Ethics, Faith, and Halakha – Lesson 4 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

Table of Contents

• Tanya, chapter 9: two demands, and the divine soul versus the animal soul
• Altruistic action and the claim that it is hard to choose evil without an interest
• Angels, the righteous person, and the distinction between the capacity to choose and its actual realization
• Elijah at Mount Carmel: “How long will you keep hopping between two opinions?”
• The possibility of sin and the logical difficulty: if one chooses, he does good, and if he does not choose, he is not guilty
• “Baal teshuvah” versus “one who becomes religious,” and the Radbaz on “coercion in matters of belief” (including Maimonides)
• Weakness of will: the formulation of the paradox according to Donald Davidson
• Rejecting alternative explanations: irrationality, compulsion by desire, and regret after the fact
• Paradoxes as a model: Achilles and the tortoise, and the position that we do not give up the intuition of responsibility
• Free choice versus determinism: nature, nurture, and the topographic model
• Statistics, the law of large numbers, and a new interpretation of the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad
• A solution to weakness of will: “choosing not to choose” and dropping the reins
• Responsibility, interest versus value, and a summary of the struggle between the two souls

Summary

General Overview

The text argues that in chapter 9 of the Tanya, the author of the Tanya sets out two demands: that a person be a chooser, and that he choose the good. The tension between the divine soul and the animal soul describes the difference between free decision and being dragged along by desires and interests. The central claim is that when a person truly chooses in a pure way, without drives and interests, he will choose what appears to him to be good. Therefore, the main task is to be a chooser, not to conduct a symmetric “struggle” between good and evil. From this, the problem of “weakness of will” is presented as a philosophical paradox, following Donald Davidson, and a solution is examined according to which sin occurs mainly when a person “chooses not to choose” and drops the reins to desire, while still bearing responsibility because the decision to give up choosing is itself a choice.

Tanya, chapter 9: two demands, and the divine soul versus the animal soul

The author of the Tanya presents a demand to be a chooser alongside a demand to choose the good, and the demand to be a chooser is presented through the tension between the divine soul and the animal soul. The divine soul is the mode of conduct of a person who decides, and the animal soul is the conduct of someone who is dragged after desires, interests, and the like. The text states that when a choice is free and clean of interests and drives, it is hardly likely that a person will choose evil that he understands as evil, whereas doing evil usually stems from fear, profit, satisfaction, pressure, or interest.

Altruistic action and the claim that it is hard to choose evil without an interest

The text defines an altruistic action as one done not for the sake of other goals, but only for the sake of free decision, and not necessarily in the sense of concern for another person. The claim is that an altruistic action aimed at evil, when the person himself thinks it is evil, is very hard to imagine, and it is not even clear why it would happen. The text distinguishes between a situation with no interests, in which “if I am a choosing person, I will choose the good,” and a situation with interests, in which a person can choose the interest over the good and commit an evil act even though he understands that it is evil.

Angels, the righteous person, and the distinction between the capacity to choose and its actual realization

The text uses the discussion of whether angels have choice in order to show that the question of the “capacity for choice” does not depend on the question of whether in practice there will be deviation from the good. Angels will always do the good because they have no evil inclination, and yet one can still discuss hypothetically whether they have the capacity to choose if they did have an evil inclination. The text compares this to a righteous person who always does good, and argues that the fact that he always chooses good does not mean that he has no choice, but rather that he uses his choice to choose good at every junction.

Elijah at Mount Carmel: “How long will you keep hopping between two opinions?”

The text interprets Elijah’s words, “If the Lord is God, follow Him, and if Baal, follow him,” literally and not only as rhetorical provocation. Elijah calls on them to go all the way with what they truly believe in, and if they do not consistently follow Baal, that is a sign that they do not really believe in him and are acting only out of desires. In this way, the text presents a value in being a chooser even if the choice leads to what appears from the outside to be evil, because a person always chooses what appears to him to be good, whereas the problem is limping between two options out of instinctive drag.

The possibility of sin and the logical difficulty: if one chooses, he does good, and if he does not choose, he is not guilty

The text presents a difficulty according to which if a person is not choosing and is in the mode of the animal soul, then he is dragged along and therefore does not choose evil but is pushed into it, and if he chooses, he chooses good. The text asks how sin that justifies guilt and punishment is possible, if doing evil is either the result of being dragged along or the result of choosing the good. In this way, the text sets the stage for the discussion of “weakness of will” as a problem that tries to explain a situation in which a person understands that he should do X and does Y.

“Baal teshuvah” versus “one who becomes religious,” and the Radbaz on “coercion in matters of belief” (including Maimonides)

The text distinguishes between “baal teshuvah” in the sense of the Sages and “one who becomes religious” in the common modern sense, and states that these are opposite concepts. The baal teshuvah of the Sages is someone whose worldview obligated him from the outset, but he failed in behavior and therefore needs to synchronize his behavior with what he always knew was proper, whereas the person who becomes religious today changes his worldview and then changes his behavior accordingly. The text interprets Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya as a person who understood that he was “not okay” and nevertheless failed, and therefore his repentance is a return to behavior that fits an already existing worldview, not a change of worldview.

The text cites a responsum of the Radbaz on “coercion in matters of belief” and states that one who acts out of a sincere but mistaken belief is not wicked but mistaken, and that an unwitting sinner is not only someone who does not know a fact or a point of Jewish law, but also someone who holds a mistaken worldview. The text rejects the claim that every person “deep down believes,” and defines a “transgressor” as someone who understands the truth and acts against it. The text responds to the claim that “according to Maimonides it is not so” and states that there is no statement in Maimonides that someone who does not truly and sincerely believe in one of the principles is a transgressor; rather, such a state is described as unwitting or as someone coerced in his beliefs.

Weakness of will: the formulation of the paradox according to Donald Davidson

The text defines sin, in the logical sense, as missing or failing to do what a person thinks he should do at the time of the act, and extends this to religious, moral, legal, dietary, and health-related sins. The text distinguishes between an action stemming from a considered judgment, even if mistaken, and an action stemming from weakness of will, in which a person acts against his own principled judgment. The text presents Davidson’s three claims: if a person thinks that act X is the right one after weighing all considerations, then he will want to do it; if he wants to do X and there are no external constraints, then he will do X; and yet there are situations of weakness of will in which a person does not do what he thinks is right.

Rejecting alternative explanations: irrationality, compulsion by desire, and regret after the fact

The text argues that the explanation “I did not act rationally” does not solve the problem, because if desire imposed itself in a way that truly could not be overcome, then there is no guilt, and if it did not impose itself, then choosing the cake, the theft, or Sabbath desecration reveals that this is what the person wanted after all the considerations were weighed. The text states that the narrative of a “weak will” is sometimes a story a person sells himself so as not to admit that he preferred pleasure, interest, or taste over some other value. The text also rejects regret after the fact as a solution to sin, because a change of will after the act creates a situation of “becoming religious” in the sense of a changed outlook or later mental state, and not a situation in which at the time of the act the person wanted one thing and did another.

Paradoxes as a model: Achilles and the tortoise, and the position that we do not give up the intuition of responsibility

The text presents the structure as a paradox and not as a proof that weakness of will does not exist, similar to the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, in which the reasoning leads to the conclusion that Achilles will not catch the tortoise even though experience requires that he does. The text presents “solving a paradox” as finding the flaw in the argument without giving up central intuitions, and emphasizes that the intuition of moral responsibility requires that something make it possible for a person to act against what he himself understands to be wrong. The text links this to the idea that giving up weakness of will would lead to the denial of responsibility, punishment, and the very meaning of sin.

Free choice versus determinism: nature, nurture, and the topographic model

The text argues that deterministic arguments from genetics or from education rely on a straw man, as if free choice meant acting in a vacuum without influences. The text proposes a model of a topographic outline in which nature plus nurture are the terrain that tilts the weights and creates “valleys” of ease and “mountains” of difficulty, while the person can climb against the slope despite the energetic price. The text states that influences exist both for the little ball and for the person, but in the case of the little ball they determine the outcome, whereas in the case of the person they only influence it.

Statistics, the law of large numbers, and a new interpretation of the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad

The text argues that there is no mental trait determined deterministically by a gene, but only tendencies and influences that can be described statistically. The text uses the law of large numbers to explain how small biases become predictable results in large groups without canceling the choice of the individual. The text compares this to a loaded die, where one cannot predict a single roll but can predict the distribution over a million rolls.

The text cites the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad in the Laws of Repentance, chapter 6, regarding the Egyptian bondage. It presents the Raavad’s objection that this is “the talk of youngsters,” because the free choice of individuals could seemingly frustrate a collective prophecy, and argues that Maimonides in fact relies on the law of large numbers and on the biasing of the outline—“I hardened his heart”—so that the collective would tend toward enslavement even though each individual Egyptian still has free choice. The text adds that rolling a die or flipping a coin are not truly random but subject to physical determinism, and that statistics is used even in non-random processes because of sensitivity to initial conditions and chaos.

