Time in Jewish Law 3
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The conception of time, space, and two time axes
- The three components of causality and the directionality of time
- Correlation versus causation: Smullyan, Leibniz, and the parable of the clocks
- Beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident as a scale of causal components
- Liability for the negligence itself: Machaneh Ephraim, contract, and prohibition
- Considerations of transgression: the Ran, Abraham and Sarah, and the measure of quantity versus severity
- David Hume and causality in physics: the speed of light, Newton, and interpretation
- Steinitz’s conditioning paradox: sufficient condition versus necessary and sufficient condition
- Logic’s indifference to time: logical determinism and the sea battle
- Existing information versus truth value: Richard Taylor’s Ozzmo and fatalism
- The knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He, and free choice: Maimonides, the Raavad, the Shelah, the Or HaChaim
- Newcomb’s paradox and a conditional proof regarding prophecy: Ron Aharoni and an information loop
Summary
General Overview
The speaker continues from the previous lecture on the conception of time and explains that the feeling that time “flows” requires a conceptual distinction between a static “lower” time axis and an “upper” time axis that moves across it. That also yields a consistent definition of time travel at the conceptual level, and even as a legal fiction. He then turns to causality and argues that a causal relation has three components—temporal priority, a logical “if-then” relation, and causation / a physical connection—and illustrates through legal topics how removing components gives rise to disputes over liability and exemption. He goes on to present David Hume’s challenge to the physical “because” component and the adoption of that approach in physics, critiques a logical paradox of Steinitz about a “necessary and sufficient condition,” and shows that logic is indifferent to the direction of time, which is why false arguments like logical determinism arise. Finally, he distinguishes between a “truth value,” which is a definition, and “existing information,” which is a fact; he uses Richard Taylor’s story of Ozzmo and Newcomb’s paradox to argue that genuine prior knowledge of a free future entails determinism, and applies this to the question of the knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He, and free choice in Maimonides, the Raavad, the Shelah, and the Or HaChaim.
The conception of time, space, and two time axes
The speaker presents a Kantian conception of time as the question whether time is merely a form of perception or something that really exists, and mentions the comparison between time and space and Richard Taylor’s argument that one can swap temporal and spatial concepts and still get valid sentences. He argues that despite the linguistic validity of the substitution, there remains a basic feeling that time is different from space, because time is experienced as flowing and space as static. He proposes that in order to explain the “passage of time,” one must assume that time flows over another time axis, so that an “upper” axis can move forward and backward over a static “lower” axis, and in that way one gets a consistent definition of the concept of time travel. He distinguishes between the question of the physical possibility of time travel and the possibility of defining it conceptually and even legally, and argues that even if physics does not allow time travel, one can still legally define an action as operating “backward in time” so long as the definition is free of internal contradiction.
The three components of causality and the directionality of time
The speaker states that a causal relation has three components: a temporal component in which the cause precedes the effect, so causality “flows” forward in time; a logical component of “if A then B,” which distinguishes between mere precedence and dependence; and a physical component of causation, which is not identical to logical dependence. He uses causality to ground the unique directionality of the time axis as opposed to space, because in space one can influence from right to left or from left to right, whereas influence from the future to the past is impossible within ordinary causality. He emphasizes that temporal priority is a necessary condition for a causal relation but not a sufficient one, and therefore one also needs logical dependence and a causative component.
Correlation versus causation: Smullyan, Leibniz, and the parable of the clocks
The speaker cites Raymond Smullyan to argue that an “if-then” relation can exist without causation, and explains that a physical critique of astrology based on the speed of light is not decisive, because one could understand the relation between the state of the stars and what happens here as correlation rather than causal influence. He presents the possibility of “gears” or synchronization that produces ongoing correspondence without mutual influence, and compares this to two clocks running in perfect coordination. He mentions that this is Leibniz’s parable of the clocks, and adds a joke about an information loop between a weather broadcaster and an Indian chief to illustrate a closed circle that creates correlation without direct causation. He concludes that one may say of two clocks, “If this one shows nine-oh-two, then that one too will show nine-oh-two,” but that still is not a physical relation of causation.
Beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident as a scale of causal components
The speaker uses the Talmudic topic of “it began with negligence and ended with unavoidable accident” to build a scale in which one can see the three components of causality and the possibility of omitting components. He describes a case of a guardian who hid an item in a forest: hiding it there is good protection against thieves, but it is exposed to fire. When thieves eventually come, this is called “it began with negligence and ended with unavoidable accident,” and according to Jewish law, “it began with negligence and ended with unavoidable accident” is liable. He presents a further distinction in the Rif’s view of Abaye in Bava Metzia 36 between a case where there is a connection between the negligence and the accident and a case where there is no connection, and gives the example of an animal deposited with him; he was negligent and left the door open, the animal went out and died naturally in the marsh, where “what difference does the Angel of Death care whether here or there.” He explains that in the case of “no connection,” only temporal priority is present, without an “if-then” relation and without legal causation, whereas in the case of “there is a connection,” time and logic are present but causation in the sense of legal blame is lacking; and in full negligence, time, logic, and causation / full responsibility are all present. He presents the dispute over when liability ceases as one removes components from the causal relation, and clarifies that in practice, in the third case of “no connection,” one is exempt.
Liability for the negligence itself: Machaneh Ephraim, contract, and prohibition
The speaker cites the Machaneh Ephraim as an explanation of how Abaye according to the Rif could impose liability even when there is no connection between the negligence and the accident, arguing that the negligence itself is a breach of contract and therefore obligates payment. He sketches a situation in which, had nothing happened to the animal, the guardian would “pay” by returning the animal itself; but when the animal dies naturally, he has nothing to return and so he pays out of pocket even though he is not to blame for the death. He raises the possibility that there may be a Torah prohibition here, or a distinction between an obligation to guard and a contractual obligation, and demonstrates a case where there is a causal connection to the death (an iron gate that the animal rammed) but no negligence, so that causal connection by itself still does not impose liability.
Considerations of transgression: the Ran, Abraham and Sarah, and the measure of quantity versus severity
The speaker cites the Ran regarding the question of a sick person who needs to eat meat on the Sabbath: should one choose non-kosher meat or slaughter on the Sabbath? He presents the Ran’s view that it is preferable to commit one severe transgression in order to avoid many lighter transgressions with every olive-sized portion, even though this was not ruled that way in the Shulchan Arukh. He connects this to a yeshiva-style quip about Egypt in the story of “Please say that you are my sister” and the puzzlement over how they would violate “you shall not murder” in order not to violate “you shall not commit adultery,” and suggests, in line with the Ran, that murder is a one-time act whereas every act of intercourse would be a repeated transgression. He uses this as an expansion for understanding liability in situations where the “negative condition” (“had it not been for the negligence, this would not have happened”) serves as the basis for a legal claim even without direct causation.
David Hume and causality in physics: the speed of light, Newton, and interpretation
The speaker argues that, ironically, David Hume specifically undermines the physical component of causality and claims that there is no empirical basis for “because,” only temporal succession and the habit / induction of “if-then.” He explains that all one sees is a sequence—you kick, and then the ball flies—and at most one can establish a rule, “when one kicks, the ball flies,” but there is no direct observation of “because.” He adds that contemporary scientific thinking has adopted Hume’s conception of causality, and illustrates this with Newton’s second law, F=ma, where the equation is symmetrical and does not indicate what is cause and what is effect, so the causal direction is an interpretation in everyday discourse and not formal content of the equation. He notes that in physics, a “causal relation” is sometimes reduced to the fact that one event lies within the other’s light cone, without speaking of causation in the deeper sense of a “producer” or “generator.”
Steinitz’s conditioning paradox: sufficient condition versus necessary and sufficient condition
The speaker presents a discussion brought in a book by Steinitz on the “conditioning paradox” and two schools of thought: cause as a merely sufficient condition versus cause as a necessary and sufficient condition. He describes Steinitz’s proof against “necessary and sufficient” by means of a chain A→B→C, where if A is necessary and sufficient for B, and B is necessary and sufficient for C, then through reversibility it follows that C too is necessary and sufficient for B, contradicting the uniqueness of the necessary and sufficient condition. He argues that Steinitz’s argument is mistaken because it exhausts causality in logic and ignores the condition of temporal priority. Even if logical reversibility holds, that does not make C the cause of B, because C comes afterward. He adds that one can formulate a necessary and sufficient condition for B as the conjunction “A before it and C after it” without any logical problem, and therefore the paradox does not rule out causal chains; it only shows that logic by itself does not identify causal direction.
Logic’s indifference to time: logical determinism and the sea battle
The speaker presents the Aristotelian-style argument for logical determinism: “Tomorrow there will be a sea battle” seems already to have a truth value today, because if tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then the statement is already true today, and if there will not be, then it is already false today. He explains that the deterministic argument concludes from this that it cannot be that tomorrow there will not be a sea battle if already today the statement is true, and therefore the future is fixed in advance. He rejects this by arguing that a truth value is a timeless definition and not an event in the world, so there is no physical causation here of the future upon the present, but only a logical relation in which “if tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then today the truth value is true.” He states that the fallacy is a confusion between “causation” and the “if-then” relation, and emphasizes that logic can operate “backward in time” because it is not subject to the direction of time the way causal production is.
