Conceptual Analysis – Lesson 9
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The distinction between logical analysis and a priori analysis
- Examples of a logical contradiction versus a non-logical contradiction
- “The laws of logic” and the confusion created by the term “laws”
- Alternative logics and quantum logic
- Logic as destruction rather than construction, and axioms in geometry
- Anselm’s ontological proof and why it is a priori
- Repentance in the Sages versus the modern “returnee to religion”
- A conceptual critique of the penitent through weakness of will
- A conceptual critique of the “returnee to religion” as an initiated act
- Participant questions and conclusion
Summary
General overview
The speaker continues a conceptual analysis and distinguishes between pure logical analysis, which applies formal tools to definitions without assuming premises, and a priori analysis, which brings into the analysis assumptions and principles that are not observational but are also not logical. He argues that logical analysis can only “destroy” by exposing internal contradictions and cannot “build” positive conclusions about existence, whereas a priori analysis can also lead to positive results because it relies on a priori assumptions. He applies the distinction to religious and philosophical examples such as foreknowledge and free choice, Anselm’s ontological proof, and the concept of repentance in the Sages as opposed to the modern “returnee to religion,” and concludes with students’ questions, including a political question in which he says he would vote for Gideon Sa’ar.
The distinction between logical analysis and a priori analysis
The speaker defines logical analysis as an analysis that applies only logical rules to a given concept and derives conclusions from contradictions in the definition without assuming premises. He defines a priori analysis as an analysis that combines logic with foundational assumptions, “intuitive principles,” such as the principle of causality or the principle of induction, which are not learned from observation but also do not follow from formal logic. He emphasizes that both types are called “conceptual analysis” in philosophy, but they are different and it is important to distinguish between them, even though they often appear together.
Examples of a logical contradiction versus a non-logical contradiction
The speaker cites Quine’s example of “the round square dome of Berkeley College” to show a pure logical proof of non-existence from an internal contradiction between “square” and “round.” He presents the problem of foreknowledge and free choice as discussed by Maimonides in chapter 5 of the Laws of Repentance and in the literature of medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim), and distinguishes between the claim that the contradiction there is a logical equivalence and the claim that the difficulty stems from a priori intuitions about time and the like. He compares physical limitations such as gravity with logical impossibilities such as a “round triangle,” and argues that the Holy One, blessed be He, can act against the laws of nature but not against the laws of logic, because a conceptual contradiction is not a “law” that can be bypassed.
“The laws of logic” and the confusion created by the term “laws”
The speaker argues that the label “the laws of logic” is misleading because it creates a false parallel to systems of laws such as legal systems, rules of games, or laws of nature that were supposedly legislated by a lawgiver and could have been otherwise. He presents the “three laws of thought” as the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle, and argues that they are pure reason, not subject to dispute and not the result of observation or of an “intuition” one can disagree with. He clarifies that the principle of causality is a priori but not logical, and therefore a claim about an event occurring “without a cause” is not a logical contradiction but at most, in his view, implausible.
Alternative logics and quantum logic
The speaker cites Lukasiewicz’s three-valued logic as an example of artificial structures called “logic” that do not really show that one can bypass the law of the excluded middle, because the development and proofs in practice rely on two-valued logic. He also rejects the idea that “quantum logic” teaches that our logic is wrong, and argues that one cannot discover in a laboratory that logic is incorrect, because science presupposes logic from the outset. He emphasizes that scientific findings cannot change logic, and that these claims are linguistic and conceptual confusions.
Logic as destruction rather than construction, and axioms in geometry
The speaker attributes to Aristotle the claim that logic, by definition, is a destructive rather than constructive tool, because it can expose contradictions and refute claims but cannot produce positive conclusions about existence without premises. He explains that in geometry it seems as though logic “constructs,” but in fact the proofs derive from axioms such as “through any two points there passes one straight line,” so this is not logic alone. He defines “conceptual analysis” in the narrow sense as the application of logical tools alone, without axioms that inject information into the system.
Anselm’s ontological proof and why it is a priori
The speaker presents, schematically, Anselm of Canterbury’s ontological proof, which defines God as “the being possessing all perfections” or “the being than which no more perfect can be conceived,” and tries to prove by reductio that if God does not exist, one can imagine Him as existing and thereby obtain a greater “perfection,” from which it follows that God exists. He argues that the ambition here is to use conceptual analysis in a “constructive” way in order to derive a positive conclusion about reality, similar to Descartes’ cogito. He cites Bertrand Russell’s remark that it is easier to mock the argument than to identify its problem, but argues that the argument is not pure ontological-logical reasoning, because it assumes a priori premises such as the idea that existence adds perfection, as well as the assumption that one can imagine God both as existing and as not existing; therefore this is a priori analysis rather than logical analysis.
Repentance in the Sages versus the modern “returnee to religion”
The speaker argues that a “penitent” in the language of the Sages is someone who always believed and was committed to Torah and commandments but sinned, and repentance is a return to the state in which he knew he ought to be. He argues that a “returnee to religion” in the modern sense is someone who was secular and adopts a different set of beliefs, and therefore is not “returning” but rather “moving forward,” and he likens this to a kind of Jewish “conversion” from secularity to religiosity. He explains that this is a move of conceptual analysis that reveals homonymy: the same term is used for two different and at times opposite concepts, and many confusions are created by the mistaken assumption that one word has one meaning in all contexts.
A conceptual critique of the penitent through weakness of will
The speaker analyzes the Sages’ “penitent” through the problem of weakness of will and cites a formulation of Donald Davidson: what a person thinks is right, he wants to do, and what he wants to do, he does unless something prevents him. He argues that these two assumptions lead to the conclusion that there cannot be a situation in which a person believes it is right to do something and nevertheless does the opposite, so “he sinned because of weak will” falls apart either in the direction of a genuine desire to commit the sin, or in the direction of compulsion, where “the impulse forced him.” He concludes that if the sin is what a person really wanted after weighing his considerations, then repentance is a change in the system of beliefs and not a “return” to the same system, and if the sin was under compulsion, then repentance does not apply to it. He emphasizes that the analysis here uses a priori assumptions, such as the idea that one does not repent for actions done under compulsion, and therefore this is a priori analysis even if its conclusion is destructive.
A conceptual critique of the “returnee to religion” as an initiated act
The speaker argues that the modern concept of a “returnee to religion” as an initiated transition from one value system, X, to another, Y, is also conceptually impossible, because a person who holds X cannot, from within X, choose on his own initiative to adopt Y. He illustrates this with a person whose values are reduced to “maximum reward, minimum punishment in the World to Come,” and argues that there is no way to persuade him to serve for its own sake from within his own premises; at most, this can “happen to him” as a result of an inner revolution or persuasion. He argues that a commandment or demand “to repent” in the sense of adopting a new worldview cannot be an initiated act performed from within the existing system, because the moment a person decides to adopt Y, he is already no longer in X in the relevant sense. He presents this as pure logical analysis leading to a destructive conclusion about the impossibility of the concept, and sums up that he is left with a situation in which “a person can’t be a penitent and can’t be a returnee to religion,” the former falling through a priori analysis and the latter through logical analysis.
Participant questions and conclusion
The speaker is asked whether the topic appears in his books, and he says not in concentrated form and asks that they send him an email so he can try to locate it. He is asked about the distinction between initiated change and change through persuasion, and he emphasizes that persuasion is something that “happens” to a person, whereas an initiated change of beliefs from within the existing system is, in his view, not well defined. He is asked a personal question about his political leanings in the elections, and he says he would vote for Gideon Sa’ar, explaining that Bennett and Shaked are excellent in his opinion, but he thinks they will go with Bibi and he is not prepared to lend his hand to that. He then concludes with “Shabbat shalom.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so we’re in the middle of conceptual analysis, and I spoke a bit about giving a bill of divorce, about speed, I spoke about clarification versus definition. I want to move on to the next stage of our discussion, and I want to distinguish between two elements within conceptual analysis, or really two kinds of conceptual analysis. One second, I’ll mute this here. There. Yes. So I want to distinguish here between two kinds of arguments, two components that exist in conceptual analysis, or two kinds of conceptual analysis. I’ll call them, say, logical analysis and a priori analysis. What do I mean? Sometimes I analyze some concept, try to understand what its definition says, and draw some conclusions from it, but I assume nothing. All I’m doing is applying logical tools to a given concept, to a given definition of a concept. That is pure logical analysis. By contrast, sometimes I apply a priori intuitions, not something that results from observation, but intuitions from reason, and within that analysis I use those a priori intuitions in order to reach a conclusion. In philosophy, both of these are called conceptual analysis, but in truth they are two different things, and it’s important to distinguish between them. That doesn’t mean—they often appear together, of course—but it’s important to distinguish them.
