Platonism – Lesson 36

Table of Contents

• [0:03] Introduction: a discussion of judging favorably
• [1:09] The mistakes in equating judging favorably with Occam’s razor
• [3:09] Understanding the principle of Occam’s razor
• [9:30] Certainty versus truth in postmodernism
• [13:08] Scientific Platonism
• [17:44] Differences between induction and abduction
• [28:17] Differences between actualism and informativism
• [30:14] Popper’s principle and the asymmetry of proof and refutation
• [32:31] The distinction between a scientific and a non-scientific theory
• [33:58] Criticism of Popper: the importance of confirmation
• [39:16] The raven paradox and confirmation
• [47:01] The parallel between science and Torah study

Summary

General overview

The text argues that judging favorably and Occam’s razor belong to factual truth, not to “existential truth” or merely to a methodological rule, and presents Matan Binyamin as mistaken on both counts when he linked them. It explains that Occam’s razor functions as a probabilistic principle that brings us closer to the truth even without certainty, and identifies the confusion between truth and certainty as the root of a postmodern error. From there it moves into an introduction to scientific Platonism through philosophy of science, presents the dispute between actualism and informativism and its connection to empiricism versus rationalism, and ends with the claim that the dispute is not merely philosophical but can be decided empirically, which will be shown in the next session.

Judging favorably and Matan Binyamin’s article

The text opens by saying that the previous lecture dealt with charitable interpretation and judging favorably in light of an article by Matan Binyamin published in “Badad,” which argued that there is justification for judging favorably even when it does not fit the facts, by force of Occam’s razor, because in his view the principle is not aimed at factual truth but at “existential truth” and at “what it is proper to think.” The author argues that Matan Binyamin is mistaken both about the law of judging favorably and about Occam’s razor, and presents judging favorably as a rational consideration aimed at factual truth: when a righteous person does something that appears wicked, the interpretation that judges him positively is usually more reasonable, because the alternative is less plausible in light of the person and the circumstances. He attributes this approach to commentators on the Mishnah, including Maimonides, Rabbeinu Yonah, and Bartenura, and stresses that judging favorably is not “twisted reasoning” but “straight reasoning,” in which the possibilities are not far-fetched given the person’s identity and the context of the act.

Occam’s razor, signs of a fool, and the connection between truth and certainty

The text explains why some people think Occam’s razor is only a methodological principle: simplicity is a property of human thought, and there is no a priori reason that the world itself should behave according to what is simpler. It brings an example from Rabbi Chaim at the beginning of tractate Chagigah about three signs of a fool, where the Talmud discusses whether all of them are needed together or whether each one is sufficient on its own, and explains that the reason for combining them is that each sign by itself has a plausible alternative explanation. It presents Rabbi Chaim’s question: why do three signs together decide the matter if each one can be explained independently? And it formulates Rabbi Chaim’s answer as Occam’s razor: one explanation that unifies three phenomena is preferable to three separate explanations, and therefore we adopt the single assumption.

The text rejects the claim that this is only “methodology” and argues that the conclusion “he is a fool” is in practice understood as a ruling about reality, not as a matter of convenience, because you do not declare someone a fool and exempt him from commandments merely for the sake of efficiency. It formulates the ruling as a probabilistic-factual claim: even if an alternative possibility exists, the probability that he is a fool is higher, and therefore this is a factual truth, though not a certain one. It identifies the confusion between certainty and truth as the root of the postmodern mistake of “everyone has his own truth,” and argues that lack of certainty does not require a fifty-fifty split; it can be ninety-ten or eighty-twenty, and therefore common sense and reason can decide even without one hundred percent certainty.

Criticism of using science as an explanatory halo for Torah

The text comments on a tendency among writers in the field of Torah and science to explain a Torah difficulty by means of some poorly understood scientific example, as if “science is holy,” and in this case to bring in Occam’s razor in order to justify a non-factual conception of judging favorably. It argues that even if one were to accept that Occam’s razor is only a methodological principle, that still would not solve the difficulty but would merely leave both issues requiring further analysis. He adds that in his own view there is no need for such reliance, because even in the scientific world Occam’s razor functions as a tool that brings us closer to factual truth with high probability.

Transition to scientific Platonism and theories in the philosophy of science

The text states that the continuation of the series will deal with scientific Platonism and mathematical Platonism, and begins with scientific Platonism through a discussion in philosophy of science. It presents the terminology of Zeev Bechler, a former philosopher of science at Tel Aviv University, from his book “Three Copernican Revolutions,” and distinguishes between two approaches to scientific theories: actualism and informativism. It describes actualism as the view that science deals only with actual observable facts, and therefore theoretical entities such as a “gravitational force” are not entities in reality but only convenient ways of describing things; at most one may say that the regularity of the phenomenon is that bodies are attracted to one another, but one should not commit to an unobservable ontological entity. It presents informativism as the view that a theory contains information about the world and is a factual claim about reality, and therefore a statement about a “force” or a “field” adds information beyond merely describing the phenomena.

Induction, abduction, empiricism, and rationalism

The text distinguishes between induction as a strategy of generalizing from the particular to the universal, and abduction as the move from facts or from a general regularity to an explanatory theory. It describes the scientific process as moving from an inductive stage, in which one infers a general law from examples, to an abductive stage, in which one proposes a theoretical explanation such as a force of attraction that explains the regularity. It argues that the dispute between actualism and informativism revolves around the status of abduction: the actualist sees it as a methodological tool for organizing facts efficiently, while the informativist sees it as the discovery of a fact about the world.

The text associates actualism with extreme empiricism, which is willing to commit only to what is directly observed, and associates informativism with rationalism, which is willing to regard intellectual conclusions drawn from observations as factual claims as well. It also places this as an Aristotelian-Platonic dispute, where informativism is understood as scientific Platonism that attributes real existence to abstract structures, laws, fields, and particles that are not directly observed, whereas the actualist treats them as merely fictional-but-useful. It illustrates this with the electron and the quark as entities known through indications and phenomena rather than through direct sight, and presents the actualist as someone willing even to give up the idea of a “cause” and to describe causality as a category of thought rather than as a feature of the world.

Experiments, refutation, Popper, and confirmation

The text states that both approaches operate in practice through the same scientific process: you build a theory, derive predictions, put them to an experimental test that challenges and tries to refute them, and if there is failure, you replace the theory. It describes the difference as one of interpretation: the actualist says that an experiment refutes only in the sense that the theory is not efficient for organizing the facts, whereas the informativist says that the experiment shows the theory is not true.

The text presents Popper’s principle about the asymmetry between proof and refutation, illustrates it with the claim “all ravens are black,” and defines a scientific theory as a theory that can be refuted, not as one that can be proven. It brings a criticism of Popper, according to which in practice confidence in a theory grows the more it survives many and varied attempts at refutation, and presents the concept of “confirmation” as an alternative position, according to which every repeated success in testing strengthens the probability of the theory. It explains that in Popper there is no room for confirmation, because all one can say is “it has not yet been refuted,” whereas confirmation assumes that the theory is a claim about the world and therefore grows stronger probabilistically.

