The Principles of Work Prohibitions – Lesson 8

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I can simply not give either of them a bill of divorce, okay? I can be with each one separately, each time on the basis of doubt, and I can be with two sisters. It’s a question of doubts in mutually contradictory cases, not important right now—that already belongs to the discussions in the laws of doubt. So when Rav Shimon Shkop talks about this topic—yes, in the yeshivot they call it “doubt and certainty” or “certainty and doubt”—he distinguishes between this doubt and ordinary doubts. In an ordinary doubt, say I sent an agent to betroth a woman for me, okay? And he betrothed a woman and died. So I’m forbidden to all the women in the world, lest they be my wife’s sisters, and so on, right? What is the doubt there? After all, if I asked the Holy One, blessed be He, He would tell me who my wife is, who was betrothed to me. I don’t know, right? The doubt is on my end; I lack information. But in reality itself there is one specific, definite woman who is betrothed to me; the Holy One, blessed be He, knows who it is, right? That’s a normal case of doubt. All the doubts you know from Jewish law are doubts of that type. You could call that an epistemic doubt. It’s a doubt in the sense that a person lacks information about reality. In reality itself there is no ambiguity; reality itself is clear. There is one correct answer—I just don’t know it, okay?

Now if, if we—but in the case of betrothal that is not given over to intercourse, if I asked the Holy One, blessed be He, “Tell me, who is betrothed to me, Rachel or Leah?” even He wouldn’t know. Ask Kurzweil and he’d tell us, right? Meaning—He doesn’t know. What does that mean? It means there is no correct answer here. It’s not that I don’t know it; I’m not missing any information. I have all the information that the Holy One, blessed be He, has. There is no difference. He has no informational advantage over me. I am not lacking information. So where does the doubt come from? Reality itself is not defined. It’s not that I don’t know something. In reality itself there are two possibilities. No—he didn’t intend either one in particular; he doesn’t care, one of the two, he didn’t mean either one specifically. The Ritva raises the possibility that maybe they could choose afterward, by the laws of retroactive clarification, so that they could choose one of them and then by retroactive clarification it would take effect retroactively on her—but that’s puzzling, never mind. But basically the point is that in a doubt of this kind, of betrothal not given over to intercourse, it’s not my lack of information. It’s an ontic doubt, not an epistemic doubt. In reality itself there are two possibilities, and there is no “right” and “wrong” possibility here. Wait, wait, wait—one second, one second—we’ll get there. Wait, I haven’t gotten to the ruling or anything yet. Right now I’m defining two kinds of doubts. Okay?

So I have doubt—maybe I’ll call it doubt versus ambiguity. Okay? “Doubt” means what we usually call doubt: a situation where I don’t know something, I lack information, and therefore I’m in doubt. Say someone throws a die, okay? So I’m in doubt about what it will land on, which side it will land on, right? It will land on one side and no more than that, and there is a correct answer as to which side it will land on. I don’t know that correct answer. So I have a lack of information, okay, on my side. But in betrothal not given over to intercourse, this is ambiguity, not doubt. Reality itself is not univocal.

[Speaker D] Either this or that—or is it both? Is it both together?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You could. That already depends on interpretation. You could maybe define it that way too; that depends on interpretation. It’s basically a quantum superposition. Whatever you say there, you can say here. It’s exactly the same thing. So the point is that if that’s so, then I’m already adopting that formulation. If that’s so, then it basically means that the correct answer is that both of them are betrothed to me. Both are betrothed to me. Each one is betrothed to me with doubtful betrothal. It’s not that I’m in doubt about one of them, where one of them is certainly betrothed to me and I just don’t know which one. That would be a doubt in my knowledge. No—here the betrothal itself is doubtful betrothal. The quality of the betrothal is tenuous betrothal, you could call it that. There is some sort of doubt here in the sense that she is betrothed to me and she is betrothed to me in some sort of superposition like that. Okay?

Now, in quantum theory they formulate this as though I have two states. One state is that Leah is betrothed and Rachel is not betrothed, and the second state is that Rachel is betrothed and Leah is not betrothed. Each of these two states is coherent. There is no state in which both sisters are betrothed to me, right? In each of these two states only one sister is betrothed to me, and I am in a superposition between these two legitimate states. Both are in fact true, while each one by itself is coherent. That’s not the same thing as saying both Rachel and Leah are betrothed to me, because that is an incoherent state. You can’t betroth two sisters. Okay? Quantum superposition means I am in a combination of two states, each of which is coherent, and therefore I can also be in a combination of the two. That is not the same thing, and this is the subtle point—this is what makes quantum theory so difficult for everyone. It’s not the same thing as saying that both Rachel and Leah are betrothed to me. It’s not the same thing. Okay? The particle is not both here and there. It didn’t go through both this slit and that slit; rather, it is in the sum of states, where in each state taken separately it goes through only one slit. And each state is internally coherent; I’m just in the sum of those states. That’s not the same as saying it both went through this one and went through that one, even though that’s usually how people formulate it in the double-slit experiment, right?

