Learning from Experience – Lesson 2

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, let’s begin. We’re at the start of a series on learning from experience, and last time I gave a kind of historical survey, you could say, or a survey with a historical orientation, of the dispute, the controversy, between rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism, or empiricism, is an approach that says you can learn about the world only through observation, while rationalism says you can learn about the world also through reason—of course also through observation, but through reason as well. And I said that there was some kind of breaking point in the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, when rationalism came under sharp criticism and an empiricist philosophical approach began to rise—that is, one that sees experience, observation, as the fundamental basis for gathering information about the world. Following that, modern science also developed, which began at that same time, and along with the development of modern science, which really continues until today, philosophy moved in a way that was not as monotonic as the army—like the army, like science. Meaning, science seems simply to keep advancing all the time; there aren’t really ups and downs, retreats, and so on. There are of course corrections to scientific information from the past, but in principle the axis looks like one that keeps moving forward. In philosophy the picture is a bit different. It’s a kind of sine wave, because we started with rationalist hegemony—that reason is the means by which to know the world—then in the early modern period we moved to the empiricist view that only experience is the means by which to know the world. And that’s where I ended last time. In the end it turned out that empiricism itself was left high and dry, because as Hume showed, and later Kant reformulated, and others too, if you stick only to things that come out of observation, you’re left only with specific facts. Meaning, let’s say, I let go of this phone and it fell to the ground, so I know that this phone, when I let go of it, fell to the ground. I can’t even say that phones fall to the ground, because I didn’t see that—I saw this phone, okay? Therefore it’s very hard to say that our scientific knowledge is based on pure empiricism. You can’t say that our scientific laws are the result of observation alone. Clearly observations are involved along the way, but to say that they are the result of observation alone is probably not correct. And I said that among the important British empiricists were Locke, Hume, and Berkeley. Locke was an empiricist in the full sense of the word, but Hume and Berkeley, both of whom were empiricists, were in fact very great skeptics. Even though at first glance empiricism and skepticism don’t seem to go together, on second glance you see that not only do they go together—they dance together. Meaning, they’re really two sides of the same coin. Because the moment you are a pure empiricist, a consistent one, then you stick only to things you’ve seen. So automatically you’re supposed to doubt anything you haven’t seen, and then anything you didn’t directly observe is, from your point of view, supposed to be doubtful. And that leaves you with very, very limited information about the world. Most of the scientific information we have about the world we never observed. It’s actually the result of scientific thinking, of building theories, of generalizations, or things of that kind. Whereas in pure empiricism, you were supposed to adopt only the basic facts that you directly observed. All the conclusions you drew from those observations—not logical conclusions, but generalizations or analogies or things like that—are in fact things whose basis is not observation. You can’t say they are based on observation, and therefore a strict empiricist is supposed to doubt them. All he thought, all that we can know, is only the cognitions that are inside us, within consciousness itself. And you really have no way to determine that there is some world outside. That’s the most extreme conclusion of pure empiricism, yes, consistent empiricism.

[Speaker C] What is positivism, this approach—what does it say? Positivists?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe I’ll get to that later. For our purposes here right now, it’s not important.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, what stops us from saying that both reason and observation work to accumulate information about the world? Why do we have to choose between them? Why not say both work?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said, it’s not a choice between the two. The empiricists claim: only observation. The rationalists claim: both reason and observation. The argument isn’t about observation. Observation is certainly a tool for knowing the world; that’s agreed upon by both sides. The argument is over whether reason can also be such a tool.

[Speaker D] So it’s tested and proven that the rationalist is right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why?

[Speaker D] Because we see that reason also works to know the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We see that we use reason. The question is whether that’s justified. Maybe we’re doing something wrong. After all, the empiricist argument is a strong argument. The empiricist argument basically says: anything that isn’t the result of—what is observation? Observation is an interaction between me and the world. Through the eyes, the ears, the tongue, touch, the hands, it doesn’t matter—some kind of interaction that I create with the world, and that interaction draws information from the world and brings it to me. Then I say: good, I drew that information from the world, so I can understand that this is correct information about the world, that it matches what’s happening in the world itself. But something that comes out of my thought—after all, my thought is a product of how I’m built. It doesn’t come from observing the world; it’s things happening inside me. What justification is there for the assumption that conclusions that come out of some mental structure of mine are supposed to match what happens in the world itself? But—

[Speaker E] If we see that many times there is a match between what you think and what happens in the world itself, then why not assume that this always holds—or at least mostly?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the principle of induction.

[Speaker E] Right, I’m saying—do they dispute that too?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the principle of induction itself is an intellectual principle. The assumption that what was will be, or that what I saw probably indicates a general law—that itself is some assumption that you can’t base on observation. You didn’t see it.

[Speaker D] So what’s the answer to that argument?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll get there, slowly. So that’s basically where I got to last time. And then what happens here is that this struggle between rationalism and empiricism, after Hume, finds itself at a dead end. On the one hand, the empiricist critique sounds convincing. The fact that something comes out of my thinking means it is a product of the structure of how I’m built; there’s no reason to assume it matches what happens in the world itself. So I think in a certain way—so what? I brought the example of Aristotle, who said that objects fall to the earth in proportion to their weight, that their speed is proportional to their weight. The reasoning sounds persuasive, if you ask people. As a matter of fact, it persuaded Aristotle too, and he wasn’t stupid. But it doesn’t stand up to the test of facts. Why? Because our head thinks this way, true—but the world doesn’t owe anything to our head. The world behaves as it behaves. The fact that we think in a certain way is simply a result of how we’re built. Why assume that how we’re built really yields something that matches what happens in the world itself? That critique is a critique that sounds convincing on the one hand.

[Speaker F] If, let’s say, evolution created us in such a way that we would survive, and therefore our reason would fit the continued existence of our species?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re proposing a solution based on evolution. To answer you briefly—we can talk about that too—but to answer briefly, I’ll ask it from the perspective of the 19th century, the beginning of the 19th century, before they knew about evolution. Why did people trust science? They didn’t yet know about evolution. And I think that even after we know about evolution, nothing has changed in our trust in science, in scientific results of one kind or another.

[Speaker F] Okay, we have the option not to rely on reason and to behave randomly, and we have the option to rely on reason and hope for the best. If it doesn’t work, then we won’t survive.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can always hope for the best. I’m not asking why we hope for the best. Hoping for the best is also a psychological phenomenon; there’s no point asking why you hope for the best. The question is whether the good actually materializes. Hoping is free.

[Speaker F] Fine, we can say that maybe we really can be mistaken, and maybe everything will change and all the laws of nature tomorrow morning will change completely, but okay, we don’t commit ourselves, we didn’t sign a contract with the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m saying, that you can choose not to believe reason. Okay, very good, that’s what I’m talking about. You’re proposing not to believe reason. Okay, that’s what the empiricists are proposing.

[Speaker F] Again, in daily functioning, in science, we’ll rely on reason while hoping the laws of nature won’t change tomorrow. Theoretically it could be that all the laws of nature tomorrow morning will change.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Leave hope aside. Why do you rely on reason?