A solution to weakness of will: “choosing not to choose” and dropping the reins

The text proposes a solution according to which a person does not “choose to do what he thinks is not right,” but rather switches off the choice mechanism and enters the mode of the animal soul, in which desires lead him. The text compares this to a drunkard who bears responsibility not for what happens during the drunkenness, but for the decision to put himself into a state of loss of control. The text states that moral responsibility stems from the fact that the person “chose not to choose” and dropped the reins, even though the evil act itself occurred without conscious decision at that moment.

Responsibility, interest versus value, and a summary of the struggle between the two souls

The text acknowledges that even a person who “chooses” can sin when he chooses interest over value, such as theft for the sake of money, and this is not weakness of will but a conscious decision. The text concludes that the struggle between the divine soul and the animal soul is a struggle over the switch of choice, over holding the reins versus handing control over to the horses. The text ends by saying that the essence of the moral act is that the person is a chooser, and that this is the basis for moral evaluation of an act.

Last time I talked about chapter 9 of the book Tanya, and we saw there that in fact two demands are being made of a person. One demand is to be a chooser, and the second demand is to choose the good. The author of Tanya presents the demand to be a chooser through the tension between a divine soul and an animal soul. A divine soul is a mode of conduct of a person who chooses; an animal soul is someone who is dragged along by urges, interests, and the like. And I also said that once a person is choosing, then usually he will also choose the good. It’s very hard to see someone who chooses freely, not through urges and interests and the like, and does evil, and decides to do evil. That’s not plausible. Interests, urges, yes, can cause a person to do evil. But a person who chooses freely and understands that this act is evil—even Nazis, let’s say—it’s hard for me to imagine a situation in which he actually understands that he is doing something evil, has no urge pushing him to do it, meaning it’s not an interest, nothing at all, and he decides to act that way, meaning to murder Jews. Either he thought it wasn’t evil for some warped reason, however warped, but that’s what he thought; or he was afraid that some harm would come to him if he didn’t cooperate—an interest; or he made money from it; I don’t know, something has to be there. Okay? But if none of those things are there, if it’s an altruistic action as I defined earlier, then an altruistic action is an action done not for the sake of other goals apart from my free decision. So an altruistic action directed toward evil is hard to imagine. I don’t know if there is such a thing. I can’t rule it out theoretically, but I don’t see why it would happen. It’s like—I’ve seen discussions from time to time about whether angels have free choice. They will always do the good because they have no evil inclination. Okay, but do they in principle have free choice, meaning could they have done otherwise? It will never actually happen. Why would they do otherwise? They have no evil inclination, and they understand that this is what must be done, this is their task, so of course they will do it. And still there is room to discuss the hypothetical question whether they have free choice, the power to choose—suppose I were to implant within them an evil inclination. What would happen then? What would happen is that they could now decide—or not, maybe they have no ability to decide because they have no free choice. Meaning the question whether they have free choice as a mental faculty, as a psychological capacity, is not contingent on the question whether it is realized in practice. That isn’t necessary. Angels always choose the good, and that still does not mean they are not choosing. Also a righteous person who has free choice and always does the good, always, he always manages to do the good—does that mean he has no free choice? He has free choice; he uses it because he always chooses to do the good, and he has free choice. Okay? So in our context too, the claim is basically that on the one hand there are altruistic actions, meaning a person does perform actions even when there is no urge or interest or anything like that, out of decision; and I further say that if the action is an altruistic action, I don’t see how it can be an evil action, meaning how it can be that a person would do something that in his own view is evil. If he himself thinks it is good and is mistaken, that’s a different matter. But something that he himself thinks is evil—I don’t see how that happens. Suppose I think now, I’ve reached the conclusion that there is, let’s say, I ask you for fifty shekels, and now I think about it: either I give him the fifty shekels and I’ll really be righteous, or I keep the fifty shekels for myself, and I reach the conclusion that it’s my money, I’ll keep it for myself even though I know it would be good to give it to him. And it’s also good to keep it for yourself—what do you mean? The question is what’s better. In the end manage to decide what you think—not what’s true, but what you think. And if let’s say I think it’s maybe a little right, but also a little I want it. What do you want more? Forget a little and a little—what more? What in your eyes has greater value, helping the poor person or helping yourself? It seems to me I think helping the poor person has greater value, but your interest is more on the other side, so you act out of interest. Correct. So that’s not an altruistic action; it’s an action out of interest. I’m talking about a pure action: no interests, no urges, nothing else apart from your free decision. Now you say this is a good step and this is a bad step, and there is no pull at all toward the bad, no interest, nothing. I choose freely. I assume I will always choose the good, won’t I? Meaning, if in my view it’s good. But is it impossible to choose evil? Yes. What does “impossible” mean? That’s what I’m saying. It’s possible to choose evil. Because I’m not claiming I have no choice. That’s exactly what I argued. I’m not claiming I have no choice. I have choice; I just choose the good. It’s not that it’s impossible to choose evil. People do not choose evil. It’s possible. People don’t choose. People can do evil because they have an interest—that yes, people do. But without interests, just to do evil because I feel like doing evil—that, I don’t see how it happens. It sounds a little funny. Like you’re saying either you don’t choose, or you choose but then you choose the good. Exactly. Meaning, the claim that ultimately emerges from here—and today I’ll sharpen it even more—is that basically our main task is to be choosers. Because once we choose, we will already choose the good. There is no task of a struggle of good versus evil. That task does not exist. The only task is just to decide, to be decisive, to be a person of the divine soul. From that point on you will presumably do the good. Now this isn’t completely precise, because it could be—and I’ll talk about this today too—it could be that you are a choosing person and still you won’t do the good, because you choose to go with the interest and not with the good. Okay? What I said before is what happens in the absence of interest. I have no urge, no interest, I have nothing, and I am a choosing person. Fine? If I am a choosing person, I will choose the good. But there is another case. I do have an urge, I do have an interest, and therefore I know it is evil to murder, but they pay me a hundred thousand dollars as a hired killer if I go murder that person. So it is certainly possible that I will choose, decide, to murder, even though I understand that murder is evil, because I prefer to make the hundred thousand dollars and do evil. That is possible. Fine? That is possible. I’m talking about a situation where there are no interests, no urges, they aren’t paying me a hundred thousand dollars, I get no satisfaction, there’s nothing—an altruistic action—and I am a choosing person, not dragged along, I am a choosing person and I am engaged in an altruistic action, then I will do the good. I will always do the good. Meaning, nothing else is possible. Again, I have the choice in any case; in practice I just always choose the good. Like the completely righteous person, as I said earlier, who in principle at every crossroads chooses the good. That doesn’t mean he has no choice, right? He has choice. At every crossroads he could have done otherwise, but he chose the good. Here too, I have choice in the sense that I can do otherwise, but in practice why would I choose that? Clearly I will choose to do the good. It’s not that I don’t have the power to choose; rather in practice the choice of evil will not be realized. If I choose, I will always choose the good. Unless interests are influencing things, in which case I have to decide whether the interest prevails or the good prevails, and that is already a decision. Okay? Today we’re going to go one step further and see that even interest does not solve the problem. But I ended last time with Elijah at Mount Carmel, right? He says to the people: “How long will you keep hopping between two branches? If the Lord is God, follow Him, and if Baal, follow him.” Usually people see this as some kind of rhetorical taunt. Right? He’s telling them: you’re not men. Meaning, if you believe in Baal, then go for it. Why are you hopping between two branches? When of course his goal is to make them worship God, not go after Baal. He isn’t really calling on them to worship Baal. And I claimed no—I read it literally. He is calling on them to worship Baal. If you really believe in that, then go with it. If you really believe in it. Therefore, if you’re not going, if you’re not always following it, then you don’t really believe in it. And if you don’t really believe in it, then why are you doing it? Just urges. So no—then worship God. Don’t go after the urge; go after what is right. After all, if you really believe in Baal, then follow Baal. There is value in being a chooser even if in the end you choose evil. In this case, by the way, if they believe in Baal, then in their view it is not evil. That is what should be done if they believe in Baal. So if they are choosing people and they also believe that worship of Baal is the right thing, then they will choose to worship Baal. That’s okay. Meaning, it doesn’t contradict what I said earlier that if a person chooses, then he surely chooses the good. He chooses the good as it appears to him to be good. Fine? Not that he chooses the good—maybe he is mistaken and thinks the good is evil. Fine. But he will always choose what he sees as good. Fine? That is basically the claim. Therefore Elijah is basically telling them: stop being people of the animal soul. People of the animal soul, when they have an urge they go worship Baal; when they don’t have an urge they worship God. Meaning, they are basically delivered into the hands of their urges. They are people who conduct themselves on the basis of urges, interests—not altruistic actions. And he says to them: be people of the divine soul. People who perform altruistic actions. What does that mean? Again, altruism is not necessarily worship of God; that is not necessarily altruism. Altruism is concern for the other. An altruistic action in the sense I defined earlier means an action not out of