So the point is, if I come back to our issue here, what Rabbi Akiva Eiger basically wants to argue is that when I talk about inevitable consequence, what am I really saying? I’m basically saying that the result necessarily follows from the act that I intended. The forbidden act necessarily follows from the act I intended—that’s all, if it necessarily follows from it. But if it does not necessarily follow from it, it may follow and it may not—what is that? That’s an ontic doubt, right? So in such a case it is not an inevitable consequence. But if it necessarily follows from it and I just don’t know whether it follows or not, why should that matter? That’s a doubt about prohibition like any other doubt about prohibition. Or in other words, what he is telling us now is making a very sharp distinction, one that has accompanied us from the beginning of the discussion of unintended consequences. I said that an unintended act, when it is not an inevitable consequence, does not operate on the plane of the laws of doubt. It has nothing to do with the laws of doubt. If there is uncertainty, then it is not an inevitable consequence and you remain in the category of unintended action. Rabbi Akiva Eiger says: that is exactly the difference. Doubt in the context of inevitable consequence, within the laws of unintended action, is ontic doubt. The laws of doubt speak about epistemic doubt. The laws of doubt deal with cases where I don’t know which of two possibilities it is, but one of them is correct, and therefore I must be stringent in a Torah-level doubt. Okay?

But if I am talking about ontic doubt, then in ontic doubt it’s not that I don’t know something. There are two possible outcomes; either of the two could occur. Okay? And here I’m basically saying: if so, then it is not certain that the forbidden outcome will occur, so you can’t call that an inevitable consequence. So the distinction Rabbi Akiva Eiger is really talking about is not a distinction between past and future at all. It is a distinction between ontic doubt and epistemic doubt. Okay? Now what about a case where there is doubt whether in the future I will decide to use the myrtle branch or not use the myrtle branch? Regarding… no, the question is also how you understand human decisions. Meaning, if a person’s decision is deterministic, then you could say that this too is really epistemic doubt, right? You just don’t know what I will decide, but in reality itself there is something I will decide. Sorry—epistemic. Yes. But if the person himself can decide this way or can decide that way, then this is not epistemic doubt where the information exists and I just don’t know it. The information does not exist. It is ontic doubt. Okay?

So now this already brings us straight into philosophical questions: does a person act deterministically or not? So you see that the comparison he makes regarding my future decisions is not crazy—but it is far from clear. And now I understand the initial assumption and the possibility of rejecting it. I asked: what does “it may be rejected” mean? How could one not reject it? But no—it depends what you mean. Because you see that he himself senses it: after all, this is about the future, not the past. So what was the initial assumption that this would be the same as the past? So there is a reason to reject it because it concerns the future—but what did he think originally? Because it is clear to him that the essential distinction is not between past and future. The essential distinction is between ontic doubt and epistemic doubt. And that is his question: is the decision whether to use the myrtle branch or not to use it ontic or epistemic? That is really what he is asking. Okay?

And the Taz does not distinguish. The Taz says, basically, all doubts are the same; there is no difference between ontic doubt and epistemic doubt. In a moment I’ll comment on why. In my view, Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s reasoning is obvious, so the burden of proof is on whoever disagrees with him. To me it is completely simple; it is obviously correct. I mean, in the straightforward sense, yes. Since an inevitable consequence basically means that the result is supposed to necessarily follow from the act you intended. But if it follows necessarily, then what difference does it make that I don’t know? Unless you say that intention means knowledge—we’ll get to that in a moment. But in the simple definition, it seems to me perfectly straightforward that Rabbi Akiva Eiger is right. Wait, I’ll get to that. I don’t want to bring that in yet; I’ll get there in a minute. What? The fly case is a case of inevitable consequence regarding the past. If there is a fly in there, then clearly I am trapping it—I just don’t know. Since it is epistemic doubt, then this doubt of prohibition is still an inevitable consequence. Okay? If it were ontic—say, in the case of the small holes and the bee, where maybe it won’t manage to get out, maybe it will and maybe it won’t—that really would not be an inevitable consequence. Why? Because there the issue is not my knowledge, but rather that it’s a kind of hole where it is not certain the bee can get out. That is ambiguity, not doubt—or ontic doubt, as I called it. And therefore you can’t compare it to the case of flies in a box. In the case of flies in the box, if there are flies then they will definitely be trapped; the only question is whether there are flies there or not. Okay? Okay, let’s skip the rest.