[Speaker F] Because I have nothing to lose. If I choose not to rely on it, then I’ll behave in a terrifyingly random way in a world with no laws at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You do lose by relying on reason. I’m asking why you rely on it.

[Speaker F] So what does it mean to rely? I take steps that fit reason on the assumption that it’s reliable. What does “assumption” mean? Not knowledge.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I wear a green shirt and not a blue one—that’s not a reason to wear a green shirt. “I have nothing to lose.”

[Speaker F] That’s not true that I have nothing to lose. But you have a lot to gain if in the meantime the laws of nature for some reason decide to keep going tomorrow as well, then it could be that planes will fly and I’ll get to my destination.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Talk about today, not tomorrow. How do you know the laws of nature today? All you know are the things you observed.

[Speaker F] Right, I’m making an induction while not being certain it’s correct.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say you’re not certain; I’m certain you’re not. I’m not talking—the question isn’t where your certainty comes from. I’m not certain; no one is certain. Whoever is certain is either confused, or ignorant, or mistaken. I’m talking about the question: why relate to this at all? What are the odds that a system built in a certain way will give results that fit reality? Zero. Zero chance. Why assume at all that it’s true? Not, why do you trust it at eighty percent. Eighty percent is great; I have no problem with eighty percent. The problem is much deeper than the fact that it isn’t certain. That it isn’t certain is completely obvious; that’s not the question. It’s obvious that it isn’t certain. I’m asking why it’s not certain but still eighty percent—why?

[Speaker F] For thousands of years induction was perfect. So why be so sure it’s not true? I just don’t quite understand.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, for thousands of years induction wasn’t true. Induction makes mistakes all the time, for everyone. So I don’t think you’re right about that, that for thousands of years induction worked. Second, even after thousands of years—even if induction had worked for thousands of years—you want to apply induction to this principle itself. Meaning, make an induction that validates the principle of induction itself.

[Speaker F] Meaning, for thousands of years people thought the sun would rise tomorrow. So why is it so airtight to say it’s unreasonable to hope and believe and think that there’s an eighty percent chance the sun will rise tomorrow too?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hope whatever you want; I have no problem with that.

[Speaker F] No—eighty percent, that reason says eighty, ninety-nine point nine, that the sun will rise tomorrow too.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s not hoping, that’s thinking. That’s what I’m attacking.

[Speaker F] That’s what I’m attacking. Thinking.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why assume the sun will rise tomorrow? Explain that to me.

[Speaker F] For thousands of years that assumption came out right and true.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? So what? Again, you have a principle that comes from reason: that what worked for thousands of years will probably continue to work. But that itself is a principle that comes from reason. You want to validate induction by using the principle of induction itself. That’s circular. Again, I’m not arguing with you. It sounds very logical to me too. But I’m asking the philosophical question: so what if it sounds logical to me? My logic is a function of how I’m built. What does the world owe me? All these questions, Hume’s questions and so on, are not questions that, in my view, are meant to undermine your trust in reason. As far as I’m concerned, these are philosophically challenging questions. Go look for an explanation of the trust you place in reason. Okay? It’s a question, let’s say, like with Descartes, whose doubt was methodological doubt, not real doubt. He cast doubt in order ultimately to arrive at the thing he could know with certainty. It’s not that he actually doubted everything he cast doubt on. So as far as I’m concerned—though with Hume I don’t know if that’s so—this is a question that demands justification. Not that I’m now suggesting to you not to believe reason, but I am saying: let’s think for a moment—why do we really believe reason? What could be the justification for that? By the way, when Kant presented this question, that’s exactly how he presented it. He didn’t ask whether our reason is right. He asked what could be the justification for the fact that our reason is right. But it was clear to him that trust in reason is correct; one should trust reason. He was only asking himself: fine, okay, that may be a clear intuition, but what is the justification for it? Aristotle too thought intuitively that two bodies fall to the earth in proportion to their weight—and he was wrong. The fact that our head works in a certain way doesn’t mean the world also behaves that way. And suppose today—

[Speaker F] After all, you can create mathematics with five dimensions, right? So there are four dimensions. So you make an assumption even though you know that in reality you can’t even grasp it with the mind. So all of us act, create assumptions for ourselves that may not be true. It could absolutely be that we’ll wake up in the next world and none of this ever was. So what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, you’re repeating the same question, and I’ll repeat the same answer. Two possibilities. If you’re asking whether it’s certain—that’s not a question. I also agree it’s not certain; that’s not the question. I’m asking why trust it at all. Now you’re telling me, let’s not trust it, let’s just go like this and what can happen. Fine. If that’s your position, I’m not asking any question. I’m asking a question about someone who does place trust in it—and between us, both you and I do place trust in it. Don’t tell me you just do it because it seems that way and what do I have to lose. You’re sure it’s true too. So let’s not play innocent here—we do trust this. And the question is a good one: why? So in the end this dead end is basically some kind of pendulum movement. We started with rationalism, moved to empiricism, and we were terribly happy and optimistic—here, we’ve reached peace and quiet, and indeed it proved itself, science advances. But then this dead end arrives, this philosophical attack of Hume and the British empiricists. We basically understand that empiricism can’t really hold water, can’t stand. We remember again that if we’re willing to accept science, it contains elements that come from reason, not from observation. And then again the question returns: so then we’re not empiricists but rationalists. But what about the attack? After all, reason isn’t supposed to be a tool that knows the world, and we never answered that attack. So there’s something here that basically gets us stuck. And by the way, scientists aren’t bothered one bit by all these questions. They of course gallop onward and move ahead and everything is fine. The philosophers trail behind them and ask, wait, what’s the justification, and propose this and that. It doesn’t interest any scientist. Scientists go on; all this philosophy doesn’t interest them. I’m asking a philosophical question right now, okay? So this claim, this situation, actually obligates us to look for an explanation. Let’s phrase it this way. We’ll talk about science, even though this is true of all the information we gather about the world in our everyday lives too, not only scientific activity. But scientific activity is perhaps the best model, if only because that’s where our trust in the findings is highest. It’s controlled activity, it gets feedback, there’s some trust in the findings science arrives at, so let’s talk about science. Science contains a great many elements that are not elements that came out of observation. The two most famous ones that David Hume pointed to are the principle of causality and the principle of induction. Induction—that what we’ve seen until now is probably a general law, and therefore will continue in the future as well, is a general law—that’s the principle of induction. And the principle of causality is that everything must have a cause. Those are, for example, two assumptions of science that have no observational source whatsoever; they are assumptions of our intellect, assumptions of reason. To sharpen this a little more, let’s look for a moment at causality, because with induction I think this is fairly clear. But with causality people feel that causality really is something we draw from experience. Why does Hume say that the principle of causality has no observational basis? Look, Hume argued it even more strongly than that. Not only does the principle of causality have no observational basis. What does the principle of causality say? That every phenomenon or every thing has a cause. He says: forget every thing, the generalization. Show me one place where there is a causal relation and you can see it by observation. There isn’t one. No place in the world. In no situation on earth can you see through observation a causal relation between events. You can’t see it. Why? Because anything we refer to as a causal relation—let’s call them the event that is the cause and the effect—between those two events there is a causal relation. I kick a ball and the ball flies, so the kick is the cause and the flight of the ball is the effect, and between them there is a causal relation. So when people look at a kick of a ball—you count the goals for Messi, right? If he kicked, then apparently he scored the goal. Why? Maybe he kicked, but the goal happened afterward not because of Messi’s kick. No, it’s completely clear to us that this goal is his goal. Why? Because it’s completely clear to us that the kick was the cause of the ball going into the net. Where does that come from? How do I know that’s the cause? Kant claims—Hume—everything I see when I see a person kicking a ball, yes, that’s my example, I see a person kicking a ball. What do I see? I see that the person kicked and I see that immediately afterward the ball flew. But that there is a causal relation between the kick and the ball—that I cannot see with any sense or measuring instrument or anything else whatsoever. That is an interpretation I give to that situation. It is not something that comes out of observation. When I look at it, and say I see it happen many times, then for me there is some causal relation between the events, but that’s my conclusion. There are no eyes that can detect a causal relation between events.