Karl Hempel’s raven paradox and the text’s response

The text brings Karl Hempel’s attack on confirmation through the “raven paradox”: the claim “all ravens are black” is logically equivalent to “everything that is not black is not a raven,” and therefore, apparently, observing a white object that is not a raven confirms the claim about ravens, which sounds absurd. It presents a response according to which the paradox is only apparent, because confirmation depends on the content of the theory, on the circumstances, and on the statistical weight of the sample; observing a white Kleenex gives only a negligible, near-zero confirmation, whereas a broad representative sample of non-black things that are not ravens could provide meaningful confirmation. It concludes that the concept of confirmation is not paradoxical, and that one can justify the intuition that a continuing failure to refute a theory strengthens confidence in it.

The analogy to Torah study: Rabbi Ovadia versus Brisker learning

The text draws a parallel between the dispute in philosophy of science and a dispute about Torah study, and presents Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his followers as those who understand Torah study as a means of knowing Jewish law, so that the conceptual theory of learning is at most an organizational tool. By contrast, it describes Brisker-style learning as an approach in which the Jewish laws are the “facts” that lead to the abduction of a meta-halakhic theory, and the conceptual theory itself is the very Torah, so that it is a claim about halakhic reality. It adds that in practice a conceptual analysis can change Jewish legal conclusions, and that there are “countless” cases in which the absence of such analysis leads to a different ruling, but emphasizes that the principal point is the question of the value and ontology of the theoretical structure even when it does not change the halakhic ruling.

Summary of the session and the claim that scientific Platonism can be decided empirically

The text concludes that the dispute between actualism and informativism does not change the way science actually proceeds, but only the interpretation of its meaning, and presents the academic world’s position as holding that this is a philosophical dispute that cannot be decided empirically. Against that, it argues that there is a way to decide the dispute empirically, and formulates this as “grabbing the Platonic bull by its horns” and as a proof of Platonism that will be presented in the next session. It ends with clarifying questions from participants about the connection to David Hume, about the meaning of the terms actualism and informativism, and about the identification of actualism with empiricism, and confirms that empiricism, “when you take it seriously,” is actualism.

Okay, so last time we started talking about judging favorably, yes, about giving someone the benefit of the doubt. And I brought it up as background because of an article by some guy named Matan Binyamin, an article published in Badad, and there he wants to argue that there is justification for judging someone favorably even though, on the factual level, it doesn’t make sense by virtue of Occam’s razor. Yes, in his formulation he says that Occam’s razor is not looking for factual truth but for existential truth, existential, maybe existentialist truth. And because of that, then also in judging favorably you don’t actually have to stick to factual truth; rather, you go by existential truth, what it is proper to think and not what is correct to think, yes, a kind of pragmatism. Now, my claim was that he is mistaken on both sides of the equation. Meaning, both judging favorably is about factual truth, and Occam’s razor is also not existential truth but factual truth. In other words, he was wrong on both sides of the equation. So regarding judging favorably, I spoke about it last time and tried to show, both from the commentators and from the logic behind the matter, that this is basically a logical consideration. That is, when you see a righteous person doing something that on the face of it looks really wicked, then even if you have a strained interpretation that casts him in a good light, that is probably the more correct interpretation, because to say that he did some outrageous things, and did them publicly no less, is simply unreasonable. It’s not that I do this because I’m righteous and I want to give him credit. I do it because that is the more reasonable interpretation of his actions. And I brought the fact that the commentators on the Mishnah, Maimonides and Rabbeinu Yonah and the Bartenura and others, all go in that direction. None of them says you need to use crooked reasoning, as I quoted from Rabbi Chaim, yes, who said: why create crooked reasoning in order to judge favorably? No, judging favorably is not crooked reasoning; it is straight reasoning. Those are strained options if I were ignoring the person involved or the circumstances. But given the person and the circumstances, those options are not strained; they are the more reasonable options. That’s regarding judging favorably.

Now I move to the other side, and that is Occam’s razor. There too I want to say another two sentences about what I already said, and then I’ll move on. One sentence is: why do people really think that Occam’s razor is existential truth and not actual truth? Because the claim is that there is no reason to think that what is simpler is also what is correct. “Simple” is a statement about us. If we are built a certain way, if our thinking is structured in a certain way, and something seems simple to us, then it seems simple to us because our thinking is built that way. Why does that mean that this is really what is happening in the world? In the world itself, if there are two possibilities, there is no reason to assume that the simpler thing is what happens. Therefore this is an a priori claim, yes? So basically the claim is that Occam’s razor is a methodological principle, not a principle for uncovering truth. Rather, if you have two ways to interpret reality and one of them is simpler, and there is no difference between them, both explain reality equally well, then use the simpler one, because why use the more complicated one if you can use the simpler one? It’s just more efficient. But that says nothing about reality itself; it doesn’t mean that it is the correct thing. That’s regarding Occam’s razor.

But, as I noted, think for example, yes, about the example that Rabbi Chaim also brings at the beginning of tractate Chagigah, about the signs of an insane person; I mentioned this, I think, the signs of insanity. He says that the Talmud there brings that there are three signs of an insane person: someone who sleeps in a cemetery at night, tears his clothes and I don’t know what else, and something else, talks to himself, something like that. So the Talmud says—the Talmud discusses there the question of whether all three signs are needed in order to determine that he is insane, or whether each one by itself is enough. The Talmud discusses, according to the view that all three signs are needed, why that is. So it says: because if he sleeps in the cemetery at night, or goes out at night to the cemetery, then maybe he simply forgot something there during the day and is going to retrieve it. So there is some rational explanation; it doesn’t have to be that he has gone insane. And if he tears his clothes, it could be that he is preoccupied, absorbed in something else, like Rava with that sectarian who saw him, yes, drawing blood from himself from pressure because he was thinking about some Talmudic topic. So each of these things has an explanation, and therefore you really need all three indications together in order to determine that he is insane.

And on that Rabbi Chaim asks: if each of the indications has another possible explanation, meaning that he is not insane but had a good reason why he did it, then why do all three together get the job done? All three indications together, you can reject them in the same way and say, “Okay, the fact that he went to the cemetery is because he forgot something there; the fact that he tore his clothes is because he was concentrating on something else,” and that’s it—explain each characteristic with its own explanation. What do you have in the three together that you don’t have in each one separately? After all, with each one separately you say it is not evidence because there is another explanation. Why are the three together enough to determine that he is insane? That was Rabbi Chaim’s question.