Existing information versus truth value: Richard Taylor’s Ozzmo and fatalism
The speaker tells Richard Taylor’s story of Ozzmo: a village schoolteacher finds a book, “The Story of Ozzmo,” which accurately describes his life up to the moment he finds it, and then goes on to predict his death in a plane crash on the way to New York; his attempt to flee leads to panic, and he causes the crash, thereby fulfilling the prophecy. He asks what would happen if Ozzmo had never read the book, and argues that if the book is reliable, then the very existence of the information means that nothing else can happen, whether one reads it or not. He distinguishes this from logical determinism: the “truth value of a statement” is not factual information in the world, whereas “existing information now about what will happen tomorrow” is a fact that entails determinism if it is correct. He formulates the distinction as a boundary line between logical definitions, which do not cause anything, and facts / information, which preclude the possibility that things could happen otherwise.
The knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He, and free choice: Maimonides, the Raavad, the Shelah, the Or HaChaim
The speaker cites Maimonides in chapter 5, who asks how the knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He, of the future can be reconciled with free choice, and notes the Raavad’s comment: “This author did not follow the way of the sages, by asking questions to which he cannot give answers.” He argues that a common answer, that “the Holy One, blessed be He, is above time,” answers a different question—how information about the future can be obtained—but does not answer the main question: if that information already exists with Him now, can a person tomorrow do otherwise than what is already known. He compares the knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He, to Ozzmo’s book: if the information exists, then there is no possibility that it will be otherwise, and therefore anyone who possesses genuine prior knowledge of free choices is a determinist. He mentions the Shelah, who argues that Maimonides’ statement “His knowledge is not like our knowledge” means that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know in the ordinary sense, and he cites the Or HaChaim on “I regret that I made them,” who suggests that the Holy One, blessed be He, “withheld from Himself” knowledge of the future in order to allow choice. He rejects simple “closing one’s eyes” as a solution, because even if no one knows the information, its mere existence would still determine things; and he concludes that the consistent solution is that information about a future dependent on free choice does not exist and therefore also cannot be known, because “to know non-existent information is like making a square circle.”
Newcomb’s paradox and a conditional proof regarding prophecy: Ron Aharoni and an information loop
The speaker describes Newcomb’s paradox: a prophet offers an open box with a thousand dollars and a closed box containing a million dollars if one chooses only it, but empty if one chooses the open box as well; the prophet arranged this in advance because he knows what will be chosen. He argues that the hesitation to “take only the closed box” is confused, because the amount of money in the box is a physically existing fact and not a truth value, so if it was determined yesterday, it does not retroactively change by virtue of today’s choice, and therefore one should take both boxes. He cites Ron Aharoni in the book The Cat That Isn’t There and argues that Aharoni misses the point by applying “logic’s indifference to time” to a factual-physical situation. He concludes that the only way to resolve the loop is that such a prophet does not exist in a non-deterministic model, and that if a person is a libertarian, then “the information does not exist” in advance and therefore “including the Holy One, blessed be He” cannot know it, whereas in a deterministic picture there is no contradiction because the person will in any case do what was fixed in advance.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time we talked—and after I spoke a bit about the conception of time, a Kantian conception of time, whether time is only a form of our perception or whether it really exists—so last time I spoke a bit about the relation between time and space. And we saw there this feeling that time flows while space is seemingly static, but really, as in Richard Taylor’s argument, you can swap the temporal and spatial concepts for one another and still get valid sentences. Meaning that apparently there’s really no difference, but the simple intuition is that it still isn’t the same thing. And I said—I think I also spoke about two time axes, right? Did I speak about that? That in order to explain this feeling of the passage of time, meaning that time flows, you have to define what it is flowing across. You could define it as flowing across space, but then that doesn’t say anything. So if you want to talk about time flowing, it has to flow across another time axis. And that also explains why it makes sense to talk about time travel, because time travel basically means that across the static lower time axis, the upper time can move forward and backward, and then at least you can define this notion of time travel in a consistent way, in a way that has clear meaning. And now of course there’s the question whether it’s possible or impossible—that’s a question in physics—but the conceptual definition, if you accept that there are two time axes, is a consistent definition. Why is that important? I think I also spoke about this—that on the legal plane we talk about going back in time under certain conditions, in the topic of retroactive determination, which I’ll get to later. And if so, then it clearly doesn’t depend on whether physics allows time travel or not. Even if physics doesn’t allow it, we can still define certain things legally as operating backward in time. But obviously logic is still important—meaning, in order to define it even on the legal level, it has to be defined without internal contradiction, meaning defined in a clear and intelligible way. And then you can talk about it as a legal fiction or some kind of legal definition, but if conceptually it has no definition, then there’s nothing to talk about even outside the world of physics. All right, so that’s more or less, I think, what I did last time. I now want to move to the issue of causality; I think I hadn’t started that yet, right? The concept of causality. Basically, the causal relation has three components. One component is the temporal component, and therefore it’s connected to our topic. A cause, usually as people understand it, is supposed to precede the effect. Meaning, the causal relation flows forward with time, not backward in time. And by the way, that’s one of the indications that there really is directionality to the time axis—it isn’t like space. As far as space goes, it’s indifferent to causality. You can influence from right to left or from left to right; it doesn’t matter in which direction the influence goes. But you can’t influence from the future to the past. So causality is one of the elements—maybe even the central one—that expresses or demonstrates the uniqueness of the time axis as opposed to space. But time is only one of the components of the causal relation. The second component is the logical component. The logical component basically means that if A is a cause and B is an effect, then, first, A has to be before B, and second, it’s—
[Speaker C] The first thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s the first thing. And the second thing is that I can say: if A, then B. Meaning, not everything that comes before something else is its cause. Right? I was born before my sister; that doesn’t mean my birth is the cause of my sister’s birth. Right? So it’s not enough to say that you came first in time in order to say there’s a causal relation between the events.
[Speaker D] Just that it’s not sufficient.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Not sufficient?
[Speaker D] That it’s not the cause. No, obviously. It’s just not sufficient; it could still be the cause.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but temporal priority is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Okay. So basically I also need some logical condition that says if this happens, then that happens—that’s the logical relation. And the third element is the physical relation. The physical relation is different from the logical relation, and that’s an important point that many people miss. Because the logical relation… exists even where there is no causation between A and B. I can say that… maybe I’ll give an example. There’s Raymond Smullyan—I think I mentioned him before in the past—the American logician, an American Jew, who does logical stand-up comedy. And in one of his books he gives an example to illustrate this point. He says that often there’s criticism of astrology: astrologers think that if the stars are in a certain configuration, that means something will happen here, or that it has some kind of influence on what happens here. Now the claim is that this influence contradicts the laws of physics, because there’s a limit that influence can only travel at the speed of light, and therefore over such a distance it takes time for the influence to occur. I never understood that question. I’ve seen it in a few places. It’s simply the wrong question, in my opinion, because there are stars that we see now at the speed of light.
[Speaker E] That’s not true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Say event A—
[Speaker C] It could be, but I don’t understand—what we’re seeing now also isn’t now.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, exactly. That’s why I’m saying I don’t understand that question. It’s a silly question, in my opinion, but for some reason it comes back in several places. Never mind, I’m only bringing it in to sharpen the point. The point is that the laws of physics say that event A cannot influence event B at a speed greater than the speed of light. Meaning, if the distance between them is a kilometer, then it will take some tenth of a second; it can’t influence faster than that. The speed of light is the highest limit, or less, but not more.
[Speaker C] Okay, in quantum theory you have that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the speed of light is still a limit.
[Speaker C] No, you have entanglement.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, those are the paradoxes, but it doesn’t work that way. But in principle it doesn’t work that way. So now you have to understand how to reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity. You have to understand that. Right, right. EPR and all the EPR experiments.
[Speaker E] So I didn’t understand. So the state of the heavenly bodies, as—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The heavenly bodies—their state there causes something to happen here.
[Speaker C] Seems possible—
[Speaker E] That they’re at a distance, but according to the astrologers that doesn’t take into account—it takes into account the time it takes for Taurus—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s why I said before that the question really is a silly one.
[Speaker C] Because if something happened in the heavenly bodies, they arranged themselves like that, then until the influence gets here—if, say, the heavenly bodies are a light-year away from us—then it’ll take at least a year until it affects us.
[Speaker E] Yes, but they could—
[Speaker C] The astrologers could say—
[Speaker E] That we measure it from when it reaches here.
[Speaker C] Exactly, in any case they measure it that way, because we can only see it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What we see of the stars now—the appearance of the stars also took a year to get here. That’s why the question is silly.
[Speaker C] What we’re seeing now happened a year ago.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the question is silly, but I’m only bringing it in to sharpen the point. What he wants to claim is that this is not an immediate difficulty. It’s not difficult. Why not? Because it could be that the relation between the stars and what happens down here is not a causal relation but a correlation. Meaning, there is some correspondence between what happens up there and what happens here, even though it’s not because—
[Speaker C] There’s another cause producing both.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. Or there’s another cause, or the correlation is accidental.
