according to which only what is actual in the experiment is information, and every generalization is merely convenient organization. Opposed to this is informativism, which claims that the simple line contains real information about the world, even though scientific practice is identical in both camps and the tension lies in the interpretation.

An attempt at a scientific decision in favor of informativism

The text argues that the dispute can be decided from within science itself by means of the probability of forward prediction: if there are infinitely many lines that fit four points, then the chance that the next experiment will fall precisely on the straight line is effectively zero according to actualism, but in practice many experiments throughout history do fit theoretical predictions at a rate that is not zero. It clarifies that this is not an absolute mathematical proof but a statistical proof, like every scientific proof, and compares it to the “signs of a fool” in Chagigah, at the beginning of tractate Chagigah, where the accumulation of signs creates a determination. The conclusion is that there is empirical support for the very ability to generalize, and therefore induction and analogy are not merely convenient but carry validity about the world.

Compulsion as a scale: the sorites paradox, intuition versus emotion

The text uses the sorites paradox and the paradox of the bald man to argue that everyday concepts are not binary yes/no categories but graded ones, and therefore one must give up the assumption that adding one unit does not change the status, and instead formulate a gradual transition of “more of a heap.” It applies this to the compelling force of claims, so that there is no division of “proof or dogmatism,” but rather different levels of plausibility that allow trust even without certainty. It distinguishes between emotion and intuition, and defines intuition as something plausible but not certain, a kind of “partial certainty” that is not emotional subjectivism arising from a binary mistake.

Belief as an epistemological foundation and as a factual claim

The text argues that belief is not unique to the religious world but is the foundation of all thinking, knowledge, and learning, because without trust in the ability to generalize and in the tools of cognition there is no science. It states that the claim “I believe that God exists” is a factual claim that is either true or false, and rejects the statement “if we knew, it wouldn’t be belief” as nonsense, explaining that what people really mean is the absence of absolute proof accepted by everyone. It presents belief as a spiritual intuition that is sometimes exposed by logical arguments that reveal content that was already “in the safe,” and it parallels this to belief in induction and in analogy.

Educational implication: the crisis of “I don’t believe” and the fear of doubt

The text describes encounters with people who are outwardly religious but confess that they do not believe, and attributes this to the mistaken expectation that belief must be absolute and logically certain. It argues that the fear of points of doubt is unjustified, and that there is no completely certain human knowledge, including vision and the law of gravity, and therefore doubt is not a reason to abandon belief but part of the structure of human cognition. It emphasizes that on the one hand belief should not be tied to certainty, and on the other hand one should not infer that everything that is not certain is dogmatism; rather, one should accept a spectrum of levels of plausibility in which different intuitions receive different degrees of certainty. It concludes that the absence of proof is not a sufficient reason to reject a claim, because every proof rests on assumptions in which our belief is ultimately based on intuition, and logic and deduction only clarify information already known and do not add new information.

Okay. A lot of the questions we talked about during the break—I said we’d get to them now—so now I’m just continuing. Basically, let’s go back for a moment to this example of the adolescent child, or of an adolescent civilization. When the teenager attacks the adult—right, this is the rebellion of youth, he attacks the adult—he assumes something drawn from his own biography. Meaning, he already went through the stage of childhood, and he knows what dogmatism is. He knows that state in which people accept something because it’s true because that’s what they say, because the parents say so, because society says so, and so on. He has already gone through that earlier stage that he himself was in, and now he’s in adolescent rebellion, okay? So he knows that. But the stage of adulthood he doesn’t know, because he hasn’t been there yet. There are some who know it even when they’re there, because that’s how they go through a second, skeptical adolescence. But if now there’s an adult of this type, the non-skeptical type, who answers the teenager, what does he actually answer him? Not everything needs proof. Right? That’s what he’ll answer. But the teenager is, of course, situated inside the analytical position—I call it his logical position, his rationalistic position—which says that he is willing to accept only proven things. How does he interpret the adult standing opposite him? As a return to dogmatism. Right? Meaning, he interprets the adult as returning to dogmatism. Basically, you just accept things because everyone says so; after all, you have no proof. So he’s basically saying this is regression to the womb, as they say—he’s going back to childhood. Why? Because he doesn’t know this third stage yet; he hasn’t gone through it. It’s something that requires a certain maturation. As long as you haven’t gone through it, you don’t know it, so you don’t understand what is really standing before you. And therefore, when the teenager stands before this adult, he’s convinced that he’s right. He’s convinced that this adult simply gave up and retreated back into childish dogmatism. He doesn’t accept things—he accepts things even without proof. Fine, but I’ll be truly rational; I won’t be like him. Therefore this discourse is a bit of a dialogue of the deaf. It’s still worth having, I think, because it helps a person, when he reaches that stage, to orient himself in the constructive direction, the stage of adulthood. But usually this discourse won’t succeed during the youth stage. I think we all know these phenomena, and some of you are even in them—who knows? After all, not everyone goes through the same stages. And so, basically, this discourse is what’s called education in this context; it has a role whose purpose is long-term. Don’t expect to achieve results now. It won’t work. It won’t work, and that’s perfectly fine that it doesn’t work. Meaning, there’s no need to panic over it, because it’s a stage a person has to pass through in order to reach the third stage. Except that really, this teenager, when he looks at the adult, identifies him with the dogmatism of the child. Maybe he’s actually right. What really is the difference? After all, that same person who gave up the demand for proofs, who is willing to accept things even though they haven’t been proven for him—hasn’t he really gone back to the dogmatic period, no? What’s the difference? He accepts things without proof. So why am I saying this is a third stage, and only the teenager doesn’t know it yet? He knows it very well; it’s the same stage he already went through. That is actually the real skeptical criticism, the truly skeptical criticism. That’s what, for example, the adults who choose the skeptical route think, because they say the second route is really just a return to childhood—it’s not truly a third stage, there is no such stage. Why? Because they remain inside the template according to which acceptable and proven are synonymous. Meaning, only a proven thing is acceptable. So you choose to accept things that aren’t proven—fine, then you simply accept things for no reason because you’re dogmatic, and that’s all. Basically, the sting, or the center of the discussion, the focus of the debate, is really whether it’s possible to create a third state, one that is not childish dogmatism but also not the enlightened rationalism of the Enlightenment, the Western one. Something that is rational but not rationalistic. As they say, what’s the difference between