Platonism – Lecture 33

Table of Contents

• Platonism, Aristotelianism, and disputes about concepts
• Intuition, emotion, and what makes “real” argument possible
• The example of queerness and the dilemma between essentialism and conventionalism
• The revolution in the concept of intelligence and multiple intelligences
• Definitions by extension and content, and the methodological problem of circularity
• A critique of “everything is intelligence” and the postmodern motivations behind it
• A qualification: expanding a concept as non-circular Platonism
• The example of LeBron James and recognizing intelligence in non-academic contexts
• Postmodernism, Foucault, the DSM, and Rotenberg
• Music, aesthetics, and matters of taste
• Kant, the thing-in-itself, and subjective descriptions that still aim at truth
• C. S. Lewis, a “waterfall,” and aesthetic arguments as claims about the world
• Qualia, brain wiring, and the conditions that make argument possible
• Wavelengths and colors as an illustration of the difference between cognitive language and the world
• End of the lecture

Summary

General Overview

The text draws a distinction between a Platonic view and an Aristotelian view of concepts, and argues that disputes over the meaning of concepts, as well as proposals to change their definitions, actually presuppose—implicitly—that concepts have objective content that needs to be discovered, rather than being arbitrary conventions. The speaker uses examples like “Who is a Jew,” the debate over “What is a woman,” the revolution in the concept of intelligence, and the aesthetics of music and a waterfall, to show how postmodern projects tend to empty concepts of content once they reach the stage where “anything goes,” even though the illuminating core within them actually rests on a Platonic assumption. Along the way, he qualifies his criticism of multiple intelligences and tries to show that expanding a concept can be a legitimate and non-circular move only if it is understood as an attempt to conceptualize an intuition about an idea, rather than as a matter of stipulation. The discussion concludes with a Kantian distinction between the thing-in-itself and cognitive description, while emphasizing that a “subjective” description in the language of cognition can still make true claims about the world, and therefore can justify genuine argument.

Platonism, Aristotelianism, and disputes about concepts

The speaker argues that a dispute over the meaning of a concept presupposes Platonism, because only if there is a “meaning somewhere in the world of ideas” does it make sense to argue about it as one would about a scientific fact. He claims that for Aristotle, a concept is a convention of a community of speakers, and therefore a dispute over “democracy” is really just a dictionary dispute in which one could simply replace the term. He adds that a proposal to change the definition of a concept, such as a possible change in the definition of “Who is a Jew,” also presupposes Platonism, because if the definition just is the concept, then changing the definition creates a different concept rather than “the same concept that changed.” He emphasizes that this runs counter to common intuition, because in his view the very existence of argument and change points to a conception of the concept as objective, and to the development of our knowledge about it.

Intuition, emotion, and what makes “real” argument possible

The speaker distinguishes between subjective emotion, which there is no point in arguing about, and intuition, which is understood as a cognitive tool directed at something outside consciousness. He illustrates this with love and hatred, and argues that an argument becomes real when the emotion is treated as expressing features of the person himself, and not merely “this is how I feel.” He claims that the position which declares “conceptual flexibility” while at the same time insisting on the correctness of one particular definition already assumes that there is something right to grasp, and that one can be mistaken about it. He presents this distinction as a condition for understanding the cultural arguments around definitions, and not as a trivial matter of taste.

The example of queerness and the dilemma between essentialism and conventionalism

The speaker explains that the debate around queerness and the question “What is a woman” rests on the dilemma between essentialism and conventionalism—that is, between Platonic essentialism and the view that a definition is just an arbitrary adoption by a community. He argues that if the definition is arbitrary, then there is no point in arguing and insisting on truth and falsehood, because it is “just a dictionary argument.” He says that precisely those who speak in the name of conceptual flexibility are forced to assume Platonism if their struggle is to have meaning and not be merely a replacement of words. He hints at the model of “the first three planes without the fourth” from the previous lecture, and presents the “fourth plane” as a leap that empties the concept of content.

The revolution in the concept of intelligence and multiple intelligences

The speaker describes a historical change in which intelligence was once understood in a narrow and intuitive way, and then psychologists and others expanded it into a model of “multiple intelligences” such as motor intelligence, emotional intelligence, mathematical intelligence, and so on. Using the example of ad hominem, he explains that Einstein’s talent in physics does not guarantee talent in the social sphere, and from there concludes that talent has different manifestations. But the innovation, he says, is in assigning all these manifestations the label “intelligence” and giving them, in principle, equal weight. He argues that the new move says there is no such thing as “more intelligent and less intelligent,” only different kinds of intelligence. He presents the evaluative addition in this move as equating scientific “genius” with athletic genius, and not merely as a technical distinction among talents.

Definitions by extension and content, and the methodological problem of circularity

The speaker distinguishes between definition by extension and definition by content, and illustrates this through “a democratic state” as either a listing of states or a specification of features such as rights and separation of powers. He argues that the essential relation is that content comes before extension, because only on the basis of an idea of democracy can one know which states to include. He then describes the reverse move, in which one begins from extension and tries to distill content out of it because of the limitations of conceptualization and the need to “pour into words” a primary intuition. He argues that when such a move returns from content to extension and arrives at a new extension that contradicts the original starting point, a circularity is created that shows that the conceptualization has failed.

A critique of “everything is intelligence” and the postmodern motivations behind it

The speaker argues that expanding the concept of intelligence to the point where everyone is intelligent turns the conceptualization into something empty, because the features that were supposed to characterize a subgroup no longer distinguish it. He interprets this as a methodological circularity in which the end uproots the beginning. He attributes the move to ideological motivations—a desire to “make everybody come out looking good” and to create an egalitarian world without “discrimination” and “profiling”—and describes it as a postmodern vision that empties standards of content. He argues that the desirable replaces the actual, and that there is no “real theory” here when the theory does not explain the observations from which it emerged. He illustrates this with an analogy to the law of gravity and the question of what happens if “all objects have mass.”

A qualification: expanding a concept as non-circular Platonism

The speaker proposes a correction in which the starting point is not a sharp division between the intelligent and the non-intelligent, but rather the identification of cases in which “the concept of intelligence is clearly expressed,” as in Einstein. He argues that then the conceptualization is not required to show what distinguishes the group from everyone else, but rather to clarify what it was that caught our attention in the original identification. In that case, one can discover that the same features exist in others as well, such as Messi or “the shoemaker in the neighborhood.” He presents this as work on intuitions that allows one to see additional manifestations of the same concept without falling into circularity. He says this move can be valid even if it serves political correctness and narrativity, but it fails once one jumps to the stage where the concept becomes “empty of content.”