[Speaker D] No, but I see that kicking the ball is a sufficient condition and in this case a necessary one for the ball’s flying.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not necessary—sufficient—but okay, so what?

[Speaker D] That’s a cause. That’s the definition of a cause, a sufficient condition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I have a series of posts on the website about the causal relation, and I explain there that there are—without going into details—three components in a causal relation. One component is the logical component: the cause has to be a sufficient condition for the effect. Some say necessary and sufficient, but in my view they’re wrong; it’s a sufficient condition. And there’s a temporal component: the cause has to come before the effect. And there’s the physical component: the effect has to be because of the cause. You understand that a condition does not exhaust the causal relation. Say I see two—the example of Leibniz—I see two clocks that always show me exactly the same time. So on the logical level I say: if clock A shows three sixteen, then clock B at that same moment also shows three sixteen. That’s a sufficient condition. The logical relation exists. Is it true to say that clock A, what clock A shows, is the cause of what clock B shows? No. Why not? After all, there is a logical connection between them; the time on clock A is a sufficient condition for the time on clock B. So why is that not a cause? Because for this to be a cause, it’s correlation. For correlation to count as a cause, there has to be a mechanism saying that A causes B, not that if A then B. If A then B is a logical relation. But A generating B or causing B—that’s a physical connection, not a logical one. And without that, the relation between them is not causal. There is a logical relation, there is a temporal relation, but you also need the physical relation in order for me to be able to say that A is the cause of B. Now, I can see with my eyes temporal priority, I can see with my eyes the logical relation—that whenever someone kicks the ball, afterward the ball flies. I cannot see with my eyes that the flight is because of the kick. That there is no way to see. So if that’s the case, says David Hume, then how do I really know that there is a causal relation between events in the world, and all the more so, how can I know that the principle of causality is true, that everything must have a cause? That’s a doubly difficult question. I don’t understand where you drew the very concept of cause from, because it didn’t come from observation. So to determine that every event has a cause already sounds like something utterly groundless. That is basically Hume’s claim. So we said causality, there is induction, and we have many more assumptions. For example, we assume that if we discovered the law of gravity then it will probably also be true on other planets or in other galaxies or elsewhere in the universe. Who says? Maybe it’s true only here. We have some assumption that the laws of nature are universal. If we found a certain law of nature, then it is true everywhere and at all times. That too is an assumption with no basis, an assumption of reason, of the intellect. It has no real basis. And so on—you can find more and more assumptions that underlie science that did not come from observation. And then the question arises: fine, if our science is based not only on observations but also on many elements that are logic or reason and not observation, then I as an empiricist—someone who accepts the empiricist critique that says who says reason reflects what happens in the world—cannot believe in science. There is a real philosophical problem here. How can one believe in science at all? Or put differently: can one learn from experience? That is really the question. And that, after all, is our topic in this series: learning from experience. So here we really reach the crescendo point, the point where we’ve taken the bull by the horns. There is a problem. We’re talking about learning from experience, but the very fact that one can learn from experience requires justification. And before the question of how one learns from experience and how to do it right and how not to do it wrong—can one learn from experience at all? That is really the question we’ve arrived at here. Rabbi—

[Speaker F] Isn’t everything the rabbi is saying here actually a certain support for the postmodern approach, that basically we create reality? Or we just want induction to be true and empiricism, because that’s what we want. And lo and behold, when we don’t want it, then every lawyer says there’s no causality here and in fact my client didn’t cause the murder, he only did something, but that’s not what caused the murder and it was caused by other things. Really nice support for the postmodern approach that the rabbi is presenting.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The problem is that you’re stopping me at the stage of the question. That’s exactly the postmodern failure. The postmodern failure says: look, there are very hard questions, therefore there are multiple truths, or no truth, or truth is relative, narratives and the like. Wait a second—before you jump to conclusions, maybe there’s also an answer to this question?

[Speaker C] I wanted to take the opportunity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s why you have to be a little careful with this jump to the conclusion. But you’re right that questions of this type and similar ones are what bring people to a relativistic outlook, that truth is relative and everyone has his own truth and all those sorts of things. These are the questions that underlie those views. Now the question that I of course—postmodernists too come in different types of, let’s call it, different levels of craziness. Meaning, there are moderate postmodernists who have small delusions. There are major postmodernists who have big delusions. Meaning, there are extreme postmodernists who basically think that everything is a delusion, including science, including the most—by the way, including observations too. Because if you carry this skepticism we applied to reason further, why shouldn’t we apply it to observation as well? The fact that my eyes see something—who says that reflects what is happening in the world? Why is it so obvious that observation is a clear tool? Reason, thinking—fine, maybe that needs discussion, whether it has justification or not. Observation doesn’t need justification?