[Speaker C] If it’s accidental, then it isn’t all the time. What do you mean accidental? I don’t understand. How can it be accidental?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there’s a case where those two things were formed in some way that fits perfectly. What’s the problem?
[Speaker C] So how can you say that if it’s like this, then—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I saw there’s a correlation between them, so apparently it works all the time. Does it work all the time? Yes. If it’s accidental, how is it all the time?
[Speaker C] Because the accident is that the laws formed there—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —create processes that run perfectly parallel to the processes created by the laws here. Ah, so there’s some sort of gearwork here? There’s an accidental coordination between the laws. And it’s synchronized in some way. Think of two clocks created in two different places. Okay? Say you built this clock to run at a certain rate, and for some reason he built the clock… Now the time shown on both clocks will always match, even though there’s no causal influence between them. Yes, that’s Leibniz’s example. The parable of the clocks is a parable Leibniz brings.
[Speaker D] Don’t you know the weather story? What? There was a radio announcer who used to say the weather and he always got it right. Okay, no. They asked him how he always got it right like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He predicted the weather ahead of time?
[Speaker D] Yes, and every time it was exact. So he told them, what, it’s simple. Right? He persuaded him—his friend who went with him, took him, said come see. Every morning, you see, I look with binoculars at the Indians over there, and I see whether they’re chopping wood, and if they’re chopping a lot of wood there’ll be rain, and if not then not. So I rely on that. And then I say it according to what I see them doing. You know what? I’ve got to go see how they know. He goes to their Indian village. With a radio and all that. And then he sees their chief with a radio listening to the announcer.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so basically what he wants to claim—a perfect closed loop—is that there can be correlation between processes even though there is no causal influence between them. For example, two clocks—the Leibniz example—the two clocks will run in complete coordination, the time this one shows and the time that one shows will fully match, even though there is no causal influence whatsoever between them. Now of course with clocks there is a factor that synchronizes both clocks, because all clockmakers build them in some way so that they will be coordinated. But that’s not important; there is no causal influence between them. Okay, that’s the point. So what does that mean? It means that with two running clocks too I can say: if this one shows nine-oh-two, then that one too will show nine-oh-two. So does the logical relation exist between two clocks as well?
[Speaker C] It’s not a physical relation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, but the physical component is missing. Okay, so in practice the physical component includes the logical component as well. I could have said it’s just time and physics, or really just physics, because physics also tells you the time. But it’s important to distinguish that there are these elements as well, because there are people who focus specifically on time or on logic and ignore the fact that this is only part of the picture, and that really you also need the physics. Maybe I’ll bring an example. I think I once mentioned this example about “it began with negligence and ended with unavoidable accident,” the topic of beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident. There the Talmud says—let’s take, say, a guardian to whom some item was entrusted for safekeeping. The Talmud says: what’s the law when he hid this item in a forest? And the assumption is that if he hides it in a forest, that’s excellent protection against thieves, because no thief walks into the middle of a forest and suddenly starts digging a hole to look for some object to steal; it would never occur to him that something like that is there. It’s excellent protection against thieves, but it’s exposed to fire—meaning, a fire could break out in the forest and burn it. Fine. So he hid it in the forest and in the end thieves came; there was no fire, thieves came. So this is called “it began with negligence and ended with unavoidable accident,” meaning he began with negligence because with respect to fire there’s negligence here, but in the end what happened was unavoidable accident, because against thieves it was guarded, and specifically thieves took it. So that’s the law, that’s the dispute regarding beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident. In practice, beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident is liable. What happens if he hid it in the forest and in the end it really burned? It wasn’t stolen, it burned—exactly what was expected to happen, or could have been expected to happen. That’s full negligence; it’s not beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident, it’s beginning in negligence and ending in negligence—full negligence. Okay. But the second case, where in the end it was stolen, is called beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident.
[Speaker F] And that’s a fortiori—if ending in unavoidable accident is liable, then all the more so beginning—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, here it’s the other way around. Meaning, full negligence is certainly liable. The Talmud discusses what the law is in the case of beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident, and the conclusion ruled in practice is that even there he is liable. There’s a third case: beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident where there is no connection between the negligence and the unavoidable accident. That’s the Rif’s view in Abaye’s opinion in Bava Metzia 36. Not everyone agrees with this—on the contrary, most disagree with the Rif, Tosafot and others—but that’s how the Rif understands it. What happens if I was negligent: an animal was deposited with me and I was negligent and left the door open. Now the animal went out, got to the marsh, and died naturally. Of course, this negligence is negligence with respect to its getting lost or being stolen, but what happened was that it wasn’t lost and it wasn’t stolen—it died naturally. And when it died naturally, “what difference does the Angel of Death care whether here or there?” Meaning, it would have died even inside… even if I had left the door closed. Now this is seemingly beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident: I began with negligence, and in the end an unavoidable event occurred that would have happened anyway. But says the Rif: this is beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident where there is no connection between the negligence and the unavoidable accident. It’s not like that hiding case in the forest. Why not? Because in that hiding case in the forest there is a connection between the negligence and the unavoidable accident. What’s the connection?
[Speaker C] The thieves found it in the forest.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, if you hadn’t put it in the forest—which was the negligence with respect to fire—then the thieves wouldn’t have stolen it. True, you weren’t supposed to be concerned about thieves, and therefore it’s not full negligence, but it is beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident where there is a connection between the negligence and the unavoidable accident. Okay, so we basically have three situations. I put it in the forest and, say, a fire happened—I put the animal in the forest and a fire happened—that’s negligence, plain and simple. I put the animal in the forest and thieves came, that’s beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident. Let’s say I hid it, whatever, I’m talking about an animal because afterward I want the case where it died naturally. The third example: I put it in the forest and it died naturally. Okay? Those are three different examples. The first example is full negligence, the second is beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident, the third is beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident where there is no connection between the negligence and the accident. Of course there’s also a fourth example, where it simply died naturally in my stable. Fine, that’s all unavoidable accident of course, if we want to complete the picture.
[Speaker C] No, there’s no element of negligence—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, nothing at all, so that’s why it’s uninteresting. But that’s the full set of possibilities. Now what’s the difference between the three possibilities? It seems to me that the difference between the three possibilities is exactly this. Meaning, if it’s beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident with no connection, and it died naturally, there is no connection between the negligence and the unavoidable accident, then basically there is no causation—the physical condition is not met. Right? There is no causation. What I did did not cause the result. More than that, the logical relation isn’t there either. It isn’t true that if I did this, then that happened. Even if I hadn’t done it, it still would have happened. The logical “if-then” relation does not exist either. What does exist? Only temporal priority. Right? First I was negligent, and afterward an unavoidable accident occurred, so only temporal priority exists. That’s the case of beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident with no connection, where it died naturally. In the case of beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident where there is a connection, it seems to me that this is a logical relation without a physical one. Meaning, temporal and logical, but without the physics. It’s not physics; of course this is a legal relation, but I’m speaking by analogy—it’s like physical causation. And why? Because basically I’m saying this: the “if-then” does hold here. If I put it in the forest, then it was stolen. If I hadn’t put it in the forest, it wouldn’t have been stolen. Right? So the “if-then” exists, like with the clocks. Fine? But there is no causation, because putting it in the forest is not the cause of the theft on the legal level. It didn’t steal it; it didn’t cause the theft because I’m not to blame. Causation here means being legally to blame. I’m not to blame for that. Meaning, I wasn’t supposed to be concerned about theft in the forest. If there were no problem of fire—on a rainy day, say—that would have been excellent guarding. When there are no fires, yes? That would have been excellent guarding. Meaning, I didn’t cause it, but it is still true that the logical relation exists. So here we already have both the temporal relation and the logical relation. What happens when there is negligence—I put it in the forest and it also burned, not stolen? Then of course everything is present. Meaning, there is temporal priority, there is the logical “if-then” relation, and there is also causation—there is legal responsibility and blame. I put it in the forest and exactly what I feared came upon me. And that is precisely what happened. So here you have full causality. And the debate in beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident is about what happens when I remove components from the causal relation. At what point do I stop being liable? So if I am the absolute cause of what happened, then of course I am liable—that’s full negligence. If it’s beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident, then the physical element is missing but time and logic are there. Here there is a dispute. The accepted view in practice is that I’m liable even in that case. In the third situation, only time is present; neither the logic nor the physical or legal causation is there.
[Speaker D] What did you say? That there’s only temporal priority and the logical relation. From which side do they obligate you if there’s only temporal priority and a logical cause?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That if I hadn’t put it there, it wouldn’t have happened.
[Speaker D] Yes, but that’s exactly like, you know—if you hadn’t put it there—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You were negligent when you put it there—say, with fire—and if you hadn’t been negligent, it wouldn’t have happened, so you’re liable.
[Speaker C] Even if it didn’t happen because of the negligence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, even if it didn’t happen positively because of you, still negatively it happened because of you. You can define it as a negative condition and a positive condition. Not that my putting it there caused the theft.
[Speaker D] The third case is disputed. No, okay, but I was trying to understand the side of those who do obligate—so they come from the negative side.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In practice we obligate there too.