The example of LeBron James and recognizing intelligence in non-academic contexts

The speaker cites an interview with LeBron James in which he analyzes plays immediately after a game from memory, displaying a detailed court vision that is not merely instinctive. He presents this as evidence of “genius” in a sense close to what people attribute in scientific and philosophical contexts. He explains that the example opens one’s eyes to the fact that intelligence can appear in different contexts without turning every skill into intelligence. He stresses that the expansion of the concept has to stop before it becomes endless generalization, so as not to empty the concept of content.

Postmodernism, Foucault, the DSM, and Rotenberg

The speaker describes postmodern moves as attempts to empty concepts of content and turn them into reflections of value systems rather than objective determinations. He attributes to Foucault an attempt to empty psychiatric diagnosis of content through the claim that its criteria are based on Protestant values of autonomy and functioning. He mentions Mordechai Rotenberg from the Hebrew University and his students as trying to offer a Jewish alternative, so that a different set of values would produce a different diagnostic manual. He argues that this move, when taken “all the way,” turns psychiatry into a value-based convention and replaces a scientific matter with a value-based one. He opposes such emptying-out, while arguing that the intuition driving these expansions is actually Platonic.

Music, aesthetics, and matters of taste

The questioner suggests that everything begins with emotion, such as music being “pleasant” or “sublime,” and argues that a debate over investing resources in culture is not necessarily Platonic. The speaker replies that Aristotle could see this as an emotion implanted within us, without any basis in a world of ideas, so that the claim is about our structure and not about an objective property in the music. He argues that if one assumes the other person is “mistaken” and could be taught in such a way that he would arrive at the same judgment, that is a Platonic assumption which locates the value in the object and not only in the experience. He presents postmodernism as granting “only” subjective emotions because it does not believe in objective truth, and argues that terms like “essential” and “significant” already presuppose a framework that is not pure subjectivism.

Kant, the thing-in-itself, and subjective descriptions that still aim at truth

The speaker presents Kant as distinguishing between the thing-in-itself and the thing as it appears, and illustrates this by saying that light is not “an electromagnetic wave” but a cognitive phenomenon created by a wave striking the retina. He argues that the conclusion is not that “everything is subjective,” but rather that descriptions are formulated in our cognitive language and still make claims about the world, allowing argument over who is describing correctly. He explains that differences of language, such as Hebrew and English, do not cancel argument, because language is a means of expression and not the source of truth. He uses the example of a red table versus a green table to argue that colors are internal to our cognition, yet still point to real differences in the object, so that subjective description is not the same as arbitrariness.

C. S. Lewis, a “waterfall,” and aesthetic arguments as claims about the world

The speaker brings the example from C. S. Lewis of two people standing before a waterfall, one moved by it and one not, and of a textbook that interprets this as a disagreement only about mental states. He adopts Lewis’s position that the aesthetic argument is actually a claim about the waterfall itself—that there is something in it that is “fitting” to evoke a sense of sublimity. He says that the very existence of the argument is evidence that this is not just a matter of taste, because otherwise there would be no point in trying to “open your eyes.” He explains that intuition functions as the expression of a perception of a property in the object, and not merely as a report of an inner experience.

Qualia, brain wiring, and the conditions that make argument possible

The questioner suggests an example of connecting the visual nerves to the auditory center in order to show that arguments may be about perceptual ability and not about the thing itself. The speaker compares this to differences of language and argues that differences in mediation do not cancel the possibility of argument if the descriptions offer different pictures of the same thing. He mentions the problem of qualia and the question of “red,” which perhaps is experienced differently by different people, but argues that the confidence that there is something to argue about rests on the assumption that our languages describe something that exists outside us. He concludes with the central claim that some arguments really are about taste, like olives versus whipped-cream cake, but not all arguments are like that, and postmodernism is mistaken when it generalizes this to everything.

Wavelengths and colors as an illustration of the difference between cognitive language and the world

The questioner suggests the example of the same wavelength being seen by one person as yellow and by another as blue, alongside the objective existence of the wavelength itself. The speaker replies that the question is subtle, because even a description of a wave and a wavelength is a description in language, but he agrees that there is “something” in the world that we call an electromagnetic wave with a certain frequency. He clarifies that differences in color within consciousness do not eliminate the objective difference between objects, even if red and green do not exist “in the world itself.” He returns to the point that description in our language does not make it subjective in the sense that nullifies truth and falsehood, and therefore there is still room for argument.

End of the lecture

The speaker says that he has to leave, so he stops here and asks that further questions be directed to him later via WhatsApp, email, the website, and other channels, apologizing that he has to “run off” in the middle.

Okay, we were in the middle of discussing Platonism, and I spoke about two characteristics of a Platonic conception of concepts. The first characteristic—or the first expression of the debate over Platonism—is disagreement about concepts. And the claim was that if there is a disagreement about the meaning of a concept, then both sides are implicitly assuming Platonism. Why? Because if, as with Aristotle, a concept is nothing but a convention—that is, we agree among ourselves that a certain collection of features will be called such-and-such, democracy, okay?—then there is no point in arguing. He says that’s democracy, the other says that’s democracy, fine, just call this democracy and call that Moshe. Meaning, it’s just word usage. The moment we argue about the meaning of democracy, that means there is some meaning out there somewhere in the Platonic world of ideas, and we are trying to capture it, describe it, explain it. And we disagree about what the correct explanation is, just like a scientific dispute about some fact, theory, or scientific doctrine that characterizes the world itself. So only in a Platonic picture of the world does it make sense to argue about concepts. In an Aristotelian picture of the world, such an argument has no meaning at all.

The second characteristic was the issue of change in a concept. And the claim is that if I say the definition of a concept has changed—I gave as an example “who is a Jew,” where today there are proposals to define the concept Jew differently. In the past it was commitment to the commandments; today it’s loyalty to the State of Israel. I don’t know exactly, something like that. So that’s a proposal to change the definition of the concept Jew. The moment you propose changing the definition of a concept, once again that basically means you’re a Platonist. Because in Aristotle’s view, in Aristotle’s picture of the world, there is no point in changing the definition of a concept. Once the definition is the concept, then if you changed the definition, you’re simply talking about a different concept. So why use the same word to describe a different concept? Set a different word. Therefore, both disagreement about a concept and proposals to change concepts—their content or their definitions—basically express Platonism.

And that somewhat—or very much—contradicts people’s initial intuitions. Because if I asked people, tell me, if there is a dispute about concepts, or if the definitions of concepts change, does that mean there is an objective concept or that there isn’t? People would say, what do you mean, obviously that’s an indication that there is no objective concept. After all, people argue; after all, the content can change. It’s exactly the opposite—really the opposite of people’s intuition. Precisely when there is disagreement, and precisely when there are proposals to change a concept, that is an expression of the fact that there is an objective concept. That we have a disagreement, or some development in our knowledge, about that concept. We are, as it were, observing the world of ideas and trying to formulate in words what we see there. Just like observing the world in scientific contexts, only here it is not by means of the usual instruments of observation—the five senses, measuring devices, and the like—but by some other kind of observation. And I spoke about this right at the beginning of the series, when I discussed the difference between Aristotelianism and Platonism.