So where—what is the Taz actually saying? It seems to me, as I said before, that it is straightforward reasoning that Rabbi Akiva Eiger is right. So what does the Taz say? Look, there’s a not-so-simple question here, because let’s think about the ground and the bench—the dragging of the bench and the furrow created there. Okay? There too it is epistemic doubt. Ask a soil expert—I don’t know, someone who knows how to analyze soil hardness and all that—give him the path of the dragging of the bench, the weight of the bench, the shape of the bench, and so on, and he’ll tell you whether a furrow will be created or not. Fine, in a moment—the next stage. Okay, first of all, what I’m saying factually right now is: only one result will happen here. I don’t know that result because it’s complicated. Why, what probabilistic issue is there here? This is all deterministic. There is nothing probabilistic here. Wherever you put it, that’s where it will fall, nothing—

[Speaker C] probabilistic here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so include the force too, include the force too, it doesn’t matter. No, he’s dragging it with force right now; he’s not deciding in the future. It’s the act of dragging itself. He also has to decide whether to drag it; that too he has to decide. Fine, that’s the time of the action. No, and his decisions about the action—his decisions also include whether to drag a bench or not; that too he decides. But that isn’t considered relevant. Why not? Because it’s a decision about the action itself. So deciding whether to apply force or not is also part of the action; it’s not… Look, I’ll tell you, let me clarify one more thing. Wait, let me clarify one more thing. Look, usually when we look at rolling a die or tossing a coin, we treat those as canonical examples of a probabilistic event, a random event, okay? Accidental, however you want to call it. Nothing here is random. It’s all completely deterministic. Completely deterministic. What does that mean? When you flip the coin, give me the initial force, the initial direction, the weight of the coin, the air, the data, all the data—like Laplace said—and I’ll tell you whether it will land heads or tails. Unambiguously. It’s all completely deterministic. So what’s the issue? The calculation is very complicated, because there is enormous sensitivity to initial conditions, like chaos. So you don’t—it doesn’t matter—but there is one clear outcome. You don’t know it because it’s complicated to calculate. No, it can’t be, there is no point. Meaning, there isn’t—if, if you give me all the data, because if it reached a point where it really was exactly so, then it would land standing up. It wouldn’t land either heads or tails. No—if it landed heads, it could have been calculated in advance that it would land heads. It could be that the calculation time would be, I don’t know, astronomical. But in principle there is such a calculation. Meaning, the outcome is an outcome dictated in advance; it’s Newton’s laws. The physics here is super simple, by the way; only the calculation is terribly complicated. Just Newton’s laws, nothing more. Meaning, it isn’t even complicated physics; the calculation is complicated. Because it depends very sensitively on initial conditions and all sorts of other parameters. So what does that actually mean? It means that even when you drag the bench or when you toss the coin, is the doubt ontic or epistemic? Everyone you ask will tell you it’s ontic doubt, because either the coin will fall—you can’t know. It might fall this way, it might fall that way, or with a die. But that’s not true. The truth is that it isn’t true. Meaning, philosophically everyone understands that it’s epistemic doubt, not ontic. Exactly. And our use of statistics when we analyze die rolls or coin tosses is only because the deterministic calculation is complicated. So we prefer to treat it statistically. But the statistics here do not reflect a genuine indeterminacy in reality. By the way, nowhere do they. Statistics always talks about doubts, not indeterminacies. Except in quantum theory. No, except in the quantum realm—leave aside human actions, because that takes us into a different area. But I’m talking about the natural realm, okay? So in quantum theory, that’s one of the things that complicates the picture here, something so poorly understood in quantum theory: there we are really dealing—according to the accepted interpretations, and even there there are disputes—with indeterminacy and not doubt. In reality itself there can be one result with a certain probability and another result with a different probability. But the concept of probability in quantum theory appears there in a way that appears nowhere else. Everywhere else, when we talk about probability, we are talking about differences between possibilities, one of which is true, but we don’t know which one is true. So we assign different probabilities to each possibility according to the information we have. Okay? In contrast, in quantum theory, what we call probabilities there are not probabilities at all. What we call probabilities there are simply the weight of the possibility that it will come out this way, or the weight of the possibility that it will come out that way. It’s not a question of my knowledge; it’s a question about reality itself. Again, according to the accepted interpretations. Okay? Yes, when I say, for example, in the double-slit experiment, when the particle passes through the two slits, there is no detector and nothing else—the particle passes through both slits. So I’m not saying there is a seventy-five percent chance that it will go through this slit and a twenty-five percent chance that it will go through that slit. Seventy-five percent of it went through here, and twenty-five percent of it went through there. Do you understand? That’s not the same thing. It’s a claim about reality, not about me, not about my knowledge of reality. That’s why quantum theory is so confusing. With ordinary statistics we manage just fine; we understand what happens in ordinary statistics, there is no problem with it. So what is the big issue that drives