[Speaker D] Only on the negative side.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: if I hadn’t put it there, it wouldn’t have happened. True, the placing didn’t cause it, but if I hadn’t put it there, it wouldn’t have happened. Now, in the case of mere temporal priority, that’s only Abaye’s view according to the Rif. Certainly most halakhic decisors don’t explain even Abaye that way, but in any case Jewish law does not follow Abaye on this issue, so in practice you are certainly exempt in such a situation. The Machaneh Ephraim explains why, in fact, you would be liable—that may also answer your question somewhat. How can Abaye, according to the Rif, really say that you’d be liable? So he says simply—and I’m just filling in the picture in parentheses so things won’t sound bizarre here—that when I was negligent, that itself obligates me. I violated the contract. I was supposed to guard, I was negligent, and that obligates me. Except what? If nothing had happened to the animal, then what’s the problem? I take the animal and I pay with it as what I owe. I owe you an animal—here, take it. But really I’m liable even if nothing had happened to the animal. The very fact that I left the door open is negligence that obligates me. It’s just that if nothing happened to the animal, then how would I pay my obligation?
[Speaker C] I’d take the animal and return it to you. That would be the payment. And if it died naturally, that’s it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, if it died naturally, I don’t have what to return. After all, I’m liable because I was negligent, so even if there is no connection between the negligence and the accident, I still have to pay out of pocket, because I no longer have the animal to return. True, I’m not to blame for what happened to it. But if it died naturally he is exempt. No, I’m saying what the reason is that Abaye obligates according to the Rif. The explanation of how Abaye according to the Rif can obligate this at all. And in practice, with dying naturally—what? He obligates even when it died naturally.
[Speaker E] Yes, even when it died naturally he obligates.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there were a Torah prohibition involved, then you’d be, so to speak, a wrongdoer. Maybe you wouldn’t have to pay but you would still be a wrongdoer on the level of prohibition.
[Speaker D] Right, exactly. It could really be that there is a Torah prohibition here. The question is whether there is an obligation to guard, or whether it’s only a contractual obligation. That’s a question. An obligation to guard so that the animal won’t cause damage—apparently there is. An obligation that it not be harmed—that’s apparently only a legal obligation, meaning because I committed myself, I’m working for you, so I have to guard it.
[Speaker E] Because the definition of how a good guardian guards—he switched it, he put an iron gate in the doorway of the pen. Now an animal came, wanted to escape, rammed the—hit its head on the iron gate and died. Now seemingly there’s a causal connection. If it had been a wooden door—no, but that’s exactly it—he wasn’t negligent, but there is a causal connection to the death. Clearly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if he wasn’t negligent, then even if there is a causal connection it changes nothing. So obviously negligence is required here. It’s just that according to Abaye as understood by the Rif, negligence alone is enough to create liability. Meaning, it doesn’t have to be that something else happens afterward at all. True, if nothing happened afterward then it has no practical significance, because I’ll pay my obligation with that very animal that remained with me—I’ll simply return the animal to you. But in principle I’m already giving it to you as payment. Meaning, on the theoretical level, for example, it could be that I could already take this animal for myself and pay you instead. Because basically it’s as if it died. Meaning, as far as the contract is concerned, I already owe you the money, not the animal. So there could even be a practical difference. But that’s regarding beginning in negligence and ending in unavoidable accident where there is no connection—that is, where it died—
[Speaker C] Naturally.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. But then you’re still a wrongdoer because you were negligent, so that doesn’t help. It’s like, you know, the Egyptians, and there Abraham says to Sarah, “Please say that you are my sister so that they won’t kill me.” So in the yeshivot they ask: what kind of logic did those Egyptians have? In order not to violate “you shall not commit adultery,” they violate “you shall not murder”? Is it preferable for them to violate “you shall not murder” rather than “you shall not commit adultery”? Yes? So it’s the same thing. You want to cause harm in order to spare yourself later theft of the animal. The negligence is your transgression—it’s the conservation law of criminality. Meaning, you won’t escape without wrongdoing.
[Speaker D] Are they angry at him for putting them in that situation? Are they angry at him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there you can make little homiletic moves, no problem. You can find a yeshiva-style excuse for it, certainly; there’s a well-known yeshiva pilpul on this. Why is one obligated? There’s the Ran. The Ran says—the Talmud, I mean not the Talmud, the medieval authorities (Rishonim), the Rosh brings several medieval authorities (Rishonim) who discuss the following question: there’s a sick person who needs to eat meat on the Sabbath. Now the question is, there’s no meat. What you can do is either take non-kosher meat or slaughter an animal on the Sabbath, which is a Sabbath prohibition. Which is preferable? Fine, so there are disputes. On the face of it, slaughtering is a stoning-level violation, a Sabbath violation, and non-kosher meat is just a regular prohibition. Even though if you ask the average person on the street, he’ll immediately say, what do you mean, of course slaughter—just not non-kosher meat, what kind of thing is that? But non-kosher meat is an ordinary prohibition, and slaughtering on the Sabbath is punishable by stoning. Okay? So the Ran asks: well then, obviously you should give him non-kosher meat, right? The Ran says no—better to slaughter. Why is it better to slaughter? Because with slaughtering you commit one severe transgression, one time. After that, you can eat the entire animal. But when you eat non-kosher meat, every olive-sized portion you eat is a transgression—even half an olive-sized portion, because a partial measure is prohibited by Torah law—so every olive-sized portion is a separate transgression. Better to commit one severe transgression once than lighter transgressions multiple times. What?
[Speaker C] Ad hoc limit. A severe transgression—then there’s some kind of weight on the scales.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there are more transgressions, even if they’re lighter, then commit the more severe transgression. Yes, even one and a half. He doesn’t give criteria; apparently he understands that quantity outweighs quality. Because you have to draw some line somewhere—you can never really weigh these things. So he says: either draw the line this way or that way, and he says draw it this way—quantity is preferable to quality. Fine. So if you accept this Ran—which, by the way, was not ruled as Jewish law—
[Speaker C] In the Shulchan Arukh. But if, for example, I don’t know, let’s look for another situation—some act that contains two prohibitions—would it also then be preferable to desecrate the Sabbath rather than do that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, apparently yes.
[Speaker C] One act, but two prohibitions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. But if you have two options, then according to the Ran you need to do the more severe act. I’ll say again: the Shulchan Arukh does not rule like him, but everybody brings proofs from this Ran even though the Shulchan Arukh doesn’t rule like him, because it’s one of those beloved Rans that everybody likes. So regarding Abraham: the Egyptians wanted to murder Abraham because then they would violate the prohibition of murder once, and after that every act of intercourse would be permitted intercourse. If they didn’t kill him, then each and every act of intercourse would be a prohibited act. So therefore it’s simple—they knew the Ran, and obviously that’s how they reasoned.
[Speaker C] In any case—fine, they knew the Ran and ruled accordingly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They didn’t owe the Shulchan Arukh anything—they were before him. It’s amazing that the Shulchan Arukh argues with them. Anyway, maybe you can spin a nice homiletic point here, build on that—I’ve got full analytical treatments on this, I can build whole systems on it. In any case, you said we should look for… you got carried away in order to earn this, so I brought you this example. Okay, I’m closing the parenthesis. In any case, for our purposes, “it begins in negligence and ends in circumstances beyond one’s control” really builds this hierarchy for us. Now it’s also easier to understand why “it begins in negligence and ends in circumstances beyond one’s control,” when there is a connection—meaning when in the end it was stolen—one is liable. Because perhaps here too the claim is that you’re really liable for the negligence. True, if the uncontrollable event is a condition—that is, if it happened… this is not like Abaye’s view, which we do not rule in accordance with, that negligence by itself creates liability. You are liable… for the negligence, provided that in the end something happened as a result of the negligence. And then I don’t care about the causation of what happened; all that’s needed is that it happened and that it has some connection to the negligence. Because otherwise he can’t impose liability for the negligence. Fine. So here too we can explain why “it begins in negligence and ends in circumstances beyond one’s control” is still liable. And this topic really illustrates these three components of the causal relation, because it constructs exactly this hierarchy of the different levels of causality. Now, objections have been raised regarding each of these components. For example, very ironically, David Hume challenges the physical component. That is, he wants to claim there is no physical component in the causal relation. The causal relation is only time and logic. No physics. And why? Hume’s claim is that there is no empirical basis for determining the existence of the physical component. Meaning, if I kick a ball and then the ball flies… because you don’t see causality. Right, you have no empirical basis to determine that the kick was the cause of the ball’s flying. What you see with your eyes is that first you kicked, and then the ball flew. More than that: you see that every time you kick, the ball flies. So temporal priority also holds—we see that—and also, say, the logical relation, if we make an induction, make a generalization, that also holds: if you kick, the ball flies. But who said that because we kicked, the ball flew? That “because” is something we have no way of detecting.