interest, but an action out of decision. Okay? Now basically, when we now do the calculation, let’s see whether it is even possible for a person to sin. To sin morally or religiously—for the moment that doesn’t matter to me, on the logical level. On the face of it, it seems simply impossible. Why? Because if he does not choose—he is a person of the animal soul—then he is dragged into doing evil; he did not choose evil, he was dragged into doing evil. Okay? If he chooses, then he does the good. So when can there be a situation in which a person does evil and we see it as failure, as a transgression, as something for which he deserves punishment? Okay? How can such a thing be? If he chooses, then he will always choose the good. So what then? If he did evil, he probably didn’t choose. Animal soul—his urges dragged him. Fine, his urges dragged him, so then he didn’t choose evil. He was dragged into doing evil; he was coerced, I would even say. Okay? But still, you could have chosen. Hm? Still, you could have chosen. Okay, here I want to sharpen this. I’ll get to this in the end, but I want to sharpen it a bit more. Maybe I’ll add one more point first. There are two concepts that people relate to as though they were synonymous concepts, as though they had the same meaning—but they do not. In a certain sense they are opposites. That is: a ba’al teshuvah and someone who becomes religious. Meaning, when we speak of a ba’al teshuvah in the sense of the Sages, and “someone who becomes religious” in today’s sense, these are opposite concepts. The ba’al teshuvah of the Sages is someone who always knew that he should keep the Torah and behave properly and all the rest. He failed. He needs to repent, to go back to doing what he understands is the proper way to act. Okay? Meaning, he has to go back to doing what he had always known he should do. The person who “becomes religious” today is the opposite. The person who becomes religious today is someone who changes his worldview. When he did those things, he didn’t think he was doing evil—that’s what he thought, that’s what he believed in. At some point he came to the conclusion that he had been mistaken. He adopts a different faith. Now he believes in the Torah, in the Holy One, blessed be He, in doing religious good and moral good, whatever, that doesn’t matter right now, and therefore he decides to do the good. That is what people today generally call “becoming religious,” right? Becoming religious means someone who becomes observant. What does it mean, becomes observant? When he was secular, he did not see himself as a criminal. Meaning, he did not think he should keep the commandments and chose not to keep them. He did not think he should keep them at all. Right? And now when he becomes religious, he changes worldview. Now he thinks yes, one should keep the commandments, and then he starts to keep them. So at no stage did he fail. Right? At every stage he truly did what he thought. The ba’al teshuvah that the Sages speak about is a ba’al teshuvah who failed; he has to turn back from the failure, to repent for the failure. What does that mean? It means a person who always knew he had to keep the commandments, he just didn’t do it. He failed. There are approaches that say every person deep down believes, and so on. Yes, I know those stories. In my view that’s nonsense. Maybe I’ll get into that now. Maybe I’ll get into it now since you raised it—but in just a moment. So the claim is basically—the claim is basically—that the ba’al teshuvah of the Sages is like Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. Right? The Talmud in tractate Avodah Zarah says that he “left no sin in the world that he did not commit.” Until he came to a certain prostitute in the cities beyond the sea who took four hundred zuz as her fee, and what happened happened, she passed gas, the fringes slapped him in the face—there are two versions—and he understood what he understood, and his state, and he repented and cried until his soul departed as a ba’al teshuvah. Then a heavenly voice came forth and said, “Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is destined for the life of the world to come.” What—up until the point when the fringes slapped him in the face, did he think what he was doing was fine? If he thought what he was doing was fine, then he has nothing to repent for; he is coerced by his beliefs. He truly thought he was acting properly. It is quite clear that we are dealing here with a person who understands that he is not acting properly. Urges, or something like that, and he chose to do it despite thinking it was not proper. And then he decides to repent. What does “repent” mean? Not to change worldview, as people today say when they “become religious.” He is not changing worldview; his worldview had always been like that. To return to acting in accordance with that same worldview that had always been clear to him. But to synchronize his behavior with his worldview, right? He changes behavior; he does not change worldview. The person who becomes religious today changes behavior, but that is the result of a change in worldview. It is not the continuation of the same worldview with a change in behavior, synchronizing behavior with worldview—that is something else, okay? So basically the claim is that if a person “becomes religious” in today’s terms, then he was never really a criminal. He always did what he truly thought was right; he never chose evil in the sense of what he thought was evil. Maybe he chose evil because I think it’s evil, but in his own view he never chose something that he himself perceived as evil, right? So in truth he never really sinned; he was coerced by his beliefs. Even if he was mistaken, a mistake is not a sin; meaning, he was coerced—that’s what he thought, what do you want from him? Coerced by his beliefs. There is a responsum of the Radbaz; the Radbaz says there is such a thing as coercion in matters of belief. Meaning, if you think something is not true, then you won’t do it, and even if you are mistaken—but what can you do? You are coerced; that’s what you think. Yes, secular Jews, a “captured infant,” and all sorts of such things. You don’t need to get into all those complicated models of a “captured infant” and the like; he is coerced. Quite simply, he thinks that’s correct—what do you want from him? He is coerced, that’s all. What, so he should do what you think? A person does what he thinks; that’s what he thinks. Yes, they asked the Radbaz there about a man who said that Moses our teacher is God. A kind of Christian concept, as though, yes, the connection between man and… So they asked the Radbaz what to do with this heretic. Throw him into a pit and not pull him out—what should be done with him? So the Radbaz says to them: leave him alone. What do you want? He is coerced by his beliefs. That’s what he thinks. What do you want from him? He thinks Moses our teacher is God. He is talking nonsense, he is mistaken, fine, but that’s what he thinks; he is not wicked. Meaning, he is mistaken, fine; being mistaken is not being wicked. Okay, so also… What? The Radbaz… According to Maimonides it’s not like that. What is not like that? On the contrary, what matters is whether you grasp the truth or not, and that’s not… But if I think otherwise, then I am coerced. Why assume Maimonides disagrees with that? Why? Where do you see otherwise? In Maimonides you see that he lays down doctrinal or philosophical principles—the Thirteen Principles or things like that—but nowhere does he write that if a person sincerely does not believe in one of the principles, then he is a sinner. I sincerely do not believe in it—what can I do? I am coerced. He does not say the person is right; he says he is not a sinner, not wicked. That’s what he thinks. He is mistaken, but that’s what he thinks—what can be done? Every inadvertent sinner does something wrong. Why is he called inadvertent? He is called inadvertent because he does not know that it is wrong. Okay, that is exactly the situation here. Only we often think of inadvertence as someone who does not know the Jewish law, or who does not know the fact—he doesn’t know that today is the Sabbath or doesn’t know that sorting on the Sabbath is forbidden. But there is also inadvertence in worldviews. You don’t think there is a God; you are an atheist. You are mistaken or coerced—that’s truly what you think, what do you want? Such a person is not a sinner; that is what he thinks. A sinner is only someone who understands the truth and acts against it. He too understands that this is the truth and acts against it—that is a sinner. Okay, so what I want to say basically is that if you are speaking about sin, you need to speak about someone whose worldview is correct but whose behavior is incorrect, and then he needs to be a ba’al teshuvah, not someone who “becomes religious.” Someone whose views are also incorrect needs to become religious; he needs to change his views, fine? That is the claim. Now the question is how we understand this state of sin. This state of sin basically means that a person thinks X and does Y. Wait, let me just write down for myself to come back to what I told you I’d get into. One second. Okay, I’ll get to that after I do what I wanted to do today, so I don’t lose the thread. So now I want to discuss how, if at all, a state of sin is possible. That is basically the discussion. This is a philosophical issue that fills shelves in the philosophy library. It is called weakness of the will. Weakness of the will. And I want first of all to sharpen the problem a little. Suppose a person sinned. I said before, I explained, what is called sin? He understood that he should do X and did Y. Right? Again, he understood it already at the time he acted. Because if he understands it now, that doesn’t interest me. I’m talking about someone who already then knew that it was forbidden to do Y and still did it. Okay? That is a state of sin. Right? Now when I sin, that sin can be of different sorts. It can be a religious sin; it can be a moral sin; it can be a dietary sin. I decided not to eat fattening foods and I slipped—I ate something fattening, a whipped-cream cake. Okay? Now I ask myself: how did I slip? For me logically right now that too is a sin. Sin here means to miss the mark. To miss, to fail, right? Meaning not to do what I think I should do, what is right to do. That is called sin. Okay? It can be a moral sin, it can be a halakhic sin, it can be a legal sin, it can be a dietary sin, a health sin, whatever. All kinds of things like that. The question is: if I think I should do X, how is it possible that I did Y? Right? That is called sin. I ask myself how this is possible. Usually the answer I give myself, the answer I give myself is: I failed. I was weak. Right? I was weak, I fell, I ate that whipped-cream cake even though I really wanted to diet. So I was weak, my will did not cope with my urges. Right? “The leaven in the dough holds us back,” as the Sages say. Okay? So the claim is basically—the claim is basically—that sin always reflects a state of a weak will. That is what sin means. Sin means that the will—I wanted the right thing, but I did not do it. Why? Because that will to do the right thing was weak. Meaning, it did not stand up to the urges, the interests, whatever it may be. Right? That is the definition of weakness of the will. Now I’ll distinguish this from another kind of action. Suppose I murdered, but I really thought that murder was proper. Yes—the secular person before he became religious. Not the ba’al teshuvah but the person who later became religious, before he became religious. So he