a non-Jew and an absolute non-Jew? An absolute non-Jew is only a Jew. Have you ever heard anyone described as a non-Jew, and they say about him that he’s an absolute non-Jew? When people say about someone that he’s an absolute non-Jew, they say it only about a Jew. Meaning that when people say about someone that he’s a rationalist, usually he has rationality. Meaning, rationality and rationalism are not the same thing. Rationality is seeing reason—or in this case logic—as everything. Rationalism is working with logic, and that’s not the same thing. So in a moment I’ll explain a little more what I mean. But let me tell you—several people already asked me during the break how all this is connected to Judaism and faith. I said, I won’t get to the Talmud or the verses, but I will get to faith. So let me give you an example of a proof for the existence of God that sharpens the points I made earlier, and from it I’ll try to propose the second alternative. The alternative of non-skeptical adulthood. Let’s call this second alternative perhaps synthetic adulthood. If the rationalism of the teenager is analytical thought—analytical meaning logically dissecting, deductive, necessary—science is analytical thinking, and the adult adopts thinking—the non-skeptical adult adopts synthetic thinking. Thinking that is willing to accept things that are not logical, not analytical, as acceptable. That doesn’t mean we don’t use logic. It only means that logic is not the only tool in the toolbox. And deduction is not the only tool in the toolbox. Okay, so here there’s really the following argument. This argument is taken from Richard Taylor, the philosopher Richard Taylor, in his book Metaphysics. And he says this: suppose a person is traveling by train to Scotland, and he doesn’t know the area, he doesn’t know when he’s arrived and when he hasn’t arrived. At some point he sees through the window, on the mountainside, a big sign made of stones that says, “Welcome to Scotland.” So he has one of two options. One option is to start packing his suitcase and get ready to get off. The second option is to say, what are you talking about? Who said we’re in Scotland? Maybe that arrangement of stones was arranged in some random way, or someone just did it for fun, but it has nothing to do with Scotland. One thing he cannot do: he cannot decide that this arrangement of stones is accidental and then start packing his suitcase. That he definitely cannot do, right? If you assume that this arrangement of stones is accidental, then you have no indication whatsoever that you are in fact at the gates of Scotland. Notice, it can be true that you’re in Scotland, but you have no indication of it. If you don’t know the place, and all you have is this stone sign and nothing else, then from this stone sign you cannot infer that you’ve arrived in Scotland if you think it’s something accidental. Okay? I’m not claiming it couldn’t be that we’re really in Scotland—it could be, by chance—but the traveler can’t know that. That’s what I’m claiming. And what is this all about? This is a parable that Taylor brings for a much broader argument. The argument I spoke about earlier regarding the question of how we accumulate information. How we accumulate information. And I said that this is the role of the non-deductive, non-logical, non-mathematical tools. Observation with the eyes, or analogical or inductive inferences—not deduction. If we see something with our eyes, it seems obvious to us that of course it’s true. The questions we spoke about earlier concern only what further conclusions we can infer from it—but this itself, I saw it with my own eyes, so it’s true. Why is it true? This structure of the eye is a very, very complex and very delicate structure. Every small deviation can completely distort what we see. And more than that, a slightly more significant deviation—not much more—could make us see sounds. Meaning, if we here connect the visual center, the eyes, to the auditory center, and the ears to the visual center, then you will simply see sounds and hear sights, and there is no problem with that. It’s just a matter of brain surgery. So therefore, we really have no indication that what we see is truly correct, aside from our trust in the visual system. And now this parable of the stones. In relation to the visual system, we have two ways of relating to it. We can assume it is something created by chance. Some random processes over the years carried out many attempts, many of them just produced nonsense, and in one place there also emerged some kind of system that makes seeing possible. It can happen, once in who knows how many attempts—it could be. And it could be that I claim it was created intentionally. It is a tool meant to help me see, like the sign made of stones is a tool meant to tell me that I’ve arrived in Scotland, to convey information to me. So those are two possible attitudes. But one thing is impossible, just like in the parable: to assume that this thing was created by chance and also believe it. Like the stones. To assume the stone sign was formed by chance and then start packing the suitcase, assuming I’m really in Scotland. If I truly assume it was created by chance—fine, unlikely, but possible. In some very rare situation, it could be that it was created by chance. But if it was created by chance, there is no way to infer information from it, to extract information from it, to know the conclusion that I am in Scotland. Certainly not. You have to sit and wait until the announcer tells you—and I trust the announcer if that too isn’t arbitrary. So also in this context of the eyes: I can assume that this very, very complex and delicate structure came into being through some random process, without any guiding hand. So if that’s the case, there is no way to believe what I see. I can assume it was created by a guiding hand, or in some way whose purpose is to enable me to see, and then I can also extract information from it, accept the information these eyes give me. But I cannot assume the eyes were created randomly and infer the information they give me, accept it as reasonable information. Basically—sorry, this is a bit subtle, let me just finish the picture and then… Basically, the sharper claim here is that all of our trust in the senses—and if you want, what I mentioned earlier, maybe even in reason as well—is based on some assumption that the senses and reason, or our cognitive tools, are not arbitrary and were not produced in some blind process. Because if they were produced in a blind process—maybe—but then I can no longer believe anything they give me. Now I want to sharpen even more what the sting of this claim is. Kant divided the proofs for the existence of God into three kinds. The third kind, the one we’re dealing with here, is what’s called the physico-theological proof. The physico-theological proof is a proof based on the complexity of the world and its purposiveness, that it fits its purposes, enables its purposes, as many medieval authorities write, Duties of the Heart and others. He argues—he argues that all these proofs are invalid. But that’s another discussion; I don’t think he’s right, but that’s another discussion. The main claim raised against the physico-theological proof is basically a claim that says: true, it’s improbable, but it could be chance. Especially if we allow very many trials. If there were very, very many trials over a very, very long time and in many, many places in space, and in one place there also arose—among all of them—life that also has cognitive tools or thought tools, observational tools that are reliable. That means a very small probability, but one divided by that probability is the number of trials needed in order for it to be possible to say that one such case also occurred. Okay? If the probability is ten to the minus one hundred, then ten to the hundred trials are needed in order for it to be reasonable to say there was one such case as well. Now that is basically the standard claim against the physico-theological proof. Against that claim, Richard Taylor builds his argument. And this is the point that’s important to understand here. He basically says, you know what, fine. So it’s something improbable, but sometimes improbable things happen too, especially if we allow many, many trials to occur. So one of them yielded an improbable result. Fine, that can