And then Rabbi Chaim says: this is basically Occam’s razor in Rabbi Chaim’s language, yes? He is basically saying: if you have three signs in this person and you have two ways to explain them. One possibility is that he is insane—that explains all three signs. A second possibility: no, the fact that he went to the cemetery at night is because he forgot something; the fact that he tears his clothes is because he was absorbed in something else; and the third thing is because of yet another reason. So to give three different explanations for the three phenomena, if I have one explanation that weaves together all three phenomena, that is certainly preferable, it is simpler, and therefore I adopt the one explanation. Therefore if I have one phenomenon, I have two explanations: either he is insane or he forgot something in the cemetery; neither has priority over the other, so why adopt the explanation that he is insane? But if I have three phenomena and I have two options—either explain all three on the basis of one assumption, that he is insane, or explain each one separately on the basis of its own assumption, three different explanations—then clearly the first explanation is simpler, more efficient, and therefore I adopt it. That is basically Occam’s razor.

Now I ask: those who basically say that Occam’s razor is only a methodological principle and does not reveal truth—what are they actually saying? They are basically saying: look, after all, even with the three characteristics it could still be that he really is not insane, and the fact that he went to the cemetery is because he forgot something there, and he tore his clothes because he was concentrating. Meaning, there is such a possibility, so you can’t really know that he is insane. Why do you decide he is insane? Methodology. Because it is simpler, so I choose to adopt that, but that does not really mean that this is the truth. Yes? That is exactly like judging favorably. And exactly like judging favorably, I say this is nonsense. It is obvious that this is not right. Why? First of all, I just ask you—tell me, when you see a person who has several signs of insanity, what will you say? That he is not insane, but each sign has its own explanation? You will say he is insane. Now I ask you: do you really believe that he is insane? Meaning, is that the truth, or are you merely choosing that option because it seems simpler to you, though it has no connection to factual truth? I assume all of you would agree that you also mean that this is the factual truth—that he really is probably insane.

More than that: how could I possibly make a determination about him that he is insane, when in reality I don’t really have a statement that he is insane—it is just a methodological issue? Insane or not insane—you don’t declare a person insane and exempt him from the commandments on methodological grounds. You need to arrive at the conclusion that he really is insane. And therefore it also is not reasonable to look at it that way.

Isn’t this a statistical issue? Yes, exactly, and therefore the claim is that all these are really just indications, but what is the explanation, not the indications? Why is this really not a methodological principle but a factual principle? Simply statistically. What does that mean? Obviously, even if all three signs are there, there is some chance that he is not insane and each one has its own explanation. So there is some chance—say ten percent—but there is a ninety percent chance that he is insane. So now true, those who say you can’t be certain are right. But the fact that it is not certain does not mean that I am still in a fifty-fifty doubt and this is only a methodological principle. I think it is true at a level of ninety percent certainty. That’s all. We once talked about the three-stage maturation model, and I said there that we have certainty about nothing. The mistake of the postmodernists is to say that if I have no certainty, then it is merely arbitrary and subjective. No—when I don’t have certainty, it is not necessarily fifty-fifty. It can also be ninety-ten or eighty-twenty or whatever. Meaning, the fact that there is no certainty only means it is not one hundred percent. But it does not mean that it is fifty-fifty.

And therefore when there are three signs of insanity, you are right that I cannot determine with certainty that he is insane, but I can determine with high probability that he is insane. This is not existential truth; this is factual truth, only it is factual truth that is not certain. That is all, and this identification between certainty and truth is the root of the postmodern mistake. Because why do they say that everyone has his own truth? Because nobody really has certainty. So it is true that nobody has certainty, but the lack of certainty does not mean that every dispute is fifty-fifty. It could be ninety-ten. Therefore one can choose what common sense says, what reason says, even though it is not one hundred percent. So I go with that at ninety percent, at eighty percent. And that, I think, is the principle of Occam’s razor. The dispute over the principle of Occam’s razor reflects the same postmodern mistake. Meaning, it reflects exactly this point that led us to postmodernism also in last night’s lecture. So the claim is that truth does not have to be certain, cannot be certain; we have certainty about nothing. What we can do is try to understand what is more probable. And if I have three signs, then it is more probable that he is insane. Now that is on the level of Occam’s razor.

So up to this point I explained why I think Matan Binyamin is mistaken both with respect to judging favorably—which is not a matter of existential truth; it is factual truth. And where it is not the factual truth, then it is not right to judge favorably. And regarding Occam’s razor, there too it is not a methodological principle; it is a principle that brings us closer to the truth. True, it does not bring us to the truth, it is not one hundred percent, but it brings us closer to the truth. Meaning, there is a high probability that this is the truth, and therefore it is a factual principle and not a methodological principle. That is basically the claim.

Now I made another remark about people’s strange tendency—and often these are people who write about Torah and science—often they have some tendency to explain something that is not understood in the Torah context by means of something that is not understood in the scientific context. Meaning, if you don’t understand something in the Torah context, there’s quantum theory and everything is wonderful. What is there in quantum theory? Quantum theory too you don’t understand. So what good is that so-called explanation, yes, by bringing a scientific example? Here too it’s the same thing. Let’s say you want to show me that judging favorably is not really factual truth but rather existential truth or methodological truth or whatever you want to call it. Now on the face of it, that seems strange to us, right? Because you are making a factual claim about reality, so let’s see whether that really is reality in your assessment. No, it does not belong to reality, it’s methodology. Now you want to explain to me or answer my discomfort—after all, it’s not logical? No no, there is also a scientific example of this: Occam’s razor. Now what have you gained? If we assume that Occam’s razor really were only a methodological principle and not a factual one—so what? Then I have a difficulty with that as well. How does it help that you bring it as an explanation for the demand to judge favorably? Meaning, there is some aura of sanctity around science, such that once you bring me something strange from the scientific world, you have solved the problem for me in the Torah context, as though science were sacred. In Torah, okay: if it makes sense, we will accept it; if it does not make sense, we will not accept it. I do not understand that logic at all.

I say: we do not need to resort to that because even in the scientific world this is factual truth. But even if, hypothetically, he were right that Occam’s razor is only a methodological principle and not factual truth, I still would not bring proof from there for judging favorably. I would remain with a question requiring further analysis, both regarding judging favorably and regarding Occam’s razor. Those are the remarks I had up to now.

Now I really want to get into the thing for which I made this whole introduction, and that is Platonism in the scientific sphere. What we really have left until the end of the series is scientific Platonism and mathematical Platonism, and with that I’ll finish the series. So today I’ll talk about scientific Platonism. I’ll start perhaps with a discussion in philosophy of science, and I’ll use it in order to discuss Platonism.