did an act because he really thought that was what was right. That is not an act of weakness of will. He will not say, “I had a weak will, and therefore I desecrated the Sabbath.” He will say, “I desecrated the Sabbath because I did not think there was anything problematic about desecrating the Sabbath. I did not think one ought to keep the Sabbath.” Right? That is not an act of weak will. Let’s call it perhaps a considered action. Yes? An action made out of decision. It is not an act of weak will. An act of weak will is always an action against my principled decision. My principled decision is that one should act like this, and in practice what I did was like that. Okay? So that is an act of weak will. A considered action is an action done out of my conception. Now the conception can be mistaken—I don’t care. I am not saying every considered action is a good action. I am saying every considered action is an action in which I do what I myself want. You may think that what I want is mistaken, wrong, evil, fine, but in my own view I will always do what I think, if the action is considered. By contrast, in weak will, in an act of weakness of will, not even what I myself think is right do I necessarily do. I do something that even I myself think is wrong. What exactly is the problem in an act of weakness of will? So this issue of weakness of the will has various formulations and treatments. I’ll follow here a formulation of Donald Davidson, a well-known American philosopher, an American analytic philosopher, and he says this: let’s assume we have—he sets out three claims, each of which sounds plausible, but the three together do not fit. First claim: if a person thinks that a certain act, say X, is the right one, then he wants to do it. That is what he wants to do. We didn’t say that’s what he does; we said that is what he wants to do, right? Now of course here I need to clarify a bit. Suppose a person thinks that it is forbidden to steal, that theft is bad. He can still want to steal. When I say that a person thinks a certain act is right, it does not mean that the act itself is good. That is not the claim. Rather, after all the considerations I have made, if this is what I think is right to do, then that is also what I want to do, right? The considerations can be moral considerations, self-interested considerations, whatever you like. And after I take all the considerations into account, what do I think is the right thing to do in such a situation? Okay? Suppose I am now debating whether to steal. I say: I know it is forbidden to steal, it is bad to steal. But on the other hand I will make a lot of money from it. Fine? Now the question is whether, in my view, the financial gain justifies a moral transgression, or a halakhic one, or a legal one. Right? If yes, then in my view that is the right thing to do. Okay? When I say “right” and “good,” they are not the same thing. Not even “the good in my own view,” not just objective good—not even that, because I have other considerations besides moral ones. Do I take all my considerations and in the end come to the conclusion that X is the right act for me—not the good one, but the right one—then I will also want to do X. So is that by definition? Yes, almost by definition. To think something is right is a cognitive statement. To want to do it is already a statement about some kind of psychological movement. Yes, this is on the intellectual plane and that is on the psychological plane. So it is not the same claim. But it sounds very obvious that if the cognitive claim holds, then the psychological claim, let’s call it, will also hold. Okay? Now if I think it is right not to eat the cake—but not to eat; to want. We still haven’t gotten to eating, only to wanting. What do I want? In the sense of my desire—do I want to eat the cake? If you want to eat the cake, that means—again, if you think it is right to eat the cake—it is fattening, but it is also tasty. Okay? And you prefer to eat something tasty even if it is fattening, then as far as you are concerned that is the right thing. If that is the right thing, then that is what you will want to do. Fine, if someone has cake and broccoli, he doesn’t want to eat the broccoli because it’s disgusting, but he reached the conclusion that that is the right thing. That’s what he said. No—again, he did not reach the conclusion that it is right. No, he’ll eat the broccoli. No, he did not reach the conclusion that it is right. Again you are talking about “right” in terms of health. But I mean “right” after the totality of considerations I make. And part of the considerations I make is how tasty or disgusting it is. That too is a consideration. And if for me the disgusting factor is stronger than the healthy factor, then what I think is right to do is to eat the cake and not the broccoli. But in the end I eat the broccoli. Then no, apparently you think it is right to eat the broccoli. Right, that’s what I’m saying. I think it is right to eat the broccoli. Can there be a dissonance between what is right and what you want? That’s what I’m asking. Describe such a situation to me. I heard. I decided that eating the broccoli is the right thing to do, I eat the broccoli, but clearly I would have preferred to eat the cake. What does “would have preferred” mean? But you more prefer being healthy than eating something tasty. So in the bottom line, in practice, you did what you wanted. Fine. But if I prefer the healthy over the unhealthy and… Fine, but on the other hand the unhealthy is also tasty. Now you have to decide not whether you prefer healthy to unhealthy—that we all know. The question is whether you prefer healthy to tasty. Suppose that tasty is less preferable than healthy, then you will eat the healthy thing. But still, eating something tasty… Can you? What does “can” mean? Will it happen? No, it won’t happen. No, because if you want to eat it, that means that this is basically what you think is right, because you think the taste outweighs the health considerations. Fine, so that is what you think. I mean after you have made all the considerations—that is what I call “right.” Do not separate the moral or health considerations from considerations of desire. Desire is also a consideration. I want to enjoy myself, and that enjoyment outweighs the moral prohibition or the dietary or health prohibition or whatever it is. If it outweighs it, then that is what I think is right to do. And if that is what I think is right, then presumably that is what I will also want to do. Again, “right” here means after all considerations. Not right in the sense of what is morally right to do, or what is intellectually right, ethically right, I don’t know what—but right after I have taken all the considerations into account. So that is also what I will want. Second assumption: if a person wants to do act X and there are no external constraints on him, then he will do X. Also a very plausible assumption. Therefore the conclusion is basically that what you think is right after all considerations is also what you will do. That is the summary of the two claims we have seen so far. What you think is right is what you want; what you want is what you do. So what you think is right is what you will do. So that was the second assumption. And the third assumption is that there are situations of weakness of will. There are situations in which I do not do what I think is right. Sin, what I called before. But sin not in the simplistic sense. In the simplistic sense there is no problem. Suppose I stole—I know it isn’t good to steal, but I also want the money, I profit from it. Fine, that is not a state of weakness of will. A state of weakness of will, as I defined it here, is a state in which I have already done the calculation of what is preferable for me—the money or morality—I reached the conclusion that morality is preferable, and I wanted to behave morally, but in practice I still stole. That is a state of weakness of will. Exactly what I described. Obviously. Now I ask: these three claims do not fit together. The first two contradict the third. Because the third claim basically says that there can be situations in which I think it is right to do X but I will not do it, even though I think one should do X. From the first two assumptions it follows that this is impossible. If I think it is right to do X, then that is what I want. If that is what I want, then in the absence of constraints—if there are constraints that is something else—in the absence of constraints that is also what I will in fact do. Now we need to understand: if there are constraints that cause me to do it, an irresistible impulse or something like that, then it is irrelevant; then again it is not sin. Sin is always when I do things because I decided to do them, not because of constraints. Right? So I am speaking about a state without constraints. A state without constraints, and nevertheless I do something that in my own view is not the right thing—that is weakness of will. On the one hand, we experience this all the time, that there are such situations. On the other hand, the first two claims show us that there are no such situations. So something in this triad of claims brings us to an internal contradiction. Now I want to sharpen the point a bit more. Look, there are sometimes situations where people, for example—and I already have some experience with these things—when I talked about these things, several objections arose among the listeners to the picture I described. First objection: sometimes a person does not act rationally. True—this is what he thinks is right, but reason did not guide him here. Animal soul, basically, in the earlier language. Meaning, he does not act according to right and wrong but according to urges or other things. But suppose I decided to go on a diet and I had a strong urge to eat that whipped-cream cake, so I ate it. So true, I did not act rationally, because after all I myself decided that I want to go on a diet, but still I did it. Now here I need to understand. Why am I asking now? What is it exactly that the urge—I described this last time—when the urge tries to drag me to eat the cake, why did I respond to it? After all, I decided to give in to it—unless it was an irresistible impulse, in which case we have a situation. A situation in which the urge acted upon me and I had no possibility of overcoming it. Yes? There are certain situations, certain psychological states—the criminal law also recognizes such things, right? Sometimes there are situations where someone is seized by some compulsion, an impulse he cannot stand against, and he does something for which he is not responsible. Okay? These are extreme situations. But I am saying: if that is not the case, if the urge forced me, then of course I am not a wrongdoer. Right? Because what can I do—I am not criminally responsible for my actions; I was coerced. My psychology too can coerce me. Coercion does not have to come from outside. I simply did not have the judgment, I did not have the ability to choose. Okay? So it is not a situation in which the urge dragged me or forced me against my will to do this. That is not the situation. So what is it? It seduced me, or tried to pull me, but I could have resisted; it was not an irresistible impulse. Right? I could have resisted. Then why didn’t you resist? Because it was more important to me to eat something tasty than to preserve my health. Right? You cannot escape that; otherwise I would have resisted. Or in other words: don’t tell yourself stories about weak will. You wanted to eat the cake. It’s not that your will to diet was weak and did not stand against