people crazy and makes them unable to understand quantum theory? Because the concept of probability there is not really probability. It would be more accurate to call it fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic is logic that has not only yes-or-no answers, but many, many possible answers, not just two. Okay? In probability there is only one correct answer; it’s just that since I don’t know what it is, I assign a different probabilistic weight to each possibility. That is not what happens in quantum theory. When I make a measurement in quantum theory, then it turns from indeterminacy into probability. Yes, when you put a detector next to one of the slits, then in effect the chance that the detector will tell me that the particle passed here is seventy-five percent, and the chance that it will show nothing because it passed through the other slit is twenty-five percent. There the quantum distribution becomes probability. But when you do not place a detector and you look at what happened afterward, say on the photographic plate, there is some interference of the parts that passed through the two slits. There you will discover that seventy-five percent of it passed through here and twenty-five percent of it passed through there, or fifty-fifty, it doesn’t matter whatever the quantum distribution says. What is the difference between the two things? When you place a detector, it’s probability, like classical probability. Before we put in a detector, it’s indeterminacy; it’s fuzzy logic, not probability, even though it’s the same calculation. We arrive at seventy-five percent, twenty-five percent—it’s exactly the same calculation. The meaning of the calculation is different, and that is what complicates the whole picture here, because people don’t understand this distinction. Okay? What I basically want to argue is that the Taz is really saying—or at least I’m putting this into his mouth—that Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s distinction could hypothetically be a correct distinction, but only hypothetically; and that all the doubts we have about reality are epistemic doubts. There is no situation of two possibilities within a complete system of data, when I have all the data. Let’s leave quantum mechanics aside now, okay? I have a complete system of data, so I can tell you what will happen next. The only issue is that I don’t always know it in practice, but in principle that determines what will happen next. And therefore, in fact, there is no real difference between dragging a bench on the ground and the flies inside the box. In both cases it is simply a lack of information on my part. Okay? The only question is: now we enter a different issue. Okay, so lack of information—how do I obtain that information? With the flies I can simply look, right? With the bench and the groove, maybe an expert could know, and sometimes not even that, at least not clearly. Okay? It’s not something accessible to the average layman. So Rabbi Akiva Eiger will say: as far as I’m concerned, something whose information is inaccessible to a person, to the reasonable person, is for me like ontic doubt. I call this pseudo-ontic doubt. It is not really ontic doubt; it is epistemic doubt. You—I don’t know. But I relate to it as though it were ontic doubt. Why? Because the ordinary person, if I ask him, sees it as ontic doubt. It doesn’t matter that he’s mistaken; that’s how he sees it. And from the standpoint of Jewish law, what matters is how the ordinary person sees it. Therefore Rabbi Akiva Eiger says that the distinction he makes is not really between epistemic doubt and ontic doubt. No one is talking about particles passing through slits in the laws of the Sabbath. Okay? That’s not the point. In all the situations we’re talking about, these are everyday situations on everyday scales; there is no quantum theory there. Okay? So what is there? There is either ordinary epistemic doubt, as with the flies, or pseudo-ontic doubt—not ontic doubt—as with dragging a bench and making a groove. Okay? Now we can start debating where the line is drawn. For example, with that gentile’s vessel that has something inside it—maybe it has milk and meat in it and maybe not. In principle I can ask the gentile who held the vessel previously, so this is information that can in principle be clarified. The question is whether he is reliable, the question is whether he is here. So now we can start discussing whether this is pseudo-ontic doubt or epistemic doubt. It may be that an expert could tell me what has been absorbed in the vessel; he can simply examine it and see what is absorbed in the vessel. Then perhaps an expert can know. This is exactly where the lines are no longer completely clear. Obviously, a person’s decision whether to use hadas or not use hadas—that already takes us into questions of determinism such that no expert can tell me that either, and then it is a different question altogether. You see that a great many philosophical questions enter here into the halakhic ruling itself. Meaning, the question whether this thing will be prohibited or permitted depends on your philosophical views and on the halakhic definitions of how we view those philosophical conceptions. Is pseudo-ontic doubt, where an expert could figure it out, pseudo-ontic or epistemic? I can ask the expert—but fine, maybe I don’t need to ask the expert. It’s similar to what people say, for example, about worms. Yes? If you need sophisticated laboratory equipment to see whether there are worms here, then Jewish law does not prohibit that. Jewish law prohibits only worms that are accessible to a layman, okay? To a person who can check and see it. There are such claims among halakhic decisors, and I want to say something similar here as well. By the way, there are also stricter claims in the opposite direction. I once wrote about this regarding the leniencies involving indirect causation. I think I mentioned it one of the previous times. About the leniencies of indirect causation—that yes, the Tzomet Institute, which comes up with these inventions involving the mobility scooter and Sabbath doors in hospitals and all kinds of