Doubt and Probability—in Halacha, in Jewish Thought, and in General—Lecture 2

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, last time we started the topic of doubt and probability—how you deal with complicated situations, or situations where we don’t have full information. So I began with a discussion of what certainty is as opposed to what truth is. And I said that certainty is an epistemic claim, meaning a cognitive-epistemic claim. Certainty is a state of the person; it has nothing to do with the content of the claim. There’s no such thing as a certain claim. There is a true claim and a false claim. Certainty is the state in which I hold the claim. If I say that the claim is certain, what I really mean is that I’m convinced of the claim. Whether the claim is true or not true—that’s a discussion that depends on whether the content described by the claim matches what is happening in the world or not. If it matches, it’s true; if it doesn’t match, it’s false. As for me, when I think this claim, when I hold this claim, I can hold it with certainty, I can hold it with high probability, and I can reject it. But those are all statements about me, not about the claim. So one has to distinguish between truth and certainty. I spoke about the fact that, in practice, there really is no such thing as certainty at all. It’s not an option that even exists for us. We can’t have one-hundred-percent certainty. We can always make a mistake. There’s nothing in the world that is free of the possibility of error from the standpoint of human grasp—meaning human perceptions, even perceptions of fact. That is, even sight deceives us, hearing deceives us, and certainly our logical inferences can be wrong, the assumptions can be wrong. So there really isn’t— the concept of certainty is a hypothetical concept, a theoretical concept. We don’t really have the ability to hold something with certainty, except for those things that say nothing at all—tautologies. Meaning, we can hold with certainty the claim that either x is true or x is not true and there is no third possibility. Or that it cannot be that x is both true and not true at the same time. Those are certain claims, but they are certain because they are contentless. That is, they don’t say anything. That’s what in logic is called a tautology. So there maybe we can have certainty, but with any claim that has some definite content, we cannot have certainty. Now, I also said that if that’s the case, then when someone speaks about certainty, what is meant is practical certainty, not philosophical certainty. In other words, practical certainty means that from my point of view this is clear—what lawyers call beyond a reasonable doubt. That doesn’t mean one hundred percent; it doesn’t mean there’s no possibility of error. But for all practical purposes, it’s true. I see a wall in front of me. From my point of view, that is a certain claim. It could be that my sight is deceiving me; that’s not certainty at the logical-philosophical level, but it is certainty in the practical sense. Of course, that raises the question whether this feeling of certainty couldn’t be the result of an illusion. The truth of the statement has nothing to do with illusions at all, because the truth of the statement is a property of the statement; it has nothing to do with the person. Meaning, if there’s a table here, then the statement “there’s a table here” is true not because I think it, but because there’s a table here, because in reality there’s a table here. So that has nothing to do with illusions. Illusions pertain to the question of the claims that I hold. When I hold a certain claim, the question is whether it’s true or whether it’s an illusion. In other words, the question is about me, not about the claim, and therefore it belongs to the plane of certainty and not to the plane of truth. The plane of truth is an objective plane; the plane of certainty is a plane that deals with me, with the person and not with the object. Then I spoke about the process of maturation. I described the maturation process as a three-stage process, and through it I tried to show, basically, the options for the third stage of maturation. And I said that at first the child is in a dogmatic state. What he is told is true because the adults said so—it’s self-evident. At a certain stage adolescence arrives, and the teenager says to his father, or to his teacher, or to his mother: who says so? Prove it. I don’t accept things without proof. And then at some point he reaches a state where he understands that there is nothing that has proof, because proofs are always based on some assumptions. There is no proof that is not based on a foundation of certain assumptions. An argument always starts from assumptions and arrives at a conclusion. So in the background there always have to be assumptions for which I have no proof. And if so, then it turns out that you can’t prove anything. And if you can’t prove anything, but I as a teenager am willing to accept only and exclusively things I have proof for, then I’m in a crisis. And that’s the crisis of maturation. From this crisis you can emerge in three directions or in three ways. Three ways or three paths—that’s the Talmud at the beginning of Kiddushin, yes. But three ways. One way is the skeptical path. If nothing is certain, and only what is certain is acceptable, then nothing is acceptable. That is skepticism, postmodernism, whatever you want to call it. The second path is fundamentalism. Fundamentalism says: true, with logic I can’t reach certainty, or with philosophy or with science I can’t reach certainty, but I can reach certainty by supra-rational means—faith, communication with aliens, or absolute trust in the caliph, or in the rebbe, or in Baba Sali. So all these things are what I called fundamentalism, because it bypasses rational thinking. It basically says: I have some other way of reaching certainty, not by the paths of rational thought. And then it says that it’s true that only what is certain is acceptable, but it’s not true that nothing is certain. There are certain things. What the caliph said is certain. By the way, I’m using the Muslim context with the caliph, but it’s the same among Jews. Among Jews too there are caliphs for every purpose. Meaning, the moment you say Maimonides said, Moses said, Rav Ashi said, it doesn’t matter who, the Chafetz Chaim said—everyone has his own pope—then it’s beyond