the urge. No—you ate the cake because you wanted to eat the cake. True, it’s not healthy. It turns out that you want to eat something tasty no less than you want to preserve your health. But that is what you want. If you did it, then that is what you wanted, because otherwise why did you do it? If the urge carried you away, then it is not sin—you are coerced. Right? In the area of dieting that won’t help you; you’ll still gain weight. But in the moral and halakhic sphere, there is no problem. If you were coerced, then you are not a wrongdoer. Right? We are not speaking about a state in which the urge compels you. But if it does not compel you, then why didn’t you resist? You didn’t resist because basically it just wasn’t important enough to you. Or in other words, you wanted to eat the cake more than you wanted to preserve your health. So this is not weak will, it is simply a different will. Your will was to eat the cake—not that your will was to preserve your health but it was just too weak. Because the description of weak will basically says that the urge forced me. Because I wanted not to eat the cake and the urge forced me; I wasn’t strong enough to defend myself, so I am coerced. When we speak about sin for which I am not coerced, sin for which I bear responsibility when I committed it, that means it is not true that I had a weak will and the urge overcame me. No. I am selling myself a bill of goods. I wanted to eat the cake, therefore I ate it. The taste mattered more to me than health, that’s all, and therefore I ate the cake. So it is not weak will, but simply what I wanted. Only what? We tell ourselves stories, we sell ourselves a bill of goods. “Ah, how I missed it here, I had a weak will,” because obviously I really wanted to preserve my health, except that I forgot I also wanted to eat the cake because it was tastier and I wanted that more than I wanted to preserve my health. It’s unpleasant to put the bitter truth in front of my face, so I tell myself stories: I had a weak will, what can you do? Because the feeling is always that the urge forced me; I’m not guilty, what can I do, I had a weak will. No. Because if you are coerced, then you bear no responsibility for the sin you committed. A sin for which you bear responsibility is a sin that you decided to commit; you don’t have an exemption claim of coercion, okay? And if you decided to commit it, I go back down Davidson’s ladder, then apparently that is what you wanted to do. If you did it, apparently that is what you wanted. If you wanted it, then that is what you thought was right. So don’t tell me “weak will”; “I didn’t think it was right, but I did it anyway.” No. If you did it, then that is what you wanted; and if you wanted it, that is what you thought was right. Meanwhile I am simply translating the contradiction in those three claims now, cashing it out into small change. Meaning, we are selling ourselves a story that we have weak will, but apparently this is a story. It’s simply not true. I simply wanted it. If I desecrated the Sabbath, and I said, “Ah, I had an evil inclination, I don’t know, there was something there I just had to get to, I went beyond the permitted boundary, I desecrated the Sabbath.” Okay? “Ah, I really had a weak will—We have sinned, we have betrayed, we have stolen—I repent.” No, I did not have a weak will. I simply wanted that thing more than I wanted to keep the Sabbath, that’s all. Could it be that in a broader language I don’t really understand, then it’s shallow and abstract, but on a superficial level—couldn’t weakness of will mean that I’m not sufficiently activating the prefrontal cortex but acting—not activating the prefrontal cortex in order to restrain the… You’re jumping much too far ahead. I’ll get to that formulation at the end. I agree, but I’ll get to it… No, no, it’s not a formulation, it’s a claim. Yes, I’ll get to that claim at the end, but I want to do it step by step. Okay? So on the face of it, this objection—that a person does not act rationally—is not a relevant objection here. So it comes out like this, either way: if you were compelled, because your will was weak and the urge overcame you, you are not responsible for your actions; that is not sin. If you were not compelled, and then it is sin, then this is not weak will; then that is what you wanted. It’s not that you wanted something else and your will was weak. That is what you wanted. Therefore, either way, there is a state of sin when you want to sin, but there is no state of weak will in which you want to do the commandment and in practice you commit a sin. That is the state of weak will. According to the picture I have described so far, such a state does not exist. Now there is another claim that comes up here, another objection to the picture I described, and this is the objection that says: maybe this is a retrospective analysis. An analysis that identifies the person who becomes religious with the ba’al teshuvah. What does that mean? Suppose I ate the cake because that’s what I wanted. Okay? But now I’m already full, right? So now suddenly I understand I made a mistake, because too bad—I gained weight, the pleasure has already flown away and the fat remains. There is a certain, yes, asymmetry here, that the bad things stay with us and the good things disappear as soon as we are done. Okay? Therefore this struggle is always between the present and the future, between present pleasure and the future value, my goal in life. So I basically say to myself like this: suppose I ate the whipped-cream cake now. After I ate it, I basically regret it, because I already ate it, so now I understand—I am confronting the consequences, I gained weight or I am about to gain weight. Okay? And now I regret it. This is the state of sin. But you understand that this too is not a state of sin, because this basically means that it is not weak will. Rather, the will then was to eat the cake. The will now is not to eat the cake. What I did then matched what I wanted then. It does not match what I want now. Fine, so what? The question whether I sin or not is determined by what I thought then, not by what I think today. Otherwise this is someone who becomes religious, not a ba’al teshuvah. Right? The person who becomes religious, after he has become religious, understands that he desecrated Sabbaths. But when he desecrated them, he did not think it was problematic—that is what he thought was the way one should behave; everything was fine. So in retrospect, in an anachronistic glance from today’s viewpoint, today he believes, he is committed to the commandments, and he regrets having desecrated the Sabbath. Okay? But this is not really regret over sin. He did not sin; he was coerced, that is what he thought when he desecrated the Sabbath. The fact that today he thinks differently—so what? That is not relevant. Weakness of will is always when the action deviates from your desire at that very moment. What you wanted at that moment is not what you did. What you want after a day, after two days—that is not interesting. Now, when I look at these three claims that do not fit together, I can ask myself—yes, there are those who present this structure as a paradox, because these are three claims, each plausible on its own, but they contradict one another. That is, the first two lead me to a conclusion opposite to the third. Okay? That is one way of looking at it. A second way is to look at it as a proof that in fact there is no weakness of will. The first two claims are correct; therefore there is no weakness of will; the third claim has to be thrown in the trash. It simply isn’t true, it’s a mistake. Here, we have proved it is not true; indeed there is no such thing as weakness of will. When we look at this thing as a paradox, what does that basically mean? It basically means that our intuition, which says that there is such a thing as weakness of will, we are not willing to give it up, because it seems very true to us. We will not give it up even if you bring me proofs. And this is generally an example of how one relates to paradoxes. Think of the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, right? I assume you know it, right? One of Zeno’s paradoxes. Achilles runs a race with the tortoise; he runs ten times faster than it. Okay? He gives the tortoise a head start of ten meters. Okay? The claim is that Achilles will never catch it, even though he runs ten times faster. Why not? Because after one second Achilles will reach the place where the tortoise was. By the time Achilles reaches those ten centimeters, the tortoise will move forward another centimeter, and every time you get there the tortoise will already be a little ahead; you will never catch it. It follows that Achilles never catches the tortoise. Fine, what’s the problem? So we proved that Achilles never catches the tortoise. The problem is that of course he does catch it. Right? Obviously, we know from experience, it is completely clear to us that Achilles does catch the tortoise. Now, when I present a paradox, often people say, “Fine, then Achilles really doesn’t catch the tortoise, what’s the problem?” No—because it is obvious to me that he does catch it, and therefore it creates a paradox. Giving up my intuition always resolves the paradox. It means there never was a paradox. A paradox is always created when I am not willing to give up my intuition, because it is obvious to me that it is correct, and then I must ask myself: so what was wrong in the argument that leads to the opposite conclusion? Right? That is what it means to solve the paradox. If I put my finger on what is flawed in the argument, where there is a failure in the argument that led me to the opposite conclusion—because I am not willing to give up any of these three assumptions. All three seem plausible to me, and therefore I do not see this as a proof that there is no weakness of will; I see it as a paradox. By the way, this goes in both directions. I have also written this on the site several times. Sometimes someone presents you with a paradox, and indeed the way to solve it is to say that one of the three claims really isn’t true. I thought it was true, I had the intuition it was true—mistake, I have to give it up. Fine, that is also possible, but not always. Meaning, sometimes it’s one way and sometimes it’s the other, and I have no rules for when it’s this way and when it’s that way. Each person has to decide how true it seems to him, how self-evident it is. Therefore, if I start from the point of departure that these three claims are plausible, then for me this structure is a paradox. Meaning, I am not willing to give up the claim of weakness of will, because that basically means we have no free choice, we have no responsibility for our actions, we have nothing. If we committed a sin, then we committed a sin—we are coerced, we bear no responsibility for our actions. And the intuitive feeling is that a person does bear responsibility for his actions, that sometimes a person does sin, sometimes a person does act in a way that he himself understands is not okay—not that I understand it is not okay, but that he himself understands it is not okay. And the question is how this happens. Let’s spare ourselves the philosophy. Okay, so that was basically the presentation of the problem. That is the problem of weakness of the will. Now I want to try to propose a solution. Okay? Now I’ll already say in advance that this is basically roughly what you claimed earlier—it does not completely solve the problem, this solution. That is, I think it does, but there is some subtle point there. You have to understand that this question