Conceptual Analysis – Lecture 6

Table of Contents

• Conceptual analysis, taxonomy, and matter and form
• Conventionalism versus essentialism and their implications
• Dictionary, conventions, and observing ideas
• Ownership, one whose bill of emancipation is being withheld, and the Pnei Yehoshua
• Monetary ownership and prohibition-based ownership, and expanding the concept of acquisition
• Benefit prohibitions, monetary damages, and the cessation of one’s animal
• Sukkah, the holiness of the wood of the sukkah, and the Rashba
• Conversion, acceptance of commandments, and essence versus procedure
• The limits of definition and language: the domino example and the chessboard

Summary

General Overview

The text lays out a philosophical foundation for conceptual analysis through taxonomy and a list of characteristics, and presents two competing views of concepts: conventionalism, which sees a concept as an arbitrary agreement about a collection of properties, versus essentialism, which argues that a concept is an abstract entity with an essence, and the characteristics merely describe it. From this distinction, the text draws implications for the meaning of conceptual debate and for the possibility of changing a concept’s definition. It gives halakhic and conceptual examples meant to show that concepts like ownership and sukkah are not exhausted by their consequences or by dictionary definitions, but point to a relation or essence that cannot be fully grasped except through characteristics.

Conceptual Analysis, Taxonomy, and Matter and Form

The text defines conceptual analysis as placing a concept alongside parallel concepts, concepts beneath it, and concepts above it, through distinguishing characteristics that describe it. The text distinguishes between the concept itself and its characteristics, in a way similar to philosophical distinctions like substance and accident or matter and form. The text argues that defining a concept as merely a bundle of properties leads to the absurdity that one could create a concept out of any arbitrary combination of traits. Therefore, some connection is needed that binds the traits into a meaningful whole, as in the example of a “democratic state” versus the accidental combination of “a state located on the seashore” and “a parliament with more than 450 people.”

Conventionalism versus Essentialism and Their Implications

The text calls the view that identifies a concept with an agreed definition and a collection of characteristics “conventionalism,” and presents it as attaching a name to a set of properties by the convention of a community of speakers. The text calls the view that identifies a concept with an essence that precedes the definition “essentialism,” and describes the concept as an idea with properties that do not create the concept but rather describe it. The text argues that according to conventionalism there is no real meaning to a debate about concepts, only a need to synchronize the dictionary, whereas according to essentialism there is room for debate, because people are arguing about the characteristics of the concept that they “observe” with the mind’s eye. The text adds that according to conventionalism, changing a definition creates a different concept and therefore is not a change in the same concept, whereas according to essentialism a concept can change and still remain the same concept. The discussion about changing the definition of “democracy” illustrates the essentialist assumption behind the debate over changing the definition.

Dictionary, Conventions, and Observing Ideas

The text argues that the tendency to see concepts as dictionary entries stems from the arbitrary character of the word in language, like the possibility of calling a “table” by another name if a community agreed to do so. The text rejects the inference that concepts themselves are therefore conventions, and argues that the dictionary does not constitute meaning but rather describes conceptualizations, that is, existing understandings that the community has already grasped and characterized. The text describes understanding the characteristics of an essentialist concept as a process of observing, with the mind’s eye, an idea that in some sense exists outside the individual mind, in a way reminiscent of the Platonic world of ideas.

Ownership, One Whose Bill of Emancipation Is Being Withheld, and the Pnei Yehoshua

The text presents the concept of ownership as a test case for the question whether a concept is shorthand for a collection of legal consequences or an entity with an essence, and argues in essentialist fashion that ownership exists even without human awareness, and the consequences are its offshoots. The text brings a discussion from the Talmudic text in Gittin 42b about one who injures a slave whose bill of emancipation is being withheld, and pays his master, and presents the Pnei Yehoshua’s difficulty with the Tosafot comparison between the thirty-shekel payment for a slave, which is a fine, and injury compensation, which is restitution. The text proposes an understanding in Pnei Yehoshua according to which even after the slave is declared ownerless, ownership remains in the sense of a bond, even though the master has relinquished rights of use and sale. Therefore injury payments are given to the owner of the property even if he is not the one actually harmed. The text uses this pathological case to argue that ownership can appear without its usual consequences, and therefore the concept of “ownership” is not identical with the collection of usage rights.

Monetary Ownership and Prohibition-Based Ownership, and Expanding the Concept of Acquisition

The text cites the language of the later authorities (Acharonim) about “monetary ownership” and “prohibition-based ownership,” and formulates the position that these are not two separate tracks but one ownership bond that has two types of consequences in the case of a slave. The text argues that declaring the slave ownerless cancels the monetary consequences and leaves the prohibition-related consequences, while the bond itself remains the same bond. The text further expands that the concept of “acquisition” in Jewish law is not limited to ownership, but also includes acts of acquisition used for “firm intention” and “strengthening the matter” even where no object is being acquired, but rather an obligation is created and a contractual bond.

Benefit Prohibitions, Monetary Damages, and the Cessation of One’s Animal

The text rejects proof from benefit prohibitions that ownership can exist without rights, because in cases of benefit prohibition the legal rights still exist and only their exercise is forbidden; therefore, one who takes the item would still be a thief. The text cites the Rogatchover in Bava Kamma (collected notes on page 17) discussing liability for damages when a person’s property causes harm, and argues that the liability can stem from the very fact that the thing is “his,” and not only from negligence in guarding it, so that ownership creates duties as well as rights. The text brings the law of “the cessation of one’s animal” as a Torah-level prohibition when one’s animal performs labor on the Sabbath even without one driving it, and interprets this as a consequence of a metaphysical bond in which one’s property is a “periphery” of the person. Thus the monetary and prohibition-related consequences are results of the bond and not its essence.

Sukkah, the Holiness of the Wood of the Sukkah, and the Rashba

The text brings the difficulties raised by the Oneg Yom Tov and others regarding women sitting in a sukkah and sitting in a sukkah while it is raining, in the context of the prohibition against using the wood of the sukkah for a non-commandment purpose, and presents the answer that when there is no actual fulfillment of a commandment, the structure is not a “sukkah” but a “pergola.” The text brings the Talmudic text in Beitzah 30, which forbids making a condition regarding the holiness of the wood of the sukkah on the basis of the verbal analogy between “festival for the Lord” and “sukkah for the Lord,” and presents the Rashba’s question in light of the dispute between Abaye and Bar Padda in Nedarim 29 about making a condition in intrinsic holiness. The text suggests that according to the Rashba there is no lapse of holiness here, but rather the disappearance of the conceptual object “sukkah” after eight days, so that an identical structure remains in its characteristics, but it is a different object that is not a sukkah. The text concludes that sukkah is not identified with a set of technical properties of walls and covering alone, but with an object defined by being designated for the fulfillment of a commandment at a particular time, and the characteristics are the way we speak about it.

Conversion, Acceptance of Commandments, and Essence versus Procedure

The text presents a contemporary discussion of the question whether “acceptance of commandments” is an essential condition for conversion beyond circumcision and immersion, and cites the position of Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar based on the fact that the requirement does not appear in the Shulchan Arukh. The text argues that acceptance of commandments is not an additional stage in the procedure but the very essence of conversion itself, and therefore it need not appear as a separate condition in the list of actions, just as “firm intention” is not formulated in the Shulchan Arukh as an additional condition for acquisition, because it is the very definition of what it means “to acquire.” The text argues that the laws address someone who comes with the aim of acquiring or converting, and someone who lacks that intention does not enter the conceptual framework of the act from the outset.