things like that, where it creates some mechanism so that it works by indirect causation, or delayed current, or all sorts of things—they have several mechanisms. Let’s talk about indirect causation for a moment. So what does that mean? I activate the mobility scooter, I press the button, and the scooter starts moving. But when I press the button, what happens there is that something jumps and activates the—I don’t know what—activates something indirectly. Okay? The question is whether such a thing—never mind, yes, they have several mechanisms. Yes, exactly. They have a few mechanisms. It doesn’t matter, I’m talking right now about any one of them. There is a claim—Rabbi Yitzhak Brand wrote about this at length, not the one from here but another Yitzhak Brand, an interesting Jew, never mind. He wrote against this, and I’m very inclined to agree with him. Meaning, he says: in the end, you press a button and the scooter moves. Why should I care that the electrons jump to the left before they start moving? An expert knows that. The expert who sees the electrical circuit and opens it and takes measurements and so on, he will see that the electrons jump like that. Fine. But the layman, the ordinary person looking at this thing, sees that you press a button and the scooter moves. The button activates the scooter. So you are forbidden to do that. Meaning, the question here is in the opposite direction. Here the claim is for stringency, not leniency. Yes? If the layman sees it as direct activation, then even if in truth it is activation by indirect causation—the professional truth, yes?—it is activation by indirect causation, that doesn’t matter. What determines it is how the layman sees it. Therefore it may be forbidden, and all the Tzomet leniencies are in fact not valid. That’s another question, and those are already side issues. I am speaking to the main point. I want to argue that there is here a Torah-level Sabbath prohibition, liable to stoning—meaning, not just issues of appearances or weekday-type activity or things like that. So it turns out that the disagreement between Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Taz is not really—or the distinction is not really—between ontic doubt and epistemic doubt, but between whether I am willing to treat a category as pseudo-ontic doubt even though it is not really ontic doubt. Notice that according to the Taz, the conclusion should have been the opposite. Because what I’m really saying now is that all doubts are actually epistemic doubts; there are no ontic doubts. But what is the law in epistemic doubt? It should be forbidden. The opposite. Ontic doubt could mean that it is not an inevitable consequence. Epistemic doubt should be forbidden. So the conclusion should have been that according to the Taz everything would be forbidden, not everything would be permitted. If he does not distinguish between the doubts. But that itself is exactly what the Taz says. After all, the Talmud says that when there is doubt, it is not an inevitable consequence. Right? That’s what the Talmud says. Now, you cannot distinguish between the doubts, because they are all epistemic. So what do we see? Apparently the Talmud also says that in epistemic doubt it is not considered an inevitable consequence. One more step is needed, because in pure reasoning, as I said, Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s reasoning is correct: that all the Talmud said was in ontic doubt; in epistemic doubt one should be stringent. Okay? Now suddenly it has become clear to us that all doubts are epistemic. So ostensibly the conclusion should have been that everything ought to be forbidden. But the Taz’s conclusion, since he does not distinguish between the doubts, is that everything is permitted. How can that be? Because we know there is a law in the Torah of an unintended act. Right? When it is an inevitable consequence and you are in doubt—after all, you understand that there could not have been a law of unintended action in the Torah if it were not like this. Because every unintended act is an inevitable consequence. Even if you did not know, then you simply did not know epistemically. But if it happened, it had to happen; everything that happened also had to happen in advance. The fact that you did not know it—after it happened, you then found out. But then retroactively you discover that it had to happen in advance. Because everything that happened had to happen in advance; the world is deterministic. Okay? And therefore, therefore the conclusion should have been that everything is forbidden. But, says the Taz, we know—we have data—the Talmud says that if it is not an inevitable consequence there is an exemption because it is unintended. If there is an exemption for unintended action, that means that epistemic doubt also negates inevitable consequence. And what is the idea behind this? This is what ultimately brings me back to the earlier comments. We assume there is a connection—meaning, why should only ontic doubt have been able to permit? Because we understand that inevitable consequence is meant to link the two actions. Right? Or to link the action to him, or to link the two actions—I’m not even making a distinction between those formulations right now. Okay? Then I say: fine, if my doubt is epistemic doubt, that still links the actions. So what if I don’t know? But if the doubt is ontic doubt, then there truly is no connection between the actions. Because in reality the doing of one action does not necessarily bring about the second action, because it is ontic doubt; in reality itself it may not come into being. That is how we understand it; that is the basis of the distinction between ontic doubt and epistemic doubt. Okay? But if I understand that everything depends on the person’s knowledge, or even on his intention, then what difference does it make whether the doubt is ontic or epistemic? It makes absolutely no difference. All the earlier formulations I said at the beginning—I started the class with this—all the earlier formulations I said at the beginning, that inevitable consequence turns you into someone who intended it, or that satisfaction