is a very difficult one. People tend to belittle this question. Obviously we have weak will, obviously we sin. Why are you giving me hair-splitting arguments and proving to me that we cannot sin? We know we can. That is the same as saying: why are you giving me hair-splitting arguments and proving that Achilles doesn’t catch the tortoise? I know he catches the tortoise. Fine, but find for me what is wrong in those arguments that prove he does not catch the tortoise. Meaning, explain to me what is not right there. Okay? That is called solving the paradox. I have two columns on my website where I also did this—one column presenting the problem. Then people suggested various solutions in the comments. And in the second column, when I presented my solution, I explained why I did not agree with the solutions they suggested, why it was not sufficient, and then I proposed my own solution. But I’ll upload that to the system if you want and you can look at it there. I basically want to claim the following. When I speak about free choice, very often in the argument, say, between a libertarian—someone who believes in free choice—and a determinist, very often they present some straw man as the libertarian. What do I mean? For example, you probably know these arguments: obviously the world is deterministic and we have no free choice, because in fact whoever is born into a religious home becomes religious, and whoever is born into a secular home becomes secular; or whoever has this or that gene is stingy, and whoever has another gene… Because we see that the genome determines one’s actions, or upbringing, or environment, or whatever. By the way, nature or nurture, as it is called—that is, environment or my nature—this is the eternal dilemma in psychology and the social sciences: what determines my actions? Nature or nurture. In a very well-known movie, I recommend you watch it, there were three identical siblings separated at a very young age, and each was sent to grow up in a different home. Now identical siblings mean identical genetics. Okay, each was sent to grow up in a different home, and then they met later in life. By the way, I think this was really the result of an experiment that was planned from the start, if I remember correctly. I don’t know how it got through the Helsinki committee, but they followed them all along, and in the end they also met and were told they were identical siblings—triplets, actually—and they observed the behavioral differences that resulted not from the genome, because the genome was identical, but from the different upbringing environments. Each of them grew up in a different environment. And that was an indication—it greatly sharpened the question of nature versus nurture, the environment versus nature. And what were the results? What? What were the results? The results were that there were many significant differences. You can never put something quantitative or sharp on it, but there were significant differences. Meaning, it is clear that nurture has an effect, not only nature. Yes, that is basically the claim. Fine, one might think otherwise, but I just want to say that neither nature nor nurture interests me. What interests me is a third thing, which is neither nature nor nurture: choice. Because both nature and nurture are deterministic. My nature forces me to behave in this way deterministically—the genome or the structure of the brain or whatever. But if the environment also causes me to behave in a certain way, that too is equally deterministic. So the argument among determinists, nature versus nurture—I ask whether the deterministic picture is in fact correct; I don’t care whether it is nature or nurture, nature plus nurture. Fine? That is the deterministic conception. And the libertarian conception says no: nature plus nurture do not determine a person’s behavior. They’ll tell me, “Look, but here is a genome, and we see that someone with such-and-such a gene behaves this way, someone with another gene behaves another way. We have scientific facts today. How can one remain a libertarian?” There is a conceptual mistake in this question. The same with education, right? A religious home—it doesn’t matter whether you bring proofs from nature, namely the genome, or from nurture, from the home environment. Still—all those claims basically say the world is deterministic, whether through nature or nurture, and not dependent on your choices. Okay? And there is a mistake here. What is the mistake? When I look at a model of free choice, meaning someone who believes in free choice, the model that stands before my eyes I describe through what I call a model of a topographic map. Think of some topographic terrain: mountains and valleys and saddles and hills and lowlands and all such things, some topographic layout. Now if you place there a little ball or just a stream of water, the topographic layout determines the path the ball or the water will take, right? Always toward the lower place; the layout will determine their route, how they move. The ball, water, whatever—any inanimate object. Okay? What happens when you place there a person? Or even an animal, but let’s say for the sake of discussion a person. Then the person basically—suppose he has—suppose I stand at this point, and here I have a mountain and there I have a valley. If I were a little ball, obviously I would go down into the valley, right? Or a stream of water. If I am a person, I can decide to climb the mountain. Does that mean I pay no energetic price? Clearly, if I climb the mountain I gain potential energy, meaning I have to invest energy in order to do it. It is hard for me to do it. It is easier for me to go down into the valley, right? So I feel the influence of the terrain just as the ball feels it. The difference between us is not in the question whether environmental influences act on us. Environmental influences act both on the ball and on me. The difference is whether those influences determine what I will do or only influence what I will do. For the ball, those influences determine what it will do. Give me the topographic layout and I will tell you what the ball will do, right? It determines the behavior of the ball. By contrast, with a person—if you place there, say, a thousand people, and they have the choice whether to go up here or down there—I would bet that more will go down than up. I don’t know how many, but more—say seven hundred will go down and three hundred will go up. Right? So the topographic layout has an effect on human beings too, but it is an effect you take into account; it does not determine your behavior. It influences your behavior. In the end, you can decide that despite the force acting on you when you go up, that you need to invest energy, you will invest energy and you will decide to climb, something the ball cannot do. So the difference between a human being and the ball is not that the environment influences one and not the other. The environment influences both. The difference is whether that influence determines the result in a deterministic way—that is the ball—or whether there is influence, but I also weigh it, and I can decide to act against it, if I am a person. Rabbi, tell me if I’m right—the description makes sense, but I’m wondering why it’s needed at all. Because suppose I was born into a Christian home; I’ll think that practicing Christianity is a good thing, and then I can choose to practice Christianity. And if I was born into a Jewish home, I can choose Judaism as the good thing, and I can also not choose it. Right. But in the end what I think is good, which is what I can choose, that will indeed come from where I was raised, right? There is an influence. So what I think—I can choose what I think? Of course. You have judgment. But let’s leave that for a moment because I want to complete the model. If afterward you want to come back to it, we will. Okay? Now what I’m saying is that the topographic layout I spoke about is nature plus nurture. All the influences acting on me in every direction—I can describe that as some topographic map within which I move around. Okay? Now understand that metaphorically, suppose someone punched me. Okay? Now on the one hand I have an impulse to hit him back. On the other hand I have some desire not to start a war, I have some moral consideration or I am afraid, whatever—various considerations not to do it. Okay? Now these different considerations will be described by a topographic layout. What does that mean? The direction of punching him back—that is the direction of a valley; it is very easy for me. I have an impulse to hit him back, so it is easy for me to go in that direction. Fine? The direction of stopping myself, restraining myself—in that direction I have a mountain, because it will be hard for me to restrain myself, because my initial impulse is to punch him back. So it is hard for me to restrain myself. Do you understand the model? Meaning, the steps that are hard for me to take will be described by directions where there is a mountain in that direction; it is hard for me to go that way. The steps that I am naturally dragged into doing, that it is naturally called for me to do, are the steps in the direction of which there is a valley. Okay, now I summarize all the influences on a person, nature plus nurture. Okay? Basically in the end this creates a topographic layout. That is my claim. This topographic layout tries to get me to hit back, not to restrain myself—but I can decide to climb the mountain anyway, not to roll down into the valley, and indeed to stop and not hit back. Because I am not a little ball, I am a human being. So the topographic layout exists; it influences me too. It exerts on me the same forces it exerts on the ball. The difference between me and the ball is not that one has a topographic layout and I do not. We both do. I too am a physical creature. Climbing a mountain costs me energy, just as it does the ball. The difference, though, is that it costs me energy and still it may be that I climb that mountain. And the ball does not. Meaning, I claim that the determinist understands the human being to be the topographic layout itself. The person is the topographic layout. Meaning, if the topographic layout causes you to do something, that is your decision, that is what you will do. The person—the topographic layout is the person. And I claim the topographic layout is the environment within which the person acts. But the person is the one moving around on this layout, and he has to make decisions. Then this means that the topographic layout influences him, because it will be hard for him to climb and easier for him to descend, but it does not determine what he will do. Unlike the ball, where the layout determines what it will do. Okay? That is the more correct, or more complete, description of libertarian conduct, of the conception that there is free choice. Notice: if I understand it this way, then now suppose I do statistics. For people who have a certain gene responsible for religious belief, say for the sake of discussion, then suppose I take a thousand people with this gene, a thousand without this gene. I assume more people from the first group will believe than from the second group. There it will be seven hundred and here it will be five hundred. Fine? There will be more. But not all. Not that all of these will believe and all of these will be atheists. Rather there will be a tilt, there will be an influence. Why? Because the topographic layout—that is the gene, right?