The Limits of Definition and Language: the Domino Example and the Chessboard

The text brings a puzzle about covering an 8×8 board with dominoes after removing two squares from the diagonal, and presents a proof using black-and-white coloring that shows the number of squares of each color does not fit the fact that every domino covers one black and one white square. The text argues that the coloring is not part of the problem in the world itself, but a cognitive tool that makes it possible to expose an existing property of the division into two groups, and that without it, it is difficult to formulate the property directly. The text concludes that all speech and definition are always done in terms of properties and descriptions drawn from the cognitive world, and therefore it is impossible to define “the thing itself,” only to point to its characteristics and consequences, exactly as was said regarding the definition of ownership or the metaphysical bond behind it.

Last time I started—in other words, after we had already seen a few examples of conceptual analyses—so last time I began dealing with the theoretical foundation of the matter, or the philosophical, logical, philosophical, epistemic foundation of the more general issue, not necessarily in the halakhic context. What is conceptual analysis in general? So I started with taxonomy, right? With placing the concept opposite those that are next to it on the same level, opposite those below it, and opposite those above it. That’s basically what we usually try to do when we do conceptual analysis, and we do that by distinguishing which characteristics describe this concept. And then I say that if some of these characteristics are shared with others, then they are parallel to it; if it contains others, then it is above them; if it is contained within others, then it is below them. In other words, the list of characteristics is basically the fundamental taxonomic tool that we use in every context, and of course also with regard to concepts. I spoke about the matter and form of a concept. I said that there is a concept—the concept in itself—just as with objects, where there is the object and there are the properties that describe it. So with a concept too, I said that there is the concept itself, the essence of the concept, and its characteristics, right? Substance and accident, or matter and form—there are several terms for this in Greek philosophy, which is usually where this is taken from. And I said that if we see the concept—I spoke about objects, but I’m shortening things here just for the summary—regarding a concept, if we define the concept as the collection of its characteristics, then we don’t see that there is anything in it beyond the collection; we just gather a collection of characteristics and attach some word to that collection, and that’s basically how we baptize it, right? That’s how, citing Kripke, I put it—we baptize the concept. If we treated things this way, all kinds of problems or absurdities would arise, like I described from that Borges story, where in principle you can take any collection of properties and produce a concept from it, and each of us, I think, feels or understands that it’s not reasonable to do that with just any arbitrary collection of properties. In other words, the properties somehow have to cluster together and produce some sort of whole. There has to be some connection between these properties for us to gather them and produce a concept from them. So I gave the example of a democratic state, for instance. It has a collection of properties: separation of powers, elections, civil rights, whatever, all kinds of things like that. Why do we gather specifically this set of characteristics and not add “a state located on a seashore and also with a parliament of more than 450 members”? Maybe let’s define a concept for that too. It’s not reasonable. Why isn’t it reasonable? Because it sounds like a combination of two characteristics that creates no whole. In other words, there is no point in combining them. By contrast, when I combine the concepts that make up a democratic state, we have some sense that this whole creates some totality that has meaning. In other words, this collection of things is not just a random collection of things unrelated to one another; rather, they are connected to one another and together create a whole that is worth attaching a name to. And that, basically, is called a concept, right? As distinct from the grotesqueries Borges brought there. And I said that basically these two approaches to concepts—one is called conventionalism and the other I call essentialism. In other words, conventionalism is treating a concept as an arbitrary definition, a convention, right? Something agreed upon. A community of speakers decides on some convention and defines a concept, and that is the meaning of the concept. This is the view that basically sees the concept as a collection of characteristics. You simply choose a collection of characteristics, agree among yourselves that this collection is called by a certain name, and that is what creates the concept. That is the conventionalist view. The essentialist view, right, the view of essence, basically says that a concept has an essence. What I described before. In other words, the collection of characteristics cannot be just any collection; rather, it is a collection that in the end clusters together or joins into an overall entity that draws on all the components, but there is something essential in their combination. And the claim is that this is basically a concept whose characteristics are its characteristics, just as we saw with objects: there is an object, and the descriptions or characteristics are its characteristics. Just as the object is not only the collection of descriptions—the object is that which is described by these descriptions—the same thing I am saying about the concept. Right, the concept is basically an abstract entity, an idea if you will, which has a collection of properties, and not that the collection of properties is itself the concept. Okay, I’m not sure all concepts are like this, but at least there are, I think there are, such concepts. And I said that basically the way to arrive at an understanding of what there is in this concept—which is basically what we do in conceptual analysis—is a kind of observation. There is some idea that in a certain sense exists in a world outside us, not only in our head or not only some convention or agreement we decided on, but there is such a thing, as in the Platonic view, right, of Plato’s world of ideas. There, those ideas exist in some sense and they precede me. I grasp them; I do not create them. Okay. And the way to understand what the characteristics of such a concept are, to perhaps produce a definition if you like, is basically through observation. I observe this concept with the mind’s eye or with some part of the intellect that is a cognizing part and not a thinking part. I simply observe ideas, and through that I can characterize them, define them, and maybe also argue about them. And I brought up—and with this I’ll finish the summary—I brought two implications of this debate between conventionalism and essentialism. One implication concerns the question of whether it is meaningful to argue about a concept. According to the conventionalist, there is no meaning to such an argument. We are simply using the same word in two different senses, so it is just pointless. Let’s decide that you will use the word X, I will use the word Y, and that’s it, and everything will be fine. We just need to synchronize our dictionaries. There is no real disagreement here. What are we arguing about? We are arguing about what to agree to, so let’s just agree. The dictionary—the word—is an arbitrary thing. Let’s choose a word for your definition, choose a word for my collection of characteristics, and everything is fine; then we’ll know what we mean every time we use these concepts. That is the conventionalist view. By contrast, in the essentialist view there is definitely room for arguing about concepts. Because we are basically asking—just as we can argue about the characteristics of objects—we are arguing about what the characteristics are of the concept we are observing. I observe it and discover such-and-such characteristics; you observe it and for some reason you see other characteristics. So we have some disagreement about the characteristics of this concept, and maybe after the argument we will also manage to convince one another and agree, or maybe not agree, but the argument has meaning only within an essentialist framework. Within a conventionalist framework, there is nothing to do—there is no point in arguing about concepts. That’s one implication. The second implication concerns changing the definition of a concept. In the conventionalist view—right, I mentioned Putnam—in the conventionalist view, you cannot change the definition of a concept, because the concept just is its definition. If you change the definition of a concept, you are simply talking about a different concept, so why use the same word? The disagreement and the change are basically exactly the same idea. So within a conventionalist mental framework there is no such thing as changing the definition of a concept. By contrast, in an essentialist framework there is definitely room for change, just as a child can grow or a table can change, or I don’t know, other things like that. So a concept too—this idea that exists there—may take on a new form over time, or in another place, or under different circumstances, and so it changes. And then there can be a change in the definition of the concept, and it is still the same concept. It is defined as the same concept even though the characteristics are different, because the concept is not the collection of characteristics. The concept is that same thing that the characteristics