When I talk, for example, about—say, an example Quine once gave—about the round square dome of Berkeley College, then I can prove that Berkeley College has no such dome. Because if it’s square, then it isn’t round; if it’s round, then it isn’t square, because that’s an internal contradiction. Okay? Here I’m not assuming anything, right? I’m simply finding a contradiction inside the definition of the dome we’re talking about, and from that I conclude that there is no such dome at Berkeley College. I didn’t assume any premise, not an observational premise, not an a priori premise, no other kind of premise—nothing. I simply applied tools of logical analysis. Okay? That is pure logical analysis.
By contrast, there is a priori analysis. A priori analysis is analysis that brings into the discussion not only logical principles but also certain foundational assumptions—for example, the principle of causality. Now, the principle of causality—David Hume, I think I mentioned this—David Hume showed that we do not learn the principle of causality from observation. Or the principle of induction. We do not learn that from observation. Rather, it is some kind of a priori intuition of ours, which we apply to reality, but we did not learn it from experience, because through experience you can’t see what is the cause of what, or whether something exists without a cause. We don’t have the ability to see that. So clearly there is an a priori principle here. Kant called it synthetic a priori, but that was already at a later stage.
Now, one can draw various conclusions through an analysis that includes the principle of causality. But the principle of causality itself serves here as a premise in that logical analysis, and that premise—true, it is not observational, meaning it is not the result of observation—but on the other hand it is not a logical principle; rather, it is a principle of a priori reasoning. By logical reasoning I mean the mathematical-logical rules that if every X is Y and Y is X then Y is X—well, or if X equals Y and Y equals Z then X equals Z. Those are what I call logical principles, as distinct from what in the halakhic context are called intuitive reasonings. Intuitive reasonings means: it sounds very reasonable to me. Yes? I don’t know—for example, that the Holy One, blessed be He, would not do something evil. Okay, so that is an intuition, but it is not a logical principle. It’s an intuition. I think He would not do something evil. That is not the result of observation; in that sense it is not empirical, but rather a priori, something prior to observation. But even something a priori can be of two kinds: either it is a principle—of an a priori character—that is not logical, but rather some intuition that I think is correct, it sounds reasonable to me, but it is not a logical principle. There is a difference between these two kinds of analysis.
I’ll maybe give an example to sharpen the point a bit. The issue of foreknowledge, the question of foreknowledge and free choice, which Maimonides discusses in chapter 5 of the Laws of Repentance, and many medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) dealt with it as well—yes? How can it be that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything in advance, and nevertheless we have free choice? If He knows in advance what we will do, then we really have no possibility of doing something else. What He knows in advance is apparently what is going to be actualized. And if so, if He knows in advance, then we have no free choice. If we have free choice, then He does not know in advance. This is an example of conceptual analysis: I analyze the concept of free choice and of knowledge and of the timeline, mix those three principles—or those three concepts—together well enough, and it comes out that one cannot adopt these two beliefs simultaneously, yes, at the same time: both that He knows everything in advance and that we have free choice.
Now here, not a few—what do I mean not a few? The overwhelming majority of religious thinkers, not only in Judaism but in general, claim that one can live with both of these beliefs together: God knows everything in advance, and nevertheless we have free choice. Now, if the contradiction between God’s prior knowledge and our free will were a logical contradiction, then one could not make such a claim. Because what that would mean is that when you say God knows in advance, you are thereby saying that we do not have free choice. So to say, “I believe that He knows in advance, and I also believe that I have free choice,” is really to say, “I both believe that I have free choice and believe that I do not have free choice.” It’s just nonsense. Because it is logically equivalent. To say that He knows in advance and to say that I do not have free choice are logically equivalent. And that is the meaning of the claim that the contradiction between foreknowledge and freedom of will is a logical, analytic contradiction. Okay?
By contrast, if someone says no, there is no logical contradiction. In principle these can coexist, but intuition says they don’t fit together, or maybe the nature of the timeline, or whatever it may be. Therefore there are certain a priori assumptions that make me unwilling to accept both of those statements at once. Then people can come and say—or various views can come and say—that in your world this can’t happen, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is omnipotent, and He can arrange even things like that so that they do work out. Okay? So if the contradiction is logical, then saying X means saying not-Y. It’s the same thing, simply logically equivalent. Therefore, accepting both X and Y at the same time is like saying, “I accept both Y and not-Y at the same time.” That’s nonsense. So you cannot accept both X and Y.
But if I say that X, in my eyes, is like not-Y—but not by logical equivalence; rather, it simply seems reasonable to me that X does not fit with Y—then it is not that X is logically identical with not-Y, but rather it sounds reasonable to me, it doesn’t make sense to me, to accept X and Y simultaneously. Here—fine, it doesn’t make sense—but it still may be that, first, I’m wrong, and second, that with the Holy One, blessed be He, it does work anyway, even though for me it does not. Okay? I don’t know, maybe God can, say, go backward in time, which I cannot do—just for the sake of discussion. Okay? So what does that mean? It means that going backward in time is not a logical problem, but a physical limitation. And the Holy One, blessed be He, is beyond physics.
I cannot keep massive objects suspended in the air so they don’t fall to earth. Therefore, if someone tells me: an object has mass, and on the other hand it stands in the air and does not fall to the earth—and again, I’m not talking about balancing forces, like an airplane and the like. There are no balancing forces; it’s just standing there in the air, only gravity acts on it, and nevertheless it remains in the air and has mass. So that can’t be. If it has mass, it must fall. It cannot both stand in the air and have mass; that doesn’t fit together. But that lack of fit is not logical. The contradiction between its having mass and its not falling to the earth is not a logical contradiction. On the conceptual level, the fact that it has mass does not mean it must fall to the earth. The law of gravity is the result of observation. I learned something about the nature of the world by observing it; I have experience, and I understand. So the contradiction between saying that it has mass and saying that it stands in the air is not a logical contradiction. It’s a rational contradiction, a scientific contradiction if you like, but it’s not a logical contradiction.
Why is this important? Because if someone says to me, okay, but the Holy One, blessed be He, can keep that object in the air—fine, maybe He can. What is impossible for me, what is impossible from my perspective because it contradicts the laws of physics, the One who created the laws of physics can of course also suspend them and can act in a way that contradicts the laws of physics, like the splitting of the sea. Even though I don’t know how to split the sea, that contradicts the laws of nature. True. But the Holy One, blessed be He, created the laws of nature, so He can also act against them. But all that is when I am talking about the laws of nature. If I am talking about the laws of logic, the situation is different. The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a round triangle. Why? Because the fact that a triangle cannot be round is not a law of physics, not a scientific law—it is logic. If it is triangular, then it is not round; if it is round, then it is not triangular. That is a conceptual contradiction. So here, in this context, one cannot say that the Holy One, blessed be He, can do it. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make for George Berkeley a round square dome, because a round square dome is contradictory at the logical level. It is not impossible because of the laws of physics—for those, the Holy One, blessed be He, can bypass. It is impossible because it is impossible.
So what all this means is that very often, when we talk about conceptual analysis, we actually mean two things, or some combination of two things. What we really mean is that we are making a judgment that contains no empirical components. In other words, no result of observation enters here; it is only rational consideration. But rational consideration without observation can still contain two different components. One is the rules of formal, rigid logic, and the other is a priori intuitions, which also do not come from observation—they too are some sort of reasoning prior to observation. But still, this is something different, not pure logical analysis; it is not only logical rules, but also certain intuitions. And therefore the difference between these two things is that logical analysis is absolutely binding. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot escape it. It is not a question of being omnipotent. Even if you are omnipotent, against the laws of logic—you cannot. Against the laws of physics—you can. The Holy One, blessed be He, can act against the laws of physics but not against the laws of logic.
I’ve spoken about this more than once. I said that one of the things that causes confusion in this context is that we are used to calling the laws of logic “laws.” Calling them laws. And then we get some picture in our head that the laws of logic and the laws of physics and the laws of biology and, I don’t know, the laws of the State of Israel are all collections of laws. There are different fields, and in each field there is its own system of laws. And logic is one such field, like physics, like biology, like Israeli law, German law, or Zimbabwean law, I don’t care. Okay? Or the rules of basketball, of the basketball association, or chess, or whatever. Or legal ethics for lawyers, things of that kind. In other words, we see logic as just another field that contains a set of laws, and therefore we call it the system of the laws of logic.