So last time I tried to bring an example of this confusion, or this error, through the discussion of queerness, yes, in the question “what is a woman,” and I showed that at the root of the debate sits this dilemma between essentialism and conventionalism, or between a substantialist view—a view that there is such a thing as an objective concept, Platonism—and a conventionalist view. Meaning, that basically it’s an arbitrary definition that a certain speaking community adopts for itself. And that is the same mistake I was just talking about now. That is, if it really is an arbitrary definition, then what is the point of arguing about it? And what is the point of insisting that this is right and that is wrong, and everyone has his own truth? It’s just an argument about a dictionary. Therefore, precisely those who speak in the name of the flexibility of concepts have to assume Platonism, have to assume that the concept exists and that you can’t just say whatever you want. This is very much the opposite of people’s first intuitions, but it seems to me that this analysis shows it clearly—that this really is the case.

I want to… What?

If, say, the debate is about, let’s say, a community of people, or two people, or a community of people, who are making something more flexible in light of some event. They’re making something more flexible. Now, they’re arguing how to define it, what, how to describe it. That’s a real argument even though it doesn’t require Platonism.

Why? It is a real argument because it does require Platonism. After all, the very fact that the two of us feel means there is some concept. Again, if by “feel” you mean in the emotional or subjective sense, then do whatever you want. But if “feel” means intuitively sensing or intuitively grasping that this is the case, then yes. Meaning, if it’s a subjective feeling, fine—once again there is no point arguing. I have one feeling, you have another. Say I love someone and you don’t love him. We talked about this. So what’s the point of arguing about it? I feel this way, you feel otherwise. If I claim there is something in this person that is worthy of love, and therefore I feel or don’t feel this way, then we have a real argument. Because then we are arguing about the characteristics of the person. The love I feel is only an expression of certain features that I claim exist in the person and you claim do not. So then we have a real argument. But if it’s just a feeling in the subjective sense, what’s the point of arguing about it? It’s the same thing as arguing about a dictionary.

So now I want to go a little more deeply into the world of definitions through another example. I once spoke about the revolution the concept of intelligence has undergone in the last generation. In the past people had some intuitive conception of the concept of intelligence, and people said this is a talented person, this is a less talented person, this is a genius, this is an idiot. People had a very simple intuition about who is an intelligent person or what intelligence is. At some point, various psychologists and others came along—de Bono and others—and claimed that the concept of intelligence is much broader than people think. And then they reached conclusions, and today it is very widely accepted that there are in fact multiple intelligences. There is no such thing as an intelligent person and a non-intelligent person; rather, one person has more of a certain kind of intelligence and less of another kind, and another person has more of that second kind and less of the first, and so on. And they distinguish between seven or eight, I think, kinds of intelligence: motor intelligence, emotional intelligence, mathematical intelligence, and all kinds of other intelligences. And one doesn’t imply the other.

After all, we know that talent in one area doesn’t imply talent in another. Here—one of the known fallacies in logic is ad hominem. Ad hominem means that you latch onto a great person. You say, okay, my position is correct because even Einstein said it. Yes? I’m a socialist. I say socialism is correct because even Einstein was a socialist. So they tell you that’s dependence on a person, or an argument directed at the person, ad hominem—ad with an “a,” yes? in Latin—and not at the matter itself. Meaning, if you want to argue in favor of socialism, bring substantive arguments in favor of socialism, don’t hang it on Einstein. So what if Einstein said it?

Now this itself can be understood in two ways. You can say, look, it’s true that Einstein is a genius, but even a genius can make mistakes; let’s check. We’re not willing to rely blindly even on a genius like Einstein. That’s one claim. A second claim says: even if I would rely on a genius automatically, Einstein is a genius in physics—who says he’s a genius in social values or forms of social conduct? Therefore, his talent in one branch does not necessarily mean that he has the same talent in another branch. We know quite a few people—I assume we all know some—who are very talented in one subject and less talented in another. So that’s an indication that there are all kinds of intelligence.

But that was always understood. It was always understood that there are different kinds of talent. Yes, the fact that someone plays soccer excellently does not mean he will be a genius in physics, and vice versa—to my sorrow. But what? Not that I’m a genius, but talent in one field doesn’t mean you have talent in another. The more substantive claim is that these two kinds of talent deserve to be called intelligence. That’s what is new. Meaning, don’t think that Einstein’s talent is somehow superior to Messi’s or Maradona’s. Okay? They are geniuses just as he is a genius, only this is genius in other domains. And that is different from what people used to think. Because in the past it was clear that this is intelligence and that is ability. Meaning, everyone has abilities, fine? One person is very tough, another plays soccer very well, another—whatever, all sorts of things—but they did not connect this to the concept of intelligence and genius and things like that, but rather to some kind of ability.

And what happened in the wake of this revolution I’m describing here concerning the concept of intelligence is that the claim became that on all these levels we are dealing with intelligences. And they all have equal weight. There isn’t something more intelligent or less intelligent, more important or less important, just different kinds of intelligence.

Now how, how exactly did this move work? Schematically, without getting into details—I don’t know the details either—but schematically it went like this. Let’s say the first people who tried to expand the concept of intelligence basically worked as follows. They took certain people and looked at what they regarded as intelligence. When you say intelligence, what do you mean, as the poet says. So they look at people and try to distill from what they say what the characteristics are of the concept of intelligence.

In logic we distinguish between two kinds of definitions. There is definition by extension and definition by content. For example, maybe I mentioned this some time ago, suppose I want to define the concept of a democratic state. So I can simply list all the democratic states in one group and the non-democratic states in another group, meaning create a set of objects that satisfy that definition. That is one way to characterize the concept. Another way to characterize the concept is to characterize it in terms of its content. What is democracy? Rights, government, separation of powers, all kinds of things like that.

What is the connection between these two definitions? Usually the connection is substantive. Obviously the content-based definition comes before the extensional definition. How do you know which states are democratic and which are not? How do you look at Britain or England and know that it is democratic? Clearly you have some concept of democracy in your head, and you check whether England really fulfills or fits that concept, that idea—that’s the Platonism. And then you list all the states that fit that idea. Meaning, the idea comes first; the content-based definition comes before the definition by extension. The extension, the set of democratic states, I construct out of an understanding of what democracy is.

But the move made by the intelligence people—and this often happens—is the opposite move. I begin with definitions through extension, and from them I try to build the content-based definition. For example, someone wants to define the concept democracy, and suppose he can’t quite put his finger on the definition. What will he do? He will take all the countries that we call democratic states and try to understand what distinguishes them, what they have in common and what sets them apart from other states that we do not call democratic. Those features that are essential to them and absent from other states—those will be the definition we propose for the concept democracy.