In philosophy of science, two approaches to scientific theories are commonly accepted. One approach—I’m using the terminology of Ze’ev Bechler, a philosopher of science from Tel Aviv University in the past, who has several books, really a trilogy, and one of them is Three Copernican Revolutions, the main book, where he presents the issue. So he talks about two approaches to scientific theories: the actualist approach and the informativist approach. That’s his terminology, I think. Actualism is a view that basically says that science deals only with facts that are present in an actual way before my eyes. Meaning, when I talk about the law of gravity, for example, then you can’t really say that there is a law of gravity, and you can’t even really say that there is a force of gravity. I don’t see the force of gravity either. What you can say is that objects are attracted to one another. That I see with my eyes. Every two objects with mass attract one another. But you cannot determine that there is a force there, as an ontic entity, that in reality there is something called gravitational force. Rather, there is only a law of gravity. And the law of gravity means that two objects with mass attract one another. But gravitational force is already some kind of entity that causes this attraction. Nobody has seen that entity. We see its consequences; we see the phenomenon of attraction. But we do not see the attracting force. We call it an attractive force, but the actualists say there really is no force of attraction. It is only our way of describing reality.

So what is scientific? What is scientific is only the actual facts that are present before our eyes. Meaning, the attraction of the bodies themselves, not the theoretical entities I created in order to explain the actual phenomena. Theory always creates—and this is how we started at the beginning of the series—theory always creates a set of concepts and principles that I use in order to explain the phenomena. What is present before my eyes are only the phenomena. The principles and concepts are some sort of structure, a kind of theoretical construction, by means of which I offer an explanation of the facts. The actualist claims that the theoretical construction is not a claim about the world. It is merely a structure that is convenient for me to use, existential truth. It is a structure convenient for me to use because it arranges the facts efficiently and elegantly, but there is no reason to assume that it really says something about the world. What there is in the world are only the facts. The facts are that objects attract each other. You say okay, but there is a force that presumably causes this attraction. That is only my form of thought, because it is more convenient for me to think that if there is attraction then there is probably some force causing it. But that is only a statement about me. I cannot claim that in the world itself there is gravitational force. I can say that there is a law of gravity, meaning that objects with mass are attracted. That is basically the actualist position.

Maybe I’ll clarify; by contrast I’ll say that the informativist approach says no—the theory contains information about the world. The theory is a claim about the world. When I arrived at the theory, I learned some additional kind of information about the world beyond the actual facts. And when I determine that there is gravitational force, I have said something more beyond saying that there is a law of gravity. That is his dispute with the actualist. The informativist claims that the theory contains information; it is a claim about the world. It is not only my methodological tool for arranging the facts in reality. That is the dispute between informativism and actualism.

To make this clearer, I want to distinguish between two forms of inference. One form is induction and the second is abduction. Induction is generalization from the particular to the general. Suppose I say: this object falls to the earth, and this object also falls to the earth, so apparently all objects with mass fall to the earth. That is induction. What does that mean? I saw several examples; from those examples I assume or generalize to a broader group that includes all objects of that type, and I say that apparently this property belongs not only to the specific cases I observed but to the whole group. And the assumption is that the cases I observed are a representative sample of the group. If they are not a representative sample, then there is a mistake in my induction. But induction assumes that this is a representative sample, and therefore what holds in the particular cases holds in the whole group.

Abduction is something that people often tend to call induction, but it is not really induction. Abduction is the move not from particulars to a general law, but from particulars to a theory. That is not the same thing. Meaning, when I want to explain the collection of particulars by means of a theory, then it is not just a generalization. I am not only claiming that the particulars I observed are particular cases, but that it is true for the whole group of particulars—say, all objects with mass will fall to the earth; that is an inductive generalization. I saw only several specific objects, and from here I infer that all objects with mass will fall to the earth. That is induction. Abduction says that there is some reason that causes all objects with mass to fall to the earth, and that is gravity. There is a force that every two masses exert on one another. That is not a generalization. It is a move from particulars not to a general law but to a theory that explains them, and of course also underlies the general law. Meaning, the scientific process often, by the way, is done in two stages. First stage: I saw several objects with mass falling to the earth; from here I make an induction and say all objects with mass fall to the earth. And now I do abduction: I ask myself why all objects with mass fall to the earth. Probably because masses create a force that pulls them toward one another. So that is already abduction. Abduction, because I moved not from the particulars to the general law, but from the general law or from the actual facts to the theory.

And the dispute between actualism and informativism is at this point. The actualist too, at least Bechler’s actualist, does induction. He makes generalizations; every scientist makes generalizations. The only question is how you relate to the generalization. Meaning, say after I made the generalization—say I reached the generalization that all objects with mass fall to the earth—now I did abduction and said okay, apparently there is a gravitational force or gravitational field that causes this. That is already abduction. Now the actualist sees abduction as a methodological process. Meaning, the generalization speaks of a set of facts in the world: objects with mass fall to the earth. Those are actual facts, facts that appear before the eyes. So that the actualist accepts as a claim about the world, even though there is generalization, induction, behind it. But the move from induction to abduction—that is, the move from the general law to the theory that explains it—the actualist sees that as a methodological move. Theory is a statement about me, not about the world. It is simply the most efficient form for me to arrange the facts. That is all. But the fact that it is efficient—you see Occam’s razor here—the fact that it is efficient or simple does not mean that it is true. It is only a methodological principle; it is not a principle of truth. And therefore actualism and informativism are the names in philosophy of science for the two approaches I presented earlier against Matan Binyamin. Is Occam’s razor a methodological tool, as the actualist claims, or is it a tool for revealing truth, as the informativist would claim?

So the informativist, against the actualist, basically says that when I move from the general law to the theory, I discovered something about the world. I discovered that there is gravity in the world, not just a law of gravity. There is gravity. I discovered that. How did I discover it? Through the scientific process of abduction. Out of the facts I somehow inferred the fact that there is probably gravitational force. The actualist of course will say: who told you? The fact that you are built in such a way that when objects are attracted it is convenient for you to think of it as if there were a force producing it—that is because that is how you are built. If someone else were built differently—after all, you did not see the force with your eyes. The force is not actually present before the eyes; it is not something actual. It is something abstract, something Platonic now, I would even say. Who says it exists?

Basically actualism is the expression of the Aristotelian conception, the modern expression of the Aristotelian conception, and informativism is a Platonic conception. Because informativism basically says that the general laws, the general concepts, are existing entities. When I decide that there is a field, a quantum wave function, an electromagnetic field, all kinds of things like that that are a theory explaining the facts, the informativist claims that those things are reality, they are factual claims. It is not only a convenient way for me to arrange the actual facts. So in fact there is Platonism here, because it basically says that the abstract concepts that organize the actual phenomena are existing entities, existing facts. And in that sense this is really an expression of Platonism; this is scientific Platonism. The scientific Platonist basically says that science reveals the Platonic ideas that stand behind the practical phenomena. The general laws, the theories, the fields, the particles that nobody sees directly—we see only indications of them. So from the standpoint of the actualist, the existence of an electron for example, from the standpoint of the actualist, that is not a fact. It is merely a methodological hypothesis. There is no electron. All there is are various phenomena that we attribute to the electron. Nobody has ever seen an electron, certainly not a quark. Okay? Therefore elementary particles, from the standpoint of the actualist, are not really existing entities. It is simply a theoretical structure, a construction that is very convenient for me to arrange the facts within. That is all.