What are commonly called the three laws of thought, for example, illustrate well what is meant. The laws of thought are the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle. These are the three basic laws of thought. The law of identity is that every thing is identical to itself. The law of non-contradiction is that you cannot accept a thing and its opposite. If you accept X, you cannot at the same time accept not-X, and vice versa. And the law of the excluded middle is that you can accept either X or not-X; there is no third possibility. The third possibility is excluded. Okay?
Now you can see what these three laws have in common. What they have in common is that they are pure reason. You cannot argue about them. This is not something that is the result of—not only not observation of the world, certainly not—but not even just some intuition that someone can come and say, no, that intuition is not correct, I disagree with you. There is no room here. There are no disputes here; there cannot be disputes. This is inherent to thought; it cannot be otherwise. Therefore it is not the same thing as, say, the principle of causality. The principle of causality—the principle that says that everything has a cause, that things do not happen without a cause—is not a principle that results from observation, but on the other hand it is also not a logical principle. Rather, it is an a priori principle. A principle of thought that precedes observation; it does not derive from observation, it derives from our thinking. But to say that something happened without a cause is not to state a logical contradiction. It is not a logical problem to say that something happened without a cause. It doesn’t sound plausible to me that such a thing could happen, but okay, it doesn’t sound plausible to me—but that is not a contradiction. Those are two different things. That is basically what I mean.
Now this mistake, or this bias in terminology, treating the laws of logic like the laws of physics, biology, or the laws of a legal system, is very confusing. Because in every system of laws, in principle, there accompanies it at least the sense that someone legislated them. And since he decided to legislate them, those are the laws—but he could also have decided to legislate something else. Therefore, when I talk about a system of laws, I always have in the background the possibility of thinking about some other world, imaginary or not imaginary, it doesn’t matter, another world in which this is not the system of laws, but there is some other system of laws. Fine? The fact that here some particular legislator decided to legislate these laws—so what? In the legal context the legislator is the Knesset. In the context of the basketball association and the rules of basketball, the legislator is the basketball association, or the chess association, whatever you want. In the context of the laws of nature, physics, biology, and so on, the legislator is the Holy One, blessed be He. But still, in all these systems, the system of laws was created by an entity you can call the lawgiver. And the role of the lawgiver was to determine that this would be the system of laws. And from that you can understand that He also could have determined that this would not be the system of laws, but rather a different one.
Therefore, when I speak about a system of laws, it always appears to me as something that is the result of a decision, but could have been otherwise. In that sense it is not correct to speak of the laws of logic as a system of laws. The laws of logic are not a system of laws, because there cannot be a world or a legislator who decides to legislate a different system of laws of logic. The laws of logic are not an option that you chose but could also have chosen a different option—not even the Holy One, blessed be He. The laws of logic are something built in by the very reason of things. This is not something somebody legislated; it is simply there.
Therefore, when I say that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot act against the laws of logic, that is also not a limitation on His omnipotence. Because an omnipotent being is supposed to be able to do anything that can be defined and conceived. But to bypass the laws of logic is not something defined at all; it is not something that can be conceived. Therefore the inability to do that is not really inability. The fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a round triangle is simply because there is no such thing as a round triangle. That concept is empty. Therefore it is not an infringement of His omnipotence. That is an implication of what I said before. So that is why I say that the laws of logic are not a system of laws.
By the way, this is already written in Maimonides in the Guide for the Perplexed and in Rashba in responsum 434, in part 4, 434, where they say this. For example, even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a square whose diagonal is shorter than its side. Because it is a logical truth that the diagonal of a square is longer than its side. That is not a physical truth, it is not the result of observation, it is not something that could have been otherwise. By definition, assuming we are talking about a square, then by virtue of its definition as a square, its diagonal is longer than its side. Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot bypass this, because it is a pure logical principle. It is not an a priori principle. So the use of the term “the system of the laws of logic” is confusing. It is not correct. Call them the principles of logic, I don’t know exactly what. “Laws” is a confusing term; it is not advisable to use it in this context. Because this is not a system that could have been legislated differently. These are the rules and there are no others.
In logic they like to play around, of course, with alternative systems of rules, but contrary to what various logicians say, it doesn’t concern us at all. These are artificial definitions; it has nothing to do with—. Even when we deal, say, with a three-valued logic, like Lukasiewicz’s logic—yes, you know, Polish logic, Poland is a logical superpower. A lot of important logicians were Polish. One of them was Lukasiewicz. And Lukasiewicz developed a three-valued logic. Supposedly it is not subject to the law of the excluded middle. Something can be either the thing or not the thing, or there can be a third possibility. Okay? And he developed an entire logic that is three-valued and not two-valued. That is, a proposition can be either true or false or something else, some third thing. Okay? And people always bring this as an example showing that the law of the excluded middle can be bypassed. That the law of the excluded middle, even though it is a logical law—law in the sense I just defined—can be bypassed. But that is not true. Why? Because think, for example, with what tools Lukasiewicz handles his three-valued logic. Not when he is inside that logic, but with what tools did he develop that logic? How does he prove theorems within that logic? The proof of theorems is built on two-valued logic. Binary logic, yes, of true or false. Once you prove that in a three-valued logic something specific is not correct, then you cannot say that it is correct. Okay? There isn’t—three-valued logic is some artificial structure called “logic” because of various features, but it is not that we really think in a way where the third is not excluded. So it’s just word games; it is not really a deviation from logic.
Or, I don’t know, there are physicists who very much like to toy with what they call quantum logic. Yes? They want to explain some of the puzzling features of quantum theory by saying that our logic is not correct. Quantum theory teaches us that logic is not what we thought it was. Now there are various proposals—I won’t go into them—which exact departures they mean, maybe transitivity does not hold, or whatever, various suggestions as to what in our logic does not hold in the context of quantum theory. But that is all nonsense, of course. Because the discussion of quantum logic—the quantum theory itself—was discovered using tools that assume binary logic. The mathematics we use is mathematics of Hilbert spaces, yes? A very fundamental concept in quantum theory. When you prove a theorem in this theory called Hilbert spaces, you prove it with mathematical tools such that if you have proved that something is not true that it is true, then it is not true. There is no third possibility. And that is how one builds—or every proof by contradiction, in fact, assumes the law of the excluded middle. Because you prove that X cannot be, and from that you infer that definitely not-X. But if there is also a third possibility, then the fact that you proved that X is not correct still does not mean that you must accept not-X. Maybe there is a third possibility. Every proof by contradiction is a proof that assumes the law of the excluded middle.
Now there are mathematical laws and measuring devices or whatever, built on that mathematics, according to that mathematics, built on proofs by contradiction. How do you use that in quantum theory? How do you build quantum theory on the basis of such devices and such mathematics? Therefore quantum logic is basically just like three-valued logic. You can describe quantum theory using some structure you can call “logic,” and it behaves somewhat differently from the logic we are used to. But it is not that we really discovered in the laboratory that our logic is incorrect. You cannot discover in the laboratory that our logic is incorrect. There is no such thing in the world. A laboratory—logic is not subject to laboratory findings; logic is not science. Therefore scientific findings cannot change our logic. Our logic is something we presuppose when we approach scientific research, scientific experiment, and things of that kind. So all this kind of talk is just confusion.
So let me return to our topic. What I want to argue, basically, is that when we talk about conceptual analysis in the accepted, common terminology in philosophy and so on, then analytic philosophy is basically doing conceptual analysis. That is what all of analytic philosophy is built on. But the conceptual analysis done in analytic philosophy contains two components: logical analysis and a priori analysis. Therefore it is very important to distinguish between them. Okay?
Now where is the difference? Look, I’ll maybe give you an example. Well, maybe before the examples I want to make the following claim: there is a difference between logical analysis and a priori analysis in this sense—that logical analysis, Aristotle already pointed this out, logical analysis by definition is a destructive tool and not a constructive one. With logic you can only destroy; with logic you cannot build. I can expose, through logical analysis, some contradiction inside this concept and prove that there is no such thing, like the round square dome of George Berkeley, yes? So logical analysis shows me that there is no such dome. But there is no pure logical argument that will prove to me that something does exist, that will build something and not destroy something. In other words, logic is always destructive. With logic I can attack your claim, I can show you that it contradicts another claim, and therefore it is not correct. Okay? With logic I cannot build something, only destroy.