Notice what I did here: I took the definition through extension. I know what a democratic state is and what is not, but I still don’t know what democracy is. And from collecting the democratic states I tried to distill the concept of democracy itself, its content, its content-based definition. Now this is a very strange process. Because if I know the list of democratic states, then in fact I already know what democracy is. How did I build the list? How did I decide which state goes onto that list and which state does not? It’s quite clear that I know what democracy is, and on that basis I decide which state goes in and which does not. So if I already know, why do I need this whole procedure?

The answer is that sometimes I have a sense of what the thing means, but I don’t have a formulation, I don’t have a conceptualization. I don’t know how to formulate in words that feeling. So I use the feeling to collect the states and sort them—what is a democratic state and what is not—and then from the list of democratic states I try to distill the concept of democracy itself, its content, its content-based definition. But clearly the understanding of the concept, the content of the concept, comes before building the set of its extension. So that is clear.

But conceptualization often first requires the extension, and from there arriving at the content. Simply because of my limitations in conceptualization, because I don’t know how to formulate my intuitions in words. And once I look at those states and their characteristics, then I succeed in pouring into words that intuition I have, or in conceptualizing that intuition I have. At the real, substantive level, clearly we move from content to extension. But in scientific research, in the attempt to conceptualize, we often go from extension to content.

Now this is basically what they did regarding the concept of intelligence. They took people’s concepts that had always been used intuitively—who is intelligent and who is not intelligent. They tried to discern what distinguishes those people whom we relate to as intelligent as opposed to others, or what they have more of than others. And after they found I don’t know how many such characteristics—five, six, seven, I don’t remember—they took those characteristics and said: that is the definition of intelligence. They conceptualized the concept of intelligence.

But then suddenly, much to their surprise, it turned out that those characteristics fit other people too—not only Einstein but also Maradona, or Ronaldo in more recent times, which by now also isn’t all that recent. So the claim is that after we made the move of conceptualization—that is, we took the extension, conceptualized it, and from it built the definition of the content—but the definition of the content suddenly sends us back and says: wait, wait, the extension is bigger than we thought. Meaning, the intelligent people are not the narrow group we thought at first; it is a broader group, which also satisfies those characteristics.

Now on the face of it this move is absurd. Why? Because its end uproots its beginning—it cuts off the branch it itself is sitting on. Why? Because if my conceptualization is really built on a given extension—that is, I know who belongs to the group of intelligent people and who belongs to the other group, that I know, that is my starting point—now I conceptualize and define the concept of intelligence out of the features of the people who belong to the intelligent group. Okay? The moment I have a conceptualization in hand, I go back to the people and sort them again according to the conceptualization. Suddenly I discover a different sorting from the one I started with. The group of intelligent people has grown; it now contains all people. Everyone has a different intelligence, but everyone belongs to the group of intelligent people.

Now that cannot be. Because if everyone belongs to the group of intelligent people, then it means I did the conceptualization process incorrectly. Because after all, the conceptualization process was supposed to characterize that very group which intuitively everyone had related to as intelligent. And these features are what distinguish it. Then suddenly it turns out that they don’t distinguish it—they exist in all people. And if they exist in all people, then I simply made a mistake in the conceptualization process. It’s not that I suddenly discovered a new fact that the concept intelligence is broader than I thought; rather, I simply made a mistake in the conceptualization process because the content-based definition doesn’t overlap with the definition by extension. If it doesn’t overlap, then the conceptualization is wrong. Because, as I said at the beginning, the starting point is always the extension. The starting point is that I have a group of people whom I know are intelligent—that is the starting point. Now I only want to conceptualize the concept of intelligence. But if after I conceptualize it, I go back and suddenly discover that the group of intelligent people is the group of all people, then how could it be that I built that definition on the basis of a certain subset which in the end turned out not to be the right one? I didn’t really find the features that characterize only it, because in fact those features characterize all people in the world. So this does not prove that all people in the world are intelligent; it merely proves that I didn’t do the conceptualization correctly. That’s all.

Therefore this move of de Bono and his friends always bothered me—or even made me smirk—because it is clear there is some kind of methodological circularity here. It is a move that cuts off the branch it itself is sitting on. Now I linked this—and it is pretty clear that this really is the case—to postmodernism or narrativity or something like that. Basically, people had an agenda, and this brings us back to the example of queerness from the previous lesson. People had an agenda to make everyone come out looking good. People are righteous; they want to look kindly on the world. Why say he’s a genius and he’s an idiot? Let’s say everyone is a genius, and then everything will be wonderful. Then we won’t have discrimination and racism and profiling and all sorts of things of that kind. And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, because everyone is a wolf. If the lamb is also a wolf, then everything is wonderful—there are no lambs and no wolves.

As Ben-Gurion once said: I’m in favor of the prophetic vision of the wolf dwelling with the lamb as long as I’m the wolf. Meaning, here too, same thing. A vision doesn’t turn it into facts. The fact that you want everyone to be geniuses is not enough to define everyone as geniuses. It needs some actual expression. And my feeling was that the move is basically empty. The methodological, scientific move is empty. It is nothing but an expression of people’s desires. People want to reach a state where I can say of all of us that we are geniuses, and then we will all be equal, the world will be egalitarian and wonderful, everyone will be appreciated, no one will be looked down on, and everything will be wonderful. Yes, that is the apocalyptic vision of postmodernity. Everything will be wonderful—in some senses, true—but I would not want to live in such a world. A world without standards, without anything to die for, as the song says.

But the claim I made there—not “but,” rather the claim I made there—was that the ideological desires of those researchers are what really underlie their conclusion. Their conclusion is not the result of a process of conceptualization, a scientific methodological process, yes? Taking observations of who is intelligent and who is not, conceptualizing, building the theory, and then understanding the world better. That is the supposedly scientific move. But they did not do that. Because in the end, when they “understand” the world, that understanding does not explain the observations from which they began.

Think about the law of gravitation. I discover that certain objects are attracted to the earth, and I discover that it is only objects with mass. Then I build the law of gravitation and say every two objects with mass attract one another. But in the end I discover that even massless objects have mass—yes, like light after the theory of relativity, that even light has mass, not rest mass, but it has mass. Then I say, fine, then all objects have mass. But if so, the law of gravitation is not correct. It’s not that I expanded the class of objects to which it applies; rather, there is no such law. My whole methodological procedure was simply incorrect.

So the claim is that here desire, or what ought to be, replaced what is. I determined reality according to what I wanted, and I very much want the whole world, all the people in the world, to receive equal treatment and for the world to be egalitarian and not to prefer one over another. And so I basically built a theory, supposedly, that turns us all into geniuses. There are no more geniuses and fools. So these are just heart’s desires; there is no real theory here.