Do you see the Aristotelianism in this context, or the existential truth that Matan Binyamin… But unlike Aristotle—Aristotle of course denies the existence of that idea—but here the actualist does not deny that there is some theory that explains. He says I cannot commit myself to the existence of an electron. No no, he denies it. He says you have no reason to assume it exists. I use it simply because it is convenient for me to arrange the facts that way. But if it does not exist—suppose you are right—I say to the actualist, you are right, it does not exist, but what causes gravity? So okay, there is no gravitational force, but what causes all the objects to fall? There is some factor, I do not know what it is. No, there is no factor. The concept of causality is our invention. Why must there be a factor? A causal form. I am used to thinking that everything has a theoretical explanation. Fine, no problem, the actualist goes along with that. He only says: but know that this is only a matter of the structure of your thought, not a claim about the world. That is the claim. Of course I am presenting an extreme position right now, but I want to sharpen the distinction, so I present it like this.

So that is the dispute between actualism and informativism, and what underlies actualism is basically extreme empiricism. Extreme empiricism means that you are willing to accept only things that you reached through direct sensory observation. That is the only thing you are willing to commit yourself to as a genuine factual claim. Everything beyond that—hypotheses that you adopt because they are convenient for you—that is existential truth or methodological truth; it is not really a claim about the world. That is the actualist. The informativist says no—even things that I do not observe directly, but which are conclusions my intellect draws from the observations, I am still willing to see as claims about the world. The theory, although I did not directly observe it, I attained it by tools of rational analysis out of the facts I did observe, and still, despite the fact that it is a process of the intellect and not of direct observation, I see the product of that process—the theory—as a claim about the world. And that is basically a rationalist conception against the empiricist conception. So that is really the dispute.

Now, the claim behind all this—what lies behind the dispute between actualism and informativism—is basically the question of how you relate to things that are not direct observation. That is really the discussion. Whoever accepts only direct observations is an actualist. Whoever says, I am willing to accept also conclusions that my intellect infers from the observations as claims about the world, not merely as a methodological tool—he is an informativist.

Now what would happen, say, if they conduct an experiment. They set up—after all, what does science do? Usually in science, after you have a theory, you try to create an experiment that will challenge the theory, that will put it to a falsification test. So you build some experiment in which the theory has some prediction of what should occur in that experiment, and you check. If what happened is what the theory predicted, then fine, it remains okay. If something else happened, the theory has been falsified. It turned out to be wrong. This is true both for the actualist and for the informativist. Both behave in exactly the same way. They take facts, build a generalization from them, from the generalization they do abduction and build a theory, and then they submit the theory to empirical falsification tests, and each time they check. If it passes the falsification tests, excellent; and if it does not pass the falsification tests, one has to choose another theory. Only—the difference between them is in the interpretation of the process. The actualist will say: one needs to choose another theory because it turned out that this theory is not convenient for explaining the facts. It is not convenient for me to organize the facts within it because there are facts that do not fit into it, so I need to replace one fiction with another, more convenient fiction. Not that something I thought was true turned out not to be true; I never thought it was true in the first place, and it did not turn out to be false. There is no true and false. Theory is only a statement about me. But obviously if it does not fit the facts, there is no point in using the theory, because it is not efficient. After all, what tests a theory, what examines a theory, is its efficiency, not its correctness. So from the standpoint of the actualist, it is not efficient because there are facts it does not explain, the facts that falsified it in the experiment.

The informativist claims: because the theory is a claim about the world, if the theory did not stand up to an empirical experiment, then it turned out that the theory is not correct, and therefore it must be replaced with another theory. Not that it is inconvenient or not optimal, but that it is not true. And therefore I need to replace it with another theory. So notice: they do exactly the same thing. Exactly the same thing. They just give a different interpretation of why. So notice: they do exactly the same thing, exactly the same thing. The actualist always gives it a methodological interpretation, and the informativist gives it a factual interpretation. But they do exactly the same thing. Okay? The difference is only in the interpretation.

I’ll connect to this one more thing, yes. It is well known that Popper’s principle says there is an asymmetry between the proof and the falsification of a scientific theory. He says that a scientific theory cannot be proven, but it can be falsified. For example, if I say all ravens are black, then that theory cannot be proven. Check one raven, check two ravens, check three ravens—you can never know with certainty that all ravens are black. You cannot prove the theory that all ravens are black. I mentioned this, I don’t remember, sometime in the past week. Suppose I went through all the ravens in the world. I put a huge net around the entire universe, gathered all the ravens, went through them one by one, and saw that they were all black. So have I proven the theory? Look, I showed that all ravens are black. That is not true, because what I proved is not a theory. Now it is no longer a theory; it is a collection of facts. There is no theory that all ravens are black; I simply gathered all the information in my possession, and that information says that all ravens are black. A theory is always something that speaks about cases I did not observe. The role of a scientific theory is not only to organize the facts known to me, but to organize all the facts that I think are true. Okay? Therefore if I saw three ravens and they were black, and I inferred from that that all ravens are black, then the statement that all ravens are black is a theory. But a theory cannot be proven. Why? Because even if I gather all the ravens and see that they are black, then although I have proven the theory, it has ceased to be a theory, so now it is just a collection of facts. It is not a general law. Okay? Therefore a scientific theory cannot be proven.

What can be done? It can be falsified. If I find one raven that is pink, then I have falsified the theory that all ravens are black. Right? To prove, you cannot; to falsify, you can. That is the asymmetry between proof and falsification. So claims Popper, and therefore he says that if we want to distinguish between a scientific theory and a claim that is not scientific, the distinction is not that the scientific theory has been proven or can be proven, but that a scientific theory can be falsified. That is the correct distinction between a scientific theory and a non-scientific theory. For example, the theory that all demons have three wings is not scientific. Why is it not scientific? Not because no one has proven it or because it cannot be proven, but because it cannot be falsified. What experiment could you do that would falsify the theory that all demons have three wings? But the theory that all bodies with mass are attracted to the earth is scientific. Why? Because it can be proven? It cannot be proven either. Have you seen all objects? Who knows—maybe objects you haven’t seen are not? It is scientific because it can be falsified. You can do an experiment: put some object here, let go of it, and see—if it does not fall to the earth, the theory has been falsified. Okay? Therefore, says Popper, what defines a scientific theory is falsifiability, the possibility of putting it to a falsification test.

Notice that the theory can afterwards be falsified and it will still be a scientific theory. It will be a scientific theory that was falsified. Why is it scientific? Because it is falsifiable. He does not say that a scientific theory is a theory that has always been falsified; that is obviously wrong. On the other hand it is also not true that a scientific theory is one that has never been falsified. A scientific theory is a theory that can be subjected to a falsification test. Whether it passed or did not pass will only determine whether the scientific theory is correct or not. But its being scientific is only because it can be falsified—it can be subjected to falsification tests. Okay? That is the definition of a scientific theory.