are trying to describe. And sometimes the concept undergoes change—for example, democracy. So we can argue that maybe we ought to change the rules of democracy. Then the conventionalist will come and say: what do you mean, change the rules of democracy? You are simply proposing a different system of government, so let’s invent another name for it. Why are you insisting on using the term democracy? Let’s use the term “popocracy.” Fine—that’s all. Why all this fuss about changing definitions and so on? The definition stays in its place, duly honored; now let’s offer a new definition. A different definition, and we’ll change our regime to popocracy. Okay? What is there to argue about—what democracy is, or whether under the new circumstances it is proper to change the rules of democracy? If we are conducting a discussion about changing the definition, that means we understand that the new definition defines the same thing that was previously defined differently. And therefore I claim that the definition of democracy should be changed, and not that we should baptize another concept in its place or alongside it. Rather, I claim that the concept of democracy itself has undergone a change. Now it needs to be different. Okay? And that basically hides behind it some essentialist assumption, an assumption that there is such a concept we are talking about, and not that the concept is only the collection of characteristics. Because then clearly it would make no sense to change the definition of a concept. Now I want to illustrate some of these ideas I brought before. I’ll start perhaps with the matter and form of concepts, right—the characteristics of the concept and the concept itself. Because on the face of it, with regard to objects, it seems to me fairly easy to be convinced that this is true, that an object is not the collection of its characteristics. This view of Leibniz—I brought it in the name of Leibniz—this view is strange. It is implausible. And I gave all kinds of examples and arguments for it, and there it seems pretty clear to me. With concepts it is much less trivial. Because a concept really—people, in the ordinary way they think, will tell you that a concept is simply a definition that we put in the dictionary. We define a word in the dictionary, put in the characteristics, the dictionary definition of that word; if we all agree, it enters the language, so we have created a concept. Why assume there is some thing called “the concept” that exists, and the characteristics merely characterize it? That when we define a concept, it is basically the result of observing the concept, not just deciding on this collection of characteristics and giving it a name? In the world of concepts, unlike the world of objects, it is harder to accept the essentialist view. There it is more natural to be a conventionalist, to think that this is basically a matter of agreement. Like in language generally. When we define a word in a language, it seems to me that very few people think it is anything more than a definition, more than an agreement, more than a convention. The fact that we decided to call this thing a table—we could just as well have called it “yakum purkan.” If we had all agreed that it is called “yakum purkan” and that is what was written in the dictionary, then that’s what it would be called. The fact that they decided to call it “table,” or in English they call it “table,” or whatever in another language, is an arbitrary decision; you can choose any word you want. And from here it is very easy to jump to the conclusion that concepts are nothing but entries in the dictionary, right? A dictionary created by the agreement of the community of speakers. I want to argue here that this is not true. The dictionary does not describe conventions. The dictionary describes conceptualizations. In other words, once the community understood the concept of a democratic state and characterized it, now it enters the dictionary. And now the dictionary describes what we all understand. The dictionary does not determine the meaning of the concept democracy; the dictionary describes our insights about what democracy is. All right? The dictionary is not a constituting definition; it is a directing definition, right—a definition that tries to capture something that exists, not to constitute it, not to produce it out of the definition. So why is that true? Why say such a thing? I want to bring a few examples so that things become sharper. I’ll start perhaps with the concept of ownership. A halakhic example. When you ask someone what ownership means—I have ownership of this chair. What does that mean? So if I ask people, I assume the answers I’ll get are: that it belongs to you means that you can use it; that someone else cannot use it without your permission; that you can betroth a woman with it if you like; there are all kinds of implications; you can consecrate it; only things that are mine, right? So all of these are implications of the fact that this object is mine. The question is whether that is all. That is the question: whether to say that this object is mine is simply shorthand for that collection of characteristics, namely that I can use it, that others cannot use it, or rent it out, or consecrate it, or betroth a woman with it, or whatever. This collection of legal implications, this collection of characteristics—we call that ownership or acquisition. That is what the conventionalists will say. I, as an essentialist, claim: no. The concept of ownership is a concept that has existence—even if no human being were aware of it and we did not understand it and had never figured it out, it would still be something that exists. And when it enters our world of concepts, it enters through the fact that we simply noticed the existence of this thing, not that we created the existence of this thing. I claim that the concept of ownership is not constituted by social agreement. Social agreement discovers that it exists; it already existed from time immemorial. And therefore my claim is that with the concept of ownership it is not correct to identify it with the collection of characteristics or legal implications of the existence of ownership; rather, there is such a thing as ownership, and those are its characteristics or implications. I’ll bring a halakhic example, as I said before. Let’s say the Talmud in Gittin discusses someone who injures a slave who is awaiting a bill of manumission. What are we talking about? A Canaanite slave. A Canaanite slave is a non-Jew who is owned by me, undergoes a certain process of conversion, is obligated in commandments like a woman, and is owned by me. All right? Now there is a situation where I declare him ownerless. I declared him ownerless—he belonged to me, he was my property, and I declared him ownerless. When I declare him ownerless, he still does not become a free man. In order to become a free man he needs to receive from me a bill of manumission. It is not enough that I renounce monetary ownership over him; I also have to change his status in terms of prohibition and turn him from a slave into a free Jew. Because when a Canaanite slave is freed, he becomes a Jew; he does not revert to being a non-Jew—he becomes a Jew. So basically what is happening here is that I can declare him ownerless, and then my monetary rights in the slave lapse, but he is still called a slave until he receives from me a bill of manumission, and then he becomes a free Jew. By the way, it is forbidden to do this, right? “They shall be your labor forever”—freeing a slave is the nullification of a positive commandment, except in cases where he was injured in one of the twenty-four extremities or when you need him for a quorum; there are examples in the Talmud where it is permitted. In any case, that is the halakhic definition. Okay. What is his status in the meantime? That is what is called awaiting a bill of manumission. He does not belong to me on the monetary level, but he still has a status in terms of prohibition—awaiting a bill of manumission. In other words, with regard to lineage and status he is still considered a slave, but in terms of ownership he is no longer my property. And isn’t he still obligated in commandments? He should still be obligated in commandments like a woman? Yes. Okay. It could be that I… no, that is something else. Okay. Now the question is what happens when there is someone awaiting a bill of manumission—I declared him ownerless but have not yet given him a bill of manumission—and then somebody injures him. Someone comes and injures him, cuts off his hand. So the Talmud says that the money goes to his master. In other words, the payment you have to make—just as if you injure someone you have to pay him compensation—in the case where you injured a slave awaiting a bill of manumission, the payment goes to his master. And that’s ownerless? What? But it’s ownerless—how does it go to his master? Tosafot asks this, and the Talmud says even more than that: the Talmud says that just as one who kills him, or an ox that kills him, pays the thirty shekels of a slave—they pay thirty silver pieces—so too, what difference is there between killing him entirely and killing him partially? In other words, if you kill him you pay the thirty shekels of a slave to his master—regarding one awaiting a bill of manumission this is a known law—so one who injures him should also pay his master. Because what difference does it make whether you killed him or only injured him? The injury is half a killing—you killed only his hand, not all of him. So the Talmud says, what difference is there between killing him entirely and killing him partially? So Tosafot asks there… wait, no, sorry—that was Tosafot’s question, and that is what Tosafot says. Tosafot says: why does the money go to his master? Because also with one who kills him, he pays the thirty shekels of a slave to his master, so what difference… what