And I think there is a lot, a lot of truth in that. But I want to qualify it a bit. Whoever remembers, I did this years ago in one of the series here—I don’t remember which one. I want to qualify it now, and the point is exactly Platonism versus Aristotelianism, or essentialism versus conventionalism, yes? Substantialism versus conventionalism.

If I say that the concept of intelligence exists as some Platonic idea—it is not a concept that we define, as Aristotle thinks, but rather a concept that we observe, that we discern in the world of ideas and try to put into words, yes? to characterize it, define it—if that is the case, then the methodological move I described earlier may not necessarily be empty of content. Yes? I take certain people and say: in these people there is intelligence. Now notice, this is a little different from what I described earlier. I’m not saying that other people are devoid of intelligence and these people have intelligence. I’m saying: in these people I discern that the concept of intelligence comes to expression. Here I see it; in others maybe I don’t see it. In Einstein I see it; in Messi I don’t see it, say when I’m living at the beginning of the twentieth century, before the revolution of intelligence. So I say Einstein is a genius and Messi has certain motor abilities or other such abilities. Earlier I described it as if I were saying Einstein is intelligent and Messi is not. Now I’m looking at it a little differently. I don’t know about Messi and others. I do know that Einstein is intelligent—that I know unequivocally.

Now what? Now I ask myself, okay, let’s gather the people regarding whom I know that they are intelligent, and let’s try to understand why I think they are intelligent. Do you understand? This is a slightly different move from what I described before. I’m not asking what distinguishes them from the other people; I’m asking what is common to these people, what caught my thought or my eye when I looked at these people and enabled me to identify them as intelligent? What is the point? Then I conceptualize and find several characteristics. These are the characteristics that caused me to relate to Einstein as intelligent.

And now I go back and say: wait a second, but actually, if you look differently, these characteristics exist in Messi too, or in the shoemaker in my neighborhood who is simply astonishing at repairing shoes. Okay? So it exists in him too. Therefore now I say: fine, if that is the definition of intelligence, then I can apply it in broader contexts, to broader or different groups of people. And now it is no longer circular, because I did not start from the assumption that Einstein is intelligent and Messi is not. It may be that Messi is too; I simply see the concept of intelligence only in Einstein. Right now I don’t see it, I don’t discern it, because it is not intuitive for me. Now, after I have made the definition and the conceptualization, even though intuitively I maybe don’t relate to Messi as intelligent, if I use the definition, suddenly I see that he actually is. And now I understand that he really is.

Do you understand that the move I described here is very similar to the previous move, but unlike the previous move, it is not circular. There is nothing circular in it at all. It is simply work I am doing on my intuitions, an attempt to conceptualize my intuitions. I don’t know how to conceptualize them; I have some initial a priori feelings, I don’t know how to conceptualize them, so I make use of those people regarding whom I do know how to identify them, characterize them, in order to define and sharpen for myself what exactly I think. And after I define it for myself, suddenly I see that I may also be able to discern intelligence in other people. And that is already a move that is not circular, and I think there can definitely be truth in it. One can debate it, but there can definitely be truth in it.

Even if it serves political correctness, yes, and postmodernism and narrativity—even a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day. I also said in the previous lesson about queerness, by the way, this is a very similar process. This example and the example of queerness are very similar examples. Here too I’ll say, as with queerness, that one can perhaps argue with the people who take the concept of intelligence all the way to the vacuum and say everyone is intelligent out of these postmodern desires. But it is true that their move opened people’s eyes, as with queerness. If we adopt the first three levels without the fourth—the thing I discussed in the previous lesson—then here too I say: if we adopt this openness that is prepared to see other kinds of abilities as intelligence, then it may become clear to us that there are other kinds of intelligence. That does not mean that now I throw out the baby with the bathwater and move to the fourth level, and say okay, so everything is intelligence. Because that really does mean that it’s just narrativity, that it’s simply emptying the concept of intelligence of content. But it does open my mind to understand that the concept of intelligence can appear in various contexts.

I remember once—I’m a basketball fan, less of a soccer fan—I heard an interview with LeBron James. LeBron James is a genius, completely and beyond any doubt. And in that interview it was simply unbelievable. They were interviewing him right after the game, and the guy analyzed plays that happened in the game. He said at such-and-such minute, more or less, he passed to that guy and he dribbled like this and he did this, and that was not right because he should have done this and he was standing there. Now all of this he said from memory immediately after the game, and a game obviously demands effort and resources, both mental and physical, meaning after that you’re drained. The guy had the whole game in front of his eyes and analyzed it in an amazing way just from memory, immediately after the game ended. Not that he sat with the television, replayed the situations, and analyzed them afterward calmly. That is genius. Meaning, it is something incredible. He has a genius-level court vision even in real time, that’s obvious, you can see it. But you see that it’s not just instinct. It would have been possible to attribute it to instinct—he has very sharp instinct, healthy. But there really is intelligence here in the same sense in which we speak about it in scientific, philosophical, and other contexts. I remember that interview very vividly. Too bad I don’t know how to reconstruct it or where to find it, because it was really illuminating. Suddenly I understood why people say he is truly a genius and not just someone with abilities and sharp senses. The man is a genius. That’s not all, of course; there are other things too thanks to which he achieved what he achieved, not just genius. But there is genius there too.

So I’m saying that this move of expanding the concept of intelligence did not initially arouse much affection in me, because it was clear to me what motivations underlay it. But the motivations do not disqualify the move. Those motivations disqualified the move when they passed to the fourth stage, in the terms of the previous lesson. Yes, when they reached the conclusion: okay, then the concept of intelligence is empty of content, and basically anyone who has some kind of skill or talent or ability is intelligent. At that point I lost them. There I do not agree. That is not correct. That is taking one step too far.

But if I stay with the first three steps, then I’m basically saying that this postmodern move did indeed open my eyes or widen my gaze, which had previously been locked. And it became broader. Not infinitely broad, because then it is simply empty of content, but broader. Suddenly I discover that I had used the concept of intelligence too narrowly. And this move is not circular and does not beg the question. It is an entirely reasonable and acceptable move.

But notice what it assumes, just like in the previous lesson. What does it assume? It assumes that the concept of intelligence has a real objective meaning, and I am only trying to understand it. I am trying to characterize it, define it, conceptualize it. Okay? Because if I look like Aristotle and say the concept of intelligence is a conventional concept—we simply agreed among ourselves to define a certain collection of features as intelligence—if it is conventional, then this whole move is completely circular. Then there is nothing to discover here. We define. So define whatever you want. What are you arguing about? What is the point of changing the definition, broadening it or narrowing it? What you define is the concept. And if you want to define differently, then simply use a different term. Why use the same term to describe a different definition?