Now think, for example, about geometry. In geometry, seemingly, we build with logic, right? After all, we prove various propositions, theorems, by mathematical or logical means. There, seemingly, logic constructs. But that is not true. Because it is not only logic; there are the axioms. Through two points there passes one straight line; two parallels never meet; and so on—the axioms of geometry, I mean Euclidean plane geometry. So we assume those assumptions, and now we apply logical tools in order to prove from those assumptions various theorems. Okay? So the theorems did not come from logical analysis alone. The logical tools were applied to axioms. Once I have axioms, I can, by means of logical tools, derive various theorems. When I speak about conceptual analysis, I mean the application of logical tools alone, without axioms. The axioms already bring information into the system. The axioms themselves contain certain claims, express certain claims, and if that is so, then now by means of logical tools I can reveal from those claims further claims and build through them more and more knowledge, or extract more and more knowledge from the axioms. But if I have no axioms at all, I have only the laws of logic, with no axioms whatsoever, then in such a situation I can only destroy; I cannot build.
I’ll maybe bring an example, perhaps the clearest example that shows this matter. There is the ontological proof for the existence of God, the argument of Anselm of Canterbury. How does it work? I’ll do it schematically; of course one can argue about it at length. It’s the first chapter in my book The First Being; there I analyze this argument. But here I’ll do it briefly, just in order to illustrate the point. So Anselm basically argues as follows. First, when you come to prove the existence of God, you first have to define the concept. What is God? So he says: the definition of the concept—I’m unpacking him; his text is a bit poetic, but if you extract the logical structure from it, it works like this—the definition is: the being possessing all perfections, or the being than which a more perfect one cannot be conceived. That is the definition of God. Okay?
Now, says Anselm, let us assume that God does not exist, and prove by contradiction that this leads us to a contradiction. And from that the conclusion will follow that God does exist. So let us now assume, for the sake of the discussion, that God does not exist. Notice: this is not yet a premise. So far this is only logic. I am only assuming it in order to show that it leads to a contradiction, and then I infer the conclusion that this assumption is not correct. If I am right that this is only a logical argument, then I have succeeded in showing by logical tools alone how to build a positive proposition, to claim that God exists, to prove that there is a God. Which is contrary to what I described earlier. Earlier I said that with logical tools alone, logical analysis alone is always destructive; it is never constructive. It can prove that things do not exist, but it cannot prove that things do exist. Okay? We cannot learn new information from it; we can show by logical tools that certain information is incorrect. We can never show by logical tools alone that certain information is correct. Never. Because at most I can prove it by logical tools from some axioms—but the logical tools alone, without axioms and without any other addition, will never build something, only destroy.
Anselm says: not true. Here I have an argument—what Kant, much later, called an ontological argument. An ontological argument means an argument that proves the existence of something from conceptual-logical analysis alone. Kant claimed that this is impossible, but this is Anselm’s argument. That is what Anselm’s argument is trying to do. And I think Descartes’ cogito—“I think, therefore I am”—is also basically trying to do the same thing. There are a few arguments in history that tried to square the circle, yes, to show that with logical tools one can make constructive use and not only destructive use. In other words, to extract a positive insight and not merely negate some proposition because it contained a logical contradiction.
So Anselm’s example goes like this. We have defined God as the being possessing all perfections, than which none more perfect can be conceived. That is a definition. So far, in defining, everything is permitted, right? To define is allowed. A definition and a premise are not the same thing. I am not assuming anything here; I am defining a concept. That is all. Therefore so far I still have not gone beyond logic. Now I say: let us assume that God does not exist. Here there is already an assumption—but I do not want to show what follows from that assumption in the sense of building upon it. Rather, what I want to show is that if I assume that assumption, I arrive at a contradiction, and therefore it has to be discarded. So this is still a logical argument. There is no involvement here of a premise; the premise here is only a methodological tool. I assume an assumption in order to reach a contradiction, and then I throw the assumption away. Okay? In other words, there is no argument here built on that assumption. It is not like geometry. It is still pure logic. So Anselm says as follows.
[Speaker B] Isn’t a definition based on some assumption?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, of course not.
[Speaker B] That nothing is more perfect than God?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not an assumption, that’s a definition. That’s the concept. The concept God is defined as the most perfect being. That’s its definition. I can define whatever I want.
[Speaker B] Okay, so everyone can define however they like.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Only if you manage to prove that what you defined actually exists have you now said something about reality. As long as you’re defining, you’re entitled to define whatever concept you want—define whatever you like. Okay? Now Anselm really wanted to make that leap: to start with a definition—and definitions are allowed, of course. By the way, the atheist who says there is no God also has to define the concept of God he is talking about. How does he define it? Exactly like the believer. They only disagree about whether that concept exists in reality or not, but they do not disagree about its definition. Because if they’re not talking about a concept with the same definition, then it’s not an argument at all; it’s just a dialogue of the deaf. When the atheist wants to deny the existence of God, he too has to accept the definition under discussion, because we’re supposed to be arguing about the same concept. So it has to be defined in the same way. Therefore Anselm basically says: I am now defining the concept about which I am arguing with the atheist. And I define it as the being that possesses all perfections, or the most perfect being that can be conceived. Okay? After that I say: let’s assume it does not exist. Now Anselm says: if it really does not exist, then let’s imagine that same concept, but as existing. I’m not claiming that it actually exists; I’m saying let’s imagine it. I can imagine that. Okay? But if I imagine that same concept as existing, then that concept, which exists, is more perfect than that same concept which does not exist. So now I have managed to imagine a concept more perfect than God. Which means that it is not the most perfect concept that can be imagined. So we’ve reached a contradiction. If so, the assumption that God does not exist leads us to a contradiction. In that case, by the law of the excluded middle, we have no choice but to conclude that God does exist. Which is what was to be proved. That’s basically his claim. Now the ambition of this argument is really, as I said earlier, to take purely logical tools and make constructive use of them—that is, to derive from them a positive conclusion and not merely negate some claim. Here the conclusion is: God exists. Such an object, defined as the most perfect being that can be conceived, actually exists. And that is already a claim about reality. At this point it stops being merely a definition. We started with it as a definition, but the bottom line is that this definition is realized in reality. There is such an object, and that is its definition—it exists. Not only is it a defined object, it exists. And that is the result of the ontological proof. So apparently he succeeded here in doing the impossible. He managed to use purely logical tools to reach a conclusion that is a claim about the world—to make constructive use of logic, which ever since Aristotle we’ve accepted as impossible. And again, I’m talking about logic without assumptions. Now, in this discussion where I analyzed Anselm’s argument, a lot of people dismiss Anselm’s argument, criticize it; most critics have no idea what they’re talking about, they lack philosophical skill. Bertrand Russell, one of the great atheists of the twentieth century, once said that it is much easier to mock Anselm’s argument than to put your finger on exactly what the problem with it is. Meaning, this is not an argument you can just casually toss aside and refute. In any case, what I want you to notice is the following point: this argument—I don’t know whether it is true or not—but it is not a logical argument. It may be true, maybe Anselm is right and one can prove the existence of God this way. But if you dig well into the guts of this argument, you’ll see that it is not true that it makes no assumptions. It is true that the assumptions it makes are not empirical—they are not the result of observation, they are a priori, prior to observation—but there definitely are assumptions here. This is not just logic. For example, one of the assumptions is that something that exists is more perfect than the same thing that does not exist. Where do you get that assumption from? Maybe not. Who says existence adds perfection to a thing? Why think that a God who exists is more perfect than the concept of God that is not realized in reality, that does not exist?
[Speaker C] If it doesn’t exist, then why is it of any interest? Then it’s not something we need to define at all. What isn’t, isn’t.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m talking about the most perfect concept that can be conceived. So I conceive of a non-existent God, and I conceive of an existent God. I’m not talking about reality; I’m talking about two concepts that I imagine. This too is a common mistake among critics of this argument. This is not a comparison between a concept I imagine and a concept that exists in reality. Anselm did not make that comparison, despite all kinds of criticisms made against him. That’s a mistake. Anselm makes the following comparison: between God as I imagine Him as non-existent, and God as I imagine Him as existent. Just imagined—I’m not talking about reality itself.
[Speaker C] And how can I imagine something that doesn’t exist?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the problem? I imagine… what, you can’t imagine fairies? I imagine fairies; they don’t exist. Can’t you imagine Peter Pan? Fine, or Tinker Bell, right? You can imagine things that don’t exist. Why not? Think about them, imagine them.