criticism, and that is fundamentalism, pure and simple. So the first route of maturation basically remains with the two claims that created the problem: the claim that only what is certain is acceptable, and the claim that nothing is certain. The result is skepticism. The second possibility is to say: true, only what is certain is acceptable, but there are certain things. That’s fundamentalism. Then of course there is the third path that emerges here: to say that it’s true that nothing is certain, but it’s not true that only what is certain is acceptable. I’m willing to accept things that are not certain too. And that’s what I called synthetic maturity. And this maturity—and I support it, I think it’s really the only way to deal with things that we encounter even in the practical world around us. Because in the practical world around us there is this sort of titanic struggle, supposedly, between the first two paths: between pluralistic postmodern skepticism and fundamentalism. And that struggle is hopeless. It’s hopeless because both sides in that struggle accept one assumption: that only what is certain is acceptable. That both of them accept. Their disagreement is over whether there is a source of certainty or not. So in the skeptical, pluralistic world, and so on, there is no source of certainty. They don’t believe in God, or in caliphs, or in rebbes. So there is no source of certainty, and therefore we remain skeptics. In the fundamentalist world they have alternative sources of certainty, and therefore they are fundamentalists. But both agree that only what is certain is acceptable, and therefore they are stuck. Because there is no way to decide these struggles. The West is helpless in the face of fundamentalism. It is helpless in the face of fundamentalism because it cannot get out of its skeptical-pluralistic posture. And the only way to deal with both sides, both with fundamentalism and with skepticism—progressivism is the expression of skepticism, the crude and blatant expression of skepticism in our time, because really there are no standards. Anyone can say whatever he wants. So I can decide that I’m a telephone pole, I can decide that I want to marry the chair next to me, and who are you to tell me that it’s not true? That is, it’s irrelevant in a world where only what is certain is accepted. You can’t ground any of these things on certain principles, and therefore everything is open. You can say whatever you want because nothing is certain. So that struggle is hopeless. The only way to deal with these two threats from both sides is synthetic maturity. Synthetic maturity basically says that I have come out of my former state. Until now I thought that only what is certain is acceptable. But no: there is common sense, there are things that are reasonable, so for me that too is acceptable. True, it’s not certain. I may be wrong, maybe someone will convince me, maybe I’ll change my mind, that’s all fine. But as long as that hasn’t happened, I hold this position. And this conception, which says that there can be a truth that is not certain—and here I connect back to my opening point—what the synthetic position is really saying is that there can be a truth that is not certain. That is what the other two sides do not accept. The other two sides say: truth is certainty. And the innovation of the synthetic position against the other two sides is: not true. On the contrary, there are no certain things at all. There aren’t; there can’t be. On the other hand, there is truth. Truth does not have to be certain. I can hold things without certainty and they can still be true. That is, if what I think matches the state of affairs in the world, then it’s true. The fact that I’m not sure about it does not mean it isn’t true. “True” is a claim about the object; “certain” is a claim about the person, as I said earlier. Therefore there is no contradiction in saying that there are uncertain truths. In fact, not only is there no contradiction, it is a necessary statement. Truth has nothing whatsoever to do with certainty. There is no connection between the question whether a claim is true and the question whether I hold it with certainty or without certainty. Those are two completely different things. I can hold a mistaken claim with certainty, and I can hold a true claim without certainty—or even think it is not correct, while in truth it is correct. There is simply no connection between these two questions. And the confusion between them is what leads to postmodernism, what leads to progressivism, what leads to many, many phenomena present in our practical world. These are not just abstract philosophical questions. This stands behind very, very real processes. And I think I mentioned that if, say, I am a synthetic adult and now my son is going through this maturation process and reaches the adolescent stage and says to me, “Prove it. Who says so? Prove it.” I tell him: listen, the sun will rise tomorrow as well. It has risen until today, it will probably rise tomorrow too. And he says, who says so? Do you have proof? So until now it rose, but maybe tomorrow it won’t rise? Yes, David Hume’s questions. These are the skeptical questions that every teenager asks himself or his parents. And the answer I give him is: listen, true, I have no proof and it isn’t certain, but it will happen, don’t worry. That’s just how it is; that’s how things work. And if I explain to him that the world rotates on its axis, he says, yes, but who says it will keep rotating? You can always ask questions. So what blocks the conversation here? What blocks the conversation is that the child or teenager doesn’t know the state of synthetic maturity. He has gone through the stage of childhood and the stage of adolescence, so from his point of view, when I cling to something that is not certain, I’m just stuck in childish dogmatism. I simply got stuck in stage one. He doesn’t understand that there is another stage here. That stage says: no, I hold this, but not dogmatically. I think it’s true, but I’m also open to hearing doubts, to thinking maybe I’m mistaken, and then I’ll change my position. That is synthetic maturity. And as is well known, everyone has to shave on his own beard. No one shaves on someone else’s beard. So until the child matures, nothing will help you. You can try to convince him that this is common sense, but nothing will help. At least with talented children, you’ve got no chance.