difference whether all of him or part of him? The Pnei Yehoshua asks about this—in Gittin 42b—the Pnei Yehoshua asks: what is the similarity? When a slave is killed, one pays the thirty shekels of a slave—that is a fine. How do I know it is a fine? Because it is a fixed amount. Anything that is a fixed amount is a fine. It is not according to the value of the slave, his age, his years of service, but a fixed amount for every killing of a slave. So if it is a fixed amount, it is a fine. A fine is of course a punitive payment, as distinct from compensation, which is monetary compensation. If you caused damage or took a loan, then you return the money—that is not a punishment; you have to restore what you did, or compensate the person for what you did to him, or repay a loan. Okay? So a fine is a punitive payment. Now the Pnei Yehoshua asks: if so, why does Tosafot compare the payment of the thirty shekels of a slave to payment for bodily injury? The thirty shekels of a slave is a fine, so the payment made by the one who killed the slave is meant to punish the killer, the murderer. It is not to compensate the slave or whoever suffered the damage here, but to punish me. True, usually the money goes to the one who was harmed, but in essence it is to punish me; the only question is, to whom do we give the money? So here it is given to the one who was harmed. But in principle it makes a lot of sense to say that even if this slave died—and after all he belongs to no one, he is awaiting a bill of manumission—there is no one to pay. Right, but I still want to punish you, and the punishment in this case is a payment, so pay it to the slave’s master. Even though really he lost nothing, because the slave did not belong to him. The slave was already declared ownerless, awaiting a bill of manumission. So it is not that the owner of the slave lost something; he lost nothing. But since I want to obligate the damager—or the murderer, sorry—to pay money, because a punitive payment has to be sent somewhere, so give it to the slave’s master. The Pnei Yehoshua says: all that applies to a fine. Quiet, quiet, Shlomo. No, no, it’s on my end, it’s on my end—our dog is barking outside. Wait, I’ll close the door so it’ll be quiet. Every now and then I consider turning him into one awaiting a bill of manumission. But you could also set a fine that goes up and down according to—after all, the whole slave is a thirty-shekel fine, a hand is a ten-shekel fine. The Torah did not establish that. The Torah did not establish that. With one who injures, he has to pay money—compensation. Okay, and now the question is, says the Pnei Yehoshua, that when you pay injury damages, this is compensation, not punitive payment. But compensation you give to the one who lost, the one who was harmed. So why on earth should that compensation be paid to the slave’s master? The slave is ownerless; he no longer belongs to his master. A slave with a hand or without a hand has no consequence for the master, because he cannot work him, he cannot use him, this slave does not belong to him. So what difference does it make to the master whether this slave has a hand or doesn’t have a hand? And it also makes no difference to the master whether he is alive or dead, if he already declared him ownerless. So the Rabbi said there is some kind of solution as to whom to give it—there is no one to give it to, so you give it to the owner. That all applies to a fine—that is exactly the difference. If you are talking about a fine, then a fine is a punitive payment. My goal is basically that the murderer pays. So I have a problem of whom to pay—give it to the master. True, he lost nothing, but I need to send the money somewhere, so give it to the master. But compensation—the essence of the payment is not to punish the injurer but to compensate the harmed party. And if so, why in the world give this money to the slave’s master? He was not harmed here. Here there is someone to pay, in fact—pay the slave himself; he did not die. When the slave dies there is no one to pay, but when the slave is alive, pay the slave himself; he is the one who was harmed. So why do you give it to the master? So the Pnei Yehoshua answers something there that is not entirely clear. If I understand him correctly, he means what I am about to say. I once had an interesting discussion about this with my shiur teacher in yeshiva, in Bnei Brak. I understood the Pnei Yehoshua the way I’m about to explain to you, and he did not accept it. So we had an interesting argument about it. In any case, the Pnei Yehoshua makes the following claim: even after the master completely declares the slave ownerless, the slave is still the master’s property. What the master did was simply waive all the rights that ownership grants him. He cannot use the slave, he cannot sell him, he cannot do anything with him—but the slave belongs to him. First novelty. Second novelty: when you injure the slave, the payment you make, even though it is compensation, you give the compensation not to the one who lost, but to the owner of the property. Usually that is the same person—if you are the owner of the property, then you are also the one who lost if I damaged your property. But here we have a pathological case. The owner of the property is the master, but the one who actually lost—the owner lost nothing, because he is an owner in some abstract sense, but he has no rights in the slave. He cannot work him, cannot do anything with him. The one who really lost is the slave, who now has no hand. The Pnei Yehoshua’s second novelty is that the payment here is indeed compensation, but you give the compensation not to the one who was harmed but to the owner of the damaged property. And if in a given case the owner of the property is not the same as the one who was harmed, you still give it to the owner and not to the party who was harmed. That is the Pnei Yehoshua’s novelty. Yes, what was the question? And if this slave caused damage? After all, you declared him ownerless, so in some sense he is also still your property—would you then also have to pay for the damages? A slave—even if he belongs to me fully and he causes damage—I am exempt. “A slave and a minor and a woman—their injury is troublesome,” the Talmud says at the beginning of Bava Kamma. A slave, even if he is fully mine, not awaiting a bill of manumission—if he causes damage, I am exempt. One of the reasons is that he is sentient; he could go around damaging the whole world and strip me of my assets. In any case, let me get back to it. The Pnei Yehoshua says—if I understand him correctly, and I think that is what he says—he basically wants to claim that the status of the slave while awaiting a bill of manumission is that I have ownership over him even though this gives me no legal or monetary right whatsoever. Now this is a very interesting point, because it shows us exactly that the concept of ownership has something in it beyond the collection of characteristics or implications. Because here it appears without all its implications. In other words, I am considered his owner even though none of the usual implications of ownership applies. I cannot use him, I cannot sell him, I cannot do anything with him. So in what sense am I his owner? I am his owner only in the sense that there is a relation of ownership between us. The concept of ownership exists here without any of its usual implications. And I think this is a nice indication that the concept of ownership or acquisition is a concept that is not the sum of its legal characteristics, but can appear even without those characteristics. Usually, when I own something, that also gives me all kinds of rights; it forbids others to use it; there are many implications. But these are implications of ownership—they are not ownership itself. And the implication in our case is that the concept of ownership can appear even if none of its implications exists. Now the question is whether we can take such a case, which is a bit extreme, and project it onto the general rule. What do I mean? Because what the Rabbi is describing here is that monetarily the person really did declare him ownerless—but because of what? Because of the prohibitive status there remains some tiny line that still connects him somehow to the slave, and on that basis the Talmud enters in and the Pnei Yehoshua asks his question. The question is whether I can derive from this case something for the whole rule—that’s the question. First of all, regarding your definition, that is part of the dispute I described before with my rabbi. I would define it differently, following what he suggested. In later authorities they call this monetary acquisition and acquisition of prohibition. The master has monetary acquisition in the slave—that is the monetary rights—and there is acquisition of prohibition, meaning basically the prohibitive status or the relationship by virtue of the slave’s being a slave. And the question—when we went to a kind of mock rabbinical court before another one of the yeshiva rabbis, he represented me, even though he was my disputant, and he asked him: tell me, why is acquisition of prohibition called acquisition of prohibition? What does that have to do with anything? Acquisition is monetary, and besides that there is a prohibitive aspect—why call it acquisition of prohibition? That is what later authorities call it. And the argument basically was—or that is how he formulated my position, though he disagreed with it—he claimed that in fact the whole concept of acquisition of prohibition is its essence. Acquisition of prohibition means: I am an owner. The owner of the slave. This ownership has prohibitive implications and monetary implications. In the case of a slave, though perhaps not in other cases. Once I declared the slave ownerless, I nullified the monetary implications, and the prohibitive implications remained. That means that in fact my acquisition