happen. But there’s one thing you can’t do with this even if it happened: you can’t now use these cognitive tools and believe them. His proof operates on a completely different plane from the standard physico-theological proof, even though it sounds very similar. The standard physico-theological proof says: it’s not likely that such a complex world, suited to purposes, came into being by chance. A very good argument in my opinion, but that’s the argument. Others say: no, why? There were many trials; one of them succeeded; that can happen. Taylor says: fine, you know what, for the sake of discussion let’s accept that one of them succeeded. One can happen. Who told you that you are located on the successful one? The correct one? Maybe you are among the unsuccessful trials? The ones in which your eyes do not correctly reflect reality? Maybe there were many trials, and at some time, place, world, I don’t know, there really emerged a creature that also sees and thinks correctly. But who told you that’s you? Notice, that is exactly like the stone sign on the train to Scotland. It doesn’t mean it can’t be you. It could be you. But you can never know it. Just as there: it could be that it really also happened in Scotland. It happened by chance, this sign of stones was arranged by chance, and it also happened by chance in Scotland. That can happen. The claim is not that it can’t happen. That’s the regular physico-theological proof: how can that be? It wasn’t created by chance; obviously we’re in Scotland. That is the parable for the regular physico-theological proof. But he says: no, leave that aside, let’s accept the claim of the opponents. It can happen. Fine, there were many trials, and in some arrangement by chance there emerged such a sign, which was accidentally formed and nowhere else—just in Scotland, by chance, it happened. Fine, one of the places—it can happen, there are many places in the world. Right? Many places, it can happen. But still, who told you that this really gives you… that you are in the successful experiment? If all the information in your possession is only this stone sign—you have no other information—there is no way you can really infer the conclusion that you are in Scotland. Not because it can’t be. Again, that’s the sting. The claim that it can’t be—that belongs to the regular physico-theological argument, which says it’s unlikely, it can’t be. No, it can be. I’m asking: how do you know that you are in the successful experiment? That’s the question. A completely different question. Now against this claim there is no answer except one. Right, I really don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t believe my eyes or my tools of thought, or whatever else you want. I’ll continue living this way, I’ll continue living this way, so I function this way, but I don’t know. And that is a consistent claim, and that’s perfectly fine. Whoever makes that claim is consistent. That is exactly the difference—that’s the weakness of this proof. The weakness of this proof is that it cannot be attacked with the standard attack that many trials can also yield an improbable result. That is the advantage of this proof. But you know, there’s a law of conservation of advantages and disadvantages. So if there is such a strong advantage, there must be a corresponding disadvantage, and its remedy comes with it. What is the disadvantage? The disadvantage is that here you have the skeptical escape route, which says: fine, indeed, I really don’t believe my senses because this was created by chance. I assume it was created by chance, and I really don’t believe them. I live this way because I’m used to living this way, I have some conditioned reflexes. Fine, what does it matter? I don’t really believe. Correct, you’re right, there’s no need to believe. If someone gives that answer, there’s nothing to say to him. In the language of Richard Taylor, there’s nothing to say to him. Here of course the question that arises is whether he is sincere when he makes that claim, but that is for the heart to know its own bitterness. I don’t think you can claim about a person that he isn’t sincere. That’s something a person has to decide for himself, assuming we’re not arguing merely in order to win, but rather using argument or debate in order to expose what is hidden in the safe inside us. So first of all, a person has to decide for himself whether he believes his senses, his thinking, or whether he doesn’t believe. If he believes, then it cannot be that it is an accidental product. In his view. Maybe it is an accidental product, but he assumes it isn’t. Meaning, I’m not proving to him that this is the truth. I’m proving to him that this is what he thinks. When he believes his senses, that is not proof that God exists, because he may be mistaken in believing his senses. Who said God exists? No, I’m only proving to him that he believes God exists. That’s all. Maybe he’s mistaken; I don’t know. But you believe that God exists. In contrast to the physico-theological proof, which tries to convert atheists, this proof cannot convert atheists. It can reveal to you that you believe even though you weren’t aware of it, that is, expose to you information hidden inside your safe that you were not aware of, like geometric information. Okay, that’s all. Once I heard a definition of the difference between theology and philosophy: philosophy takes premises and derives conclusions from them, and theology takes conclusions and derives premises from them. Theologians usually take the existence of God and derive from it premises that will later lead back to the existence of God. The most striking example was a Christian philosopher named Anselm, who opens his famous proof, the ontological argument for the existence of God, with a prayer to God to help him find his way to Him. Meaning, that may be the strongest expression of this point. So the theologian basically assumes conclusions and tries to derive premises that lead to those conclusions, while the philosopher assumes premises and tries to derive conclusions from those premises. But that’s an illusion; the philosopher too is a theologian. Not only is the theologian a philosopher, but also the… sorry, regarding the comparison—those stones, aside from the stones there is no sensation or reason to think they came about that way by chance. By contrast, the person who says: I’m the sophisticated one who sees correctly, hears correctly—here there are reasons. Maybe he’s mistaken, but he has reasons. He lives life and feels that it works. But the question is about that feeling—that maybe it’s chance, fine, but he has reasons—not psychological reasons, but rational ones. Because those senses are what we’re talking about. How do you know those senses are correct? Because I have sensations. Fine, but a schizophrenic also has sensations. No, he has no sensation at all. Why does he feel the stones are saying hello to him? He has nothing except the stones. If there is success according to your system—that’s what I’m asking. But that success is an indication for your method, for the method being used. The using system—you can present that as a minus. For example, if vision had given feedback. The fact that it fits, then it’s a sign that apparently vision is… But fine, leave that aside—take all our senses, or all our cognition. Now I will ask about that. All our cognition is some terribly complex structure. We have no indication apart from this cognitive system, because all our indications from the world come only through the mediation of that system. So we have no external indication. No absolute proof and nothing—nothing. No proof. That’s exactly what you said earlier. Because I’m asking the question about your entire cognitive system. In my opinion there’s no reason not to believe. Who believes in the cognition of the end? Because I have no reason not to believe. Not true. There’s no reason anyone believes the ending is good, right? There too you have no reason. What’s the reason? These reasons are always tailored in advance. In the practical sense of receiving a good picture. To receive according to what suits him. No, what’s pleasant to you is not what’s pleasant, and what’s true is not the same thing. Right? No, no proof. No proof of anything. Is what’s pleasant automatically true? It’s pleasant to me that I drove to the beach. So does that mean the Holy One, blessed