Now one of the criticisms of Popper is that according to his view—and he writes this—according to his view it comes out that, say, there is a theory that has stood up—say all bodies with mass are attracted to the earth, that is my theory, like all ravens are black, no matter. Now I checked once and again and again, and it was always corroborated. It was not falsified in any test, and I did many tests of all kinds, with all kinds of objects, in all kinds of places in the world—this is the principle of variety in evidence. Yes, you need to test your theory in as many cases as possible, meaning the greatest possible variety of cases, different places, different kinds of objects; that is best. Okay? Now suppose I checked everything and it was fully corroborated. What can you tell me? Popper says: you can’t tell me anything. You cannot say that all ravens are black; that is a theory, you have not proven it, you cannot say it. What you can say is that, so far, the theory has not been falsified. What does that mean? I will use this theory, says Popper, but I will use it in an actualist sense. Meaning, this theory is a theory that has not yet been falsified. So what does that mean? Since to me it seems the most natural and the simplest, I will use it. But I will use it not because it is true, but because it is efficient and so far has not been falsified, so there is no reason to give it up. That is all. Meaning, what lies behind Popper’s conception is actualism.

Now against that his critics say: wait a second, there is some kind of problem here. Why? Because it is intuitively clear to all of us that if the theory stands up to very many falsification tests and is not falsified in any of them—meaning it passes all the falsification tests successfully—then obviously our confidence in the theory increases. Right? Factually first of all, before the question of justification, factually our confidence increases. The more evidence we have in favor of a certain theory, the more we tend to think it is true. According to Popper there is no basis for this at all. It is merely all you can say: it has not yet been falsified. That is all.

And the claim of his critics says: apparently you are too extreme. You went for criteria that are too minimalistic. In order for you to make a claim about the world, you require proof; you require certainty. Certainty really is not there in claims like all ravens are black or all objects with mass fall to the earth. But we say, the critics, from our perspective there is also something called confirmation—not approval but confirmation. What does that mean? Every experiment in which I subjected the theory and it was not falsified—that is, it stood up—confirms the theory. Someone once noted to me that one should say “confirms” and not something like “recovers”; anyway, it confirms the theory. What does that mean? It means the theory becomes more probable to me. I am more inclined to think it is true. And the more tests it passes, more varied tests of all kinds, the more and more confirmed it becomes. That is the alternative claim to Popper.

And what lies behind this claim? What lies behind this claim is that when I adopt a theory, I do not adopt it merely as a methodological tool, like Popper’s actualism, but I adopt it because I think that this is what is correct about the world. Okay, so how do I know that? I don’t know. But from my perspective the scientific enterprise is not a methodological matter. It is a tool for knowing the world. And therefore standing up to experiments, repeatedly standing up to more and more experiments, strengthens my confidence in the theory. You understand that if the theory is only actualist, then there is no such thing as strengthening my confidence in the theory, because I have no confidence in the theory. I don’t adopt the theory because it seems true to me; I adopt the theory because it is the most efficient tool for me to deal with the facts, so as long as it is not falsified it is an efficient tool for dealing with the facts. What do I care how many times it was not falsified? But if you understand the theory as a claim about the world, then of course—or at least then one can understand why every observation in which the theory is confirmed or not falsified strengthens my confidence in the theory, because I claim that I do have confidence in the theory. It is not merely a methodological tool. How do I arrive at that confidence? From the fact that the theory again and again stands the test and is not falsified. It is confirmed in each of the experiments, and that strengthens my confidence in the theory.

By the way, the concept of confirmation has an interesting attack against it—I say this in parentheses—an interesting attack by Carl Hempel, also a philosopher of science. And he says this—this is called the paradox of the ravens. He says: what do the confirmationists say, those who disagree with Popper? They basically want to claim, say, that I have the theory that all ravens are black. Okay? So basically every time I observed a raven and it turned out to be black—that is, not some other non-black color—the theory was not falsified, so my confidence in the theory that all ravens are black increases. Right? That is the thesis of the proponents of confirmation. Let’s call them the informativists now.

Now he says: you understand that if I take the claim that all ravens are black, the claim that everything that is not black is not a raven is logically equivalent, right? “Every raven is black” is logically equivalent to the claim “everything that is not black is not a raven.” Because if it were a raven, then it would be a non-black raven. Right? If all ravens are black, there cannot be something that is not black and is a raven, because all ravens are black and this thing is not black. Okay? So this is called the rule of denying the consequent. If A implies B, then not-B implies not-A. If being a raven implies being black, then being non-black implies being not a raven. Okay? Meaning, one denies the consequent. The implication goes from antecedent to consequent, and the reverse implication is that denial of the consequent implies denial of the antecedent. Okay? That is logical equivalence.

So now, Hempel claims, if every experiment in which I observe a black raven confirms the statement that all ravens are black, then in that same way I can also confirm that statement by looking at the equivalent statement, that everything that is not black is not a raven. Right? If I confirm the reverse statement, then I have confirmed this one too, because they are logically equivalent. Now how does one confirm the statement that everything that is not black is not a raven? One takes things that are not black and checks whether they are ravens or not. If they are not ravens, then we have confirmed the statement, right? So it comes out that seeing a white tissue confirms the statement that all ravens are black. You understand that this is absurd. The moment I see, I don’t know, a gray fan, then that is evidence that all ravens are black. Confirmation, not evidence. It is confirmation that all ravens are black. So Hempel says: this is a refutation of the concept of confirmation. It is proof that it is not right. If something withstands the test, is not falsified in an empirical test, then it does not thereby confirm it.

But there is a tiny bit of confirmation here, right? What? Seeing a white tissue confirms the statement that all ravens are black? As with rejecting idolatry as a basis for faith, as though to say every other thing is not God, so also… a tissue is not God, blood is not God. Stay with the tissue and the ravens; there it’s something a little different. You understand that it sounds absurd? To see a white tissue is to confirm the statement that all the… You don’t have to look at ravens at all in order to confirm the statement that all ravens are black. Look at all kinds of other objects in other colors, just make sure they are not ravens. Wait—if I went through all the other objects, slowly, I have infinite patience, and for billions of years I go through all the beings in the world that are not… and I see that they are not ravens, when they are not black and I see that they are not ravens, then have I not confirmed it? Certainly yes. Okay, so I agree.