[Speaker F] Absolutely it does. We see miracles that never happened at all. We see them, explicitly—I saw a miracle. A lot of sick people tell me, I had an open miracle, look how I recovered for no reason whatsoever.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they didn’t see a miracle. They gave an interpretation to an event they saw, and they said it was a miracle. To say that something is a miracle is the result of interpretation. By the way, to say that it’s a miracle already assumes in the background a belief that there are laws of nature. Because if there were no laws of nature, there would be no miracles. A miracle is always something that happens in a way that doesn’t fit the laws of nature. So the fact that I see miracles does not refute the assumption that there are laws of nature; on the contrary, it confirms it. If there were no laws of nature, you wouldn’t see miracles. The claim, in the end, is that empiricism too can be attacked with a similar attack to the one it launches against rationalism. If you don’t trust the intellect as an instrument for knowing the world, why do you trust the senses? Why do you trust perception? The senses can also mislead you, they can invent things, it could all be hallucinations. Who told you that what the senses show you is in fact what is happening in the world? What the senses show you really happens in the world? After all, you have no access to the world itself, only to how it is reflected inside you. Yes, this is already starting to sound Kantian. You have no way to reach the world itself except through the senses. So if your senses betray you, or deceive you, you have no way of knowing it, because you have no non-sensory means that can give you feedback about what the senses are showing you. Therefore, basically, if you want to take this skepticism all the way, you can attack empiricism exactly as you attack the intellect. There’s no difference. So in the end, somehow we’re left with some sort of skepticism, or a very large vacuum. I think I mentioned that Descartes’ cogito principle—you know, I think, therefore I am—whose purpose was, I think I mentioned this last time, was basically to try to arrive at some claim about the world without needing observation. I think, therefore I am, is a logical consideration that yields a conclusion about the world: that I exist. That’s a factual conclusion, okay? And the claim is that in order to reach Descartes’ conclusion, and to reach it with certainty, you don’t need observation. This is basically an attempt to save rationalism from the attacks. Now, the principle he used was: I think, therefore I am. Who is this—what is it—that exists? I think I mentioned this. What is it that exists? Not the body. The fact that I think does not prove that my body exists. It proves that my intellect exists. Yes, the thinking person exists, not the physical person. The astral person, if we want to speak in mystical language. My intellect exists, not my body. And then Descartes continues: after we have proved that the intellect exists, the intellect says that the body also exists, so therefore the body also exists. I’m saying this in jumps, of course, but he also said it in jumps, so that’s fine. But notice the point that I think is a correct point. That is, the existence of the intellect or of our spirit is much clearer and more self-evident than the existence of matter. People think that the existence of matter is the obvious thing. Materialism is the starting point. Are there also non-material things, not matter but spirit or something like that? That’s a debate. The materialists say no, the dualists say yes, but no one argues about matter. Descartes says: you’ve simply reversed the picture. It’s a crooked way of looking at things. The opposite is true. No one can argue about spirit, because it is what recognizes the existence of matter. I think, therefore I am, or I think, therefore the world exists. Because how do I know the world exists? Because I think it exists. Okay? That means my thought is something far more basic and solid—yes, certain—than the existence of matter or of the world, in complete contrast to the usual conceptions that somehow say materialism is supposedly the obvious thing, the existence of matter, of the world, is obvious, while spirituality is mysticism.

[Speaker D] But they say thought is a material thing. What? But they say thought is a material thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyone who says thought is a material thing is just confused. He isn’t even mistaken.

[Speaker D] He says it’s the intellect doing calculations.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no such position. There’s no such position. If there are people who say that—fine—but there is no such position. Those are confused people. Thought is not a material thing. It may be produced by a material thing, by the brain. But thought itself is not a material thing. It is generated by currents in the brain, but what do those currents generate? Something conceptual, right? Ideas, thoughts, insights. What are those? Are those material things? Anyone who says that is simply confused. As I told here once, there was a certain Jew, a biology professor at Tel Aviv University named Yosef Neuman, who passed away a few years ago. After I wrote God Plays Dice, he called me, because he was a militant, active atheist, widely quoted, and I think in my book I referred to him in one or two places. So we spoke on the phone, and the conversation just rolled along, and then he said to me: listen, among my crowd, the materialists, I can’t manage to explain to them that you can’t say that thinking or insights or will are material things. They tell me, yes, thinking is electrical currents. Now that is complete nonsense even from a materialist point of view. And he says it’s amazing to discover people, including philosophers and scientists, smart people, who repeat this nonsense, and you can’t get through to them how nonsensical it is. Because even he, as a materialist—as an enlightened materialist—does not claim that thought is a material thing. He only claims that there is no additional substance besides matter, what we call spirit. That doesn’t exist. Rather, thought is something that is a property of our material whole, a characteristic of our material whole, but it’s not that thought is itself matter. I think that too is not correct. But that, at least—I don’t know—I’m willing to hear those words. But to say that thought is matter—that’s just, anyone who says it doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. So let’s return to our subject. The claim, basically, is that one can cast much broader doubt—not only on intellect but also on experience and observation—and then we really are in a state of absolute doubt, total darkness. We cannot even accept the specific facts we saw, not only the scientific or other conclusions we infer from those facts, but even the facts themselves—who says they can be accepted? Our senses can—the deceiving demon of Descartes—our senses can also deceive us. And that really raises the question whether one can learn from experience. How is learning from experience usually understood? Usually the naive picture is that we observe cases, a number of cases, and after we understand those cases we build on their basis a theory that explains them, and thus we arrive at the scientific law or scientific theory. The attack I formulated here attacks both stages. Even the specific facts you observed—you cannot really know that they are true facts about the world. That is the attack on empiricism. And then you generalize from them and create a scientific law from them. That certainly, certainly you cannot know—that is the attack on rationalism. Our whole ability to learn from experience is basically left without any clear justification. The claim in fact continues on after Hume and Kant. Kant tried to offer some proposal for this. I don’t want to get into the issue of the synthetic a priori in Kant again; I’ve already talked about it several times in the past. Kant offered some proposal that basically—I’ll say it briefly—he wanted to argue that the world, or the scientific facts that science deals with, are not facts that exist in the world itself, but rather the cognitive image of the facts that occur in the world itself. In the final analysis, the facts I’m talking about are the facts as they appear in my cognition, not the facts as they occur in the world itself. And therefore he argues that it’s no wonder that our thought can describe what happens in the world, because it’s not in the world; this too is within our thought or cognition. And so he tries to explain the assumption that our thinking can match what happens in the world. Because the world itself also basically takes place within our thinking. I’m saying this in a very schematic way. This explanation doesn’t hold water; quite a few philosophers have already attacked it, and it seems to me simply that it doesn’t hold water. Because his claim is basically that the constraints of our thinking also impose constraints on our cognition. For example, let’s take Newton’s second law, that force equals mass times acceleration, F equals ma. How do I know there is such a general law, that force always equals mass times acceleration? I saw a few cases, and in all of them the acceleration was proportional to the force divided by the mass, and from here I inferred the general law. Now Kant says to me: how do you know that in the world itself it really works that way, that force is proportional to acceleration? That’s a conclusion you inferred by means of your intellect, your induction. But how do you know that’s what happens in the world? So what is his answer? That what happens in the world I truly do not know. But after it passes through translation and takes some form within my inner cognition, there F always equals ma. Equals ma, force proportional to acceleration. Basically what he wants to say, if I translate it, is that if, say, there were an event in the world in which force were proportional to acceleration squared, then I simply would not see it. It would not appear in my cognition in that way, or it would appear in my cognition in such a way that it is proportional to acceleration and not acceleration squared. That is, it would distort the picture. But that is no smaller a hallucination than the hallucination he came to explain. And the hallucination that says my intellect matches what happens in the world does not seem to me any more far-fetched than this hallucination that says that if there is something that doesn’t fit the laws of nature we simply won’t be able to see it. There are such things in the world, we just won’t be able to see them. Why? Why wouldn’t we be able to see them? What’s the problem? If the acceleration is eight and not four, then I won’t see the body? Other bodies with acceleration eight I do see, so why wouldn’t I see this body? No, you are introducing no fewer demons than the demons you came to solve, to eliminate. Usually an explanation is supposed to be more understandable than the thing being explained. Okay, but your explanation is no less bizarre than the thing you came to explain, so what did we gain? And there are other problems with the Kantian proposal. It should be remembered that Kant was the only one who offered any proposal at all to solve this problem in the history of philosophy. There were various other proposals, but they weren’t really even proposals, just words. There is a summary of these proposals—ten proposals or something like that—in Hugo Bergmann’s book Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, in chapter nine. He too ends up concluding that there is no proposal that holds water. And then, basically, it turns out that we have trust in science, but there is no—and cannot be—or at least to this day we have not found any justification for that trust. Something here—neither empiricism succeeds in saving us, nor rationalism succeeds in supporting us. It’s clear that science contains rationalist elements and not only observation, not only empirical elements. But on the other hand, there is no justification for relying on rationalist elements. So how can it be that we trust science? Why is our trust in science justified? That is basically the question. Now, as part of the answers or conclusions drawn from this, there is Karl Popper’s claim, a famous claim, that basically he wants to argue that a scientific theory is something we have no way of proving. But we do have a way of refuting it. For example, if I want to claim that all bodies fall toward the earth according to the law of gravitation—yes? That’s the law of gravitation. Is there a way to prove it? No. You can do one experiment and another and another, and even if it works in all the experiments you performed, you can’t know that perhaps it won’t work on other objects you check. This is the problem of induction, yes. Therefore, you cannot actually prove a scientific theory, at least a theory dealing with countless cases. If it deals with a finite number of cases, then maybe you can go through all the cases and prove the theory, but if you went through them all then it’s no longer a theory. You simply collected all the facts and that’s it. A theory, by its essence, is always some sort of generalization that comes to make claims about things I haven’t seen. Right? When I speak about a scientific theory—or a scientific law—it’s always laws or theories that try to make claims about facts I have not observed, by virtue of facts that I have observed. So basically a scientific theory cannot be proved, but refutation certainly is possible. If in one of the experiments I release an object in the air and it does not fall toward the earth with an acceleration of 9.8—yes, of g—then I have refuted Newton’s law of gravitation. To refute a scientific law, no problem; to prove a scientific law is impossible. That is Popper’s asymmetry between proof and refutation. And then Popper basically wants to claim the following: when you want to define a scientific theory, a scientific theory is not a proven theory; it is also not a theory that can be proved. Rather, it is a theory that can be refuted. Not a theory that has been refuted, yes? Rather a theory that can be refuted. So, for example, the law of gravitation is not a theory that was refuted, and it’s also not a theory that was proved. Why is it scientific? Because in principle it is open to empirical refutation. I can do an experiment, and if the experiment fails, then I have refuted the theory. A theory that is open to refutation is a scientific theory. By the way, even if the theory has been refuted, it is still a scientific theory; it is a mistaken scientific theory. But its scientific character is basically its relation to experience. That is, a theory that cannot be refuted is a theory that has no relation to experience, it says nothing about reality. Right? Because if you say something about reality, then it should have been possible to refute it; one could have checked reality and seen whether it is true or not. So a theory that cannot be refuted is basically a theory that has no relation to reality, it says nothing concrete about reality, and therefore it is not a scientific theory.