with the result turns you into someone who intended it; whether intention means knowledge or intention means purpose—according to all those formulations, there should be no difference between ontic doubt and epistemic doubt. That is apparently how the Taz understood it. So what does the Taz say? He says: what do you mean? If you know, then it is an inevitable consequence. If you do not know, then you also do not intend it, so it is not an inevitable consequence. That’s all. What difference does it make whether you do not know because it is ontic, or you do not know because it is epistemic? Bottom line: you do not know. Do you remember the “we are witnesses” of Tosafot? That if it is certain to happen, then we are witnesses that you intended it. Yes? Green on the outside, red on the inside, with watermelon seeds—it’s a watermelon. Meaning, if you wanted this and you did this, then apparently that is what you intended. Right? But all that is only if I really knew that it would happen. But if I didn’t know that it would happen, it doesn’t matter whether in fact it really would have happened anyway and I just didn’t know, or whether in reality itself there is some doubt, some indeterminacy in reality itself. Bottom line, you cannot say that I intended it. The Taz is right. The only way to understand Rabbi Akiva Eiger, who distinguishes between ontic doubt and epistemic doubt, is that he understands it like the later formulations I gave at the end, the third formulation at the beginning of the class. Namely: when I impose liability, it is because I see a connection between the prohibited act that I did not intend and the permitted act that I did intend—yes, making the groove and dragging the bench. Such a connection exists only where the acts are truly connected in an ontic way, meaning that one act brings about the second act. Right? But if it does not bring it about—if it is not certain that it brings it about—then no. Here, if the act does bring it about and I just don’t know, that really should not permit it. Because bottom line, the actions are connected to one another; it does not depend on my knowledge. So I think that the dispute about doubtful inevitable consequence reflects very powerfully the differences between the various conceptions of unintended action. Let’s finish with a few comments. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, in Minchat Shlomo, speaks there about eating worms, a fruit that has a worm inside it. And likewise what the Shevut Tzion wrote in section 28, and this was also brought in Imrei Binah, laws of meat and milk, in the name of one gaon, and in Darkhei Teshuvah section 84 it was brought in the name of the author of Beit Ephraim: regarding the worm, since one’s mind is not on it, it is considered an unintentional involvement. Again, unintentional involvement and unintended action get interchanged—we’ll talk about that—but yes. And even though unintentional involvement does not apply in forbidden fats because one derives pleasure, here it is different, because the pleasure is only from the fruit and not from the worm. And even though this should be like a doubtful inevitable consequence regarding the past, which should not count as unintended action—you see, suddenly he moves from unintentional involvement to unintended action—but he says this is unintended action, yet doubtful inevitable consequence regarding the past should be forbidden, yes? Like Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s view. Nevertheless, it seems that if the clarification can be done only through very great effort, that is considered like an ex post facto case, and in our case it is properly considered as something done afterward at the time of eating by unintentional involvement and as unintended action, and therefore permitted. For after all, with dragging a bed and the like, one can also know in advance through a great expert, and even so it is permitted. And since it is permitted for the trap owner, it is certainly also permitted for others. Exactly the argument I made earlier—he managed, by divine inspiration, to anticipate the argument I was going to make. What did he say? He basically said that with the bench and the groove too, an expert could tell you whether a groove will be made here or not. The only issue is that the clarification requires great effort: go to an expert, he will do research, this and that, and in the end he will give you an answer. Okay? So with the worm too you can conduct an investigation in the end—cut open the fruit, check, try to search, or use experts, do an X-ray, run it through some imaging machine or something like that. But if it is a clarification that requires great effort, or an expert, or whatever it may be, that you do not have to do. What does it mean you don’t have to do it because it is a pressing circumstance? Fine, so you don’t have to exert so much effort in a pressing circumstance—that’s the point. Absolutely not. It’s not because of that. It’s not a leniency for a pressing circumstance; rather, if the clarification is one that requires great effort, then for me it is considered like ontic doubt and not epistemic doubt. Therefore it is not an inevitable consequence and it is completely permitted—not because of a pressing circumstance. It is permitted under the law of unintended action. It is not a leniency because of pressing circumstances, because it takes great effort and they don’t require you to exert great effort; it is not consideration for the person’s difficulties. The great effort is an indication that what we are dealing with here is pseudo-ontic doubt and not epistemic doubt. That’s the point. Do you understand? If we know that physics is deterministic, then it is not known about this. That’s a comment—a comment that I hope to get to in a few minutes. Yes. Look, just as an anecdote, Rabbi Shimon Shkop in Sha’arei Yosher, section 3, brings proof for Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s distinction. He says: and the reason for this seems to me, in my humble opinion, that—there, he brought Rabbi Akiva Eiger. See tractate Shabbat 95 and Tosafot, where Rabbi Eliezer and the Rabbis disagree