And indeed this paradox of Hempel is a false paradox. Why? Because clearly the concept of confirmation is a function of the content of the theory and of the circumstances. Suppose the theory says all ravens are black. It talks about all ravens. Now there are different ravens in different places, of different species, so it is worth checking different species and different places, and little by little if you checked different kinds and everything comes out black, then you have confirmed the claim that all ravens are black. What does “confirmed” mean? If you saw some representative sample of all ravens, then you can assume it is true of all ravens. Okay? Now in the same way, indeed, one can confirm the statement that everything that is not black is not a raven. But for that, of course, you need to take a representative sample of things, of all things that are not black, or alternatively go through all the things that are not black. But if you don’t want to go through everything, because we are talking about confirmation, take a representative sample. Now if you take a representative sample that truly represents the whole population of non-black things, and in all of them you see that it is not a raven, then indeed you have confirmed the statement that all ravens are black. Why does that seem absurd to us? It seems absurd because seeing one white tissue is negligible confirmation. Fine, it confirms by a tiny amount the statement that everything non-black is not a raven, but this is confirmation that is completely negligible. Because it has no statistical weight in relation to so many colors and so many types of objects that have those colors, such that if you saw one type of object in one color, it has no statistical weight at all, nothing. Maybe some tiny millimeter. It has no significance. But that is only a quantitative matter. If you take a representative sample of many colors and many objects, then yes indeed, it will represent in the same way. And therefore the paradox of the ravens is mistaken.

What does that mean for our purposes? It basically means that the concept of confirmation is not a paradoxical concept, right? And our intuition that says that when we see again and again that the theory stands up to falsification tests, is not falsified in those tests, we can be strengthened in our belief in that theory. Okay? That is… confirmation is a valid tool. That is basically… I didn’t understand how confirmation solves Popper. What? I didn’t understand how confirmation solves Popper. It doesn’t solve Popper; it disagrees with Popper. In what does it contradict him? In that Popper claims there is no such thing as confirmation. All you can do is either falsify. Or say that it has not yet been falsified. But the fact that it has not yet been falsified does not mean that it is true. It only means that meanwhile I can use it methodologically because it fits the facts I know. So why not use it? But I am not claiming that it is true. I am only claiming that it has not been falsified. So there is no room to talk about confirmation in such a worldview, because confirmation tells me that I believe more and more that it is true the more empirical tests it passes. But for Popper there is no such thing at all as believing that a theory is true. All you can say is that it has not yet been falsified. Fine.

There are those who say that in a later period Popper maybe partly retracted somewhat; there are all kinds of debates among those who deal in philosophical archaeology. But for our purposes it does not matter. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll call this Popper’s approach because I need a label, and I’ll discuss it with that term.

So up to this point I have presented the dispute between actualism and informativism. And the important point to notice is that these two pictures belong basically to the philosophical plane, not the scientific plane. The scientific plane proceeds in exactly the same way whether you are an actualist or an informativist, or whether you are Popperian or one of the confirmationists. This is what you call leaning on confirmation. So the claim is that everything is done in exactly the same way. You take a collection of facts, assume this is a representative sample, make a generalization to all the facts, move to abduction and create the theory, submit the theory to falsification tests; if it did not pass the tests, you throw it away and look for another; if it passed the tests, then it remains with us or becomes more confirmed according to that version, or according to Popper it has not yet been falsified so one can continue using it. Okay? And everything I described up to now is completely agreed upon by the actualist and the informativist. They have no disagreement whatsoever. Both agree that the scientific process should proceed exactly in this way. Their dispute is only what interpretation I give to the process that proceeds that way. Is it basically an approach to truth, or is it merely clarification of methodological tools that I will use in order to handle facts? That is all. But it does not approach truth in any way. Theory is not a claim about the world. Scientific claims about the world are only the collection of actual facts.

This is a little reminiscent—I’ve spoken about it more than once—it is a bit reminiscent of the dispute over Torah study. Say Rabbi Ovadia and his sons and followers think that Torah study is a means to arrive at knowledge of Jewish law. Okay? From their point of view, Torah is basically the collection of laws. The analytical structures, what is done in the yeshivot, the pilpulim, what Rabbi Ovadia would call “in the yeshivot what they do—chefza and gavra and all sorts of theories,” which are really abductive constructions—for Rabbi Ovadia, that has no real value. It can help you think about the halakhic facts, so fine, use it on the methodological level, but engaging in those things is not Torah study. Torah study is only engagement with the laws. The laws are the substance of Torah. These tools are at most perhaps tools—if it helps you organize the laws into these or those categories, no problem, organize them. You see Aristotle? Organize them into different categories, fine, but the categories are not claims about the world; they are simply for your convenience. It is a methodological tool.

So from Rabbi Ovadia’s point of view—he himself also did not really engage in lomdus, but even someone who did engage in lomdus he might perhaps accept the legitimacy of it simply because you need it, because from your perspective you are built in such a way that the conceptual analytic theory is the most efficient tool for you to handle the collection of laws. That is all. In contrast, the Brisker yeshiva analyst sees it exactly the opposite way. From his perspective the laws are not the point at all. The laws are a tool by means of which I can try to do abduction and build the meta-halakhic theory. And Torah study is to arrive at the meta-halakhic theory, where of course how do I arrive at it? By means of the laws. I examine what the law says about all kinds of cases and from that I try to build a theoretical structure that explains the cases, just like in science. Therefore the talmudic analyst is really an informativist. The analyst understands that the conceptual halakhic theory is a claim about Torah; it is part of Torah. Torah is the conceptual theory. The laws are the actual facts that the theory explains; they are consequences of the theory. But Torah itself is really the theory.

By contrast, Rabbi Ovadia is an actualist. He basically says: what is Torah? Torah is the collection of laws. The theory—if it helps you, use it, but you are using it only because it is a tool that helps you organize the facts. Halakhically, that is all. Don’t think there really is a law in the object or a law in the person, that there is something in reality corresponding to these statements. These statements are not statements about Torah; they are statements about you. The statements about Torah are what is forbidden and what is permitted, that is all. And what is obligatory. You organize it into categories of object and person, and sign and cause, and law in this and law in that, and all kinds of things of that sort—that is your way of organizing. Good health to you. But it is only a methodological issue, not existential truth. You see that this keeps coming back all the time.

Rabbi, Rabbi, I still didn’t understand. The view that says—David Hume, I don’t know, an extreme empiricist—does he deny causality or does he say we don’t know with certainty that there is causality? How can he deny something—how can he know? He does not deny it positively; he only says there is no reason to assume there is causality. No reason? Yes. No reason to assume it exists; there is no point in assuming there is causality, no logic in it, because why assume that the way I am built is really the truth? You cannot say positively that it is not true, obviously, just as you cannot say positively that it is true. But it is a kind of anticipation of postmodernism, anticipation with a “t.” Meaning, he basically says forget it, you don’t have access to it; there is no reason to speak about it in terms of true and false.

So that is a bit different from Aristotle? Aristotle says you are literally inventing inventions, you invented an idea that never was and never came to be. The empiricist says I don’t know, maybe—from where do you get the thought that the way I’m built… To my mind the difference is one of nuance, of formulation. It’s not… Aristotle too, if you asked him, would say: look, I don’t know whether these categories… after all, they do not exist in reality, he disagrees with Plato. Rather, it is convenient for us to think in that way. Now whether that is right or not, he too could answer you: look, I don’t know, but it is also not a question that is accessible to me, so why deal with it? I am not a Platonist.