[Speaker B] But they’ll always be made up of existing things. You can’t imagine something that’s… you can imagine a monster with seventeen—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] heads and who knows what—
[Speaker B] sure, but it all—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] will always be composed of things that exist. First of all, you’re talking here about visual imagination. But not every kind of imagining is necessarily visual. I can think about fairies. In that sense, that’s enough for me too—I don’t need to imagine them in the sense of drawing them before my eyes, but rather to think about the concept of a fairy. That is enough for the purposes of this argument. But again, I really don’t want to get into it here; there are a lot of subtle nuances. What matters to me is just this point: if you assume that an object I imagine as existing is a more perfect object than an object I imagine as non-existent—well, then you’ve made an assumption. An assumption about the concept of perfection. And is that empirical?
[Speaker D] No. Right, there’s nothing empirical in this whole claim.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. But it can always be refuted. Wait. It’s true that the assumptions here are not empirical, but it is not true that there are no assumptions here. That is exactly what I’m saying. In other words, what Anselm did is indeed a conceptual analysis, but it is an a priori analysis, not a logical analysis. Meaning, it is not true that all we have here is simply exposing a contradiction within a concept and proving that it does not exist. Anselm made assumptions here. True, they are not empirical, they are a priori, but he made assumptions here. Another assumption he made, for example, is that I really can imagine God as existing and can imagine Him as not existing. Now, that sounds very reasonable to us, but it is an assumption—about what I can imagine and what I cannot imagine. That is not a logical principle. There is some assumption here. Again, a very reasonable assumption, I have no problem with it, but there is an assumption here. You cannot say there is an argument here without assumptions. And if it is an argument with assumptions, then we are already in the a priori field and not in the logical field. Or in other words, the reason Anselm managed to arrive at—or make constructive use of—conceptual analysis, to reach a conclusion that asserts something positive, is because his analysis was an a priori analysis and not a logical analysis. Pure logical analysis cannot do that. Logical analysis that makes no assumptions at all, not even an a priori assumption, but merely uses logical tools and shows contradictions—such an analysis can never lead me to a positive conclusion. So here, for example, is the difference between these two kinds of conceptual analysis. Right? The square college, the round square dome of Berkeley College—that is pure logical analysis. And from it I infer a conclusion about the world. From pure logical analysis I infer a conclusion about the world. But I infer a negative conclusion about the world: that such a dome does not exist, that it cannot possibly exist. From pure logical analysis one cannot infer a positive conclusion about the world. But from a conceptual a priori analysis—that is, an analysis that combines, besides the tools of logic, also a priori assumptions—that really can give us positive results and not only negative results. Again, you can argue about Anselm’s argument, that’s not important to me right now, but in principle there certainly can be a constructive argument that is not empirical. But such an argument has to contain something besides logic, because if it is only logic, it cannot build, only destroy. So that is the distinction between these two kinds of conceptual analyses. I’ll maybe bring another example. Not long ago I wrote a column on the website about… yes?
[Speaker E] Wait, but in destroying too, don’t we also need to share assumptions? In destroying as well. If there’s no logic, it’ll destroy? It needs assumptions first. If there’s nothing to destroy, then what will it destroy? Without assumptions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I showed the example. I can show that there is no round square dome on Berkeley College. I made no assumption whatsoever. And I have a conclusion that says something about reality—that there is no such dome on Berkeley College, nor anywhere else. So that conclusion is a claim about the world, and I obtained it by purely logical tools. But it is a destructive conclusion, not a constructive conclusion. It destroys the claim that there is such a dome on Berkeley College. There cannot be such a dome. So an argument that contains only logical components, without a priori components, can destroy—but it cannot build. Okay? That is basically the claim. By the way, that too is interesting—I’m thinking now about the claim that a logical argument can only destroy and not build. That itself came out of conceptual analysis. Is it itself a constructive claim or a destructive claim? Fine, we’ll leave that little dialectical game for amusement in our spare time. In any case, I want now to bring another example of conceptual analysis. And I’ll try to show the destructive side of conceptual analysis. When we talk about repentance, we are really talking about two different types of people, or two different kinds of processes: the penitent of the Sages is one of them, and the repentant person of our day is somebody else. These are two completely different types. Today’s repentant person is not the penitent of the Sages. Two entirely different things. In a certain sense, even opposites. The penitent of the Sages is someone who always believed in the Holy One, blessed be He, was committed to Torah and commandments, understood that this is what is right to do—but sinned. His inclination got the better of him, whatever, he sinned. He repents. What does repentance mean? Repentance—this is why it’s called repentance. Repentance means returning to the place where he originally knew he was supposed to be. He returns to act the way he always understood it was right to act. That is why there is an element of return in repentance. He returns in repentance, right? The penitent basically contains some element of return, because he returns to the same outlook that he always understood to be correct—he just didn’t act on it, and now he corrects that and returns to acting according to it. He returns, basically—some people define it as returning to his inner truth. Okay? That is the penitent of the Sages. By contrast, today’s repentant person… today’s repentant person is someone who was secular and decided to become religious. That’s the accepted terminology. Okay? That is something completely different. And when he was secular, he did not think it was right to keep commandments and merely sinned because of his inclination. He simply did not think it was right to keep commandments. Or he didn’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He—whatever, depending on each person and his beliefs. But he held a certain set of beliefs, and then he “repents,” as we call it today, which basically means adopting a different set of beliefs. It’s not the same thing; in a sense it’s the opposite. He isn’t returning anywhere—he’s moving forward. Meaning, he was in belief set X, and he adopts belief set Y. Okay? In contrast to the penitent of the Sages, for whom it is really more accurate to say “returns in repentance.” That is why the prophet already says, “Return, wayward children.” Right? To return is to go back. So the concept of “returning in repentance” is not a modern concept. Repentance is connected to returning. Repentance—even the concept itself is return. Right? To return, to go back again. What people today call “returning in repentance” is not a good term, a very bad one.
[Speaker C] It’s like converting. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. It’s a kind of conversion—not the conversion of a non-Jew, but the conversion of a Jew from secularity to religiosity. But it is not—there is no “return” here at all. The concept of repentance also doesn’t really belong here. Okay? It is simply adopting a different outlook.
[Speaker D] They just didn’t have another term, so they slapped it onto this.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Can’t be helped. It doesn’t matter to me right now; I’m not getting into the evolution of the term, how this happened. But I’m first of all pointing out this double meaning. These are two different concepts, and in a certain sense even opposites. Okay? So that’s the first thing. So we already see here—I am pointing to two concepts and showing that when we use the concept of repentance, we often don’t notice that in different contexts it takes on different meanings. This is a classic move in conceptual analysis. Rabbi Chaim often does this sort of thing with two legal categories, or whatever—there is even a rule in Yad Malakhi that says that very often the Talmud uses the same term, but in different places it receives different meanings, even though the same term is used. Fine, a banal example would be migo. Migo can in some contexts mean “why would I lie,” and in other contexts it means argumentative leverage. Okay? So the meaning is different even though we are using the same concept—in the same term, sorry, not the same concept. Two different concepts that use the same term. Okay?