Do you understand that the whole correction I made to this move stems from Platonism? And once again, this contradicts people’s initial intuitions. Because if you look at the discourse of those people who push this idea of multiple intelligences—and today it is already a sacred principle in very broad strata of psychology and the social sciences and so on—these are people… I don’t remember what I wanted to say, I lost my train of thought. But people’s motivation was postmodern, yet that motivation leads them into a vacuum. It leads them to the position that there really is no such thing as intelligence—whatever we define is intelligence. And that is what they fail to sharpen for themselves, and then they wouldn’t make the self-destructive leaps that they make.

I think many of them actually mean the move I am describing and not the move they make. They are just not willing to admit Platonism. They are not willing to admit that there are objective concepts in the Platonic world of ideas that we are trying to capture. I remembered what I wanted to say. And you think, basically, that their move shows that the concept is empty of content, whereas I claim that their move shows exactly the opposite. Their move shows that the concept has objective content. Therefore there is a point in arguing about it, and therefore there is a point in claiming that it has changed—in claiming that it has changed. Because if it were not so, if we were in an Aristotelian world, then there would be no point to this whole matter. Choose another word and define it however you want and use it; don’t use the word we use in its accepted sense. Why confuse all of us?

Therefore, at the foundation of their project—and this is what I said at the beginning of the lesson—that our initial intuition says that claims about changing a concept, or disputes about a concept, basically mean that the concept has no objective definition. And I claim that is a mistaken intuition; it is the opposite of reality, the opposite of truth. If there are disputes and proposals for change, that actually means there is an objective concept. And that is the point those postmodernists do not understand. They think that in order to claim that the concept has changed or to accept other views regarding the concept, you need to say that there is no such thing as a concept in the objective sense. That is not Platonic—that is Aristotelian, conventionalist. We simply define concepts for ourselves.

Yes, just as Foucault emptied psychiatric diagnosis of content, for example—or tried to empty psychiatric diagnosis of content. What did he say? Basically he argued, in Madness and Civilization—he has all sorts of writings—that all the characteristics of psychiatric categories, our DSM basically, yes? the psychiatric symptom manual, are based on conceptions. This is Protestantism, yes, following Max Weber. Basically Protestantism has certain conceptions, like that a person should be successful, autonomous, functional. Yes, Western neuroticism comes out of the Protestant conception. Then he says that when we diagnose people on the psychiatric level, many times the diagnosis is determined by the question of whether he can function, whether he is dependent on others, and so on. But those are Protestant criteria.

And therefore, yes, Mordechai Rotenberg from Hebrew University and his students try to take this and propose a Jewish alternative. Meaning, if I look at a Jewish value system in which there is no problem with being dependent on another person and so on, in their view, then the psychiatric diagnostic system ought to change. And if you take this to its logical conclusion, it basically empties the DSM of content altogether, because it basically means that the DSM is a reflection of the value system of those who wrote it, not scientific determinations, not determinations that have some basis in the objective world. Everything is characteristics that stem from an ideology or a certain set of values. So this is not a scientific matter; it is a value matter. So he basically empties psychiatry of scientific content and turns it into a convention. If you agree that one ought to be independent, then your psychiatry looks like this; other people are willing to accept dependence, so their psychiatry will look different, and so on. Yes, they will diagnose and put into the DSM someone who is too much of an achiever, who obsessively pursues success, because in their eyes that is morally wrong—they are more cooperative. So for them it will be a different DSM, yes, a different psychiatric symptom manual.

So on this issue, for example, all these moves, which all converge into postmodernism in one way or another, are moves that serve some attempt to empty concepts of content. And in that sense I oppose them, I don’t agree with them, I think that is a mistake—they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But I claim, in a kind of paternalistic way, that deep down, inwardly, they are actually trying to do something else because they themselves do not understand what they are trying to do. They are basically trying to tell me: you are looking too narrowly; this concept has other manifestations, and it is still the same concept. But that is a distinctly Platonic statement. It is a statement that says there are absolute and objective concepts, except that your perception of these concepts is too narrow. Pay attention, I can broaden your gaze and you will see that the concept is broader than you think.

Notice, I am speaking about this in terms of broadening vision, looking, seeing. There is something out there somewhere that I am looking at and observing and trying to describe, and that is a Platonic idea. I am observing the Platonic idea. Therefore these postmodern projects contain something that in my eyes is actually very illuminating, precisely because of the vacuum ultimately created by them. Because that vacuum shows that the move should have stopped earlier. And if it had stopped earlier, then it would have been very meaningful.

As I said regarding queerness, to make the distinction between sex and gender, yes, between sex and gender, is a very eye-opening distinction that we were not aware of until, I don’t know, a hundred years ago. We were not aware of it, and I think it exists and it is right to make it. The leap into the vacuum—the fourth level, what I spoke about last time—is the stage at which you commit suicide together with your theory. In order to validate your theory, you empty it of content, and that is a mistake, a mistake born of not understanding. And the mistake is here. The mistake of all these big moves that exist today in the world—in science, in society, in values—the whole matter lies in this particular point: that they look at the world in an Aristotelian way, while inwardly they are actually Platonists. They are basically mistaken about their own distinction. They don’t understand that they are observing a concept and simply seeing it as broader than had been seen until now. In order to ground their claim they say, no, there is no concept and we are not observing anything; whatever we define is the concept. That is the easiest way to carry out the postmodern revolt. But of course that way is easy because it does not really carry out the revolt; it simply empties concepts of content. And the genuine expansions should have stopped at the first three levels without moving to the fourth level—the self-destructive leap, as I called it just now.

Okay, so just a moment, wait, wait, wait—I’m again going back, I really still don’t quite understand the Aristotelian approach. Because again, when in the end we start from feeling, or what the Rabbi wants to call intuition, something we feel within ourselves—let’s take music, say music, pleasant music or sublime music. Everyone can call it something else. We know what it is. We all feel that sensation. Now two people are sitting there, one says: pop music too is beautiful. The other says: listen, classical music—learn it, maybe you’ll feel the same thing. So that’s not just saying, on taste and smell there’s nothing to argue about. He says, listen, there’s something there; maybe it’s worth devoting to it, the state should devote resources to developing it, and so on. So it all starts from feeling. I don’t think Aristotle can say that there is just some convention and we just invent some music and call it sublime music.

No, I’ll answer you here—I understood—I’ll answer you here what I answered before to your previous question. Aristotle will see this as a feeling rooted in us, but one that has no basis in the external world, in the world of ideas. Rather, we are built in such a way that we like a certain kind of music. Let’s try to characterize the music that we like. This is not a statement about the objective world—that there really is something different in that music—but a statement about us. We like that kind of music.