regarding sweeping. Sweeping means using a broom—I think I mentioned this sometime—sweeping with palm branches, whether it is an inevitable consequence. For apparently, if tannaim disagree about this, how can one say that the person doing it knows for certain that it will be so? The tannaim disagree over whether the leaves of the palm branch will fall off when I sweep, okay? So if a person sweeps, one tanna says this is an inevitable consequence; you are forbidden to do it because branches will fall off. You say: what do you mean the branches will fall off? Does he know that branches will fall off? It cannot be that he knows for certain that branches will fall off, because there is a tanna who says they won’t. It doesn’t matter that I think they will, but opposite me is a tanna who is intelligent and wise no less than I am, and he says they won’t. So regarding the ordinary person, you cannot say that he knows for certain that branches will fall off, right? To such an extent that one can even ask: how do I myself know for certain that branches will fall off? Here, he thinks maybe not. Fine, we can discuss that. But regarding the ordinary person, how can you make him liable because of inevitable consequence? A sign that inevitable consequence is not about the person’s awareness. That is his proof. If inevitable consequence depends on the person’s awareness, as the Taz thinks—so then you think it depends on the person’s awareness. If the person does not know, it doesn’t matter whether ontic or not; if the person does not know, it is not an inevitable consequence. Rabbi Shimon Shkop says: that cannot be. If whether it is an inevitable consequence depends on the person’s awareness, on his knowledge, yes, then what is the problem? In a case where tannaim disagree about sweeping, the person who is sweeping cannot know with certainty that a leaf will fall off, right? And if whether it is an inevitable consequence depends on his knowledge, then even the tanna who imposes liability should have exempted him. Even though he thinks the leaves will certainly fall off, that person does not think the leaves will certainly fall off, because he doesn’t know whether I am right or whether the other tanna is right. So if that is so, then why does this tanna impose liability? Not why the other exempts—why do I, who think he is liable, really impose liability? This means that inevitable consequence does not depend on the person’s awareness but on reality itself. And if reality itself, in my assessment, is such that the leaves will certainly fall off—ontically I have no doubt; the doubt is only epistemic—I don’t care, because what matters depends only on ontic doubt and not on epistemic doubt. Fine, that is a sharp proof. Of course the tannaim there function as the experts; the expert who assesses whether these leaves will fall from the palm or not—they are functioning there as the expert. But that is basically what he is saying. Now really, one final comment touching on the history of philosophy, or whatever you want to call it. I truly do not think—even regarding later authorities like Rabbi Akiva Eiger and so on, but certainly in the period of the Sages—I do not think they distinguished between ontic doubt and epistemic doubt. Not that they didn’t distinguish because they thought they had the same law; they simply did not grasp that there are two such kinds of doubt at all. Meaning, for them, in reality itself, reality itself was not defined. It is not that I don’t know whether a groove will be made or not. I do not think they understood it as a situation that is in fact determined deterministically. What the layman today really thinks—that is what everyone thought then. Today the experts know otherwise, and the layman still thinks as people thought once. But in fact that is not—yes, maybe I’ll give you an example from elsewhere. A tiny bit of heresy. In the Mishnah in tractate Berakhot in the last chapter it says that prayer about the past—yes, someone who prays, “May it be Your will that these not be the members of my household,” or “that my wife give birth to a boy,” when his wife is pregnant, “that my wife give birth to a boy”—that is prayer about the past. Fine, one may not pray like that. Now why is it forbidden to pray about the past and permitted to pray about the future? The simple conception is that the future is not yet sealed, whereas the past is already a fact. You can’t change facts, but the future—you ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to change it—of course He can change it. But that can’t be true. It can’t be true, because if there is a fetus in my wife’s womb, already now it is either male or female even before it is born, right? So why is it that while it is still in the womb I’m allowed to pray—or during the first forty days, yes, while it is still… but after that it is already forbidden? Because the Sages understood that in the earlier stages it could still turn out either male or female; that is, for them it was completely probabilistic. Fine. Then you can say to the Holy One, blessed be He, choose this option or choose that option, okay? But really, according to today’s scientific understanding, that is not true. Obviously it is determined deterministically. Even when the biologist talks about something random—and that was my next point—even when the biologist talks about something random, of course he is talking on the biological plane; on the plane of physics and chemistry it is deterministic. These are not quantum phenomena, because these are different scales. Therefore in fact everything is deterministic. The only issue is that we see it as something random, okay? But then it turns out that in principle every prayer is a prayer about the past. Even prayers about the future are prayers about the past. Or alternatively, if there is a baby in my wife’s womb who is male, then I pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, to perform a miracle for him. What’s the problem? I pray that He perform sex reassignment surgery. That isn’t a prayer for something against nature, right? So what is the problem? So what if it already exists now? I can also pray, “May