in the slave is complete. Acquisition of prohibition is acquisition in every respect. It is acquisition—it is not a different acquisition; it is the very same acquisition. In other words, acquisition of prohibition is the same acquisition I had before; I merely waived the implications. But what remains is the same relation that existed between me and the slave—that he is my property, that I am his owner. Now the claim is—and here of course one could say—I return to the question—one could say that this is unique only to the relationship of a master to a slave, and not necessarily to all objects that I can own. But I do not see any reason to say that. You can say it, and one can discuss whether there is proof or not; maybe I’ll bring another point in a moment. But even if not, I’m trying to show that at least one can separate the two, even if only with regard to a slave. Still, the concept of acquisition appears here without any of its usual legal implications. So that means that this concept is not merely the collection of implications. I didn’t understand—so what does he give up when he gives up the monetary side of his ownership? The relation between me and the thing—that relation between me and the thing is called my being its owner. This ownership has legal implications that in this case do not exist, but this metaphysical relation does exist. The implications—you’re asking what the implications are? We just saw the implication, namely the payments… No, I asked something else. I asked: according to what the Rabbi is saying, the master has two points, two lines, with respect to the slave. There is the monetary one and the prohibitive one. No, that’s what I corrected before—not so. There is only one line: I am his owner, period. This ownership has two kinds of implications in the case of a slave. There are two kinds of implications, and therefore this one line remains fully in place afterward as well; I just waived the characteristics. Like a person who, I don’t know, takes a pill and loses his consciousness. So now he has no consciousness. Does that mean he is not a human being? He is a human being, only the characteristic that ordinary human beings normally have—consciousness—is absent in him. Okay? Maybe I’ll bring another example to illustrate this, not involving a slave, so that you can see it can also appear outside the slave context. Maybe first I’ll say what does not constitute proof. There is a dispute among medieval authorities concerning things from which benefit is forbidden: is there ownership over things from which benefit is forbidden? Some authorities claim there is ownership over them, and apparently this too is proof for what I said before, that the concept of ownership can appear even without any right of use flowing from it, because with things from which benefit is forbidden I cannot make any use of them. So apparently this too is an example that ownership can appear—there can be a relation of ownership between me and a certain object—even when I have no rights of use in it. But that is not correct; it is not proof. Why? Because here I do have the rights of use; I’m just forbidden to exercise them. That is not the same thing as someone who does not have the rights. One who does not have the rights means that legally they do not belong to him, such that if someone takes it he is not a thief. With forbidden-benefit items it is entirely mine legally, only I am forbidden to use it. If someone takes it from me, he is a thief. Maybe it is theft of less than a perutah’s value—that is another discussion—but in principle he is a thief: he took something that is mine. It is like if I raise a pig and the Torah forbids me to eat it. Does that mean the pig is not mine? Of course it is mine. Whoever takes it from me is a thief. I am forbidden to make certain uses of it because the Torah forbade it. The same with things from which benefit is forbidden. The fact—or the opinion—that sees ownership even in things from which benefit is forbidden is not proof for our matter. If anything, the opposite: the opinion that says there is no ownership over such things is actually counter-evidence. Because why say there is no ownership? Once I have no right of use at all, then apparently ownership too has lapsed. So that basically means that at least that opinion is not willing to accept that there could be a relation of ownership without its legal implications. Those opinions, perhaps. But I’ll bring an example, as I said before, concerning ordinary property. The Or Sameach discusses it and cites it. And Rabbi, with things from which benefit is forbidden—for example an ox sentenced to stoning—if someone takes it from me, does he… has he stolen from me? That is the dispute. If it is mine, then there is theft here; if it is not mine, then there is no theft. But as the Rabbi mentioned just now—It has no monetary value because there is no… all that is theft of less than a perutah’s value. That is another discussion. Another discussion. In any case, the Rogatchover in Bava Kamma, on page 17 I think, in his novellae to Bava Kamma—some kind of collected notes there—he discusses the inquiry of later authorities: why must a person pay when his property causes damage? Yes, this is a well-known inquiry. One approach says that because I was negligent in guarding it, therefore they obligate me to pay. The second approach says that by the very fact that my property caused damage, I have responsibility to compensate the injured party; I am responsible for what my property does. The Rogatchover asks: if it is not because of my negligence in guarding it, then why should I be obligated to pay for what my property damaged? It damaged, not I. If you say it is because of negligence in guarding it, then I understand—the blame is mine; I was negligent in guarding it, something happened, I have to pay. But if it is not negligence in guarding it, but simply the fact that my property went and caused damage—so what? Why does that obligate me? So the Rogatchover says: it obligates me because it is mine. In other words, here there is an implication that is not—you have to notice—not a trivial implication. It is not a trivial implication because here the fact that the thing is mine does not give me rights in the thing; on the contrary, it saddles me with obligations because of the thing. I have to pay if it causes damage. These are not the usual characteristics of the concept of ownership as we know it. But I’ll give you the second example the Rogatchover brings there; it is even more extreme. He brings the law of resting one’s animal on the Sabbath. On the Sabbath there is a prohibition against my animal doing labor. Let’s say, I don’t know, uprooting a plant from the ground. If my animal uproots a plant from the ground on the Sabbath, I have violated a Torah prohibition. That is the halakhic ruling—resting one’s animal. If it does it in order to eat, that is something else, that is for its own life needs. So that is something else—it is acting for its own life. But if it performs an action—transferring objects from a private domain to a public domain, reaping, plowing, whatever—and I am not even with it at all, I’m at home, I still violated a Torah prohibition of resting one’s animal. Now there are disputes here—Ritva, Tosafot Rid at the beginning of the chapter “One Who Was Overtaken by Darkness” in tractate Shabbat—there is a dispute how to define this. But according to at least one definition, the very fact that my property acted, even without my negligence in guarding it, it is not an obligation on me to guard it; it is an obligation on the animal to rest. Of course the prohibition is not a prohibition on the animal—the animal cannot violate prohibitions or fulfill commandments. The prohibition is on me, but the definition is that my animal must rest. It is not because I did something, because I failed to guard it properly or because I worked with it—that would be the prohibition of driving one’s animal. Resting one’s animal is something else. So if that is the case, the claim is basically that the fact that this animal belongs to me obligates it to keep the Sabbath. Now what does that have to do with anything? The fact that it belongs to me merely means I have a collection of rights in the animal. I am allowed to buy it, slaughter it, eat it, do whatever I want with it, forbid others to use it, and also consecrate it, and whatever you like, betroth a woman with it. I have a collection of legal rights in the animal. How is that connected to the obligation on the animal to keep the Sabbath? What does that have to do with it? It’s an obligation on me to guard it. No, no—that’s what I’m saying. According to this definition it is not an obligation on you to guard it. There is no such thing. An animal is an animal, and if you want it not to violate the Sabbath, you have to guard it. You can join the camp of the medieval authorities who define it differently. I am speaking according to those medieval authorities who do not define it that way. And even if you don’t agree with them—they are there. You won’t succeed in making them disappear. Not because you failed to guard it—by the very fact that your animal desecrated the Sabbath, you violated a prohibition. Or you would be coerced if you tried to guard it and it forced its way through. Doesn’t matter. In principle you violated a prohibition. And the question is: what does that have to do with anything? If I have a collection of rights in the animal, so therefore it has to rest? Therefore I violate a prohibition if it…? What does that have to do with anything? The Rogatchover says: you see here that my ownership relation to the animal basically means that the animal is some sort of extension of me. It has some kind of metaphysical connection to me. The legal implications are a result of that metaphysical connection, but they are not the essence of that metaphysical connection. The metaphysical relation means there is a connection between me and the animal. Some connection, something that binds us. This relation has many implications—in this case monetary implications, but also prohibitive implications, like resting one’s animal. And even if I manage to renounce all the implications, to waive all the monetary implications I have in the animal—to relinquish all the fruits I have in the animal, not the body of the animal but all the fruits—still there is the prohibition of resting one’s animal, exactly parallel to one awaiting a bill of manumission. And here this is already an example not connected to slaves, but to ownership of an animal, of ordinary property. And the Rogatchover says it is the same law as the obligation to pay for damage caused by the animal. All these things show us that the concept of ownership is not a collection of proprietary rights I have in the thing. The concept of ownership is first and foremost some kind of relation between me and the thing. The legal proprietary rights are implications of that relation. So that is an example in the concept of ownership of the concept itself detached from its implications. Usually, of course, when there is ownership, the implications of ownership will also appear. But here we see situations in which the concept of ownership exists without the implications that normally accompany it, and nevertheless it exists. So that means—think of Leibniz, right?