[Speaker C] It’s like any physical law. Any physical law—you can say, “who says?” Right. You test it again and again and again.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so then I discover the logic. No, I confirm the logical relation that if this happened then that will happen. Right, also in the future, because I make a scientific generalization. But how do you know there’s a relation of “because,” not just “if…then”? The physical component, not the logical one. Hume also agrees that if a thousand times people kick and the ball flies, then you can formulate a general law that when people kick, the ball flies. But notice: you formulate the law that when people kick, the ball flies—not that if people kick, then because of that the ball will fly. Because that “because” is on your own private responsibility. Where do you get it from? Where is that “because” coming from? How can one even see a relation of causation between events? How do you see causation? How do you perceive with the eyes, the ears—how do you perceive a relation of causing? How do you know it’s not merely a correlation of “if…then”?
[Speaker D] What do you even do with the word “because”? Does he even have such a word?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Apparently he does, if he comes to deny it.
[Speaker D] But what is it—where is it? Where does it appear anywhere?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nowhere. He claims it’s an illusion.
[Speaker D] So the word “because” is also just an invention?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, it’s an illusion. His claim is that there is no “because”; that it’s our illusion, our way of speaking. It doesn’t really describe anything in the world. And by the way, ironically, contemporary science has adopted Hume’s causality. If you ask a physicist what is called a causal relation between things, he’ll tell you: causation… a logical relation and time. No causing. In physics, causality doesn’t talk about causing. Look even at any simple equation in physics, Newton’s second law, okay? We say that force equals mass times acceleration. Okay—what is the cause and what is the effect here? Everyone understands that the cause is the force and the acceleration is the effect: you apply force and therefore there is acceleration. Not that the body accelerates and therefore a force acts on it—that sounds strange. But there’s no hint of that in the equation. The equation is a symmetric equality. Right? It’s just equality, and it’s at the same instant in time. The force at a given moment equals the acceleration at a given moment. You won’t extract a causal relation from the equation itself. The causal relation is our interpretation. The equation only establishes “if…then”: if there is force, there will be acceleration—and in a certain sense, if there is acceleration, there is force, right? From the standpoint of logic, it’s symmetric. Logic is indifferent to questions of causing. Because obviously, if A causes B, you can also say that if B then A. No problem. Not… why not? Say we’re talking about a necessary and sufficient condition—we’ll get to that. If the logical relation exists between A and B, it will also exist between B and A. But causality has a direction. Okay, causality in the sense of physical causing. Therefore, specifically in the physical world, causality does not include the physical component, only time and logic. When in a physics lecture you hear “there is a causal relation between events,” all that means is that one lies within the other’s light cone, and that’s all. Meaning that one can possibly affect the other. There’s no talk at all of causing. Physics doesn’t deal with causing, even though of course in everyday discourse everyone understands that force causes acceleration and not the reverse. But that’s an interpretation. It’s not written in the equations; you won’t derive it from the equation. I mean, it doesn’t… it doesn’t happen immediately. The process develops, and then a temporal direction is created between force and acceleration, contrary to the standard formulation of mechanics, but still the causing is our interpretation. So Hume is basically saying there is no physical component in causation, and as I said before, at the philosophical level he says there’s no empirical basis for asserting that there is a relation of causing between cause and effect. But from our philosophical perspective it’s clear that it does include a physical component as well; we would not call two such clocks one the cause of the other. Right? No one would say one clock is the cause of the other clock, even though the temporal relation exists here and the “if…then” relation exists here as well. Forget two clocks. If the clock now reads 9:23, is that the cause of the fact that in a minute it will read 9:24? The first event happens before the second, and it’s also true to say that if it now shows 9:23, then in a minute it will show 9:24. So the logic is there and the time is there, but no one would say that one is the cause of the other.
[Speaker C] Or that there’s one factor causing both of them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, no, exactly—no one would say that one is the cause of the other. Which means it’s clear to us—even if it’s only an interpretation and lacks empirical basis—it’s completely clear to us that the causal relation has to include a component of causing, and the physical component as well. So much for the physical component. Now I want to talk about the logical component. With the logical component there is a discussion—and I also once talked about this, I no longer remember in what context—there’s a discussion of it in Steinitz’s book, where he brings what he calls the paradox of conditioning. That is, he presents a dispute among philosophers over the question whether the cause must be a sufficient condition for the effect, or whether the cause must be a necessary and sufficient condition for the effect. There are two philosophical schools regarding the causal relation. One school holds that a cause is a sufficient condition for the effect, but not a necessary and sufficient one, only sufficient. The second school says no: a cause must be a necessary and sufficient condition for the effect. Okay. Why could that be?
[Speaker C] What does “necessary and sufficient condition” mean? Couldn’t there be two causes—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] such that
[Speaker C] each one can cause the effect?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—that’s his claim, no. Think about it; it’s not so trivial that that’s false. True, it feels non-intuitive, but it’s not so trivial. Think, for example, of a fire breaking out. Say a fire starts. That can come from striking a match, it can come from focusing a magnifying glass on paper, it can come from lots of different things. But if you think about it more deeply, you’ll see that the process is always the concentration of intense heat adjacent to the paper. True, I can produce that heat in all sorts of ways, but what caused the fire in the end was high heat at a certain level applied to paper. And then there may be some logic to saying that perhaps indeed in all cases where there are several causes of the same result, there is actually something—the common denominator; we once talked about a common denominator—something shared by all the causes, and that shared element is what causes the effect.
[Speaker C] Take, for instance, an electron. There are two completely different causes that can make it accelerate. One is that somebody pushes it, and the other is that I place some charge nearby that pulls it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The common denominator is that a force acts on it. What difference does it make how you applied the force?
[Speaker C] You can always reduce it to some force…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly the point: in the end there will always be a common factor that causes the result, and it is one.
[Speaker C] Why is it one? It’s force. What difference does it make what caused the force?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Reduce it to some force—so what?
[Speaker C] Those are just the sources of the force.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That changes the sources of the force, but in the end there is a force acting on the particle and therefore it moves. What difference does it make what activates it?
[Speaker C] You define it as force. No, sure, you say force.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s really true. What do you mean? A force acts on it and therefore it accelerates. The question of the force’s sources—there may be one source, there may be another—but in the end a force has to be created for the body to accelerate. That means there is one factor, if you really look at what caused it in the end—not at the beginning of the process but at the very end. What ultimately created the acceleration? The force. A force acted on it and therefore it accelerates, always. Fine, one can debate this. It’s really not so simple, but it’s also not trivial that it’s false. In other words, it needs discussion. And I ask the question further on: fine, but what caused that heat? Either the striking of the match or the focusing. So true, fire is always caused by heat. But what causes the heat? Here already you have two different things. Whatever you’ll say about them too… So true, force always causes acceleration, but what caused the force itself? It too is a phenomenon. What causes it? Fine, here we need discussion. Maybe with some strain I can say something there—that there are two types of force that in the end translate into one thing—but that would be very forced. In any case, never mind; there is a dispute among philosophers about this. So Steinitz says he has a simple logical proof that the cause is a sufficient condition, not a necessary and sufficient condition. Why? He says this: let’s assume for contradiction that A is the cause of B, so A must be a necessary and sufficient condition for B. Okay? And we’ll show that this cannot be, and thus prove that this need not be the defining feature of causes. So he says as follows: suppose A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B. A necessary and sufficient condition has two characteristics. One characteristic is that it is unique. Meaning, if A is necessary and sufficient for—let’s say C, let’s put it that way—then it cannot be that B is also necessary and sufficient for C. Right? Because if A is necessary and sufficient, then when A exists, C happens whether B is there or not. And if B is necessary and sufficient, then it cannot be that A is needed, because B itself is necessary and sufficient. Therefore a necessary and sufficient condition is unique. Another property of a necessary and sufficient condition is that it is reversible. Meaning, if A is necessary and sufficient for B, then B is necessary and sufficient for A. The necessary is the reverse of the sufficient, and the sufficient is the reverse of the… that is, if A is necessary for B, then B is sufficient for A. And if A is sufficient for B, then B is necessary for A.