[Speaker D] I don’t understand why we care whether it’s called a scientific theory or not. What practical difference does it make? Call it a philosophical theory or a metaphysical theory.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a recommendation to scientists about what kinds of theories they should deal with, that’s all.

[Speaker D] So what does that have to do with our issue?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does it have to do with our issue? Because it’s a result of what I’ve explained until now. After all, why did he arrive at—if you ask a person on the street, including scientists, what is a scientific theory, they’ll tell you a scientific theory is a theory that has been proven, that passed empirical testing. But Popper says that’s not true. No theory has been proven, and not only that, no theory can be proven. Still, we have a feeling that certain theories are scientific and other theories are not scientific, so Popper proposes a minimalist criterion: a theory that can be refuted is a scientific theory, and only such theories are worth dealing with—by “dealing with” I mean in the scientific context. The theory that there is God, for example, is a theory that cannot be refuted. There is no data, no experiment, whose result—whatever it may be—will show you that there is no God. So the theory that there is God is a theory that cannot be refuted, therefore it is not a scientific theory.

[Speaker D] The fact that you can’t imagine a way to refute it doesn’t mean there’s no way at all to refute it. Maybe one just hasn’t been found…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you find a way to refute it, then I’ll retract and say that it is a scientific theory. As long as we cannot imagine a way to refute it, what does that mean? It means that from our point of view it says nothing about reality, right? It may be that in a few years, or hundreds of years, whatever, someone will come up with a brilliant idea and say, no, no, there is something here that I can subject to empirical refutation, so now the theory does tell me something about reality, and now it really is a scientific theory. And we were wrong in thinking it wasn’t scientific. But from our point of view it was non-scientific because it said nothing about reality and could not be refuted.

[Speaker D] Okay, and in that sense is Popper empiricist? I didn’t hear. In that sense did Popper follow empiricism?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, because basically Popper arrived at that conclusion because of empiricist criticism. Why? Because Popper basically claims—and now I’m getting to positivism; earlier someone asked about positivism—Popper was part of twentieth-century positivism, and positivism is basically a position that says: I am not willing to accept any claim about reality unless it is the result of direct observation or logical proof. That’s it. Anything else cannot count as a claim about reality. So Popper takes this positivist conception and says to himself, wait a second, then let’s examine what claims we have that can be made about reality. None of the laws of science are like that, because the laws of science are not the result of observation alone, nor of logical proof. So it turns out that positivism—which basically took empiricism to the extreme—pulled the rug out from under all of science. Even though their intention was actually to ground science, to strengthen it, in the end they emptied it of content, because you cannot treat a scientific theory as such at all, since the theory—as distinct from the specific facts I observed—is not the result of observation. Only the facts I observed are the result of observation. So what I can say with certainty is the facts I observed; anything beyond that is speculation. So Popper says, wait, let’s try to formulate this more minimally. What I want to claim, says Popper, is that I can define a scientific theory not as a theory that has been empirically plus logically proven—that is, by observation plus logic—because that cannot be, it won’t give me any scientific law. Rather, a theory that stands the test of empirical refutation. That is, there is a link to empiricism, but empiricism’s role is not to prove but to refute. Now, a theory that does not stand the test of refutation is not worth dealing with. Maybe it is true, maybe it is not true; we have no way of knowing, at least not with scientific tools. Therefore it is not in the domain of science. A theory that belongs to the domain of science is a theory that science can try to deal with. Now Popper says: what does “deal with” mean? Prove it, science can’t do anyway—no theory can be proven. But refute it, science can. That’s enough for me. That is, if science can do something in relation to this theory, then it is already a scientific theory. That is basically Popper’s claim, and you understand that this is ultimately just a conclusion from the difficulties I described earlier. Because it basically means: if I don’t trust the intellect, then I can’t trust scientific theory, and in effect the Popperian argument yields the claim that laws of nature or scientific theories are not true. They are only scientific. They are scientific in the sense that they can be subjected to a test of refutation. As long as they have not been refuted, then perhaps one can use them—perhaps it’s not unreasonable to use them—but I have no way of knowing that they are true. Because to know that they are true is a non-scientific statement; it is the result of thought, and thought is not a tool for knowing the world.

[Speaker F] But I don’t understand. What I said was basically those same things in the formulation of a kindergarten child, and the Rabbi didn’t accept it; the Rabbi didn’t accept it at all. The moment Popper formulated it and gave it the aura of a scientific theory and terminology, suddenly it makes sense.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I kept stopping you at the stage of the question. Who said that I accept Popper? I absolutely do not accept him. True, Popper says exactly what you suggested earlier, and exactly as I didn’t accept what you said, I also don’t accept what he says. But right now I’m presenting the thesis, not the antithesis. Step by step. So first we need to understand what Popper is saying, try as much as possible to get into his head, and only then come with criticism. So that is Popper’s claim, and Popper basically drew the conclusion from empiricism, taking it, so to speak, to the extreme.