—that there is something in the concept of ownership beyond the collection of characteristics or legal implications that are usually attached to it. And does it have a verbal definition? What? In other words, does the essential concept, without its implications, have a verbal definition, or does it only exist in itself? Ownership. But that’s not a definition—ownership is the concept. What is its definition? In other words, does it have some definitional content? Yes—what do you mean? A thing that is owned. If I acquired it, then it is mine. That is the definition. I didn’t understand what kind of definition you’re looking for. If I acquired it, then it belongs to me. Or an elephant stepped on a bale of hay—right, how do you lift an elephant? Fine. Yes, but the Rabbi is describing how one performs acquisition, not how one defines acquisition—that’s what I mean. What sort of definition are you expecting? There is a relation between me and the thing. I can give you a set of implications of that relation. What sort of definitions are you expecting? No, because a relation between one thing and another also exists, say, in marital relations. There too there is a relation, but it is a different kind of relation. So to define acquisition as merely a relation—that seems incomplete. Correct, there are many kinds. This one is acquisition. “A woman is acquired in three ways”—that too is acquisition. On the contrary, it is not acquisition of ownership, but there is a relation. Correct. That is the mistake of those who think the husband is the owner of the woman. He is her master because she belongs to him. So wait—does that mean that in acquisition there is no definition at all, no necessary content of ownership? Correct. In other words, acquisition is just a relation, a connection between—I don’t want to say object and object. In Jewish law you perform an act of acquisition. An act of acquisition is not only an act that acquires things in the proprietary sense of ownership. An act of acquisition is an act of final intent, to give public expression to the matter. Even when we make a contract, neither of us has acquired anything. We are only obligating ourselves. We will perform some symbolic act with a kerchief, right, or some pen, to give public expression to the matter, to establish final intent. So in halakhic jargon that is called an act of acquisition. What did I acquire there? I acquired nothing. I created a relation between me and my partner to the contract. That’s all. The concept of acquisition in Jewish law is actually much broader than ownership. Ownership is the legal implication that the ordinary legal concept of acquisition usually has. Okay? But there are other things too. Okay. Again, you have to understand that this may also connect to what I spoke about last time: when you try to define a concept, you always characterize it through its characteristics; you cannot define the thing itself. Therefore even this metaphysical relation I am speaking about here—I have no way to define it except by pointing to its characteristics or implications. About it, all I can say is that it exists, because a definition is always one given in terms of characteristics, properties, implications, things like that. You cannot define the thing itself. I spoke in the previous lecture about yellow light or about sound, which are cognitive phenomena described in a language drawn from my world. I do not describe the things themselves; I describe how I perceive them. One cannot describe the thing itself, define the thing itself. Every description or definition always relates to the properties or characteristics of the thing, not to the thing itself. Another example perhaps is one way to define the concept of a sukkah. You know the question raised by the Oneg Yom Tov. He says: women are exempt from the sukkah, but of course not only may they sit there, it is even desirable that they do so, first because they fulfill a commandment even though they are not obligated, and second as part of the husband’s dwelling—“you shall dwell” means he lives with his wife—so they should sit there, and it is fitting that she too sit in the sukkah. The Oneg Yom Tov asks: but there is a prohibition against making use of the wood of the sukkah. In one of the responsa of the Oneg Yom Tov, one of the later authorities. There is a prohibition against using the wood of the sukkah. If I make use of the sukkah, of the sukkah wood, not for the purpose of the commandment, that is forbidden. Now the woman is not commanded in the commandment, so in a case where it is neutral, let her do it—it has value, why not? But in the case of a sukkah there is a prohibition on using the sukkah if it is not for the sake of the commandment. So if she is not commanded, then in essence she does not have the commandment in the full sense. So the use she makes of it is not use for the purpose of a commandment. If so, does she violate a prohibition? So in practice it should have been forbidden for her to sit there. Or another question that is asked—Elchanan Wasserman and others ask—what happens with sitting in the sukkah when it is raining, when rain is falling. The Talmud says, and the Shulchan Arukh also rules, that one who sits in the sukkah when it is raining is a fool, because one who is exempt from a matter and does it is called a fool. The later authorities ask: why a fool? He is violating a prohibition. A fool means he is simply doing a pointless act, an ignorant act, but here, they say, it is not merely a pointless act—it is forbidden. After all, you are sitting in the sukkah and using it not for the sake of a commandment, because there is no commandment to sit in the sukkah when it is raining. So this is not just foolishness but wrongdoing—he is violating a prohibition. So one of the answers—the Kovetz Shiurim, perhaps this is close to his formulation—wants to claim that a sukkah, when it is not serving for the commandment, is not a sukkah. In other words, the sukkah when it is raining is not a sukkah at all—it is a pergola. A sukkah is an object that stands for the fulfillment of the commandment, but if it does not stand for fulfillment of the commandment because it is raining, then it is a pergola, built exactly like the sukkah but not a sukkah. What about the woman? Regarding the woman he doesn’t discuss it, but I once thought maybe one could say that for the woman too, the sukkah itself is not designated for her use as a commandment, because the woman is not obligated, so perhaps she too is not forbidden to make use of the sukkah. Fine, but that’s another discussion; we won’t get into the details now—you can go on pilpul-ing about that for a long time. What I only want to show here—I’ll perhaps give another example, in another aspect of the sukkah issue. There is a Talmudic passage in Beitzah 30, where the Talmud discusses the prohibition on using the wood of the sukkah. The Talmud says there that one may not stipulate against the sanctity of sukkah wood. The Talmud derives “festival unto the Lord” and “sukkah unto the Lord.” The festival refers to the festival offering. Just as the festival offering is forbidden for benefit, it is sacred, so too the sukkah is forbidden for benefit. From here they derive the prohibition on using sukkah wood. Now the Talmud says: therefore one may not stipulate concerning sukkah wood. What does that mean? I stipulate that I am placing these boards here on condition that they not become sacred, so that I may use them. Impossible. The Rashba asks: in Nedarim 29, the Talmud brings a dispute between amoraim, Abaye and Bar Pada, on the question whether one can make a condition regarding a sacred object. And the Talmud says there that according to Bar Pada, inherent sanctity does not lapse on its own. What does that mean? If something is sacred with inherent sanctity, then its sanctity cannot simply expire just like that. Perhaps if you do an act, that can remove the sanctity, but just like that sanctity does not lapse. There are two implications of that there in the Talmud. First, you cannot consecrate it for a fixed time—for example, make it inherently sacred for ten days and after ten days it flies off by itself. There is no such thing. Inherent sanctity does not vanish on its own. And you also cannot make a condition regarding inherent sanctity, because if you make a condition and the condition is not fulfilled, then the sanctity disappears. Okay? So one cannot make a condition regarding inherent