[Speaker C] Doesn’t the first condition also follow from the second? What? Yes, it follows from it, of course, there’s a connection between them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying: for me it’s convenient to show that there are two aspects here. Okay, so if I say that A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B, that means A is unique, and it also means that B is a necessary and sufficient condition for A. Okay, good. Now let’s assume the view that a cause has to be a necessary and sufficient condition, and refute it. Let’s assume it and see that it leads us to a contradiction. Let’s look at a causal chain with three stages: A causes B, and B causes C. Okay? Now I say: if A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B, and B is a necessary and sufficient condition for C, according to this view of causality, then notice that if B is a necessary and sufficient condition for C, that means C is also a necessary and sufficient condition for B. Because a necessary and sufficient condition is reversible. But then it follows that both A and C are necessary and sufficient for B, and that can’t be, because a necessary and sufficient condition is unique. Right? So the reversibility contradicts the uniqueness, and vice versa. Okay? Therefore, he says, what comes out of the view that a cause must be a necessary and sufficient condition for its effect is that it is impossible to start a causal process. If A is the cause of B, it stops there. B will be the cause of A, and it stops; it cannot continue and also generate C. A causal chain cannot arise. But that can’t be, because we constantly think that the world operates by causal chains. A caused B and B caused C, and that’s how the world works. That is, everything causes what comes after it. So therefore he says this causal conception cannot be right, because it cannot fit with the existence of a causal chain. Where is he wrong? He is wrong in this: first of all, I can show he is wrong, and then I’ll prove it—but first an indication. It’s obvious that even if I reversed C into being a necessary and sufficient condition for B, C still can’t be the cause of B, because the condition of temporal priority is not fulfilled. Right? If I look at a causal chain—A causes B causes C—and now I look at this as causes, not as necessary and sufficient conditions, then for it to be a cause, three things have to hold: temporal priority, logical relation, and causing. Right? Now I say A is the cause of B, so it is a necessary and sufficient condition for B. B is the cause of C, so it is a necessary and sufficient condition for C. But something else also has to hold: it must also come earlier in time. But if I say that the necessary-and-sufficient relation that holds between B and C is reversible, meaning that C too is necessary and sufficient for B, still it’s obvious that C is not the cause of B, because it comes afterward. So here already we see that you cannot exhaust the causal relation in logic. Logic alone is not enough. Now I’ll say more than that: why is the causal chain in fact possible, even if the conception is—well, the conception could be that it’s a necessary and sufficient relation. I’m not defending it; I’m only saying there is no proof against it from this paradox. Why? Because what I’m really saying is that the necessary and sufficient condition for B is the existence of A before and C after, together. That is necessary and sufficient for B. Everything is fine, right? Now true, A and C together are not the cause of B, because C appears afterward—but on the logical plane there is no problem saying such a thing. On the logical plane, when I ask what is the necessary and sufficient condition for B, I say it is A before and C after. And there is no problem. And true, B is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of A before it and C after it. Everything is fine. And there is a causal chain of three elements, and no problem—and of course there could be ten elements, and a hundred elements. It makes no difference at all. It is simply a mistake, a logical mistake. Now the point is, basically—what we see here is that the temporal component helps distinguish between a logical relation and a causal relation. Those are the first two components. Besides that, as I said before, you also need the physical component. Okay, so that’s regarding the paradox of conditioning. Another point I want to show here is that logic is indifferent to time. Logic is indifferent to time. Because we see that being a condition—if A is a necessary and sufficient condition for B, that does not mean A is before B. It could also be after. What I said before, that the relation between effect and cause—the logical relation can
[Speaker C] be B—if A is a sufficient condition for B, then B is also a sufficient condition for A.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So logic is reversible, and time is certainly not reversible. Unless they are simultaneous. But I’m saying: if there is temporal priority, then we see that there is a disconnection between logic and time. That’s an important point. Meaning, beyond looking at causality in general, which has three components and you have to be careful that all three are there—you can’t give up any of them because otherwise all sorts of paradoxes arise—even if we leave causality aside and now look only at the two components of time and logic, even on that level time and logic are independent. Logic is indifferent to time. Now I’ll give an example of this. Another example. There is an argument called logical determinism. It is a logical argument in favor of determinism. On its face, of course, it has to be false—even before I explain the argument. Because it can’t be that by purely logical tools I’ll manage to prove a claim about reality, a claim saying something about the world. The world may be deterministic and may be non-deterministic. It could be that our world really is deterministic, but surely it is not a logical necessity that it be deterministic; that is, a non-deterministic world is possible. The question is what our world is. Fine, there is a debate. But if there is a logical proof that the world is deterministic, then every world would have to be deterministic. There could not be a non-deterministic world—which is absurd. There can’t be such a thing. So on the face of it, it’s obviously wrong. But the trick is always to look for where it’s wrong, because that’s the nature of paradoxes. You know they’re wrong, but it’s hard to put your finger on the catch. So let’s see how this argument works. The argument basically says this. Suppose I ask the question—an Aristotelian question—will there be a sea battle tomorrow? I can’t know. I have to wait until tomorrow and see whether there will or won’t be a sea battle. Now I’m not asking whether there will be a sea battle; I’m making a statement: tomorrow there will be a sea battle. Fine? What can I say about the truth value of this sentence? I don’t know what its truth value is, right? That’s obvious. But does it have a truth value? Not whether I know it—maybe I don’t know. Does it have a truth value?
[Speaker D] Tomorrow we’ll know whether it’s true or false.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it has one. I think it does.
[Speaker D] Because tomorrow it either will happen or it won’t.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Surely that’s already true today. If tomorrow it happens, then the statement “tomorrow there will be a sea battle” is already true today. Why? Because what is the criterion for the truth of a statement? You compare its content to the state of affairs in the world that it describes and see whether there is a match. Right? Now if I say “tomorrow there will be a sea battle,” and indeed tomorrow there is a sea battle, then this statement is true. So what if today I can’t know that? But the statement was true even a year ago and will be true even a year from now, because it correctly describes the state of affairs in the world. Only what? We have no way of knowing it. Fine? The statement is true. And if there will be no sea battle, then of course the statement is already false today. Which means that the truth value of a statement is indifferent to time. True, I can’t know whether there will be a sea battle tomorrow, but the truth value of that statement exists—it is already true today. Or false, whichever it is; but whichever one is correct is always correct. It was correct a thousand years ago and will be correct a thousand years from now. It is always correct. Now the logical determinist asks: fine, then… let’s say the truth value of the statement is true. “Tomorrow there will be a sea battle” is true. We don’t know it, but that is the truth value of the statement. If so, it cannot be that tomorrow there won’t be a sea battle, because already today the statement is true. So it cannot be that tomorrow there won’t be a sea battle. That means tomorrow’s reality has been fixed from the beginning of the world, of course—not from today, because this statement was true from the moment the world was created, always true. Okay? So the conclusion is deterministic. Where is the failure in this argument? The failure comes exactly from this point: even though the truth value of the statement characterizes it already today, tomorrow the opposite can happen—there is no problem. If tomorrow there is no sea battle, then the statement is already false today. And if tomorrow there is a sea battle, then the statement is already true today. What bothers our intuition? That tomorrow determines something about today. But notice: “determines” is just a borrowed word; it determines logically, not physically. There is no causing of tomorrow upon what happens today. This is just a definition. We define the truth value of a statement as the correspondence between it and a state of affairs in the world. Right, this parallels what I said before: backward influence in time on the conceptual level, not on the physical level. I can define whatever I want. If I define the truth value of a statement this way, then I define it in a trans-temporal way. Fine? What happens tomorrow determines what is happening today, but it determines it retroactively. Meaning, if there will be a sea battle tomorrow, then already today it is true that there will be a sea battle tomorrow. If there won’t be a sea battle tomorrow, then already today it is false that there will be a sea battle tomorrow. There is no problem at all with logic working backward in time, because the influence between the occurrence and the truth value of the statement is a logical influence, not a physical influence. Because the result is a truth value of a statement; the result is not an event in the world. If this sea battle causes a person’s death, that is physical causation. The battle caused the person’s death. But the fact that the occurrence of the battle caused the statement to be true—the product caused here is a truth value of a statement; it is a definition.
[Speaker C] In both cases we use the word “caused,” but it’s something completely different.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, something entirely different. Therefore there is no problem at all with the future “causing,” in quotation marks, the past. No rule forbids that; there’s no problem. It’s a definition. I define the past on the basis of the future, so what’s the problem? Am I forbidden to define things that way? I’m allowed to define. As long as it’s consistent, I can define whatever I want. Okay? That’s how we define the truth value of a statement. Therefore it’s clear that you can’t prove determinism from here, because they assume… and where is their mistake? They confuse causing with logical relation, exactly the same confusion. They claim there can be logical causation backward, and therefore nothing else can happen tomorrow. But why? Why can’t it? Because they don’t understand that on the logical level there is no problem with a backward relation. A backward relation cannot exist when the relation is causal causing. But the logical component of the concept of causing, of the concept of cause, is indifferent to the direction of time. It can go backward, it can go forward. The relation between the occurrence of the battle and the truth value of the statement is the relation of “if…then”; it is not a relation of causing. That is, the relation between them is not causal, because to say that the relation between A and B is “if A then B” is not to say that A caused B or produced B. That’s not true, because B did not occur; B is not an event in the world, it has no causes and no producers, it is not an event in the world, it is a definition. Okay? But the logical “if…then” is true. If tomorrow there is a sea battle, then the truth value of the statement “tomorrow there will be a sea battle” is true already today. So the “if…then” exists, though here the temporal relation does not exist—it goes backward in time. Therefore it’s clear that this cannot be a cause, and of course physically it can’t be either. Okay? So again, this is an expression of the confusion people make between causing and logical relation, and of not noticing that since logical relation is not causing, it can be indifferent to the time axis. Because causing has to go forward in time, meaning the effect comes after the cause. But logical relation is not causing, and therefore it is indifferent to the time axis. This is a play between the three components: time, logic, and causing. Since logic is not causing, there is no problem with logic operating against the direction of the flow of time. Physical causation cannot do that.
[Speaker D] When we talked about the will, there was also this problem—that I decide I’m going to call you, and then that activates the electrons in my head so that I perform the action I want to perform.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but the physical cause is the electrons. You perform the action because of the electrons, not because of the event tomorrow.