be He, intended for me to drive to the beach? What’s the connection? What’s the connection between what’s pleasant and what’s true? Maybe if it’s not proof, at least an option? No. Again. If you choose the claim, the option, that says: I really don’t believe my sight, but I live this way because I’m used to it and because it’s fine and pleasant for me—what you said earlier—that’s the second option you mentioned, and that’s perfectly fine. The guy smashing the suitcase on the train can say the same thing. But my sight wasn’t created by chance because it serves me correctly. Never mind why. And if he gets off the train in Scotland there, then he’ll tell me, this is very nice, therefore I smash the suitcase—I really like smashing suitcases. But that’s basically the physics resulting from what I created here. But do you understand? Now everything you created and saw and all of it here. And how do you see? You see with your eyes, your ears, your sensation. But that is exactly what I’m asking about. How do you understand anything outside your system of sensation and cognition? And if you put the whole system into question—not a small question, the whole system—then that is exactly what I’m asking here. This is actually perhaps the most fundamental philosophical problem of epistemology: the synthetic a priori judgment, what Kant calls it. How can we actually believe the information we accumulate? I was talking about the distinction between a philosophical argument and a theological argument. So I’ll use that incorrect distinction just to sharpen the point I want to sharpen here. The physico-theological proof is a philosophical argument. It is a philosophical argument because it takes a person who does not believe and tries to move him, to prove to him, to bring him to a state where he will believe. So it takes someone, uses premises, and leads him to a new conclusion. Okay? Taylor’s proof can be called a theological proof. Why? Because it takes someone and shows him that the conclusion—that he believes—was already there from the outset. It does not bring him to belief; rather, it shows him that he is of course already a believer. But if you remember everything I said in the previous class, every logical proof is like that. Take that logical proof that Socrates is mortal. What does that proof actually do? It shows us that we in fact already know that Socrates is… It doesn’t show us that Socrates really is mortal. What does it show us? That if we know these two premises, then implicitly we already know this as well. It didn’t prove to us that Socrates is mortal; rather, it proved to us that we think so. That’s what it proved. Which means that logic is a theological tool, not a philosophical one in the previous sense. When we use logic, it is always begging the question. So what are those tools that are the philosophical tools? The tools with which one can move forward, accumulate new information—not discover information that is already inside my safe, that was already there beforehand and I simply wasn’t aware of it? Those are the non-logical tools. The tools that do not beg the question. The tools that add new information. And about them I ask: how do I know they are correct? The same question one can ask about vision one can ask about analogy, induction, or any other non-deductive form of inference. Suppose Taylor assumed that the story is some successful experiment or something like that. So you proved to me there’s a ninety-nine percent chance that God exists, and one percent that this is in some successful experiment. A proof in which ninety-nine percent… No, no proof. Not proof that God exists. I’m proving that you think God exists with ninety-nine percent, plus or minus one percent. That’s the yes that I answered at the beginning of the first class regarding this doubt that must continue to accompany the whole issue. I’ll get to that. Okay, so here there’s a different kind of proof. What did he call it? A proof by another route. It is going to use the tools you brought me, of course, of some random experiment, but that does not mean that the conclusion that came out is really a correct conclusion. Maybe it’s just imagination, maybe someone wanted to place this sign in Scotland in order to announce Scotland or to mislead. No, that’s what I said earlier. I said earlier there are two ways to understand saying that this sign doesn’t give me information, not one. One possibility is that it happened by chance; a second possibility is that someone did it, but not in order to convey information about Scotland, or he did mean to convey something but lied. It doesn’t matter. For me I do not distinguish between those two possibilities. I ask what? No, it’s simply the two possibilities. The claim that I cannot trust this sign—that is Taylor’s claim. This is the physico-theological proof, this is Taylor’s proof. It addresses a skeptical person. I’m talking about the one packing the suitcase. The one packing the suitcase—I’m talking with him, he is skeptical. He does not believe. He says to me, fine, even if he packs the suitcase and says to me that this just happened, I’m still not talking. I’m speaking with the one who packs the suitcase because he inferred the conclusion that… The question is whether he can do that under the assumption that this is accidental, or an artwork, or something like that. I’m asking questions. Okay? Let’s expand this parable one more step forward. Let’s imagine, if he accepts the eyes as a device that delivers information to him, not as a work of art. But no—I said the process by which eyes came into being is apparently not a blind process, in my view. Otherwise, why would I believe it? Whoever created it—call Him God, call Him Mount Sinai for that matter—the point is that there is some hand that created it. That is the divine concept Maimonides is speaking about here. Okay? Look, now in… yes? Where does faith in the eyes suddenly come in? What? Where does the faith… ah, to that we’ll now get, perfectly fine. So look, here in fact we return once more to the point where we were earlier. In practice, that same person who believes his eyes, like the one packing the suitcase, can have someone sitting opposite him who says: tell me, why are you packing the suitcase—have you gone crazy? He says to him: what do you mean? It says “Welcome to Scotland.” The other says to him, “So it says”—fine, so it says, so what? It happened by chance. What is the dispute here really about? The dispute here is over whether I can accept my intuitions that tell me this sign was not formed by chance. Because after all, the one packing the suitcase also assumes that this sign means something, right? Where does he get that assumption? Why? On what basis? I understand that this is what he assumes, but why? On what basis does he assume it? After all, all he has is the sign itself; he wasn’t here when they built the sign. So how does he know? So here we are indeed supposed to return to the physico-theological argument, which says that such a sign does not come into being by chance. But here comes Jonathan Miller’s claim—yes, if so, maybe it’s an artwork? Maybe it’s simply something created not really in order to convey information? And look, there’s something here that doesn’t fully get us out of the mess. Because we—and this parallels exactly what I said before, that same form of synthetic maturation I spoke about earlier. That adult claims: I’m not like the dogmatic child. I believe things because I have an intuition that they are true, even though I don’t have clear proof. So the teenager sitting opposite him in the carriage says to him, right—he says, fine, you’re just giving childish dogmatism another name. After all, you have no proof whatsoever. Why do you believe it? So in fact we still haven’t solved the problem, because all we’ve done here is maybe show a person that structurally he believes. But now, when he suddenly encounters the contents of his safe, he asks himself, wait a second—but really, why? After all, I don’t really have justification for it. And then he stops believing his eyes. Do you understand? Meaning, he believes his eyes, and then by a theological argument I prove to him that if he believes his eyes, that already implicitly includes belief—yes—in some sort of directing factor. And then when he understands this, he says: ah, you’re right, indeed—so I don’t believe my