[Speaker C] Meaning, so they have to mature on their own.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, it’s… what?

[Speaker C] It seems to me that this whole division is really on the theoretical plane. Because in practical terms everyone belongs to the third part. Because anyone who crosses at a crosswalk knows that here he can cross with his eyes closed—he’s sure. But it’s not sure, because one in a hundred accidents happen.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, with eyes closed I wouldn’t go into a crosswalk, but yes.

[Speaker C] I just looked—it shows that this is the majority, so leave it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Our daily functioning really assumes these assumptions. Correct. The skeptic will say: I do it because I’m used to it; I don’t grant it any truth value. But I don’t believe him. I mean, it’s just… I agree. These are just positions people present; it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s really what is inside them. But never mind, that’s another issue. In any case, what this really tells us is that there is some kind of challenge still standing before us. Because if I say: no, I’m not a dogmatist, I don’t just hold claims blindly, I’m a synthetic adult—what does that mean? The teenager will say to me: what is that? You call it by different names, but bottom line you accept something even though it isn’t certain. So you’re just a dogmatist. Call it whatever you want. What really distinguishes the synthetic adult from the dogmatic child? What distinguishes him is the use of common sense. The dogmatic child doesn’t use common sense; whatever he is told, he accepts. That is, he has no criticism. The synthetic adult also accepts things without proof, but he does apply critical thought to them. He is not a fundamentalist. That is, from his point of view, even his truths, even what he believes in, are exposed to critical thinking. They have to be examined—whether they are correct or not correct. I’m supposed to be open to changing my position; if there are good arguments against me, good evidence against me, then I’ll change my position. And that of course raises the question: what are these tools? Those tools of common sense, those tools that do not give us absolute truth, but I’m still willing to rely on them in order to function in the world. That is, I think something is true even though I have no certainty. So what are these tools? If I don’t have tools and I just say that, then it’s just whitewashing, word laundering. Then I’m really just a dogmatist. If you want to be something a little different—not a dogmatist, but a synthetic adult—you need to present your working tools. What are the tools of critical thinking with which you deal with uncertain truths? That is basically the foundational question of the synthetic adult, and really the foundational question of human thought altogether. That’s why I say we are not dealing here with some esoteric philosophical problem that should interest three people. This is an existential question. This is the question over which the world is falling apart today. You have to understand: it’s a philosophical question with far-reaching consequences for what happens here every day. Therefore it is very important to clarify these points. Rabbi, Rabbi, the matter of intellect—wait, one at a time, yes.