[Speaker D] But now, Rabbi, I don’t understand—even if you justify the use of the intellect, you still can never say that a claim is proven or that a claim is true with certainty. So his theory is correct: a scientific theory is a theory that can be refuted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said the only options are proof or refutation? Maybe there’s something else? Corroboration, for example? We’ll get to that in a moment. Slowly, slowly.

[Speaker G] Well, he also accepts corroboration.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he doesn’t.

[Speaker G] One—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One of the criticisms of him is precisely the issue of corroboration. In a moment, in a moment we’ll get there. Maybe from another angle I’ll formulate it this way. There’s a distinction—I think Reichenbach was the first to make it—between the context of discovery and the context of justification. When I come up with a scientific theory, then the idea of how to formulate the theory, or what the theory is, belongs to our creative faculty. Okay? And therefore we really have no way to criticize the way a scientific theory is created. That’s the context of discovery—how one discovers a scientific theory. And therefore, says Reichenbach, if someone comes along and says, I have a scientific theory, and they ask him how do you know it’s true, and he says: Elijah the prophet was revealed to me, riding on my grandmother in a dream at night, and he told me that this is the correct scientific theory. And I trust Elijah the prophet, and even more my grandmother, who is the Messiah’s donkey. And therefore this is my theory. Reichenbach says: that is a completely legitimate argument. We have no way to touch the context of discovery of the theory, how the theory is discovered. But of course that also doesn’t mean we can know it’s true. It’s a legitimate claim; that doesn’t mean the claim is true. What can a scientist do with it? Subject the theory to a test of refutation. That is called the context of justification. If you now perform an experiment that tests the theory, and it passes the experiment, then it still has not been refuted, as Popper told us before. If it does not pass the experiment, then the theory has fallen. Therefore, basically, the context of discovery does not belong to the domain of science. The context of justification is the only thing that belongs to the domain of science. And you understand that this is really saying Popper’s point from another angle. Because creating the theory is basically the move from the facts I am trying to explain to the theory that explains them—the generalization, the creation of the theory. Theory. That is an intellectual move, not an observational move, and of course an intellectual move is also not logically necessary. Someone who wants only observational moves or logically necessary ones like the positivists says: no, that belongs to the realm of fantasy, not to the domain of science. Basically Reichenbach’s distinction is the same statement as Popper’s, from another angle. And both are basically a result of the difficulties I described earlier. Now I really want to make the following claim: where is the key point? Up to this point I’ve finished with the questions or with the thesis; now comes the antithesis, or synthesis, whatever you want to call it. The thesis and antithesis are rationalism as the thesis and empiricism as the antithesis. I now want to present the synthesis. My synthesis basically says—I’ll start with Popper and then roll backward.

[Speaker D] What’s the answer to all these questions?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. The answer—yes, you could say that. Maybe it’s the only possible answer. What Popper misses is that for him, if something is not proven with certainty, then—he was a positivist—so it’s either logic or direct observation. Anything that is neither of those is not science. And I say that’s not true. There are components in science that are not observational but are also not logic. They are components we’ll call components of thought, but they are softer, not rigid like the logic we know. I call it intuition. And we have some intuitive grasp of reality, or intuitive thinking. And that intuition is a faculty located between observation and thought, between reason and empiricism. And therefore this is what I call a synthesis. What do I mean? I want to argue that when I build a scientific theory from the facts I observed, the move I make is indeed not observation—observation is only the facts—but it is also not intellect in the same sense that logic is intellect, that is, something that occurs only inside me, in which case the question arises: who told you this matches reality? Rather, it is another kind of observation, one not carried out by means of the senses. It is cognition performed by the intellect, not the senses. The mind’s eye—this has various names among philosophers—and I tie all of them to this claim. I argue that we have a faculty called intuition that can look at reality and understand not the specific facts I see with my eyes or hear with my ears, but can discern the general law that stands behind the facts. And this intuition basically tells me that when I have experiments that support a certain theory, true, they do not prove it—Popper is right. And true, one can refute the theory clearly and logically. That is, if it fails in one experiment, then logically it has collapsed. So if someone wants logic, he has two options: either a theory that has been refuted, or a theory about which we know nothing. That is on the level of pure logic. But I want to claim that there is something besides logic. In thinking there is another branch that is not the logical branch. That is what I call intuition. And that branch is a softer branch, not certain in the way logic is, not definite, but it is some capacity to recognize abstract dimensions in reality. When we observe objects falling toward the earth, we can with the mind’s eye see not only those objects that fell, but understand that the law that explains this is Newton’s law of gravitation. Even though there could be many other laws that would explain it, it seems to us that this is the correct law. This intuition is something between thought and cognition, something in the middle; therefore I call it a synthesis. Because rationalism believes in thought, empiricism believes in cognition, and I claim both are mistaken because both assume you have to choose. If you think, then you are not engaged in cognition; if you cognize, then you are not engaged in thought. That is not true. There is a certain branch or faculty in our intellect that is cognizing thought. And that is what is called intuition. I’ll illustrate and explain. I’ll sharpen this more later; I hope it will become clearer, but that is basically the claim. What does this thing mean, if I roll the carpet backward over everything we’ve talked about until now? First of all, it means we have something to deal with in the context of discovery and not only in the context of justification. When we take the collection of facts and build from them a theory, discover the theory, there are ways to try to see whether this construction makes sense, whether it sounds reasonable. Not certain—there are no proofs here. But we do have some ability to look at it and say: this makes sense. It is reasonable. And just as I do not doubt what my eyes show me, I also do not doubt what my intuition tells me, unless it is proven to be mistaken, just like with the eyes. There too, if they prove to me that my eyes deceived me, then I’ll retract. The same with intuition. It is another kind of cognition, but since it is carried out by the intellect, it is something between cognition and thought. Let me perhaps give you an example that sharpens the point. I put it this way. Suppose I’m sitting and trying to solve a hard mathematical problem. I’ve been sitting on it for, I don’t know, a year. And I arrive at the solution. The solution is sine of 17x squared. Fine? I’m looking for some function, doesn’t matter. A differential equation. Okay? I solved it: sine of 17x squared. Good, I’m thrilled, finally after a year of calculations and all sorts of things I reached the answer. A friend of mine comes, some mathematical genius, looks at my differential equation, says: ah, that’s an interesting equation. The solution seems to me to be sine of 17x squared. I look at him in complete shock. I say, what? How did you come up with that? I’ve been grinding through calculations here for a whole year, sweating blood, and you come along and in a few seconds tell me the right answer straight away. So what does he say to me? I had a feeling it was right, I have this sense that it’s right. I didn’t have that sense, so I had to carry the calculation through to the end. But he had that sense and reached it immediately.

[Speaker H] I totally sinned in not sinned to Levi Begadima. Well, I can’t find the Edison, I don’t—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t hear anything.