eyes. Now he goes back, because now we can no longer proceed with theology; we have to proceed with philosophy. Because how do I know that this information is correct? You showed me that this information is in my safe, but who said it’s true? Maybe it isn’t true? So here I’ll go back perhaps to the example from metaphysics to show—and this perhaps returns to the argument you presented earlier, though I’ll present it a bit differently. Look, in philosophy of science one of the most nagging problems—perhaps the most nagging one, you could say—is the problem of induction, which began from Hume until our day and has not found a satisfactory solution. And this is the following problem. I observed several phenomena directly, and from these particular phenomena I infer a general conclusion. Induction, from the particular to the general. And the question is: what justifies this? It’s not a proof. Induction is not necessity. Who says the sun will rise tomorrow? Let’s formulate this more systematically. So I’ll say this: suppose we measured a relation between two variables. Okay, it doesn’t matter now—say force and acceleration, fine? Newton’s second law. We got these results. We took four measurements and got these results. Now we ask ourselves: what is the general law? What line? So what do you say? No one here will say anything else, right? A straight line. The physicist draws a line—beautifully neat. Then the one sitting opposite him at the stern bench in Scotland says: why not this line? And that line too explains all the experimental results. And this? And this? How many such lines are there? Infinity, right? Infinity not even countable. A huge infinity. So who says the straight line is the correct one? All our laws in physics are built on considerations of this kind. We make generalizations from particular cases; we construct the general law, which metaphorically is drawing a line. Okay? But in fact for every finite or discrete number of experiments there can be infinitely many lines that fit them, that suit these particular cases as a general law. So why do we always choose the straight line, or the simple line, or whatever it may be? Right? The answer is of course: it’s the simple line. And then they ask: “simple” belongs to what’s pleasant, not to what’s true. Right? “Simple” is nice—but why assume that the simple is also the true? There are two answers to this. One answer—and it’s not an answer. The answer that isn’t an answer is the first one. One answer is that it really isn’t the true line. Rather, why make a complicated line if I have a simple theory? If this is the simplest theory and it explains all the facts in my possession, then there’s no reason in the world to make a complicated line—hard to work with, pointless. If I have a simple line, then I use the simple line. Notice that according to this claim, this is a good answer—it’s not correct, but it’s good. Because this answer basically says that the straight line is not a claim about the world; it is a claim about us. Let the creature from dimension minus thirty-three come—he thinks precisely that line looks much simpler. And he has lines that are much, much simpler if you like, but to him that line is simpler. Fine, you use your simple line, we’ll use ours, and we’ll part as friends. Right? Because the line is not a claim about the world; it is the means by which we arrange the facts in the way most convenient for us. Each person, according to the shape of his closet, chooses to arrange the facts there—the books or whatever you like. He has a closet of another shape—good health to him. That is one claim. Let’s call it—they call it—what Scheffler called actualism. Actualism is simply because only the actual is something I’m willing to accept. The actual is what I saw in the experiment—the four points. Anything that was not actually present before my eyes is not a claim about the world. It’s interpretation, aesthetic considerations of one kind or another; it is not a scientific claim. That is called actualism. Opposed to actualism comes informativism. These are his terms. Informativism means that, in my opinion, the straight line contains information about the world. I claim that the straight line is a true claim about the world, not about me. It is a true claim. But then of course the one on the opposite bench asks you: on what basis do you assume that? Because it’s simple—so what if it’s simple? Simplicity is a reason to use it as a device. That’s why actualism too draws the straight line, because it’s the simplest, the most convenient. But you also claim it’s true. So on what basis? After all, all you have are these four points, and through them infinitely many shapes can pass. So on what basis do you decide this is true? That is actually an illustration of the problem of induction. When we make a generalization on the basis of particulars and create a general law, we always, as it were, sin, because there is a choice here of one option out of infinitely many options, and therefore if we don’t want to be sinners, then we should treat this line as some statement about us, not a statement about the world. This is the simplest way, from our point of view, to organize the changing information, and therefore we use it. There is no reason to make something complicated when it can be done simply. But that truly says nothing about the world itself. So how do the informativists and actualists describe the scientific process? In exactly the same way. There is no difference between them in scientific practice, in how science works. We do an experiment—say if the next experiment falls here, great, we’ll continue using the straight line, right? In both cases we’ll continue using the straight line, both actualism and informativism, each for its own reasons. This one because it’s convenient, and that one because he thinks the simple is also the true. But if suddenly something falls here, then the actualist too will say: okay, now bring me another line, something else, because the previous device no longer works with the data I have—that’s all. I haven’t discovered anything new about the world, because even before I didn’t know this straight line—it is not knowledge about the world, it was just a tool that was convenient to use. The informativist sees this as a refutation. Earlier I thought this straight line was information about the world, that there is a direct relationship between force and acceleration, and now it turns out that that’s not correct—there is no direct relationship. So I accumulated information, like Maimonides with negative attributes—what you know that He is not, that too is the accumulation of information. So ostensibly, the dispute between actualists and informativists is philosophical only. That’s how people tend to think in the world of philosophy of science, that it cannot be decided. There’s a book by Bechler called Three Copernican Revolutions, where he talks about these two worldviews. Throughout the book he constantly preaches in favor of the informativist thesis and attacks actualism harshly. Throughout the whole book there isn’t one argument against actualism. Only that it bothers him philosophically. There is no argument there, and it’s pretty clear in the philosophical literature—you don’t find arguments. It looks like a purely philosophical question, because we all do the same thing in the laboratory and in drawing conclusions. The question is only how to relate to the general law we reached. Exactly for this reason, no one ever does four experiments, then draws a line and that’s it. Rather, they always do four experiments, draw a straight line, and then do four more experiments to check whether it’s correct, right? Just for example, now we have eight. Okay, and now an ordinary person will explain to us. Come on, draw the straight line before you do the experiments—what difference does it make? Not every straight line you posit is now considered the correct one. Rather, first posit the assumption and then do experiments. Okay. So you’re right—I’ll try to formulate it a little differently, but I think that’s what you’re trying to say. Look, I think there’s a very, very fundamental mistake here. It can be decided scientifically from within; it’s not a philosophical question, it’s a scientific question. And one can prove that informativism is correct—a decisive proof. A very simple proof, which is why