—influences. It influences human beings too. But it does not determine. It is not that all one thousand of these will believe and all one thousand of those will be atheists. No. If it were deterministic, then all one thousand would believe and those one thousand would be atheists. Do you see what I mean? Fine? So basically what I want to say is: when you now ask, “Look, we see there is no free choice, because in fact whoever has this gene believes and whoever doesn’t have this gene does not believe”—that is not true. First of all, as a matter of fact, the fact is not true. It is not true that everyone who has this gene believes. There is not a single mental property, not one, for which they found a genome that determines it in a deterministic way. There is none. Cowardice, stinginess, religious belief, whatever, various such things—there is no trait, no mental function of a human being, that can be ascribed in a deterministic way to genetic structure. None. All we have are influences. If you have such-and-such a genetic structure, then you have more tendency to believe or less tendency to believe, whatever. Okay? But this does not determine the matter, it only influences it. Therefore the claim that usually those with this genome believe and those do not believe does not mean the world is deterministic. This claim assumes that the libertarian thinks I operate in a vacuum. No influences act on me. I act in a vacuum. That is called free choice. “Free” means completely alone, as the song says, right? No influences act on me. And then he attacks and says: here, we see there are influences. But that is not correct. Clear-eyed libertarianism—not naive libertarianism—is a libertarianism that recognizes that there are influences on a person. Of course there are influences. It is obvious there are influences. It only claims that these are influences, but they do not determine what I will do; they only influence what I will do. Okay. There is a dispute between Maimonides and the Ra’avad in chapter 6 of the Laws of Repentance. Maimonides says there: after all, the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Abraham in the Covenant Between the Parts that they would enslave them and oppress them—“They will enslave them and afflict them four hundred years.” Okay? So Maimonides asks: then what do they want from the Egyptians? After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, forced them; He decreed in advance that this is what they would do. So Maimonides says: because every individual Egyptian had free choice. The Egyptian collective was decreed to enslave Israel, but each individual Egyptian had free choice. So the Ra’avad asks there: this is childish talk, he says, nonsense of a child. Why? Because suppose each Egyptian had free choice. Then in principle it is possible that all of them would choose not to enslave Israel. And then the collective prophecy would not be fulfilled. Fine, maybe that is a small chance, but it could happen, right? If they have free choice, then in principle all of them could decide not to enslave Israel. Or nine hundred and ninety-nine Egyptians out of a thousand decide not to enslave Israel. Each of the thousand has choice. After all, in the end the collective does have to do it, because it was decreed in advance. Therefore, he says, Maimonides’ words are childish, yes—this does not answer the question. Besides, says the Ra’avad, I don’t understand what Maimonides wants anyway. In the previous chapter, chapter 5 of the Laws of Repentance, Maimonides already said that divine foreknowledge does not dictate free choice. The Holy One, blessed be He, knows in advance, but we still have free choice. So why is Maimonides suddenly asking another question, again in the next chapter? You already solved the problem—or solved it, or at least posed it, I don’t know if he solved it. Okay? Now, that claim is not correct. Because here the Holy One, blessed be He—first of all, what Maimonides wrote in chapter 5, in my opinion, is that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know. Not that His knowledge does not contradict free choice; He simply does not know. Things dependent on choice He does not know. But beyond that, there is also a difference between a case where the Holy One, blessed be He, knows something and a case where He reveals it to Abraham at the Covenant Between the Parts. Now Abraham already knows that the Egyptians will enslave Israel. This is not only divine knowledge. A human being knows it. What will you say here—that this too does not contradict free choice? Therefore Maimonides asks the question, even though in chapter 5 he says the two things do not contradict. In chapter 6 he says yes, but here Abraham knows. Does the Egyptians’ free choice still remain? But beyond that, Maimonides is basically speaking here about the law of large numbers. The Holy One, blessed be He, says the Egyptians will enslave Israel—that is not determinism, it is libertarianism. What does that mean? Suppose the Egyptians, if there were no intervention by the Holy One, blessed be He, had free choice whether to enslave Israel or not. Suppose that in such a case they would not enslave Israel; there would be a small minority, and in the end that great enslavement would not come about. Okay? What the Holy One, blessed be He, did was change the topographic layout within which the Egyptians act. Now in the direction of enslavement there is… a steeper valley, and non-enslavement is a mountain. Right? Meaning it is more natural to enslave Israel. They still have free choice. But if you have a thousand Egyptians, or a hundred thousand Egyptians, and statistically you have, say, sixty percent toward enslaving Israel and forty percent not to—because now it is no longer fifty-fifty, the Holy One, blessed be He, tilted the scales, “I hardened his heart,” as the Torah says—then statistically it is obvious that the Egyptians will enslave Israel even though each one of them has free choice. And that is exactly this model I am speaking about here, of influence that does not determine. When you look at large numbers, then the influence will also determine. Right? That is the law of large numbers. But in principle, for each person individually, it is only an influence; he can decide not to do it. And still I can tell you in advance: if there are enough Egyptians, then the law of large numbers says they will enslave Israel. Because I placed the weights on the… Let’s say, for example, suppose I took a die, a fair die, okay? Six faces. And now I loaded it. I loaded it so that it has an eighty percent chance of landing on one face. And all the other faces, the other five faces, each has four percent. Together that makes a hundred percent, right? Four, four, five times, plus eighty percent for one face. Okay? Now I roll the die. I cannot predict it will land on one, right? But I can predict that if I roll it a million times, then about eight hundred thousand of them it will land on one. Plus or minus a little. Right? Meaning, the law of large numbers turns something statistical into something deterministic. Yes, but here you’re comparing randomness to free choice. Correct, I’m comparing randomness to free choice in the sense that I really say it works the same way. The best proof of this is the fact that in psychological research people use statistics. Now when you study human behavior, it is not like studying dice. But it turns out that free choice obeys statistics like a random thing. And when you tilt the weights, then in large numbers you will see the difference. My son—I also wrote a column about this once on my website—my son worked at Facebook. He told me, “Listen, I’m really frustrated by this.” Why? He worked there on marketing data and tracking data concerning results. So he tells me, “Look, I can determine that cottage cheese will sell in Melbourne, Australia, on Monday at eleven o’clock twenty percent more. It’s all in my hands. If I decide, I’m already telling you now—check me. In Melbourne, Australia, next Monday at eleven o’clock, the quantity of cottage cheese sold will be twenty percent higher.” Because he does some manipulation of advertising and marketing and I don’t know what online, pushes a cottage cheese ad to people, I don’t know exactly what. Now each person has totally free choice. And that is what he did not understand. I explained it to him, and then wrote the column about it afterward. He tells me, “Listen, what free choice? We are all puppets. The people at Facebook are playing with us”—which he himself, among others, was doing. Right? He says, “Basically I move people around like puppets on a board. I can determine what they do.” I told him: you are deeply mistaken. You do not determine for anyone what he does. Everyone has free choice. But when you tilt the weights in large numbers, you really will see an expression of your tilting of the weights. So twenty percent more will buy cottage cheese, but every Australian citizen there in Melbourne individually has free choice whether to buy or not buy the cottage cheese. It’s not picking but choosing. What? It seems to me this is more picking than choosing. Buying cottage cheese? Right. So what? You’re saying that this is not a choice at all, it’s just… Then it really is random. Maybe. In any case, with choice too it works this way. True, I assume that choice works like a process… By the way, what is a truly random process? Give me an example of a process that is really random. Throwing a die? Yes, throwing a die, a coin toss. There is no such thing in the world. Right, there isn’t. But we use statistics. And even in the examples where you wouldn’t ask why you are using statistics, like throwing a die, there too you can ask the same question. It’s even worse. Because in throwing a die, it is neither free choice nor random—it is completely deterministic, it’s Newton’s laws. Give me the initial velocity, the weight of the die, its shape, the air density, and I will tell you which face it will land on. Completely deterministic. And still we use statistics, because there is sensitivity to initial conditions, chaos, things like that, and therefore we use statistics. Meaning, it turns out that statistics is a tool that describes not only random events—in fact it never describes random events. It only describes events that are not random. The only random events we know, and even that is a matter of interpretation, are in quantum theory. And there it is not statistics in the ordinary sense. They use statistics there, but it is pathological statistics, something entirely different. What we ordinarily know as statistics, and what causes so much difficulty in quantum theory, is that this is not the ordinary statistics we know from other fields. Statistics is a tool that serves us precisely in contexts that are not random. People simply are not aware of that. In any case, for our purposes, what I basically want to say is that the libertarian picture is one in which the environment influences me but does not determine what I will do. It tilts the scales. So if there were many people in situations where for all of them the scales are tilted, then one can predict what percentage of them will behave in what way. But an individual person has completely free choice. By the way, the law of large numbers also says that these numbers, this law, will hold only if each individual really has genuine free choice. If I toss a coin and know that in a large number of tosses half will land heads and half tails—okay?