But what if some music has some kind of being, some essence of sublime music, maybe somewhere up in the seventh heaven…

No, that’s the important point. But that’s the difference, that’s the difference. The difference is that Plato sees it outside, in some objective sense—it existed before we existed; we simply perceive it. And according to Aristotle, we constitute it, we don’t perceive it. It exists only because we are here. If we had been built differently, sublime music would have been African tom-tom drums. And that is exactly the difference.

And I think that once you see it in the Aristotelian way, you actually empty it of content, because there is no point in arguing. If I find one thing within myself and you find another thing within yourself, then why are you arguing with me? Inside me there is something else. If we are looking at the objective world, then I tell you, no, it’s not inside you—it’s in the world; you are simply mistaken in your perception. Then there is a point in arguing. Or if I claim it changes. Yes, I go back to everything I said. That is exactly the point of the difference.

So it comes out that the postmodern approach gives more respect to what we feel.

It says: only to what we feel. Not more respect, since it does not believe in any objective truth, all that remains is only our subjective feelings. Yes, that is the claim.

But if they are essential and very meaningful…

What does “essential and meaningful” mean? There is no such thing as essential and meaningful. “Essential and meaningful” is in the eye of the beholder. There is some feeling inside me, and that’s all, that’s how I’m built. “Essential” and “meaningful” are already statements that are not of this world.

Plato too—his window onto identifying that idea was his feeling, his intuition. That is what existed in reality.

Not exactly true. He sees intuition as a cognitive instrument. And Aristotle says, what are you talking about? It’s just a feeling embedded in me because that’s how I’m built. That’s the whole difference, the whole formulation, the whole gap.

That’s how you’re built, or that’s your construction, that’s the…

Doesn’t matter, that’s how I’m built or… because if that’s how you’re built, that’s objective—that’s DNA.

That’s objective about me. But again, if you are built differently, is there any point in my arguing with you?

Yes, yes. For example, with the example I gave about music: if one person says Mozart’s music is nothing but grating noise in the ears, but if I sit and teach him and play it for him and explain the structure, and somehow he listens again and again, suddenly a window opens for him because he too is a human being. So there—if that happened, then you’re right.

But who told you it will happen? Who told you he is built like you? He’s just mistaken, and if you teach him then he will discover that he is also built like you? You are implicitly assuming, without admitting it, a Platonic assumption. You are basically saying that this is not his structure or mine, but rooted in the objective world, and therefore if he feels otherwise, he is probably mistaken. Then if I teach him and expose what he really understands, or teach him how to grasp it correctly, I assume he will reach my conclusions. Therefore you are smuggling in Platonism—you can’t escape it. In the end, in the end, you are hiding Platonism. Because otherwise there is no point in arguing.

I don’t argue with anyone when I say I love someone and you say you don’t love him. I have no argument with you; I won’t argue with you. I love this and you love that—why argue? Here the test is different.

This is the argument, this is the big argument when we hate someone and a person wants to say to him, no, don’t hate him, try to see his positive sides, judge him favorably. Again, try to see his positive sides. But why is there…? Who said…? You are looking at the person as an external object and saying: he has positive sides that you are missing. So you understand that you have moved into Platonic language. But if I say it has nothing to do with positive or negative sides—I love him and you don’t love him, not because he is negative, just because the chemistry didn’t happen—then what’s the problem? Then it’s a statement about you and me, not about him. So in such a case there is no… no argument. That is exactly the difference.

Every time you attack from the angle you are trying to attack from, you are actually introducing Platonism into the discussion through the back door. That’s exactly what…

But according to Kant, since we cannot attain the world as it is in itself, in the end everything is epistemology. So we are always dealing with what is within us. We have no possibility of reaching the thing itself, the object.

No, what we are trying to do is describe things as they are in themselves, which we grasp directly. Those descriptions are of course dependent on our cognition, our senses, our perceptions—everything is fine. My claim is that all these descriptions are simply our way of describing something in the world itself, and not something subjective to me. The description is made in language, which is my language. Fine, because it is my language, but that does not mean the description is subjective. It means that I… It’s like if I describe the same thing in Hebrew or in English, I did not describe different things. I described the same thing in different languages.

You are really bringing me to the next point I wanted to address here, and that is the Kantian questions. Kant basically makes a distinction between the thing in itself and the thing as it appears to us. He says, what is light? People will tell me light is an electromagnetic wave. But that answer is mistaken—that’s not correct. Light is not an electromagnetic wave. Light is that cognitive phenomenon created when an electromagnetic wave strikes my retina. When an electromagnetic wave hits my retina, the sensation of light that I call light is generated within my consciousness. Light is something that exists only in my consciousness. It does not exist in the world itself. In the world itself there is no light and no darkness and nothing of the sort. There are electromagnetic waves. Light and color and sounds and ranges of tones and the like—all these are purely cognitive phenomena; they do not exist in the world.

Does that mean—and this is a mistake of many interpreters of Kant and certainly of laymen—that Kant taught us that everything is subjective, that he is the herald of postmodernism? It is exactly the opposite. Kant is the greatest foundation against postmodernism. Kant did not say that everything is subjective. Kant said that the descriptions we give of the thing in itself—for after all he says there is a thing in itself—the descriptions we give of the thing in itself are always formulated in our subjective language. But those descriptions make a claim about the world. Whoever describes it differently is mistaken. I will argue with him. It is not like describing in Hebrew and English, the difference between someone describing in Hebrew and someone describing in English. If you describe in Hebrew in a way that gives me something different from what I describe in English, then the fact that you do it in Hebrew and I in English does not erase the disagreement. We have a disagreement because we are describing something different, even if you do it in Hebrew and I in English. It is not because of a change of language. Language is only the means of expression.

Therefore when I say there is an electromagnetic wave in the world, then in my subjective language I say I see light. But clearly that is only cognitive language for saying something about the world. In the same sense, I mentioned, I think, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia—I think I mentioned it in this series, didn’t I? He begins the book with some English literature textbook for high school. And the book there said—he brings some poem by Coleridge—in which two people stand before a waterfall and are struck by the beauty of the waterfall. One is struck by the beauty of the waterfall and the other is not impressed at all. It can happen. And the other is not impressed at all.

So the literature textbook basically wants to claim that this argument is merely an argument about what is taking place in the souls of the people. Inside me I feel sublimity, awe, elevation, and the other does not feel that. So there is no argument. You are built in such a way that this arouses awe in you; he is built differently, so it does not arouse awe in him. So it comes out that all aesthetic disputes and different experiential disputes are basically emptied of content. On taste and smell there is nothing to argue about, because you are built this way and he is built differently. I like whipped-cream cake and you like olives—what argument is there? No. Your taste buds are like this and my taste buds are like that. There is nothing to argue about.