[Speaker B] Well, no… if they see you as a file they don’t see me. By mistake, they might see.

[Speaker F] It’s worth muting everyone.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Mute it. I thought someone was talking to me. Fine. So the point—what is confusing here—is that using the term “feeling” here is a mistake. Again, one can argue about the dictionary, but it’s confusing, misleading. Why? A feeling is when I say I love someone, I’m afraid right now—those are feelings. I’m happy, all kinds of things like that. Those are feelings. Feelings are not claims about reality, at least not the reality outside me. They’re some inner psychological state of mine. Suppose I love someone and someone else doesn’t love him. Is that a disagreement? Do we have a dispute? No. I love him and he doesn’t. That’s different taste. There’s no arguing about taste and smell. Why? Why is there no arguing about taste and smell? Because taste and smell are not facts. Taste and smell are mental states. Mental states—my mental state is one thing, your mental state is something else—there’s nothing to argue about. Okay? So if I love someone and you don’t love someone, we have no disagreement. If I’m happy and you’re not happy, we have no disagreement. If I’m afraid and you’re not afraid, we have no disagreement. What would the disagreement be? If I claim there is reason to be afraid here, that is already a claim about reality, and you’ll claim there isn’t. But then the disagreement is not whether I’m afraid or you’re not afraid. The disagreement is whether there is something to be afraid of. That is already a factual disagreement about reality. But feelings in themselves are not claims, they are not facts. So of course there is nothing to argue about. You are not claiming anything about reality, and therefore someone who feels differently is not arguing with you. Now when someone—when that genius who came to me and said the solution to this equation is sine of 17x squared—is it correct to call such a thing a feeling? The answer is no. Because if someone says the solution is 18x squared, sine of 18x squared, then of course they have a disagreement. One of them is right and the other is wrong. Usually one can check by substituting into the differential equation and seeing who is right and who is wrong. And it turns out the genius was right. Once you say that in this claim one can be right or wrong, and that one can argue about it, you have said that this claim is a claim about the world; it is not a feeling. It is a claim. So why did that person use the term “feeling”? This happens often. I feel that it’s true. I feel that he hates me. I feel there are 30 people in this room even though I didn’t count, or all kinds of things of that sort. All these are not feelings. They are intuitions. What is the difference? A feeling is indeed subjective. There is nothing to argue about because it doesn’t claim anything about reality. Intuition makes claims about reality. But it makes them not by virtue of observation and not by virtue of logical argument, but as some kind of direct claim about reality: that’s how it seems to me. But I may be wrong and I may be right. If I have an intuition that gives me a scientific theory, one can subject it to a test of refutation and check whether I am right or wrong. So one cannot say that scientific theory is a feeling. Scientific theory is a product of my intuition. What is this faculty called intuition? It is basically some sort of abstract observation, observation with the intellect, not observation with the senses. But it is still a state based on my interaction with the world. The interaction is not through the senses but through the cognitive part of the intellect, through intuition. This is some kind of faculty we as human beings have, and we can grasp the world intuitively. Okay? Often you can connect this with Daniel Kahneman’s System A and System B. When you drive on autopilot, you’re driving the car and not even noticing, you’re thinking about entirely different things, but all the driving is done perfectly well. One can say that your intuition is doing the driving here, and if you drive consciously then you’re doing the calculation. Let’s calculate speed and where I need to go because this will get me there and this maybe won’t get me there, here I have to veer left because otherwise someone will hit me, so I calculate and decide how to act based on the calculation. That is our conscious mode. But there is an unconscious mode, and it is basically a mode built on the direct instructions of intuition without doing the calculation, maybe without even being aware of it. Okay? So this is also somewhat connected to Daniel Kahneman’s distinction. And of course this intuition does not produce certain results. It is not logic. We may be mistaken here. There is no guarantee that we are right. On the other hand, my claim is that intuition is not a shot in the dark. It’s not some kind of thing where you say, wait, why assume it’s true at all? No, just as I trust my eyes, I trust the mind’s eye, my intuition. That is basically the fundamental claim. And now I want to say that if this is so, if one accepts the existence of such a faculty, then first, it solves all the problems of Hume and Kant. Because it basically says the two options of empiricism and rationalism are not distinct from one another in a dichotomous way. There is a faculty that combines both things together, thought and cognition together, and this is the faculty by means of which we actually know the world. It is the faculty that helps us move from the facts we observed to the general law. Therefore, when I observe more and more facts that fit a certain law, from my point of view it is true that this does not prove that law, and in that Popper is right, but I do claim that it corroborates that law. Corroboration is the softer term I want to speak about, as opposed to proof. It is not arbitrary. Not everything that is not proven is just arbitrary speculation—that is my claim. There are things that are not proven, but my common sense tells me they are true. Common sense and intuition are synonymous. I have such a faculty that can give me non-certain results, but with a good probability, 80%, it will indeed give them to me. Not 100%, but also not zero. 80%, it will give them to me. And this, I think, is the only solution to Kant’s synthetic a priori problem—I haven’t gone into it here—to the whole set of problems raised by Hume. For example, when I ask where do I know there is such a thing as causation? After all, we didn’t see the causal relation between the kick and the fact that the ball flew. The answer is: that’s not true, we did see it. Not with the eyes—the eyes cannot see that there is a causal connection between the kick and the ball flying. But with the mind’s eye, when I look at the situation, it is clear to me that there is a causal relation between the events. People mistakenly attribute this “it is clear to me” either to thought detached from the world or to feeling, in which case it is completely subjective and there is no reason to believe it. I say no: this is observation. But it is observation with the sixth sense, observation with the mind’s eye, not with the senses. I see that there is a causal connection here, and I see the principle of causality—that everything has a cause—and I see the result of the induction I am making, that the law is a general law and not just particular cases; that is induction. All these things—their justification is basically this faculty called intuition, and its existence is very elusive, because it is easy for people to understand why logic gives correct results, and easy for them to trust their direct observation. But they claim that beyond those two things there is nothing. It is a dichotomy: either it is logic or it is observation—yes, I mentioned the positivists. Positivism errs exactly at this point: that there is something that is neither this nor that; it is in the middle. A synthesis of the two. It is cognizing thought. Yes, it is a kind of thought that deals with cognition of the world. I see—when I saw the bodies falling to the earth—I see with the mind’s eye, if you are talented, yes, like Newton, then you understand that the general law explaining all those falls is the law of gravitation. And after you explain it to others, by the way, they also understand that you are right. So in the end we all understand that this is how it is. Newton’s great talent was that he managed to arrive at it on his own; he didn’t need Newton to explain it to him. Okay? That is basically the claim. I think this is the only explanation for our ability to learn from experience, for the trust we have in scientific laws or in the general laws we arrive at. Only now one can say: who says intuition isn’t a delusion, an illusion? But of course that cannot really be an answer, because it is self-evident—it’s clear to me, I see that this is so. Just as I do not cast doubt on my eyes, I also do not cast doubt on the mind’s eye. If you want to be a total skeptic and tell me, fine, but this too is an illusion, then you are a total skeptic, and to a total skeptic I have no answers. I don’t know how to answer a total skeptic, except to tell him that I disagree with him. There cannot be an answer to total skepticism, because what would that answer be based on? Whatever principle it is based on, the skeptic will say: and who told you that is true? Therefore I cannot offer an answer to total skepticism. What I can offer is an answer of common sense, and the answer of common sense says that there is such a thing as common sense. Therefore the only way to learn from experience, to explain our trust in learning from experience, is that intuition is involved here, combining thought with cognition. Now I’ll sharpen this more later, and you’ll see it will come out much clearer. For now it sounds a bit mystical and a bit vague and undefined. I already have to stop here, but in the next lesson I’ll sharpen it further, and I hope maybe I’ll succeed in convincing you more. Okay, I’ll stop here.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, do you call this recognizing thought? Yes. Could we also call it thinking recognition, or not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We could. Somehow it seems to me that recognizing thought fits better, but I don’t know.