it’s strange to me that people haven’t really stood on it. We have four experiments. Okay? What is the number of lines that can fit the four experiments? Infinity, right? What is the probability that the straight line is the correct line? One divided by the number of possible lines, right? If they go to infinity, the probability is zero. Okay? Now I do the next experiment. In the next experiment, what is the probability that it will fall on the straight line according to the actualist? Zero. Right? The actualist, honestly speaking, should say that the straight line is not correct. There are infinitely many lines. The straight line is only one of them. I use it as long as I can—it’s convenient for me. But it’s no truer than the others. I have no information except these four points, right? And from the actualist’s point of view the probability that the next experiment will fall here is zero. So then, how many experiments carried out throughout history succeeded, in the sense that the result fell on the theoretical line? Not all of them, but not zero. Some percentage of them—I don’t know how much and how to measure it, but… yes, if there are infinitely many lines then it’s zero. So the probability that such an experiment will succeed, according to the actualist, is zero. And that is the meaning of looking forward and not backward, as you said earlier. When I stand here, I have four results, and I ask myself what is the probability that the next result will fall here? The actualist, straightforwardly, should say zero. So let’s make a bet. How much are you willing to stake? I’m willing to put in two shekels against a thousand. One to five hundred—that’s tremendous, a tremendous ratio. One to five hundred. Okay? Do you understand that he’ll lose? This is a scientific proof that actualism is nonsense. Atheists. No, this isn’t proof because within the measurements until today we haven’t reached infinity. Correct. But that’s what is called scientific proof in every scientific context: when you show that the probability that this hypothesis will be realized is zero and it is in fact realized, then that is proof. Yes, assuming it’s really zero—but it’s not really zero. Maybe it’s some very small number. In theory it’s one divided by infinity, so it could be… so it could be, but it’s not zero. No, therefore I didn’t say it’s zero. Every scientific proof is not mathematical. This is a statistical proof. You understand that this is a better proof than the proof we have for the law of gravity? Good enough scientifically? I didn’t say it was absolute. Did I say absolute? I said scientific. Nothing scientific is absolute. The law of gravity too is built on generalization, on some statistical consideration saying that the generalization can’t be accidental. Not that the result itself can’t be accidental. And in tractate Hagigah, at the beginning of Hagigah, right? The signs of a fool. He also… also goes out at night, and tears his clothes, and goes—I don’t know—sleeps alone, but there in the cemetery he also goes out alone, so he is a fool. Each one by itself could perhaps be due to something else, but the three things together mean that he is a fool. Meaning, we have here a very clear scientific proof that our generalizations based on simplicity are correct. Not that they are a convenient tool for use, but that they are correct. Because if this were only a tool that is convenient to use—and here I return to my earlier claim—then the fact that it works is not merely that it’s pleasant for me. That’s why I didn’t agree with the wording, although I assume that’s what you meant. Meaning, rather, the fact that it works means that something happened here that is a statistical miracle. Because if my cognitive tools are built in a blind way, and my trust in those cognitive tools is merely arbitrary trust because it’s pleasant for me this way or because I got used to it or something like that—there is no reason in the world that the experiment I do tomorrow morning in the laboratory should correspond to what came out of my generalizing tools. But in fact it happens. It doesn’t happen in one hundred percent of cases, of course; there are many experiments that fail. But it doesn’t happen in zero percent of cases. It happens in some tens of percent; I don’t know how to measure it. Okay. So what does this actually mean? One more second—what does this actually mean? Why did I bring this? It basically means that our ability to make analogy or induction is an ability for which we have confirmation. It’s not just that we got used to it. Usually the feeling—what does the person whom I confront with Taylor’s proof answer me? Why do you believe your senses? I got used to it and it’s convenient for me, but truthfully it isn’t really correct—you don’t believe them. It doesn’t really reflect, if you’re not consistent with yourself, it doesn’t really reflect what’s happening in the world. I’m used to it, it’s convenient for me to believe it, and that’s all, and I really don’t believe. Yes. What is he actually saying? That tomorrow morning, if he sees—it’s as though he should be surprised. That’s really what ought to have been, right? Or if the next experiment also falls in line with the conclusion from the previous experiments, that’s a statistical miracle. None of us is surprised when he sees the sun tomorrow morning. You can say fine, that too is something scientific, I don’t know. But in the end there’s something here that is not proof in the logical sense, but it is proof at a super-scientific level. It is no less correct than any scientific law. It is much more correct than any scientific law. And for the simple reason that all our trust in scientific laws is based on this proof. So it cannot be less correct than the correctness of scientific and geometric laws. So in practice—I just want to clarify what I wanted to say from here. I started from the question of how an alternative adulthood can exist. How can there be a stance that is not the dogmatism of the child, and on the other hand accepts things even if they have no proof—willing to accept things even if they have no proof—things not arrived at by deduction but by analogy or induction, by non-necessary inferential tools. What’s called accepting things without proof. Accepting things without proof—what, that flying aliens are hovering over the building—that really isn’t even the dogmatism of a child, it’s just foolishness. We are talking about a rationality that does not rely solely on logic, but is still rational. Meaning, we still have means of control for how we infer these conclusions. These means are called analogy and induction. And these means, claims the teenager, the analyst or naïve rationalist—this isn’t proof, it’s worth nothing, just arbitrariness, a mere statement. You think this frog resembles that frog, so if this one is green then that one is green too. That’s your thought; it isn’t any proof. But if in the end every time I go and see a frog and discover that it really is green—and similarly with the next experiment—then how can you tell me it’s just my convenience and says nothing about the world? So there is something here, some sort of empirical, experiential feedback to our ability to generalize, or to our synthetic ability, to our ability to accept conclusions that are not based on proof in the logical sense, like scientific conclusions. Scientific conclusions are not based on proof, but on generalizations and observations. Therefore what we have here is a proof against—just as there is a proof against actualism—basically a proof against analyticity. Analyticity is that view which says that only the proven is acceptable. And what really stands behind the matter here is what is called the epistemological advantage of something like imagination and intuition and so on. There is a certain feeling—the teenager’s feeling—that either I have a proof for something, or it is unacceptable. There is no middle state. Every middle state is really just dogmatic. Then we arrive at what is called the heap paradox. The heap paradox says the following. Suppose there is one grain of gravel. That’s not a heap, right? If there is a certain number of gravel stones and I add one more gravel stone, that surely does not change the status from non-heap to heap. But a million gravel stones are a heap. Those three assumptions do not fit with one another. Each one