[Speaker D] That’s called homonyms, right? Something like that. The definition for it is homonyms, not like synonyms—the opposite of that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, homonyms, yes, exactly. So the claim is that… so first of all, the initial conceptual analysis tells us: pay attention. You are using one term, but if you examine things carefully—often we don’t—but if you do, you’ll see that in different contexts it serves different meanings. And that is one of the main roles of conceptual analysis. Very often our confusions, our paradoxes, and the difficulties we run into stem from this problem: we use the same word, and therefore we carry some assumption that it also has the same meaning. But no. It appears with different meanings in different contexts. Very often scholarly resolutions are built precisely on such a conceptual distinction. So that is the first distinction. Now, each of these two types of repentant person or penitent can now be analyzed on the conceptual level, and we can discover that each contains some built-in problem. Each of them, both of them. Let’s start with the penitent of the Sages. Up to this point we’ve actually done something that is in a certain sense constructive, right? We distinguished between two concepts of repentant people, and now we sharpened something we didn’t know before: that there are two types of penitent or repentant person. In a certain sense that’s a constructive result, not a destructive one. Now let’s move to the destructive part of conceptual analysis. So I’ll begin with the penitent of the Sages. The penitent of the Sages basically begins with someone who believes in value system X but does not act according to it. And being a penitent means returning to act according to it, returning to act according to the same system I believe in—not adopting another system, but that same system that I have always believed in. I believed in it and was committed to it, but I didn’t do it at first, and now I return to acting according to it. The question that arises here is what philosophers call weakness of the will. Weakness of the will, right? What is weakness of the will? Basically, there are philosophers who argue that conceptual analysis can show that the delinquent phase of the penitent, his first stage, cannot exist—and of course therefore one also cannot define repentance from that state, a return to the normal state. Why? Because the claim is basically the following. Suppose I believe in system X, then—
[Speaker C] How do you not carry it out?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. So now there are two assumptions. I’ll formulate it according to Donald Davidson, an American analytic philosopher. He formulated it like this. First assumption: what I think is right, I also want to do. Right—I’m not necessarily talking about morally good, but right all things considered. Weigh all the considerations I believe in: morality, interest, inclination, whatever you want, everything. At the end of the day, bottom line, I think this is right—so if I think this is the right thing, then that is what I want to do. That’s one assumption. Second assumption: what I want to do, if there is nothing preventing me from doing it, then I also do. Fine—two assumptions that sound very reasonable. But if you combine the two, you discover that whatever I think is right is what I will do. There cannot be a situation where a person thinks something is right and nevertheless does not do it. That is exactly the state of weakness of will, because a person who sins—a person who behaves not according to the value system he himself believes in—how does he always say it to himself? “My will was weak.” That’s why it’s called the problem of weakness of the will. What does weak will mean? I really wanted it, but I was weak and therefore I didn’t do it. Right? That’s how we often explain our failures to ourselves. This can be failures in the religious world, failures in the moral world, or failures in dieting, or failures in sports. I didn’t achieve what was required because I didn’t train hard enough. Why not? After all, I really wanted to. Yes, but I was weak. Okay, so it’s not necessarily—
[Speaker C] You had another desire that overpowered that one.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, I’m getting to that in a second. Meaning, it’s not necessarily in a religious context or in a moral context, but there is some system that I advocate, no matter in what context, the sum total of considerations. So if I think it’s right, I also want to do it. If I want to do it, and there is nothing else preventing me, then I will also do it. But if that is so—if I accept these two plausible assumptions—then how can weakness of will be possible? How can there be a state in which I believe one ought to act X, but I don’t do it? Right, that’s the definition of weak will, of an action that expresses weakness of will. It cannot be. That is basically the question of how an offender can exist, right? How does a person go on a diet and still eat fattening foods? Really, right—my will was weak. Donald Davidson says: you’re fooling us and fooling yourself. It’s not weak will—you didn’t want to diet. If you ate the whipped-cream cake, don’t tell me stories, you simply didn’t want to diet. Even though—what? After all, I always wanted to be both healthy and good-looking. True? As our rabbis said: it is better to be young, healthy, rich, and handsome than old, sick, poor, and ugly. Okay? It’s a well-known saying. So of course I always wanted to be good-looking and healthy. Clearly I wanted to diet in that sense. But at the same time I also very much want to enjoy myself. And if we take all the considerations together, then for me the desire to enjoy is stronger than the desire to be beautiful and healthy, and that is why I ate the whipped-cream cake. So it is not true that I wanted to diet, believed it was wrong to eat, and nevertheless ate. That’s nonsense. You’re selling us a bill of goods. You’re selling yourself a bill of goods. You did not think that was the right thing to do. If you ate the whipped-cream cake, apparently that is what you really think is right to do, otherwise you wouldn’t do it. The only way out of this is to say: no, no, but the inclination overpowered me. That’s what weak will means. If the inclination overpowered me and did not let me do what I want, then I’m coerced. So this is not an action that I did willingly. Then what relevance is there to repenting for such an action? After all, for wrongdoing that stemmed from weak will I am required to be a penitent. Right? That’s our topic. So now I’m asking how the concept of the penitent can exist. In conceptual analysis it cannot—the concept of the penitent cannot exist. Why not? Because according to Donald Davidson’s argument, what you think is right is what you’ll do, unless something prevents you. So if you ate the whipped-cream cake, that means that is what you thought was right to do. And again—not that you don’t want to be beautiful and healthy, but you also want to enjoy yourself more; you want to enjoy yourself even more. So you want both: you also want to enjoy yourself and also want to be healthy and thin and beautiful, and therefore the desire to enjoy ranks higher for you than the desire to diet, and therefore you ate the whipped-cream cake. Nothing overpowered you—that is what you wanted. What will you say? No, no, I didn’t want that, I only wanted to diet, but the inclination overpowered me. What does “overpowered” mean? Were you coerced? Were you forced to obey it? If so, then there is nothing to repent for. That is a sin committed under coercion, and for a sin committed under coercion one need not repent. So either way: either you were not an offender—that is, either you were an offender who believed in what he was doing, in which case when you now “repent,” you are not a penitent; you are simply changing your beliefs. Let’s say now you begin dieting—you take it upon yourself to start dieting. So I claim that since you cannot be a penitent, because if you ate the whipped-cream cake then from the outset you also thought that was the right thing to do, then if now you decide not to eat whipped-cream cakes, you are basically changing your belief system. You are not a penitent, you are “returning in repentance.” The only way out of this is to say: no, the inclination overpowered me. I really did believe I should diet, but the inclination overpowered me. But if the inclination overpowered me, then the sin I committed was a sin under coercion. So it does not make sense—you need not repent for a sin I committed under coercion; it is not a sin, I was coerced. What is there to repent for? Therefore in the context of repentance one cannot define this concept. The concept of the penitent is a contradictory concept. That is what the conceptual analysis of the concept of the penitent raises.
[Speaker C] How does the Rabbi explain the phrase “the inclination overpowered me”? Who is this inclination?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly what I’m saying. I have some sort of urge in my psyche, or whatever—not even necessarily, it can of course also be connected to the body—but it forced me. Fine? So if it forced me, then I’m coerced. What do you want from me?
[Speaker B] Can’t we distinguish between what is right and desire? They’re two different things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker B] I mean, on the one hand he has a desire; he knows what is right—that doesn’t change, what’s right for him is right for him—but in his desire—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You mean what is right from a certain aspect; that’s exactly what I want to bypass. I’m talking about what is right when you take all considerations into account. What, in your view, ought to be done when the considerations are not only value-considerations.
[Speaker B] But why is that repentance? He has a certain value outlook—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and—
[Speaker B] he has a desire, and sometimes the desire overcomes the outlook.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is desire? That’s not desire, that’s inclination. It’s not desire. You’re talking about inclination. I’m talking about desire. Desire is what I believe in. What I want to do is what I think ought to be done. Again—ought. When I steal, that doesn’t contradict the fact that I may believe theft is a bad thing. Theft is morally bad; on the other hand, having money is very pleasurable, and the value—
[Speaker B] But in his value outlook he’s against theft, but in the end he—okay, so you call it inclination.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’m saying: if it’s not something I think, but something acting on me from outside and causing me to steal although I don’t want to steal, then I’m coerced. But if I want to steal because I want to enjoy myself, even though I myself agree that theft is morally bad, it’s not that I hold a different moral system—but on the other hand my value-world is made up not only of moral values but also of interests. And when I ask myself what is right for me to do, it is right for me to steal. Why? True, it’s not moral, but the pleasure justifies it for me. “Justifies” not morally, but justifies it for me—I want to enjoy myself, and for me it is worth committing the moral offense. So now to repent of such a thing is simply to change my belief system; it is not to return to my original belief system, but to change the system I held.
[Speaker C] To assign it a different weight.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A different weight, yes, it doesn’t matter—to change the system in some way. Right, it can also be changing the relative weight; you don’t have to adopt different values, you can just give them different weight. But either way, the weighting too is part of your value system. So that basically means the concept of the penitent is an empty concept; there is only the one who “returns in repentance,” there is no penitent.
[Speaker D] But that’s only if the assumption is that the human soul—or let’s say human identity—is one. Meaning, this whole assumption of this contradiction is because you say the moment that—what am I choosing from? No, that’s what I’m saying. Meaning, maybe there is one part of you that does want, and it is separate from the other part that overpowers it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so the part that does want won’t repent, and the part that doesn’t want—then it will be one who “returns in repentance” and not a penitent.
[Speaker D] And maybe that’s what the concept is really built on, the contradiction within it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that changes nothing. Then you’re simply putting five human beings into one body. Let those who sinned repent, and those who didn’t sin need not repent. But I will still ask the same question about each one of them. You gain nothing from that. You are simply putting an entire collective into one human body. Paranoid schizophrenia, right? Meaning, you are actually taking several characters, but simultaneously. Usually with schizophrenics it appears—each time another character appears. But here you’re saying there are several characters at once. Fine, so there are characters who will repent and characters who won’t repent. But the repentance they do will be “returning in repentance,” not being a penitent. Because there is no such thing as a penitent. Okay, so that’s one result. Now I just want to sharpen this in the context I discussed earlier. Was what I did here only conceptual analysis? Only logical analysis, sorry?