[Speaker D] But the will—the will is one level above that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, and the will activates the electrons. But what causes the will? Not the future event. The will is a will that there be a future event; the future event’s occurrence is not what causes the will. The will. Yes, the will is really the thing that can turn the future into a cause. That’s what is unique about the will, if you are not a determinist. Yes, but it turns the future into a cause
[Speaker D] now—as though you take the future.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but the future is not the cause—that’s just a borrowed expression. The occurrence of the event is not the cause; rather, my will that the event occur is what generates a causal chain that brings about the occurrence of the event. In other words, a potential for occurrence that already exists today causes the actual occurrence to happen tomorrow. And what performs that inversion is the will. Okay, so that’s another indication of logic’s indifference to the time axis. Now let’s look at another story. There’s one from a book by Richard Taylor, whom I already mentioned—there he talks about, I mentioned him in connection with space and time, in another chapter. In a chapter on fatalism he tells a story about some village schoolteacher named Osmo. One bright day he walks into the town library, looks around, and sees on the shelf a book titled “The Story of Osmo.” Well, interesting—just like my name. He takes out the book and begins reading. He is horrified. Osmo was born on such-and-such date to such-and-such parents in such-and-such place. It’s exactly him. Then he went to kindergarten and was friends with so-and-so and so-and-so, played in the sandbox, and his kindergarten teacher was such-and-such. Everything matches. Then he went to first grade, studied to become a teacher, became a teacher in such-and-such school. Exactly his story, and now it’s getting close to… Then Osmo enters the library one day, enters the library, yes, and on that day he enters and sees a book on the shelf titled “The Story of Osmo.” All of this is written inside the book. Now Osmo completely loses his composure, because the next page will describe what will happen tomorrow. You understand? After all, if this book was written and was there already beforehand, and if it knows what happened until today, it probably also knows what will happen next. Fine, but he can’t hold himself back, so he flips ahead. The book says that Osmo will die in a plane crash on the way to New York on such-and-such date, I don’t know, a month from now. Fine? That’s what is written in the book. Osmo slams the book shut in utter panic. Impossible. He immediately runs and buys a ticket in the opposite direction. Not to New York. Fine? Then of course they take off, there’s a storm, the pilot decides to change course and turn the wheel. Osmo, in hysterics, bursts into the cockpit, struggles with the pilot to stop him from doing it, and that is what crashes the plane. The plane crashes and Osmo dies.
[Speaker D] Like with the Angel of Death.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, “Appointment in Samarra.”
[Speaker D] Right, where he said, “That’s why I brought them here.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the claim is that basically, as it were, if the book contains the correct information, nothing else can happen. Now Richard Taylor asks: what would have happened if Osmo had not read the book? Assuming such a book exists, what would have happened if Osmo had not read it? If he had not read it, exactly the same thing would still have happened, because the book—assuming its information is correct, reliable, everything is written there—it makes no difference whether Osmo read it, and it also makes no difference if nobody ever reads it. As long as there is such a book in which this information is written, nothing else can happen. Right? Assuming the book is reliable. And what this basically means is that if there is such a book, then indeed the future is fixed. That really would prove determinism. Why is this different from the argument of logical determinism—and this is now my addition, not related to Osmo and Taylor—why… how is this different from the argument of logical determinism that says that the truth value of a statement existing now does not dictate what will happen tomorrow? Because there is a difference between saying “the information exists now” and saying “the truth value of the statement is defined now.” True, the truth value of a statement is a definition. A definition can be a definition for now too—what difference does it make when I define it? I define it. But if the information exists now—that’s determinism. Obviously. That is something in the world. There is now information about something that will happen tomorrow. If that information is correct—assuming it is correct—there is no way to contradict it, no way for things to be otherwise. So it’s very important to see the difference between saying that the truth value of a statement exists now and saying that the information exists now. Maybe I’ll give an example concerning God’s knowledge and free choice. Maimonides, as is well known, in chapter 5 asks: if the Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything in advance, then how can we choose freely? This question is famous. Right, that His knowledge is not like our knowledge, and all kinds of tricks like that. It’s not entirely clear what Maimonides means there, what exactly he answers to this question—so much so that the Ra’avad says, “This author did not follow the way of the sages, by asking questions to which he cannot provide answers.” Meaning, the Ra’avad understood that there is no answer in Maimonides’ words. Maimonides said that we cannot understand it, but there is no answer. Others want to claim that there is an answer there in Maimonides, but there are all sorts of statements that try to propose an interpretation of Maimonides or answers that are not Maimonides’ but other answers to this question. One answer, for example, says that the Holy One, blessed be He, is above time, and therefore He can know things that occur in the future, and that doesn’t contradict anything. I think that answer does not answer the right question; it answers a different question. There is indeed another question: regarding a future event, how can the Holy One, blessed be He, obtain the information already now? I as a human being can’t obtain information about a future event, right? The question is how the Holy One, blessed be He, can know what… fine, we say He is above time, He can stretch out His hand into the future, pull out the information, and bring it into the present. Okay? But the question of knowledge and free choice is the opposite question: not how the Holy One, blessed be He, obtains the information, but given that He now has the information,
[Speaker C] given that He can obtain the
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] information and has already obtained the information, then can it be that tomorrow the opposite will happen? That is a completely different question. What does that have to do with the fact that He is above time? Maybe He is above time, but I’m not above time. That is, how can I behave differently from what the Holy One, blessed be He, already knew yesterday? Now you have to understand that here it is very important to understand that when the Holy One, blessed be He, knows the information, that means there is Osmo’s book in which the information is written. The information exists. When the information exists, it’s deterministic. This is not like the truth value of… In other words, logical determinism is a difficult argument, but it does not prove determinism. But if you believe, on theological grounds or whatever, that the Holy One, blessed be He, really is equipped with all the information about what will happen, then you are a determinist.
[Speaker D] By the way, when the Talmud says that if someone hears a cry in the city and prays that it not be from his house, that is a vain prayer—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “that it not be in my house”—that is a vain prayer.
[Speaker D] Yes. Why? Because it already exists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s right. It’s lost. What difference does it make? It means you cannot change the past.
[Speaker D] You mean it already happened.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It already happened, right. We cannot know the future in advance, but in a certain sense this is also changing the past, because God’s knowledge is also an event. And if tomorrow you do the opposite, you are changing God’s knowledge, while God’s knowledge is an event. It’s not like a human being’s knowledge. A human being’s knowledge is some neural structure. Now if a future event changes my knowledge in the past, that means there is an effect on a physical phenomenon in me today. That cannot be. The truth value of a proposition is a definition. So I said: no problem, logic is indifferent to the direction of time. But information cannot be created by the power of the future. Okay? That is problematic. So you say God is not physical; His knowledge is not physics. True, but still—even if He knows the future, suppose He can know the future—even then, if He knows the future, I cannot tomorrow do the opposite. Now the moment I cannot tomorrow do the opposite, then in principle a human being too could know the future, so you no longer need the Holy One, blessed be He, for that.
[Speaker C] Never mind, but then there’s no choice. Right, that’s the issue of choice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and then it’s also trivial according to… not trivial, but there’s no principled problem with knowing the future, because if the world is deterministic, then in principle you can know the future. It may be complicated, but it’s not impossible. So this claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is above time and can apprehend… that doesn’t answer the question, it’s not relevant. The Or HaChaim writes in chapter 6 of Genesis, on “I regret that I made them,” there before the generation of the Flood, when the Holy One, blessed be He, said that—so how can that be? A person regrets? How can the Holy One, blessed be He, regret? And then he gets into the question of knowledge and free choice. And then he says that we have to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, withheld from Himself knowledge of the future in order to allow us free choice. He closed His eyes. Okay? And then I go back and ask the question: what happens if Osmo hadn’t read the book? If Osmo hadn’t read the book, but the information was written in the book, that means the information exists. So what difference does it make if everybody closes their eyes? Right now no one knows the information. So what difference does it make? If the information exists, something else can’t happen tomorrow, assuming the information is reliable, of course. So even if nobody knows it, what difference does it make? So if the Holy One, blessed be He, closed His eyes, does that solve the problem? It solves nothing. What do we need to say? It seems to me the only solution is that He really doesn’t know. The Holy One, blessed be He, does not know the future; if He gives us free choice, then essentially…
[Speaker C] He doesn’t know a future that depends on our free choice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the future of what we will choose. Of course, deterministic things are only a matter of complicated calculation; there’s no principled problem in knowing them. But something that depends on human choices—the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know it, because otherwise we would have no choice. The information does not exist, because if the information exists, even if He didn’t know it,
[Speaker C] There’s no meaning to knowing something that doesn’t exist.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Knowing non-existent information is like making a square circle. The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a square circle, just as He cannot know non-existent information, just like we once discussed, yes, that He cannot make a wall that withstands every shell and a shell that penetrates every wall.
[Speaker C] It’s impossible, because they’re two
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] things that contradict one another. Also the stone He cannot lift. Yes, the stone He cannot lift, all those gimmicks. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do something contradictory. Now, what frightens people in sentences of this kind is the phrase “He cannot.” Again, the “cannot” here is borrowed, in the same sense that causation was borrowed earlier. He cannot logically, not that He cannot physically, because it’s not defined—it’s just nonsense. It’s not that He can’t do something; there is no thing. That “thing” is just nonsense—there’s no such thing. Therefore, to say that He cannot is only a borrowed expression. The Omnipotent can do anything you can conceive of, but He cannot do blah blah blah blah blah—there’s no explanation for that. What is it? Explain to me what that is.