sounds reasonable, but they do not fit with one another. Or the baldness paradox. A person who has one hair on his head is bald. A bald person to whom you add one more hair—that does not change the status of his baldness. But a person with a million hairs on his head is not bald. Again, these three assumptions do not fit with one another. Since we don’t have time, I’ll just tell you the solution. The solution is: one of them has to be given up. And of course we have to give up the second one, that adding one does not change the status. But notice how to give it up—it’s much subtler. It is not correct to say that adding one stone turns you from non-heap into heap. That expression throws out the baby with the bathwater. Rather, the expression has to be subtler: adding one gravel stone turns you from one degree of heap-ness to a slightly more heap-like state. Meaning, heap or non-heap is not correctly examined in terms of yes or no, of zero or one. There are different levels of heap-ness here. One gravel stone is almost not a heap at all. Two is already a little more heap-like. Three, even more heap-like. Ten is already quite a heap. Fifteen is very heap-like. And one hundred is really a heap, completely a heap—and add whatever words you want. It doesn’t matter; these are different degrees of heap-ness. And therefore the assumption we need to give up is that everyday concepts are judged in binary terms of yes or no. No everyday concept is judged in binary values—not even one or zero. Every everyday concept can be subjected to this attack of the heap paradox. Only mathematical concepts are different. The concept of table, bird, cloud, democracy—whatever you want—every everyday concept should not be judged in terms of yes or no. And one can always formulate the heap paradox about it. The same is true of acceptability. The fact that a certain statement is acceptable, a certain claim is acceptable—that’s not either one or zero. It’s not either I have a proof or it’s dogmatic. That is the art of the adolescent—or of the adult, sorry, the mature person. The mature person understands that acceptability too is not something that is zero or one. That’s what the teenager still doesn’t understand. The teenager attacks you and says: look, if it’s not one, then if it’s not one, that’s it, it’s dogmatic. What is the answer? The postmodern adolescent says, fine, then indeed not—nothing is—and everything is arbitrary. The synthetic adolescent says, what are you talking about? Acceptability too is not judged in terms of one or zero. In my opinion this is very reasonable, this is fairly reasonable, this is really reasonable, this is unreasonable—and there are different levels. And those levels are levels that still allow one to believe in a claim, exactly as we saw here. Here too not all experiments succeed. I draw the straight line; it is not true that throughout scientific history all experiments fell exactly where I predicted they would fall. Absolutely not. Otherwise I would have known all of science already from the days of Aristotle. Things change. There are experiments that fail. The experiments that fail are the experiments that teach us the most. More than the experiments that succeed. From the experiments that fail we understand something we didn’t understand before. Like losing an argument. You gain from an argument only when you lose. Because the one who won the argument—what he knew before turned out to be correct, so what did he gain from the argument? We gain from an argument only when it turns out you were wrong, and then you learned something new. So here too it’s the same thing. This art of giving up on binarity, on zero or one, seems to me connected to another distinction between two concepts that perhaps seem close today: emotion and intuition. When I say I feel something, often I mean it in the emotional sense. I feel love, jealousy, things like that. But sometimes I feel that the solution to this equation is eight. That certainly isn’t “feel” in the emotional sense. There I mean something else. I mean: in my opinion the solution is eight. I’m not certain, but it’s acceptable though not certain. I have no proof of it. Let someone come and solve the equation and show that it’s eight—that will make it certain. Right now I have an intuition. What is intuition? Intuition is something that is reasonable but not certain. And it is not an emotion. The classification of intuition as emotion, it seems to me, comes from that same fundamental conception of zero or one. Because if intuition is not one, then if it’s not one, it’s subjective, it’s emotion. No. Intuition is partial certainty. It is non-full certainty—not complete certainty, perhaps—but it is certainty. It is something I am willing—certainty, let’s put it this way—a certain degree of truth, maybe that’s more appropriate, a certain degree of certainty. That is basically what I think is called faith. And therefore I don’t think faith is what uniquely characterizes the religious world, the religious outlook, and the religious sphere in our psyche. Faith is the basis of everything we can think, know, and learn. As we saw earlier, without faith in our ability to apply generalizations, to draw non-deductive inferences, there is no science. And without faith—our ability to reach the conclusion that there is a God—without faith, say, in our cognitive tools, as I presented it earlier, we cannot reach the conclusion that there is a God, but also not the opposite. Without faith that there is a God, we cannot have consistent, justifiable faith in our cognitive tools. Therefore I prove to anyone who believes in his cognitive tools that he implicitly believes, because without that it would be impossible to believe in the cognitive tools. And therefore all this talk of the type: well, if it were something we knew then it wouldn’t be faith; it’s called faith so apparently it’s something else—that is nonsense in my opinion. The statement that there is a God is a factual claim. Either it is true or it is false. And if we know it, then that means we know that the opposite is mistaken, right? Whoever says there is a God is thereby saying that the statement “there is no God” is false, right? It’s not an open question. What do we mean to say when we make such statements? That perhaps we don’t have absolute proof for it. I cannot present here some argument with premises accepted by the whole world whose conclusion is that there is a God. Maybe. Fine? But that is a different claim. It really only means that my conclusion that there is a God is based on some sort of spiritual intuition that I have, and sometimes I use logical arguments that expose it, which is already inside me, and the logical argument helps me expose it through various symptoms, like faith in my cognitive and thinking tools. But with the logical argument I expose the fact that I have some kind of spiritual intuition that there is a God, just as I have some kind of spiritual intuition in my tools of cognition, in my induction. Just as I have faith in my tools of analogy. Just as I have faith in many, many things that are inside the safe within me, things that logic can merely help me discover. Therefore it seems to me that faith is not a word that belongs to the family of knowledge, intuition, intellect, and another family. It is not correct to classify it in the family of emotion and experience. It may be that emotions and experiences are derived from faith and so on, but the distilled claim of faith—“I believe that there is a God”—is a factual claim. And when people attack me and say, wait, who told you? Did you see Him? Then in the same measure I can ask: who told you induction is correct? Did you see it? Rather, what do you do? You infer conclusions from experiments that you performed. I too infer conclusions from experiments that I performed, and I don’t think that’s different. That same primary intuition I’m speaking about, that same trust I have in my basic assumptions—that is what I call faith, nothing else. Now one last remark because time is running out; afterward we can talk during the intermezzo. Here this is already really more on the educational plane. I’ve encountered very, very many people of all sorts and sectors and so on who came to me with some revealing confession and said: listen, truthfully, with all the bekishe, striped coat, hat, and charming sidelocks, I don’t