And the claim of that literature textbook is that all aesthetic and artistic disputes and the like are also like that. They are basically an argument about taste buds. And Lewis’s claim is that this is absolutely not correct. There is a real argument here. And the fact that both sides argue with each other means that it is not just taste buds—otherwise why are they arguing? That’s what I said earlier. The fact that they are arguing is the greatest proof that it is not just taste buds; it is a claim about the waterfall. The claim is not that the waterfall arouses in me feelings of sublimity, but that there is something real in that waterfall that ought to arouse feelings of sublimity. And if it does not arouse feelings of sublimity in you, then you are blind to those aspects in the waterfall. Therefore I am trying to open your eyes, yes? to argue with you, to enlighten you, because there is something in the waterfall itself that I claim exists, and I am not merely reporting on my own psychological state. That is exactly his claim.

The same is true here with Kant and in general: people think that when there is a disagreement, that means the concept is empty of content, that it’s taste buds—I feel this way, you feel differently. No. The fact that I feel this way and you feel differently—if I understand it as intuition and not as emotion—then intuition is the expression of something I grasp outside. And its expression inside me is such-and-such. If the expression inside you is different, that means you are probably grasping differently what exists out there. If so, we have an argument, and it is worth conducting it. We won’t always succeed in persuading each other or in reaching agreement, but we have a real disagreement. You cannot part company on the semantic level—“you call it Jew and I’ll call it Israeli.” That won’t help. We are arguing about the same concept.

Rabbi, Rabbi.

Yes.

For example, say now I thought of an idea. Suppose if we connected the nerves of the eye not to the visual center in the brain but to the auditory center…

That’s the example I always give in this context.

Then now two people are standing there. One says, seeing it is such-and-such, that’s what I see with my eyes. The other says, what are you talking about? There’s nothing there—I smell it altogether, what are you talking about? Now there is no disagreement between them that there is, I don’t know, structure or form or landscape or waterfall there. But there is a disagreement about our capacity to understand.

Right, so the parable you are giving here is similar…

Isn’t that a substantive disagreement?

The parable you are giving here, the parable you are giving here is like my speaking Hebrew and your speaking English. There is no disagreement between us. But that does not mean there could not be a disagreement between us. Suppose you describe it in audio terms and I describe it in video terms, because for me it is connected to the visual center and for you the eyes are connected to the auditory center. Neither of us is more right or less right as far as the language is concerned. You describe it in audio and I describe it in video. But what you describe may differ from what I describe, and then we have a real argument. And the postmodern feeling is that since this is all just wiring in the brain, then there really cannot be disagreement and there are no real disagreements. That I do not accept.

I agree that we can have different languages. This is the philosophers’ problem of qualia, yes? When you speak about the color red and I speak about the color red, are we talking about the same thing? There is no way to verify that. And more than that, there is no way to verify that when I speak about the color red, you are not hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—you are just used to calling it the color red. Therefore there is no way for us to know that. In that sense we are trapped inside our languages. And still, the assumption that there is a point in arguing and that there is something to argue about means that we trust—it can be discussed what that trust is based on—that these languages are only languages that describe something existing outside. Therefore it may be that if you describe it differently, even if you do so in English and I in Hebrew, that does not mean there is no disagreement between us. Let’s see what you describe in English and what I describe in Hebrew, and there may be a disagreement, and we will have to conduct it while trying to synchronize the languages, because otherwise the argument cannot be carried on. That is the claim.

But the disagreement is not about what is there. The disagreement is not…

Yes, yes. I’m saying some disagreements are indeed like that. Some disagreements are indeed illusory. For example, if you like olives and I like whipped-cream cake, then it really is an argument about taste buds, and there is no point in conducting it. I agree. But if… I’m saying there is room for argument because if you are blind… that person is blind…

Not blind. I’m simply built differently. What does “blind” mean? Each one is blind to the other’s point of view—that’s not blindness. Just eyes of a different type. Therefore there is no point in arguing about it.

So the point is that the moment an argument is taking place—contrary to intuition, I keep returning to this point—it does not mean the concept is empty of content, but exactly the opposite. It means the concept has objective content and the argument is conducted around it. That is really the point. And I’m not saying every argument is like that; again I repeat. The argument between olives and whipped-cream cake, in my view, really is like that. It really is an argument about taste buds, and there is no point in conducting it. Okay? Maybe some people have a taste for conducting arguments—that too is taste buds. Okay, but that is not an argument in the real philosophical sense; there is no logic to conducting an argument on the real philosophical plane in that sense.

In that sense, that’s true. I am only claiming that not all arguments are of that kind. And the postmodernists claim that all arguments are of that kind, and I claim that is not correct. Some arguments are not of that kind. Some arguments—when I am moved by a waterfall—I claim that there is some kind of sublimity in the waterfall itself, and that my psychological state is merely an expression of the fact that I encounter that sublimity. And if you do not encounter it, that is a kind of blindness. But if it is merely a different way in which I am built and it has nothing to do with what is happening in the waterfall itself—then for me the falling water arouses a sense of sublimity and for you it does not. Fine, then you are just built differently. That’s not… there is no statement here about the waterfall, and therefore there is no point in arguing about that point. That is really the claim.

Rabbi, does the following example express this? There is a certain wavelength, and one person sees it as yellow and the other sees it as blue, but objectively there is light of a certain wavelength.

Yes, if you treat… it’s a bit of a delicate matter to answer this, because the question is whether wavelength itself belongs to the objective world, or whether that description too—you know, you describe a sine wave and a wavelength is the distance between its peaks—even that is really a subjective description or a description in subjective language. But clearly there is something in the world that in our language we call an electromagnetic wave. There is something like that there. Therefore if you relate… not only an electromagnetic wave, but one with certain characteristics, a certain frequency…

Yes, of course. If you see a certain frequency or wavelength and I see another, then there is something different in the light itself. It’s not just a difference in the perceivers. There is something… when I see one table as red and you see… and another table is green, clearly there is something in the table itself that causes me to see the first as red and the second as green. The fact that this difference—that this is red and that is green—exists only inside me, that red and green exist only inside me, and in the world itself there is no red and green, that does not mean there is no difference between the tables. It means that I describe that difference in my subjective language in terms of color. But there is such a difference. If those two tables were identical, both would also appear to me on the subjective level as red. Therefore the claim is: I do not know how to describe in an objective language what the difference is between the two tables, because to describe in an objective language is an oxymoron. Description is always in my language. But the fact that the description is made in my language does not mean there is not some claim here about the world, such that from my point of view someone with a different description is mistaken, or that I have something to argue with him about. That is the point I want to make.

Okay, well, I have to… please forgive me, but I have to leave, which is why I started early. So I’ll stop here. If there are questions or things like that, maybe by WhatsApp, email, on the site, through all the other media. Sorry for the escape—I simply have to go.