[Speaker C] And it becomes so simple once you understand it. Right. So where is Maimonides? Huh? Where is Maimonides?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the Shelah argues that this is what Maimonides says. Yes. The Shelah argues that what Maimonides says is that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know. When he says “His knowledge is not like our knowledge,” he means that knowledge as we define it—He really doesn’t have that. When we say that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows, we mean something else—not that He can acquire knowledge in the way we… that’s how people usually understand Maimonides. But as I said earlier, that doesn’t answer the right question. So the Shelah argues—I’m doubtful that this was Maimonides’ original intent—but that’s what the Shelah argues. The Shelah argues that “His knowledge is not like our knowledge” means that knowledge in the sense that we define as knowledge—He does not have it, because
[Speaker C] truly it can’t be; it’s an internal contradiction. And it’s not only Maimonides; it’s lots of medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) who get tangled up in this.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Raavad there says that it is like the knowledge of astrologers.
[Speaker C] But it seems, once you understand it and someone explains it to you, it seems pretty simple.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. I’ll say more than that: I think we once talked about Newcomb’s paradox. Right.
[Speaker D] What does it say?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Just the name—the one with the prophet and the two boxes. Didn’t we talk about that? I think not. Fine, I’ll describe it now. Could be. I’ll describe it now. Suppose someone comes to us who is an all-powerful prophet.
[Speaker D] Ah, we did it—not with the prophet, with the boxes that had money in them, right? Yes, yes, ah, okay, so we did.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An all-powerful prophet offers you an experiment. Okay? In this experiment there is an open box and a closed box. The open box has a thousand dollars, and the closed box—he explains to you what he did with it, what’s inside it. So he says this: since I know what you’re going to do—you can, sorry, first we have to say: you have two options, either choose only the closed box, just the closed one, or take both. Now the prophet says this: I know what you will choose because I’m a prophet; I know what you will do. Now, if you choose only the closed box, I put a million dollars inside it, sorry, okay? But if you’re greedy, you want both boxes, then you’ll be left only with the open box with the thousand dollars, and the closed box will be empty. That’s my policy; that’s how I prepare the box the day before. Since I know what will happen, I have no problem—I know what will happen, so I prepare the box accordingly. Okay? Now this prophet offers you the experiment. What do you do? Take the closed box or take both? Both… So seemingly you should jump—seemingly you should take only the closed box, right? Because that gives me a million dollars; if I take both, I only have a thousand dollars, so better for me to get the million. But the truth is that when you think about it, there’s no logic in taking only the closed box, because whatever is inside the closed box is already there, right? Now if the closed box is there, why shouldn’t I also take the open box with another thousand dollars? Whatever is there is already there. This prophet is not a magician, he’s only a prophet. Meaning, he’s not now going to pull out of the box what’s in it; he prepared yesterday whatever he prepared, and that’s that. Why do people get confused about this? For example, Ron Aharoni, in the book I mentioned, The Cat That Isn’t There, this mathematician from the Technion—a fascinating book; anyone who hasn’t read it, I highly recommend reading it. A fascinating book, brilliant at a fundamental level and fascinating in a really extraordinary way. It’s an amazing book. That book shook me up, because he argues that there’s no such thing as philosophy and it’s all nonsense, and it’s all the same nonsense. All the philosophical issues are the same nonsense: a confusion between subjectivity and objectivity. It’s amazing how he shows this across all the philosophical issues—really, just a brilliant book. And this is a person who knows what he’s talking about. There are many who criticize philosophy and don’t understand it; he knows what he’s talking about. And in Newcomb’s paradox he wants to argue that obviously you should take only the closed box, because logic is indifferent to time—basically, in my language I’d put it this way. And what I think he misses is that here we’re not talking about logic, we’re talking about a fact: what’s inside the box is not the truth value of the statement “what will be in the box tomorrow,” but rather what is in the box is a fact. If that fact is true yesterday, then it’s true today as well. It can’t change from the future to the past. And therefore it can’t be; you have to take both boxes, you have to take both boxes, that’s clear. But—but what do you mean? But if I took both boxes, then there will only be a thousand dollars. If… how can that be? That throws us into a loop. What’s the answer? That there is no such prophet. There cannot be such a prophet. This is a proof by contradiction that such a prophet cannot exist. Now think about it: that prophet could also be the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself; it doesn’t have to be specifically a human being. The Holy One, blessed be He, could also set up such an experiment for me, offer me such an experiment and confront me with the challenge: what do you choose? And I would fall into the same loop. So this is proof that even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot know anything in advance, because the information cannot exist in advance. If I think I have choice. One of two things: I can adopt the deterministic thesis, and then it’s fine.
[Speaker B] The Holy One, blessed be He, has powers that a prophet doesn’t, just like He turned the tefillin into dove’s wings.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—but He tells me in advance, the Holy One, blessed be He, tells me in advance: I’m not touching the box. I can of course do anything, but I’m not touching the box; I just know what you will do. I function de facto as a prophet. Okay? So He could set up such an experiment for me, and if He sets up such an experiment for me, He throws me into a loop. So this is exactly the same confusion between logic and physics. Logic is indifferent to time, but physics is not. And how much money is inside the box—that’s physics, not logic. So it cannot change retroactively in time. So one of two things: either you choose the deterministic picture, and then there’s no problem—the prophet can know everything in advance and there is a deterministic picture. And the fact that you think you’re deliberating whether to take two or take one—you’re just under an illusion. You’re not deliberating. You will do what the prophet knew in advance you would do, and there’s no problem. That’s a coherent picture. And then the prophet can know everything in advance—but of course that’s not much of an achievement, because in a deterministic picture, fine, it could be that there is a prophet who knows everything in advance; in a deterministic picture it’s only a matter of calculation. But if you’re not a determinist, then by definition there is no such prophet. Meaning, this experiment does not prove libertarianism. You can be a determinist and remain consistent with this experiment. One thing it does prove is that if you are a libertarian, then nobody can know in advance what you will do, because the information does not exist—including the Holy One, blessed be He. Meaning, it proves neither libertarianism nor determinism. You can remain a consistent libertarian; you can remain a consistent determinist. One thing you cannot be is a libertarian who thinks that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows it in advance.
[Speaker D] Where does this information begin? It’s… what? Where does this information begin? What do you mean—is this desire, when you decide to do something, is that something from nothing? Yes, in a sense, but…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is created within you from nothing; that’s the power to choose. The power to choose is the power to create information.
[Speaker D] It’s not interaction with the world, it’s not influence from the world?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, it’s something from nothing. It’s my decision.
[Speaker D] Not only physically—I mean, I’m asking, like, you want something… it’s not connected to that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not not connected. It may be connected, but it’s not dictated by the circumstances. It’s connected to the circumstances.
[Speaker C] If it’s dictated, then it’s deterministic.
[Speaker D] Yes, I’m just trying, you know—it’s always missing some step of where it comes from. That’s how it is. I’m not—we talked about this, I remember from way back that we talked about it, but every time I miss this layer of where it starts. That’s the libertarian price.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you’re a libertarian, then this information doesn’t exist at all.
[Speaker D] This information doesn’t exist in the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t, right. And since it doesn’t exist, then nobody—including the Holy One, blessed be He—
[Speaker D] can know it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t know something that isn’t there. Exactly. And therefore this is proof of what I’m saying: you can choose. If you are a determinist, no problem—the Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything in advance, but then you’re a determinist. If you’re a libertarian, then fine—but then the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know. And that’s exactly the point. Meaning, the Holy One’s knowledge dictates the result, and therefore if you say the result is not dictated—you’re a libertarian—then He does not know.
[Speaker C] Yes, but when people say—the whole problem is the phrase “does not know”; then it becomes a mess. No, there are two different senses: not knowing something that exists, that
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] not being able to access information that in principle exists here—that’s an inability.
[Speaker C] Not knowing something that doesn’t exist—that’s not an inability.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, it’s like a square circle. Right. Not knowing information that does not exist. It’s just that people use the same expression, and that…
[Speaker C] Because if
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you know it, then it exists. If you know it, then it exists. Meaning, you can’t know non-existent information; the moment you know it, you make it exist. It’s exactly the same… Now I’ll just finish with the Or HaChaim. The Or HaChaim who says that the Holy One, blessed be He, closes His eyes and doesn’t look—it could be, if I want to interpret him by the principle of charity, yes? That that’s what he meant. He doesn’t literally mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, closes His eyes; rather, by giving us choice, He determined that the information about what we will do would not exist, and so He thereby concealed that information from Himself.
[Speaker C] That’s very likely, because to say “He closes His eyes” sounds a little childish.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but in the plain sense of the wording it seems that he really does mean that. But if I want to judge him favorably and not harshly, then maybe that’s what he meant. And then basically what he says is exactly what the Shelah says: that if we have free choice, then the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot know. And when he says that He closed His eyes, the intention is that He gave us free choice.