[Speaker D] Yes, to me too, but okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s it, so we’re…

[Speaker D] Just a second—you defined this series of lectures as learning from experience in Jewish law and in general. What does all this have to do with Jewish law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Every series always starts this way, with a conceptual, philosophical introduction, and after that we’ll apply it to Jewish law too.

[Speaker D] We’ll apply this principle of recognizing thought to Jewish law too?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Learning from experience. For now I’m only dealing with the justification for learning from experience. Okay, I understand. Fine, have a peaceful Sabbath.

[Speaker F] Rabbi, may I ask a question? One question? If the Rabbi would agree, for example, that the moral issue too is basically an emotion. It’s just an emotion where it’s not a matter of taste, where you feel and say from the outset that you know it doesn’t obligate others, but rather you think that everyone is obligated by the moral duty. No, no, no. Then intuition could also belong to that same field, and we could call it emotion, and I think…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re dancing at two weddings. You can’t say it’s emotion, and I think everyone… If you think, then it’s not emotion.

[Speaker F] Why, who says? Intuition—if I call it intuition, then suddenly it’s okay. After all, even in the moral realm the Rabbi says there is intuition, so whether we call it emotion or intuition, it’s a real feeling. It’s not that I can formulate it, and I can’t give reasons for it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it’s an inner truth, then it’s not emotion, not an emotional reaction. That’s what I call intuition.

[Speaker F] Meaning, the Rabbi is surely convinced that it is forbidden to murder an innocent person. He can’t give any rational reason for it, no rational reason at all, and despite that he is convinced that it is true and with all his heart feels it. It’s not that he checks it in a computer. He never forgets it. So it really is emotion. Fine, you can call it this or that, but basically we mean the same thing. Semantically we gave it a different name.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The opposite. Then what is this whole discussion with you for? All you’re suggesting is that we confuse ourselves semantically. I clarified that there are two things: there are emotions, and there are intuitions. Now you’re saying let’s call intuitions emotions too and get confused, because it’s all semantics. It’s precisely in order to solve this semantic problem that I gave a different name to each of these human faculties.

[Speaker F] No, but for example, we feel… we’re inventing a new thing now, a new inner world called intuition, when every person lives with two things: there are things he can justify rationally, and there are things he feels.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re not inventing it; we’re distinguishing something that exists. We’re not inventing it. Anyone who examines within himself the difference between the solution to this equation, sine of seventeen x squared, and the statement “I love so-and-so”—you understand that there’s a difference between those two statements, right? Of course.

[Speaker F] That’s all. When I say I feel that I love so-and-so, I feel that nobody else is obligated to love so-and-so. Fine. But when I feel that it is forbidden to murder an innocent person, I feel that it is forbidden for everyone to murder an innocent person.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So that’s why I call the first thing emotion, and the second thing intuition. You want to call these two different things emotion? Why? What good does that do? Just to confuse us?

[Speaker F] Yes, yes, because both of them cause us the same anger, the same devotion, the same self-sacrifice, the same things that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s not true. First you explain to me that these two things are different—you agree. So I call the first thing emotion and the second intuition. Why argue now about semantics and propose semantics that are even more confusing? I have good semantics. You want to tell me, no, let me offer you semantics that will confuse us all—and why should I adopt that semantics? We agree on the substantive claim that we’re talking about two faculties—faculties with a k—two different human faculties. So why not call them by two names? Why call them by the same term? It’s just semantic stubbornness. I’m not insisting that it specifically be called intuition; as far as I’m concerned, call it komforken. I’m suggesting a different name for it so we don’t confuse these two things, so as to sharpen the fact that they are different.

[Speaker F] It’s just my feeling—and this really is a feeling, because it has emotional, artistic contexts. You can express it in many languages. It’s tied up with your whole life. It really is emotion. So you want to formulate it as intuition? That doesn’t bother me, but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is this “it”? What is this “it’s tied up”?

[Speaker F] I’m saying that when a person feels some moral obligation, some moral demand, then he doesn’t just know something. It activates him, it angers him, it…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] makes him happy, excites him. Irrelevant. Since moral knowledge is a different kind of knowledge from knowledge of a physical fact. It’s knowledge that moves me to act or prevents me from acting. Irrelevant. But it is still knowledge and not emotion. I didn’t say all kinds of knowledge are the same; I only said that all knowledge is not emotion—it’s something else. Within knowledge there is knowledge of moral principles, and there is knowledge of physical, biological, and other principles. Fine. But it is still knowledge and not emotion. Different things. Okay, look, I’ll explain this more later on. I hope it will have more substance then and be clearer.

[Speaker I] May I ask a question, Rabbi? Yes. It’s a question I’ve still been mulling over since the previous lecture, but it’s hard for me to define it. Is this whole conceptual system actually relevant only to the human species? Or would we define the absolute certainty—there’s no other word to describe it—of animals, the way they conduct themselves in the world and don’t philosophically hesitate and live in the most natural way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that they don’t hesitate doesn’t prove anything—they make mistakes. They make mistakes too; it’s not only human beings who make mistakes. They just don’t hesitate—they make mistakes and walk straight into the fire. So what?

[Speaker I] That’s not certainty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s an illusion of certainty, not certainty. If there’s a foolish person who doesn’t hesitate about anything, does that mean he’s always right? No, it means he’s foolish.

[Speaker I] In that respect, is his way of functioning the same as an animal’s way of functioning, or is it a different conceptual system?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, it can also be the way a foolish person functions. I’m only commenting on the term certainty. There is no certainty; animals don’t have certainty either. The fact that they don’t understand that it’s not certain is because they’re foolish. Fine. But beyond that, the question whether animals have intuition—whether all the faculties I described earlier also exist in animals—that’s an excellent question. I don’t know how to answer it. If animals have no reflection, no awareness, then thought with respect to animals is more like some instinctive response and not something that passes through deliberation and is then translated. But I don’t know. I don’t know what exists inside animals.

[Speaker I] Does that get close to determinism? Here again…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Once again, determinism or non-determinism. So again, determinism or non-determinism is not necessarily connected to the issue. Tell me, if an animal makes an unconscious lottery, then its behavior is non-deterministic, but it’s still not choice and decision.

[Speaker I] Yes, well, it’s a somewhat confusing conceptual world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I didn’t promise you a rose garden, as they say. Thank you very much. Okay then, have a peaceful Sabbath, goodbye.