sanctity, nor make inherent sanctity for a fixed period. That is Bar Pada’s view. Abaye’s view is that one can make a condition even regarding inherent sanctity—that inherent sanctity can lapse on its own. The Rashba asks from the Talmud in Beitzah 30: this proves against Abaye, because there we see that since the sukkah is compared to the festival offering, it has inherent sanctity, and one cannot make a condition. But Abaye says one can make a condition even on things that have inherent sanctity. Inherent sanctity can lapse on its own. That is the Rashba’s question. What? Also with the sukkah—after it’s over? We see that with the sukkah, the fact that you designate it for eight days is inherent sanctity, because it is like an offering, and with an offering you can’t… Right. So actually, you are right. I think what I asked on the Rashba is that in principle the overwhelming majority of commentators, except for this Rashba, understand that the sukkah is not really sacred with inherent sanctity, so this question does not even get off the ground. It is simply a way of saying that using it is forbidden. But the Rashba understood it as actual sanctity, so he asks this question. So I ask: if so, then how does the Rashba understand that after eight days the sanctity just floats away? Inherent sanctity cannot be for a fixed time; it does not vanish by itself. And you don’t perform any act at the end of the eight days. The eight days pass, the festival ends, and the sukkah evaporates, right? It is no longer sacred. Well then, by the same token it is not clear how the Rashba assumes it has inherent sanctity if after eight days it flies away. I make the following claim: according to the Rashba, after eight days it is not a sukkah—it is a pergola. All eight days of the festival, the sukkah is a sukkah. A sukkah—its sanctity does not lapse on its own. After eight days, it is not that its sanctity has lapsed; the sukkah has disappeared. What remains is a pergola. So also with the festival offering, once the time of the festival offering has passed there is already nothing. It was a festival offering for its time; the time passed and it is no longer there. If you would remove the offering, then you would be right. You cannot remove the offering, because it is designated for sacrifice. But no, here too maybe you cannot remove the sukkah. Inherent sanctity. After eight days it is simply no longer a sukkah; there is no sukkah in the world. After eight days there is no status of sukkah. But after eight days there is also no festival offering—you can no longer sacrifice a festival offering. No, that does not matter. It is still an offering and remains sacred in any case. That is not important. It is not because the festival offering is no longer defined as a festival offering; it remains defined as a festival offering even though the festival is gone. Maybe you could bring it on the next festival—one could discuss that, I’m not sure. In any case, it’s not necessarily specifically about the festival offering—let’s speak of a sin offering, peace offering, burnt offering, voluntary offering, whatever you want, doesn’t matter. Thank you. All right. So the point is that what I want to say is the same principle I said before: the sukkah is not the object you see before your eyes. The object you see before your eyes is a pergola. A sukkah is not a structure built with so-and-so many walls, such-and-such roofing, at such-and-such height and width, with all these specifications. That does not define a sukkah. Those are the characteristics of the sukkah. The sukkah is some structure meant for fulfilling the commandment of sukkah, which has various characteristics. In this case the opposite situation occurs from what I described before. In this case, the characteristics remain and the object disappears. It is another object with the same characteristics. Earlier I spoke about the characteristics disappearing while the object remained. Here I say the object disappears and the characteristics remain. Think, for example, what happens if there is an offering that evaporates after a month. I consecrated it as a thanksgiving offering and after a month it evaporated on me. I don’t know, some magician did this and the offering evaporated. Does that contradict the claim that inherent sanctity does not lapse on its own? No. Because what lapsed here is not the sanctity—the sanctity is eternal. What disappeared here is the object. The sacred object, not its sanctity. As long as the object exists, you will not succeed in making the sanctity fly off it, unless through an act, but not on its own. But the object itself—if it evaporates, then it evaporates. Who said objects cannot evaporate? And once it has evaporated, then of course it will also no longer be sacred, because it will no longer be here at all. My claim is that after eight days, a sukkah is like an offering that evaporated, not an offering whose sanctity lapsed. The offering itself disappeared. Agreed. Like wine—agreed, wine can evaporate and suddenly there is nothing here. Okay. All right. So this example is only meant to say that the concept sukkah too is not the collection of characteristics we see before our eyes. The entire tractate Sukkah is full of the collection of a sukkah’s characteristics, but it is not dealing with sukkah itself; it is dealing with the characteristics of sukkah, because definitions always deal with characteristics. But what is a sukkah? A sukkah is the object that has those characteristics, that is designated for fulfillment of a commandment, and that exists only during those eight days of the festival of Sukkot. Now I remember another example that goes in this direction: conversion. Let’s talk about conversion. Conversion has several stages in the process: circumcision, immersion, and presentation of blood—a sacrifice. Now in the last generation there has been a discussion about acceptance of the commandments. Is acceptance of the commandments also part of the conversion procedure? Now I am not speaking about the act of accepting the commandments, where the convert stands up before a religious court and says, “I accept the commandments upon myself.” I am speaking about the convert’s consciousness—does he really intend to accept upon himself the yoke of the commandments? I am not speaking about the act in the process of conversion, but about what must exist essentially. Does there really have to be acceptance of the commandments? Suppose Elijah came and told me that this convert had absolutely no intention of accepting the commandments. My problem with his conversion is not that he did not stand before the religious court and say, “I accept the commandments.” It is not that a stage or act is missing from the process of conversion; rather, without acceptance of the commandments he is not a convert. Suppose even if he stood before the religious court and said, “I accept upon myself the yoke of the commandments,” then he completed the whole conversion procedure, but Elijah came and told me: he lied—he really did not intend to accept the commandments. Then he remains a non-Jew. He remains a non-Jew because he did not—let’s ignore for the moment “It is not in Heaven” and all that—leave it. Let’s speak only in principle. So the claim is that acceptance of the commandments is required in conversion. One of the claims raised by those who oppose the need for acceptance of the commandments in conversion—Avi Sagi, Zvi Zohar, and so on—is that this requirement does not appear in the Shulchan Arukh. Circumcision appears, immersion appears, sacrifice does not appear because it is not applicable nowadays; in Maimonides sacrifice also appears—but acceptance of the commandments does not appear. So apparently it is not required. And again, I am not speaking about the act of saying “I accept the commandments,” but about there being within his consciousness that he accepts the commandments. So I argued in an article in which I argued against their thesis that this point does not need to appear in the Shulchan Arukh. Because acceptance of the commandments is not one of the components in the conversion process—it is conversion. It is the essence of conversion. Conversion means acceptance of the commandments. You only ask me: how do you do that? You do it through circumcision, immersion, and presentation of blood. That is the procedure. Just as in an act of acquisition, I lift something and acquire it by lifting or by pulling. Obviously the lifting and the pulling do not acquire in themselves. They express final intent. What acquires is the final intent. Now look in the Shulchan Arukh—I wrote an example there—look in the Shulchan Arukh and find me a place where the Shulchan Arukh says that final intent is required in order to acquire. It lists all the forms of acquisition, how each thing is acquired, how it is not acquired. You will not find there that final intent is required. Why not? Because final intent is what is called acquiring. That is the definition of the concept; it is not a requirement that must be fulfilled in order for acquisition to take effect. That is what it means to acquire. The Shulchan Arukh basically says this: if you want to acquire something, this is what you must do for each type of object. Land is acquired this way, a cow is acquired that way, a coin acquires this way, produce acquires that way, and so on. For each object it tells you what practical legal procedure must be performed in order to acquire it. But to whom is the Shulchan Arukh speaking? It is speaking to someone who comes with the aim of acquiring. If you do not intend to acquire, the Shulchan Arukh simply is not speaking to you. It doesn’t need to write there, yes, but you have to intend to acquire. You don’t need that. If you did not intend to acquire, then I am not speaking to you. You simply will not acquire, because you do not want to acquire. So the intention to acquire is