—that is only if the tosses are independent and each toss is truly balanced with equal chances of heads and tails. If the tosses are dependent, if there are additional influences, if it is not completely random, then the law of large numbers will not give me fifty-fifty here. This is the great absurdity. Meaning, the law of large numbers works precisely when I have no control over the situation. Precisely when I have no control over the situation, I can predict what will come out. If I do have control over the situation, I will not be able to predict what will come out. I think Markov, right? Markov, who did Markov chains, actually proved that this is not true. That even with dependent events the law of large numbers… No, absolutely not. Markov only defined Markov processes, these are memoryless processes; only the last step matters, you look only at the last step. And they have certain statistical properties, everything is fine. But the law of large numbers does not hold when there is dependence. Never. So what I basically want to say is that the picture—a sober picture of libertarianism—is not a picture with no influences. Of course there are influences. Okay? Rather, I can veto the influences. There are influences, but I can decide not to go with them—something a little ball cannot do. Now I am basically saying, going back to what we discussed last time about the animal soul and the divine soul: if I act in the mode of the animal soul, then I am a little ball. Then the environment and its influences will take me wherever they take me. I turn off the switch of choice, and from then on I become a little ball. But if I choose, if I am a person of the divine soul, then the environment will influence me but will not determine what I do. Okay? So now what I do depends on two things. It depends on whether I turn on the switch of choice, and then whether I also make use of my choice. I decide. Once I am in the mode of a chooser, now I also decide what I do. If I am not in the mode of a chooser, then I also do not decide. The circumstances take me. Okay? So when I—yes, you can call it for example that I am riding a chariot with horses. Right? I can let the horses take me, and then they will take me wherever they decide. And I can hold the reins. The horses will still struggle with me and influence what I do, but I do not release the reins. The decision whether to be a chooser, a divine soul, or an animal soul—not to be a chooser—is the decision whether to hold the reins or let the horses take me. The horses are the urges, the interests, the topographic layout around me. Okay? Now what I want to argue—and here I come to your formulation from earlier—the only solution I can think of in the context of weakness of will. After all, what is the problem in weakness of will? How is it possible that I do things which, from my point of view, are not right to do? Not right in terms of all the considerations, not just morally wrong, but not right on the basis of all the considerations. How can that be? Right—that was the question, weakness of will. The answer: I really do not do things that I do not think are right to do. What I do is turn off the switch of choice. Once I am no longer choosing, my urges then take me to do these things. So there is no frontal clash between what I want and what I do. I do not decide to do things I do not want. No—this cannot happen. But very often I decide not to decide. And that can lead me to do things I do not want. Think of a person who drinks alcohol and afterwards goes to drive. He is not blamed for what happened when he drove, right? What is he blamed for? He is blamed for the drinking. After he drank he had no control; he is not guilty of anything then. But he bears responsibility, because he put himself into a state in which he had no control, and now what happened to him happened under coercion. The same here. When a person sins, he never chooses to do something he does not want. Never. He does not choose to do something he thinks is not right. There is no such thing. We are dealing with a person who does not choose. Only then do you sin. That is what I said before: only if you do not choose do you sin; if you choose, you do not sin. Except that there can be a situation where you choose not to choose. You decide not to choose. And now you can end up doing all sorts of things—and good things too, by the way. If my urges take me to do good things, then I do good things. But I am delivered into the hands of my urges. Whatever they do, wherever they take me, that is what I will do. In such a state, a situation can arise in which I do something while at the same time I think it is not right to do it. Why? Because there is no frontal clash between what I decided to do and what I think. I did not decide to do it. The horses took me to do it. Why am I guilty, you ask, if I was coerced? That is what I asked you at the beginning. After all, I am coerced. No, I am not coerced. Because I let go of the reins. I decided to act in the mode of the animal soul and not the divine soul. I gave the horses control. So I bear responsibility for everything that happened afterward, even though it happened to me under coercion. And I am not responsible in the sense that I never did something against what I think is right. I did not choose to do something I think is not right. Now of course, why did I say I am not entirely satisfied with this solution? Because of course one can ask about the choice not to choose. Why did you choose that? Do you think it is right to choose that? Then why did you decide not to be a chooser, not to choose, to let go of the reins? And there the same question of weakness of will returns. So wait—then basically, if that is what you thought, then that is what you did. What are you trying to say? That I was weak, weak-willed, and therefore I stopped choosing? We have only moved one step back, but it is the same problem. After all, in the end, if I am responsible, it is because I made a decision. And if about decisions I ask, wait, how can that be with weakness of will—then the decision whether to choose or not to choose will be exposed to that attack. Not the decision whether to murder or whether to eat whipped-cream cake. Okay? But rather the decision whether to be a chooser. So there I will again ask: wait, I decided not to choose, and for that you hold me accountable. Then one will tell me: wait, but I had weak will, and therefore I decided not to choose. Okay? So what is weak will? What, did you have an urge not to choose? Did it force you not to choose? Then you are coerced. It didn’t force you? Then why did you surrender to it? Because you wanted not to choose. You chose not to choose. So in the end we are back to the same problem. But I say it is not the same problem. I’ll explain why I think this nevertheless solves the paradox. Because when I decide not to choose, what I see before my eyes is not the murder that will result from it. On the contrary, the whole idea is that I end up murdering without having chosen to murder. But I am still responsible. If I did not choose, then what do they want from me? No. I did not choose to murder, but I am responsible for having murdered. Why? Because I chose not to choose. Now when I chose not to choose—yes, I wanted not to choose. But not that I wanted to murder. I wanted not to choose. And for that I will be held accountable. In the end, it brought me to murder when I had not chosen. That, I did not want. But since I chose not to choose and the horses took me to murder, then I bear responsibility for what happened. Like the drunk driver. Okay? Therefore I claim that this does solve the problem. Even though one could ask the same question about the decision whether to choose. Because the decision whether to choose does not stand in opposition to the value concerning murder. When I decide, I am not deciding to murder. I am deciding not to choose. Yes, sometimes a person just has no strength and says: now I’m just going with the horses. I don’t want to choose. Right. That decision is not weakness of will. It is a decision—a decision not to choose. Fine? But that decision is not a decision to murder. Therefore I am willing to accept that a person makes such decisions. A person does make such decisions. A person does not make a decision to murder when he understands that it is not right to murder. That does not happen. But a person can make a decision not to choose, which will bring him to murder even though he thinks murder is forbidden, that it is not right to murder. That can happen. So in the bottom line, there really is no weak will. Meaning, in the end it is not that I had a will not to murder but it was weak. No. I did not want to murder at all. What was weak in me was the resolve to hold the reins. That is what was weak in me, not my desire not to murder. Okay? Therefore the clash is not a frontal clash against the value I believe in, that murder is forbidden, or that one should not eat whipped-cream cake. I ate the whipped-cream cake not because I decided to, but because I turned off the switch of control. Now I ate because my urges took me there. I delivered myself into the hands of my urges. Okay? So it is not that I chose to do something I think is not right to do. That does not happen. Donald Davidson is right. But still there can be a situation in which on the one hand I did not choose to do it, and on the other hand I am still responsible for what happened—which is the paradox here. If I did not choose, then I am not responsible. If I am responsible, then apparently I chose it. Otherwise why am I responsible? No, no—I chose not to choose. And that is what places the responsibility on me. But I did not choose to murder. I did not choose murder. It happened. But I am responsible for the fact that it happened because I let go of the reins. Okay? I think that this—that is the solution. Now this basically represents—returning to the struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul from last time—this struggle is basically the question whether to let go of the reins. It is not that a person of the animal soul goes with the urges and a person of the divine soul goes with the will, with his higher parts. You are a person with two souls within you, both an animal soul and a divine soul. You decide which of them will manage you. And that decision is the decision whether to be a chooser. That is the only decision we have, whether to be a chooser, like Elijah in chapter 1. If I decide to be a chooser, then I am a person of the divine soul, and then I will do what I want, okay? If I decide not to choose, then I am a person of the animal soul. Now I’ll say more than that: even if I am a person of the divine soul in this abstract sense, meaning that I am a choosing person, still I may sin. I may sin because I chose the interest over the value. I chose to steal in order to make money, even though it is not moral, but I chose it—that is not weak will. Here I am held accountable because I chose it, not because my will was weak. Therefore weakness of will does not exist—really, it does not. But that does not mean a person has no responsibility for his actions. I have responsibility for my actions because I chose interest over value. Okay? So this is the more detailed description of the struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul. Meaning, the switch that determines whether the animal soul will lead me or the divine soul will lead me is the switch of choice, the reins—whether I hold the reins or drop them and let the horses run. That is basically the meaning of the struggle, and that is basically the essence of the moral act. The essence of the moral act, fundamentally, is to be a chooser. And that is basically the foundation of every moral evaluation of an action. Okay. I think I’ll stop here. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next time I’ll get to your comment.