[Speaker C] No, there are several assumptions here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Clearly there are assumptions, right? The assumptions are, for example, that one need not repent for something I was coerced into. Or the two assumptions of Donald Davidson: that there is inclination that can… that between me and myself, what I want is what I do, unless something interferes. All of these are assumptions.
[Speaker C] That there is inclination in you at all—that’s an assumption. That it can force you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, there are quite a few a priori assumptions here. In other words, the analysis I did here is an analysis containing components that are not merely pure logic, but also a priori assumptions, even though the result is basically destruction. I did not prove something positive. What I proved is that the concept of the penitent is contradictory; it does not exist. So notice—something interesting happened here. The operation was destructive. But the contradiction that led to that destruction was not a purely logical contradiction; I used a priori assumptions as part of the analysis. So this is conceptual analysis, but not logical analysis; it is a priori analysis. It also contains a priori components, not only logical ones. Even though the result is a destructive result. I said that a destructive result can also be reached with pure logic. A constructive result can be reached only with a priori tools. But sometimes even an a priori analysis will yield a destructive conclusion and not a constructive conclusion. That can happen. The only thing that cannot happen is that there be a constructive conclusion from an analysis that has no a priori dimension but only a logical dimension. That cannot happen. Now let’s move to the other side of the equation. I want to get through this. And now let’s talk about today’s repentant person, not the penitent of the Sages. Today’s repentant person is someone who adopts a different value system. He believed in value system X, and now he decides to adopt value system Y, a different one. That too, under conceptual analysis, comes out impossible. Yes? What I’m doing here is completely destructive. That too is impossible. Let’s see why. If the person holds value system X, right? The example I like to bring in this context is this: let’s take a person who holds a value system containing only one value. And that value is: maximum reward, minimum punishment in the World to Come. That’s it. That’s what guides all his actions. Now understand that this person is a supreme righteous man—there isn’t the slightest peep in the Mishnah Berurah that he doesn’t fear and scrupulously observe according to every view, in order to receive maximum reward and avoid punishments as much as he can. Meaning, you won’t see in his behavior the slightest trace of lack of fear of Heaven. The man is careful with every minor and major matter—but all of it is for the reward in the World to Come and the avoidance of punishment. Okay. Now let’s try to think how I could persuade such a person to repent—to become someone who serves for the sake of Heaven, not for reward and punishment. If you think about it a little, you’ll see very quickly that there is no way to do it. The only way to do it is to tell him: you know, if you serve for its own sake, you’ll get a greater reward. Again, it’s the same thing. Right? Like—it always reminds me of the story about Adam HaKohen, one of the… So understand that you can’t do such a thing. In other words, you can’t do it. Why not? Because in order to persuade me to serve for its own sake, you have to use my assumptions. Right? You can’t take your assumptions and build an argument that will persuade me. In order to persuade me, you have to start from my point of departure. And my point of departure is that I care solely about maximum reward and minimum punishment. That is my point of departure. Within that framework, will you succeed in persuading me to serve for its own sake? There is no chance. You won’t succeed. Okay? Now think about a situation where a person decides on his own—not that someone else persuades me—decides on his own to change his worldview. Okay? That is basically what is called “returning in repentance” in our present-day sense. Right? He was secular and decides to become religious. How does that happen? If right now he is secular, okay? Now what does it mean that he decides to repent? If he decides to repent, then he has already repented, because he already knows that the religious path is the correct one. So he doesn’t need to repent—he already has. He has already adopted the religious path. Rather what? You could say that he only decides to think. And after he thinks, he arrives at the conclusion that the religious path is the correct one and not the secular path. Right? There is a process. There is a process from—
[Speaker D] You know, up to his practical state or a fully formed decision.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, don’t dodge it, friends—that’s dodging. Think carefully. No, that cannot be. There cannot be such a thing.
[Speaker D] Why? Don’t people decide things in a moment? There are things that take time before people decide.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The duration of time, the time dimension, is completely irrelevant here. I haven’t spoken about the concept of time. Time plays no role here.
[Speaker D] So what’s the point—that there’s a singular point where he decides and that’s it, and that’s… is that what the Rabbi means? I’ll explain. Like in Kiddushin—where if he says, “on condition that I am righteous,” it works in an instant.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll explain, one second. Wait, I’m not talking about the time axis; the time axis is irrelevant here. What I’m saying is this. A person holds worldview X. Okay? And acts according to it. Now at some stage he decides to adopt worldview Y. Okay? What does that mean? After all, if he now set out on the path from X to Y, then when he set out he already understands that Y is the correct system—otherwise why did he start moving toward it? Or in other words, a person needs to repent—but to repent not in the sense of the penitent who returned, but in the sense of one who “returns in repentance.” So I am again required to do this repentance proactively. Meaning, I thought that it was actually right to sin, because we already discussed this: the penitent is not a defined concept, only the one who “returns in repentance” is defined. What does “returns in repentance” mean? That if he sinned, then apparently that is what he thought was right to do. Right? Right when I take all considerations into account, yes? “Right” in the sense I defined earlier. So I am basically someone who thinks it is right to sin. Now they tell me: you must repent. So what am I supposed to do when I repent? I am basically supposed to take myself, proactively, and adopt outlook Y. But if I hold outlook X, why would I proactively adopt outlook Y? Outlook Y is not outlook X. From within outlook X I cannot arrive at the conclusion that Y is correct. If I want to adopt outlook Y, that means that already now I no longer hold outlook X. Because if I held it, you would not want to arrive at outlook Y.
[Speaker D] But not necessarily that you grasp Y. It could be that there’s an intermediate state where you’re neither in X nor in Y. Is that a possibility? There’s no intermediate state?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, there is no intermediate state. There is no such thing.
[Speaker D] No, but that’s only if it’s a binary system the way the Rabbi presents it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no, that’s not the point. I’m saying I can say the following: I decided to rethink my life. That is the only intermediate state I know. And then I can arrive at the conclusion that system X is not the correct one in my eyes, but system Y is the correct one in my eyes. That is defined. That I can accept. But to take someone who now holds system X and tell him: now you repent. So what do I do? The four stages of repentance: abandoning the sin, regret, resolution for the future, verbal confession—and now I become a penitent. What does that mean? When I started doing this repentance, I was already holding system Y. Because otherwise why should I repent for holding system X, which I really believe in? I acted according to it and really believe in it. How can one address a person who holds system X and tell him: you must repent and adopt system Y? If I hold system X, then I don’t believe in Y—I believe in X. It’s like persuading someone who serves not for its own sake to serve for its own sake. There is no such thing. You cannot persuade me from within my own system to change that system. All I can do is rethink my life. And arrive at the conclusion that this is not right and that is right. But I cannot repent proactively. Because if I repent proactively, then I am already after the repentance; so I’m not repenting—I’ve already repented. Therefore this act is never proactive; it can only happen to me. It cannot be something I decide and carry out, okay? And in that sense, being one who “returns in repentance” is also impossible—simply impossible, not logically definable. Now here, by the way, in my opinion there are no a priori assumptions. This is pure logical analysis. There are no a priori assumptions here at all; this is completely logical analysis. The claim is that a proactive process of repentance cannot be defined from within itself; it is logically contradictory. Repentance can happen to me—I cannot do repentance, I cannot “return in repentance,” I cannot. There is no such thing. Because if someone decides to repent, the moment he enters that decision, he has already done it. He is not deciding to repent—it has already happened to him. There is no such thing as doing this proactively, where I decide and then carry it out. Either it happened to me, and then it simply happened; or it didn’t happen to me, and then it didn’t happen. I can rethink things and adopt system Y—that can happen. So here I think I at least do not identify any a priori assumption; this is a purely logical argument, and it too is of course a destructive argument. It does not prove the existence of something, but rather proves the impossibility of the concept of one who “returns in repentance.” Now notice—we’re left high and dry. We are left in a situation where a person can neither be a penitent nor be one who “returns in repentance.” He cannot be a penitent—that is the result of a priori analysis. And he cannot be one who “returns in repentance”—that is the result of logical analysis. Okay, I’ll stop here. It’s a nice illustration; one can try to think what the answers are, but that is less important for our purposes here. What matters to me is to demonstrate the kinds of conceptual analysis and their implications—what one does with them. All right, does anyone want to comment or ask? Now’s the time.