I still don’t understand the empiricist on the statistical point. After all, he sees that causality works in infinitely many cases. In infinitely many cases causality works. There is a link, a correlation. Yes, but if it is a correct theory then it always… if it is correct, we are not certain, but if it is correct… There are infinitely many correct theories. This one is the simplest, so what? Yes, but it has been realized infinitely many times… They have all been realized! And no other theory has ever collapsed… And none of them has ever collapsed! I have infinitely many theories, all of which are constantly realized and have never been falsified, and I choose the simplest among them. But they all meet your criterion. What alternative theory to causality does David Hume have? What do you mean? There are connections caused by all kinds of other mechanisms, not causal mechanisms. That work, that up to now have been realized and were correct in all the cases we encountered? Yes. I will later bring more concrete examples for this description, but yes, every set of facts can be described by infinitely many theories. Infinitely many theories. Only, we precisely… a miracle in each case, for example, like the three signs of the insane person of Rabbi Chaim. What did he say? Meaning… But statistically, again, he would need to invent a theory for each and every case… Well, but statistically, then we already said about Occam—Occam’s razor, that it too is a statistical issue. Again, you are assuming what needs to be proved. I agree, I just want to show it. Right now I am presenting the two conceptions; in the end I want to show why I really think there is statistics here and that this is correct, not only a methodological matter. I am trying to understand David Hume. What brought him to this nonsense? I’m not going to explain him because I don’t agree with him. I’m only trying to present this dispute in order to show why he is wrong. I’m simply trying to present it in a more systematic way.

Regarding the differences between Rabbi Ovadia and Rabbi Chaim, for example, I want to understand: all the inquiries Rabbi Chaim carries out in all kinds of areas—does that also cause changes in Jewish law? Meaning, could it be that Rabbi Ovadia did not give the correct law because he did not analyze it properly? Look, factually, certainly yes. But the claim I put in Rabbi Ovadia’s mouth is a principled claim. Suppose there were no difference at all in terms of Jewish law, okay? Suppose for the sake of argument that you found some conceptual formulation that organizes the entire set of laws, say of Maimonides, and Rabbi Ovadia knows the laws of Maimonides and explains them differently, not conceptually, or simply knows the set of laws. Now the question is whether there is value to the theory you hold. Is that Torah? Rabbi Ovadia will say no. It is only a way of organizing the laws. Rabbi Ovadia says I do not need that way of organizing the laws; I have the Mishneh Torah, and for me that too is a good organization of the laws. So if it is convenient for you, use it, but it is not Torah. Rabbi Chaim will say: even if it does not cause any law to change, still, if I became convinced that this is the simplest and therefore also the most correct explanation behind the halakhic facts, then from my point of view I have learned another piece of Torah. It is part of reality; it is a statement about reality—in this case, Torah, yes? And it is a claim about Torah; it is not merely some organizational tool of mine, by the way.

But from a practical point of view, from a practical point of view, have you encountered cases in which, for example, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef did not analyze the law all the way through, and if you take Rabbi Chaim or someone like that you’ll see that the law is actually different? Of course, countless times. What do you mean? Really? Ah. Conceptual analysis constantly leads—even two different conceptual analyses lead to different conclusions. So obviously the absence of analysis will often, not always, but often lead to different conclusions. That is obvious. Okay. What? Fine. What?

So in short, what I want to say—I’ll perhaps summarize because we’ve already reached the end—so I’ll just summarize where we got to so far. What I really want to say is that there are two ways of viewing the scientific process. The actualist way and the informativist way. These two ways do not differ in any practical sense regarding how science is conducted. They describe in exactly the same way how science is conducted and should be conducted. The dispute is only the question of interpretation. What does this conduct mean? Is it basically the attempt to find the optimal tool for me to organize the facts, as the actualist claims, and if there is an experiment that falsified the theory, then it did not falsify the theory in the sense of showing that it is untrue—I never thought it was true—but rather it showed me that this is not an efficient theory because it will not explain all the facts, and therefore there is no point in using it. By contrast, for the informativist, if you falsified the theory then you showed that it is false. Because he thinks the theory is true. So if there is a fact that falsifies it, then he says okay, so apparently the theory is not correct; one needs to find another theory that will be correct. So the difference is only a difference in interpretation, but they do exactly the same thing. Seemingly.

And therefore, Bechler, although throughout his book the whole book is intended to attack actualism, there is not in the whole book a single argument in favor of informativism except attacking the actualists. Meaning, he cannot… And why not? Because Bechler himself is an empiricist. And an empiricist cannot bring evidence against actualism, because the difference between actualism and informativism—sorry—that difference is not a factual difference. In terms of facts, after all, they agree completely. Both agree that science should proceed in exactly the same way. So you will not be able to bring scientific evidence against actualism or against informativism. It is a question of how you philosophically interpret the scientific process. And therefore in the end the accepted view in the world is that the dispute between actualism and informativism is a philosophical dispute. It cannot be decided empirically, yes? If your philosophical inclination is actualist, then you are an actualist; if you are an informativist, then you are an informativist. But there will be no way to decide this dispute scientifically or empirically.

Now I claim that there is such a way. There is a way to decide it; this is not a philosophical dispute. There is a way to decide this dispute empirically. And here we seize the Platonic bull by the horns. Because now I am really proving Platonism. But I’ll do that in the next session. That’s it for now. If there are comments or questions.

Just what you said regarding the challenge to causality—does that also fall under this issue of the theory of confirmation? Meaning, David Hume challenges causality, but the claim is that causality is the theory. So from David Hume’s point of view, he says causality is not a claim about the world; in the world there is no causality. In the world there are correlations. It is convenient for us to use the term causality because it helps us think about reality, organize the facts in reality. And the argument against that is what we said about confirmation—that we do in fact have some tendency to believe in the theory. That is not against… that is the position that disagrees with Hume and with Popper. But the question is whether that position is correct. The opposing position claims that the more it stands up to falsification tests, the more it is confirmed. Popper says: it has not yet been falsified. For now it is a philosophical dispute in how to formulate it; there is no way here to prove one side over the other.

And one more small thing. When you say informativism and actualism, I’m trying to absorb the concepts but I don’t really understand why those words. Actualism means that science is the collection of facts that are present in an actual way before my eyes. Theory is not actually present before my eyes; it is not something I see, it is not something actual—it’s concepts, abstract things. Therefore the actualist says science is only the actual things, only what is… present to me in an actual way before my eyes, the facts. Theory is not part of science. Is actualism like empiricism? Informativism says that the theory contains information about the world, information—that’s why it is called informativism. Meaning, my relation to the theory is an informative relation, in that for me the theory contains information about the world, not only a tool to arrange the information. And actualism is basically like empiricism? Yes. Empiricism, when taken seriously, is actualism. Got it. Thank you. Okay. So goodbye. Sabbath peace. Sabbath peace.