really believe. I don’t believe at all. I met many such people. And with a large part of them I tried to ask: why do you come to the conclusion that you don’t believe? Explain. Try to explain how you diagnosed this inside yourself. They said: look, there’s no proof for anything. You can say it this way, you can say it that way. There is no real proof. Proofs can be questioned. Even the best of them are certainly not proofs in the strict logical sense. And in the strict logical sense, as we said earlier, they do no more than expose something I already assumed in advance. Then I tell them that perhaps there is some mistake here in your expectations or a mistake in your conceptual definitions, because you were educated—maybe I was too, and maybe many of you were too—that faith must be something absolute. Someone here earlier also said ninety-nine percent isn’t… In my view that’s not true. Nothing is absolute, at least not in my world. And here I return to the point with which I opened the first class—the doubt with which I opened the first class. The excessive fear of points of doubt is an unjustified fear. That same point of doubt I have regarding the law of gravity, and when I get on an airplane—who says this will work? Maybe these laws aren’t correct, and next time they won’t work, or things like that—that exists here too. I am a human being, and as a human being I am not omnipotent like the Holy One, blessed be He, and I am subject to my logical and intellectual limitations. And as a human being I have my tools for drawing conclusions, and it may be that my conclusions are mistaken. It has happened in the past that I found my own conclusions to be mistaken. This conclusion too may be mistaken. So what does that mean—that I don’t believe? What are you talking about? It only means that I believe in this the way I believe in the law of gravity, and just as the law of gravity could in principle turn out—though it doesn’t seem likely to me—to be wrong the day after tomorrow, so too this may turn out to be wrong. This feeling that faith must be bound up with certainty—in my opinion not only is it incorrect; it’s obvious that it is incorrect—but it is also destructive. It is destructive because it leads people to the feeling that if it isn’t certain, then I am deceiving myself, then I don’t really believe. And people cannot free themselves from this flawed education that faith must be certainty. Therefore I say: the coin I tried to present in these two classes has two sides. One side is that it is not correct to tie faith to certainty. Like every other piece of knowledge, we have no knowledge that is certain. Not even what I see is certain; it could always be a mirage. But on the other hand, the other side is also incorrect. It is not true that everything I have some doubt about, that is not certain, is just dogmatism to adopt, an emotion. That is exactly the conclusion I want at least to convey here. The states of knowledge that we can—suppose the states of knowledge that you can eat, you didn’t eat, and it will be almost certain. It doesn’t matter. Suppose you got up in the morning, drank coffee, and someone hypnotized you and convinced you that you ate breakfast even though you didn’t—you would be convinced that you ate breakfast. So I ask: do you have knowledge—eating, sleeping, or what we’re saying now—it isn’t certain. Nothing is certain. It isn’t certain. And that you ate lunch yesterday is also not certain. Nothing is absolutely certain. I’m only saying that on the one hand one must be careful not to say it’s certain, because in my opinion that’s simply not true. On the other hand there is some problem—there is always some problem here, to this day there is some problem here. You are… these are the sorts of things I ask him, and I try to lead him to the conclusion that this too is not certain on the one hand, but on the other hand he still holds it as reasonable. So therefore there is no reason to cast doubt on my faith. This intermediate state where you come and say that I have something regarding which there is truth—reasonable, acceptable, very reasonable, very acceptable, I don’t know—certain for all practical purposes. What? Not everything that comes to me as true—about some of them we agree and about some not. That it is reasonable that there is a God, but it is not certain. No, that’s what I’m trying to see: whether he belongs to those for whom it is reasonable that there is a God. If he somehow thinks that faith means only certainty, then I am trying precisely to show him this. Meaning what? That probability is perfectly fine. Don’t be disappointed that you’re not at the level of one hundred percent. But sometimes I really take him by the hand this way, and then he says to me: no, I don’t accept even that. Then he really is an absolute skeptic. But as I said earlier, to an absolute skeptic there really is nothing to say. What can you say to an absolute skeptic? I just think that most people are not really absolute skeptics. Show me the first person who would be surprised by an experiment that lands here on this curve, who would tell me he is surprised. After all, nobody is really surprised. Therefore, if he is honest with himself, then he will understand—I think almost everyone is like this, or everyone is like this—that this thing is reasonable in his eyes. Reasonable is not certain, but on the other hand, reasonable too is acceptable. Don’t be like the teenager who says that if it isn’t certain, if there’s no proof, then it isn’t correct. Because if that’s so, then nothing is acceptable. My claim is that it is acceptable like scientific claims, like every other claim I make about the world. Everything. Now one more final remark because of Yoni’s question from yesterday or the day before: this doesn’t mean all my intuitions are at the same level of certainty. There is a whole spectrum here, right, between zero and one. There are things regarding which my certainty is very high; there are things in which my certainty is lower. That doesn’t mean my certainty that I see him here now is like my certainty that, I don’t know, all the elephants in Africa have four legs—although even of that I’m pretty convinced. There’s a difference. Or my certainty that between two points there passes one straight line. Even that has no proof; that too is an axiom. How do I know it? From my intuition. Right? But the degree of certainty I have in that intuition is very high, very high. Okay? So this too is a very common failure. After I speak with people, many times I discover that they think that if this is so, then anything I feel like thinking is true is one hundred percent true, or at least almost one hundred percent true. No. There are different levels of probability. The world is much more complex. There are different levels of probability. All I did here was not to claim that faith is tremendously reasonable. That I claimed in the section about Taylor’s proof. But my more fundamental message says that the fact that faith is not certain is not a reason to reject it. That is my claim. Okay? That’s something else. Fine, one can argue about how reasonable or unreasonable it is, but very often the feeling is that I reject faith because I have no proof for it. My claim says that the fact that I have no proof for something is not a sufficient reason to reject it. The question is how reasonable it seems to me. More than that: every proof for something is itself based on premises my belief in which is based on intuition. Meaning, everything begins and ends with intuition. Logic is not an alternative to intuition. Logic succeeds in extracting from my intuitions the information hidden within them; it does not add new information. Therefore, in fact, all information—if I return to the question you asked—all the information that we accumulate, we accumulate by intuitive means. Logic and deduction are only means of clarifying the information we already know. The way to accumulate information is always by intuitive means. Okay. It adds new information for me. Therefore, in fact, all information—if I return to the question you asked—all the information that we accumulate, we accumulate by intuitive means. Logic and deduction are only means of clarifying the information we already know. The way to accumulate information is always by intuitive means. Okay? Okay, now as far as I’m concerned we can talk.