not one of the conditions for acquisition to take effect. It is what is called acquiring—that you have final intent, that you intend to acquire. There is just a practical legal procedure for how to do it, how to express final intent, and so on. Therefore the Shulchan Arukh does not need to state that a person must have final intent. One who has no final intent does not open the Shulchan Arukh. One who opens the Shulchan Arukh and wants to determine how to acquire something is someone who has already decided to acquire. One who wants to accept the commandments—that is, to become a Jew and accept the 613 commandments—what must he do? He opens the Shulchan Arukh and sees that it is circumcision, immersion, and presentation of blood. The Shulchan Arukh does not need to tell you that you must intend to accept the commandments. To accept the commandments is what is called converting. That is the very definition of the concept. It is the concept itself. So it does not need to be part of the act. Those are characteristics—how it is carried out in practice. So according to this, acceptance of the commandments is not part of the act. It is not an obligation as part of the act. Correct. If it does not exist, then he is not a convert at all, because he does not want to be a convert. Not because it does not exist, but because it is the very essence of conversion. It is the result of conversion. If there is no acceptance of commandments in you, then you are a non-Jew. You don’t want to be a Jew—fine, that’s okay, you are allowed, no problem, you may remain a non-Jew. But what do you want from our lives? If you do not want to convert, don’t come to convert. If you do not want to acquire, don’t come to acquire. The laws of conversion address one who wants to convert; the laws of acquisition address one who wants to acquire. And again, notice: the distinction here is a distinction between the concept itself and characteristics, except that I am claiming that what people regard as a characteristic, I claim is not a characteristic—it is the thing itself. In conversion it is acceptance of the commandments; in acquisition it is the intention to acquire. Okay? And the characteristics, or how one carries this out in practice, are already halakhic details that must be checked in Jewish law. I’ll bring another example, one that touches both on this and on another aspect. There is a very nice riddle I once saw. Think of a board of eight by eight squares, a chessboard. Picture a chessboard in your head, all right? It has sixty-four squares, eight by eight. Now you have thirty-two domino tiles, these domino plates. Each domino tile covers two squares of the chessboard. All right, it’s a rectangle the size of two squares of the chessboard, okay? Now if I take thirty-two such tiles, there is no problem covering the chessboard with them, right? Put four in each row and you cover the chessboard. Okay? Now here is the riddle. I remove from the chessboard the squares A1 and H8, right? The bottom-left square and the top-right square, for example—it doesn’t matter, or vice versa. The two ends of the main diagonal. Okay? And you have thirty-one such domino tiles. Is it possible to fill the board? With thirty-one tiles. In terms of area it is the same thing. I have sixty-two squares because I removed two out of the sixty-four. I have thirty-one domino tiles, each with the area of two squares, so it ought to fit. The question is whether in practice you can cover the board or not. You can’t. And of course you have to prove the answer. So people say this is a known problem in computational geometry—Avi is saying that here—but you can solve it without computational geometry in a very simple way, even though when you look at it, see, this is not an easy riddle. When you try to tackle it and solve it—I can tell you the solution? Please. Please: color it black and white like a chessboard. The two corners are the same color, so you can’t. Yes, that is clear. That is the standard solution. Think about a chessboard: in principle this problem of course also exists on an uncolored board, right? You do not need color. I am asking you whether, with thirty-one domino tiles, you can cover the board. But now I want, voluntarily, to color the board the way one colors a chessboard, okay? The two squares I removed are squares of the same color—agreed? Think, say, of the black diagonal. On the black diagonal, the bottom-left square and the top-right square are both black. Or on the other diagonal they are both white. Okay? So basically I have thirty black squares and thirty-two white squares. Now every domino tile you place on the board covers one white square and one black square, so clearly you cannot cover the board with thirty-one domino tiles. Which is what had to be proved. A beautiful elegant proof. Think about it: if I had presented you with the board uncolored and given you the domino tiles and told you, try it and check and prove it, I would bet that most of you at least would not have managed to prove it. What did we really do here? Suppose we were not familiar at all with chessboards or checkerboards—it was unfamiliar to us, had nothing to do with us. I just give you such a board. You don’t know what chess is, what checkers is. It never occurs to you that it can be colored black and white like this. You just have a board and I ask you a question with dominoes. It would never occur to you to color it and ask yourself that question, right? On the other hand, it is obvious that the solution is correct even for an uncolored board. The problem and the solution, right? Nothing really depends on the color of the board. The color of the board is only meant to illustrate for us or help us think about the problem, but the solution does not require color. How would we formulate the solution without color? We would have to find a property, a shared property of all the black squares, and a shared property of all the white squares. Property A and property B. All right? A geometric property, or if you like, topological, or whatever you want, such that this property distinguishes all the black squares, property A, and property B distinguishes all the white squares, by their relation along the diagonal or however you want to define it. Okay? And now one could repeat the proof and say: every domino tile covers one square with property A and one square with property B. But we have thirty-two A squares and thirty B squares, therefore thirty-one domino tiles cannot cover the board. I could have done the same thing, but it would never have occurred to me to attach a common property to all the squares that are usually colored black or white on a chessboard. Why would one even think in that direction if I don’t have a chessboard? This means that the color, when I colored the board, actually helped me notice something that exists even without it. Right? In other words, there is some property to this set of squares—to the thirty-two black and thirty-two white, there is some shared property that I don’t know how to express in ordinary language. I assume mathematicians perhaps do know, but never mind. But if I color them, it is obvious to everyone that we are dealing with two clearly distinct groups. This means that the color serves me in order to express or reflect a property of these two groups of squares. And once I used the color, the solution became self-evident. Without the color I would not know, even though the solution does not depend on the color—neither the problem nor the solution. This illustrates, in a certain sense, also the fact that there are things that exist independently of their properties. Think about the black squares and the white squares: they have some property that I do not know how to formulate, but only after I colored them black and white can I say these are the black squares and these are the white ones. Because now they already have properties; I have a way of speaking about them through their properties. Without the properties I have no way of dealing with the thing itself, with the characteristics of the group itself. What are these characteristics really? That is one aspect, and it also illustrates another point I spoke about last time, namely that every statement or every claim I make about something is always formulated in my cognitive language. I mentioned this earlier, like light or sound—the tree that falls in the forest but makes no sound, or the light which, as I explained, exists only in our consciousness. In the world itself there is an electromagnetic wave, but there is no light. Okay? So here too: in the world itself there is no black-and-white color of chessboard squares; that is only the way these squares appear to my eyes. But the solution lies in a property of the squares themselves. But in order for me to be able to talk about it, I need to formulate it in language drawn from my consciousness. So I color it: black squares, white squares. And here even if you are only a very small mathematician, it is very easy to show you and explain to you the proof of this claim. Okay? So this illustrates two things: first, that there are things that exist beyond their properties; the properties are not the thing, but only characterize the thing, while it exists beyond them. And second, that speaking about the things themselves is always done in terms of the properties, in terms of the concepts of my consciousness. And no, I cannot speak about the thing itself—just as they asked me earlier to define the concept of ownership or a metaphysical relation. I don’t know how to do that. I know how to do it in terms of legal implications, in terms of the properties of the thing. I cannot speak about the thing in itself, only by means of its properties. So I think this example clarifies that point too. Okay, does anyone want to comment or ask? So this is where I finished. Thank you very much, yasher koach, yasher koach, thank you very much.