[Speaker B] Something not connected to the lesson too?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, if anyone wants to ask about the lesson, that’s preferable.
[Speaker F] I have a short question: is the topic you spoke about today found somewhere in your books? I can’t hear. Is the topic you spoke about today found somewhere in your books?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not in a concentrated way.
[Speaker F] Where is it found, not in a concentrated way?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Send me an email; I’ll have to remember. Send me an email and I’ll try to locate it. Okay, thanks. Anyone else?
[Speaker E] Yes, regarding the one who “returns in repentance.” I didn’t quite understand—isn’t it connected to how we define what “returning in repentance” is? The Rabbi defined one who “returns in repentance” as someone who moves from a state of belief in X to a state of belief in Y, right? Is that how the Rabbi defined it? So what then—logically this transition is impossible? Is that basically what the Rabbi is saying? The transition is not possible in a proactive way. It can happen to me, but I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He can’t do it intentionally. After all, the commandment to repent, or the obligation to repent, say during the Ten Days of Repentance, essentially demands that a person repent. There’s no such thing as demanding that a person repent. Either something happened to him and then he adopted system Y, and if that didn’t happen to him then he remains with system X. How can you tell a person who holds system X, “Adopt Y”? It’s like telling someone who serves not for its own sake, “Serve for its own sake.” There’s no way to do that. If he serves for its own sake, it’s because some kind of inner revolution happened to him—but it happened to him; it’s not that he decided to do it intentionally.
[Speaker G] But maybe it happened to him because they told him he had to do it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But how did it happen to him? What does “had to” mean? They told him he had to, but I don’t think he has to. So what then? If it happened to me, in any case it happened to me.
[Speaker E] Wait, but ordering him to do something—that is possible, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker E] Commanding him to do something is possible, right? What I don’t understand is the difference between commanding him to do some specific commandment and commanding him to change his belief—what’s the difference?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously a law, or Jewish law, can command me to perform some action, and even if I don’t understand why it’s right, if I have faith in or commitment to Jewish law, I’ll do it. That’s obvious, and it has nothing to do with what I’m talking about here. Here I’m talking about a command to adopt a worldview, not to do something. So I’m saying: if I don’t believe in that worldview, then what does that mean? What does it mean to adopt it? So—
[Speaker E] So a mental act apparently can’t? Repentance is an act that you do, isn’t it? A mental act. You can’t, in a… wait, repentance—until now the Rabbi defined…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You have to adopt a new system within which you believe that it’s not proper to desecrate the Sabbath, and then naturally you also won’t desecrate it. Because if he believes that one may desecrate the Sabbath, then he’ll keep desecrating it—why wouldn’t he? The assumption is that a person does what he believes in.
[Speaker E] Wait a second, does the Rabbi agree that he can move from a state of desecrating the Sabbath to a state of not desecrating the Sabbath—is that possible?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, physically? Of course.
[Speaker E] Behaviorally?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course, why not? So—
[Speaker E] Wait, if so why—
[Speaker D] No, wait a second—
[Speaker E] Wait, so why not conceptually, Rabbi? Why not conceptually? A change in outlook—why not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll explain again. A conceptual change can happen to him, but he can’t do it intentionally. Because if he believes in outlook X, then he cannot intentionally adopt Y; he doesn’t believe in Y, he believes in X. Again, go back to the example of serving not for its own sake. You can demand of me—I serve not for its own sake—and now you can tell me, “Listen, serving not for its own sake isn’t okay; serve for its own sake.” But in my value system there’s only one value: maximum reward, minimum punishment. Can you now, within that framework, tell me, “Serve for its own sake”? I’ll laugh at you.
[Speaker G] So then what’s the meaning of “from not for its own sake one comes to for its own sake”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? It happens to him. The thing happens to him; it’s not something intentional. If you serve not for its own sake, that may eventually lead you to serve for its own sake—maybe yes, maybe no—but the claim is that it can only happen to him; it’s not something he does intentionally.
[Speaker E] Rabbi, in any case my claim is that just as we understand that it’s possible for him to change his actions—for example, from desecrating the Sabbath to observing the Sabbath—so too he can change his outlook to the same degree.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll explain why that’s not true. A person cannot change his outlook intentionally. The change can happen to him; he cannot change it. I think one should serve not for its own sake—go back to that simple example; it’s a simple example and it demonstrates this most clearly. I think one should serve not for its own sake. Now you come and tell me, “That’s not okay; you have to serve for its own sake.” What do you mean it’s not okay? Not okay according to what? After all, my value system is maximum reward, minimum punishment, so what’s not okay about it? I’m doing exactly what I think. What could move me from that? Only if I suddenly come to the conclusion that it isn’t right and that one should serve for its own sake. But when I hold the belief that one should serve not for its own sake, then to demand of me intentionally to make an internal conceptual change—what is that demand based on? After all, I believe in serving not for its own sake. There is no way to do that.
[Speaker G] Does that mean you can’t persuade people to change their values?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can persuade them, certainly. That’s exactly what I’m saying. When you persuade, it happens. Because when I present arguments you hadn’t thought of, you come to the conclusion that I’m right and that previously you were wrong. That’s perfectly fine. That’s what I mean when I say that the thing happens to you. But when I tell you—not that I’ve persuaded you of something new, but rather, given the existing data, this is what you believe, and now I demand that you change your beliefs—what nonsense is that? This is what I believe. What is that demand based on? You can’t demand such a thing. You can’t logically—not that it’s impossible because it’s immoral or something; it’s simply not defined.
[Speaker G] But when you persuade a person that the value of serving for its own sake is higher than not for its own sake, and he understands that and changes his mind. I’ll explain again: if you persuade him, then it happened to him.
[Speaker D] There’s no intentional choice here. So there’s an assumption in the definition of becoming repentant. The assumption is that persuading a person to change his thoughts—maybe that isn’t the definition of becoming repentant at all. It’s not an assumption, it’s a definition. No, because why—but the question is whether the definition is correct. Meaning, there’s something swallowed up inside the Rabbi’s definition, because he keeps repeating it—changing your mind, changing your mind—maybe it’s not changing your mind? That’s my question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can persuade; you cannot make such an intentional change. Whether you call that becoming repentant or not becoming repentant—for all I care call it whatever you like. It doesn’t matter; those are just words. What do I care?
[Speaker D] Call the first one Moshe and the second one Yankel. No, wait a second, because we wanted to discuss the subject of becoming repentant. So basically there are two, let’s say—we’ll set becoming repentant aside—there are really two elements here: whether intentional change is possible, yes, and change that is, so to speak, not intentional but through…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Intentional change—
[Speaker D] And change—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Through persuasion.
[Speaker D] Right. The question is which of them now falls under the rubric called, or under the definition called, becoming repentant. Maybe that’s the catch here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t care in the slightest. It’s words—what do I care? Call the first one Moshe and the second one Yankel. What I’m claiming is that Yankel is possible and Moshe is not possible.
[Speaker D] No, that’s fine, I agree with that part; with that I agree.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So whether you call it repentance or not repentance doesn’t interest me.
[Speaker D] No, because I thought maybe we wanted the concept of becoming repentant here, because if I put Yankel on it and not Moshe then there’ll be a problem. But if we switch them, then maybe I’ll understand it that way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] נכון, I also think—I’m also convinced—that becoming repentant is Moshe and not Yankel. But that’s not what I was claiming here. For the sake of my example I’m not using that assumption. If you ask me halakhically or philosophically what a penitent is—obviously it’s Moshe and not Yankel. But that doesn’t matter; here I only proved that Yankel is possible and Moshe is not. Okay. Anyone else?
[Speaker B] A question.
[Speaker E] Personal?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay.
[Speaker B] If it’s permitted to ask—if the Rabbi could maybe share with us his inclination ahead of the elections?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They asked me on the website. I don’t have many inclinations of the heart; I think I’m going to vote for Sa’ar, if that interests anyone. Gideon Sa’ar. Okay. Not that in my eyes he’s some especially exalted figure, but among the existing options he’s the least bad in my view. Bennett and Shaked are, in my opinion, excellent people; the problem is that they’ll go with Bibi, and I’m not willing to lend my hand to that. Bibi and the Haredim.
[Speaker B] Okay. Well, thank you very much, Sabbath peace,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Goodbye.