it be Your will that these not be the members of my household”; I can pray that they indeed be my household, but that He remove them from there and put others there instead. It doesn’t sound pleasant, but in principle it is possible; it is not against the laws of nature, right? So what if the situation already exists? The situation already exists or not—you see, it’s like past and future. It’s exactly the same distinction. The fact that the situation exists does not make it something categorically different from a future situation. Both can be changed to the same degree. Both are fixed in advance, and both can be changed by present intervention. There is no real difference between past and future. But I think that for the Sages there was a difference. The future really, in their view, was not fixed. It really was open from their perspective. All those thinkers who speak, for example, about divine involvement within nature—there are no open miracles, but there is divine involvement within nature—that is of course nonsense. There is no such thing as involvement within nature. If He intervened, then it is not within nature; He changed nature. I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to heal me. Now there is a certain percentage of people who recover. It is not against nature to recover. A certain percentage of people recover, right? So I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, that I be among them. But that is just sleight of hand. Why? Because what am I asking the Holy One, blessed be He? I’m saying: if I belong to the majority that does not recover, make some change in my case so that I will recover, right? That’s what I’m asking. If I would recover anyway, I don’t need Him. To ask Him to intervene means: make it so that the natural outcomes will not occur, and something else will occur. So I’m asking Him to intervene; that is not within nature, that is to intervene in nature, to change nature. There is no such thing as involvement within nature. These are inventions born of complete misunderstanding. And so many people write this as though it were some sublime idea—how the Holy One, blessed be He, can intervene and yet it still fits nature. It is simply nonsense. There is no such thing. Any intervention is against nature. Even in quantum mechanics, by the way, that still isn’t true. If the Holy One, blessed be He, intervened in quantum theory, that too is against nature, because even in quantum theory there is a given distribution. And if the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes, then it goes against the distribution. It is still against nature. No, you’re talking about not being obvious to the eye. But not being obvious to the eye is irrelevant. Because the fetus in its mother’s womb after forty days also is not obvious to the eye—so why is it forbidden to pray? So I say: I’m talking about the fetus. After forty days its sex has already been determined and nobody knows it; there was no X-ray, right? Why can’t I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to change it? It’s not visible to the eye, everything is fine. No—even for a miracle not visible to the eye one does not pray, because the future is different from the past. That was the conception there: that the future is open and the past is not. And that is not true. No, no—they mean to say that the laws of nature exist and He still intervenes because there are two possibilities. Because from the standpoint of the laws of nature there are two possibilities. So He chooses one of the two legitimate ones. No, and that is not true. There is no such thing. Yes, exactly—that is what I’m talking about. They are mistaken.

[Speaker C] He doesn’t know the things you’re saying here now.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but I’m saying: if you say that because he lives in error, then update him. What do you mean? It’s permitted to be foolish, but are we dealing with fools? You don’t build on stupidity. Inform him and tell him what really needs to be done. Yes, exactly. There was some kind of proof here that there are various possibilities and nature chooses one of them in some random way, so we ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to choose this one and not that one. One last comment—I have to finish—one last comment: this pseudo-ontic attitude also exists in the scientific world; it is not some outdated anachronism. It exists in science too. When you look at biologists who tell you that there are random components in the evolutionary process—now what are random components? I don’t know, some ape had a mutation and just then a tiger came along, and the mutation enabled him to escape, so the tiger ate him and only the ape without the mutation survived. Then that ape would survive through natural selection. So it’s chance, because something else could have appeared there rather than a tiger, and relative to that something else the other one would actually be less successful than this one. Fine? It’s a matter of chance. You understand that it is chance only at the level of biological integration; there is nothing random there at all. Because the tiger’s appearing there was the result of deterministic processes that caused the tiger to appear there. Nothing there is random. But on the scale of the biologists—and that’s fine, I think in biology that is how one should work. If you work at the level of electrons in biology, you won’t get anywhere. But on the biologists’ scale they speak of it as something random, like a die or a coin. With a die and a coin we see it as a random process and analyze it statistically, even though there is nothing random there at all. The same is true of biology. Meaning, the pseudo-ontic attitude—that is, the pseudo-ontic attitude—is a very sensible way to relate in certain contexts. It is not something that stems from ignorance, from rigid thinking, or anything of that sort. Sometimes you relate to things at this phenomenological level, and then for me it is a random process. In truth it is not, but fine; from the standpoint of this simple perspective, it is a random process, and that is how I view it. Okay, let’s stop here.