[Speaker D] How does the Rabbi understand this well-known question, that those same progressives or postmodernists, as the Rabbi calls them, actually fight bloody wars over their truths?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, that belongs to the world of psychology. You know, as the song says, “without something to die for,” right? You can’t live in a world where there isn’t something you’re willing to die for. Now if a value vacuum or a vacuum in your intellectual world is created, then the vacuum itself becomes the thing you’re willing to die for. That is, it becomes an article of faith. The article of faith for which you go on crusade is the belief that there are no articles of faith. And for that you will go on crusades. Why? Because human beings need something sacred. It’s a psychological problem. By the way, many of these people accuse believers of exactly this. They say: you believe in these things just because you have a psychological need to hold on to something sacred, absolute, something for which you’re willing to give your life—opium for the masses, what Marx said. But that’s actually a correct statement. Among many religious people, faith really does come from there. It isn’t real faith; it’s faith that comes to answer a psychological need. But that’s true also among secular people and atheists and all sorts of people. They need something sacred. We all need something sacred to die for. It’s hard to live in a world devoid of meaning, where there are no sacred things, nothing that gives meaning, nothing I’m willing to fight for or against. A world of peace, of “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb”—I wouldn’t want to be within five hundred parasangs of it. That’s the most boring world possible, a world where everyone would commit suicide, a world where the wolf dwells with the lamb. They would also need to change our consciousness in the messianic age in order to give us that world of the wolf with the lamb. I remember that my postdoc adviser—sponsor, I don’t know, adviser, whatever to call it—he was a very extreme left-wing activist in Israel, and he told me he was once in Scandinavia somewhere, I think in Denmark, something like that. He said, wow, I got to Denmark and I said, nothing here interests me. There are no wars, no problems, no Arabs, no attacks—from the left’s point of view, so to speak. So he sits on the couch, puts his feet up on the wall, says: I’ve reached peace and tranquility. All the nerves he had from what goes on here—none of that exists; in Denmark nothing happens, and even if something happens, it doesn’t interest me. So he sits there, and when he came back he told us: after three minutes I started itching. After ten minutes I realized I was about to break some wall here. After two days I simply fled back to Israel. You can’t live in that boredom. It’s something terrible. Rage and crusades are an existential need for human beings. A world without crusades is a world I do not want to live in. You have to have something to die for. It’s true, psychologically speaking it’s very simple. I’m no great psychologist, but it’s simple. And therefore it seems to me that postmodernism really at some stage went through that process: at first it was the vacuum, the rebellion against truths, and then the vacuum itself became the absolute truth for which people fight and kill and excommunicate. And they define all those who do not believe in the vacuum—or rather, who believe in something, meaning do not believe in the vacuum—as heretics. And all the religious jargon appears there too. All the religious jargon. And for the same reasons, by the way, also in the religious world. In the religious world all that jargon of heresy and bans and excommunications and all those things comes from the same place: psychological needs. Why excommunicate and ban someone who thinks differently from you? If he thinks differently from you, try to convince him. When you ban and excommunicate him, you go on a crusade against him; you are not arguing. And when you go on a crusade, that’s psychology, not ideology and not philosophy. When you have no arguments—once the arguments run out, the labels begin. Yes, when you have no arguments.

[Speaker E] There’s also an aspect here in the educational sense, no? What? There is also this issue in an educational sense, as if they do it just for society, for educational reasons.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In my opinion it only causes educational harm. There’s nothing to it.

[Speaker E] Yes, but at least apparently there are people who think that this is how it preserves…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that they think that is itself also a product of psychology. They find some philosophical rationalization. In the end, I’m telling you from what I encounter around me: the labels people say about someone—and I’ve heard this more than once—they say someone is a heretic, that he doesn’t know, that he doesn’t believe this, that he’s against Maimonides, whatever exactly—it appears precisely when the arguments run out. Someone who has no arguments to answer your claims will label you a heretic. Because he’s helpless, he has no way to deal with it. That’s just… Someone who has arguments will raise the arguments, will try to convince, will try to engage, and that’s all. Okay, but this really is already…

[Speaker E] But Rabbi, what the Rabbi says about postmodernism—that’s really a criticism from within their own position, isn’t it? They say that there’s no truth at all, but that itself they do accept as truth. That’s their problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the most common argument, yes. If there are no truths, then why is “there are no truths” such an absolute truth for you? Why do you believe in that so absolutely?

[Speaker E] So is the Rabbi saying that this was created in them because of the psychological genre, so to speak?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. I argue—and this is like the example of leaving religion and returning to religion and all that—I argue that where there is no philosophical explanation, you have to look for the explanation on the psychological plane. So I say that yes, there is a philosophical problem here, but it still comes from somewhere. It comes from this psychological need, in my opinion. In any case, the point is that tools really are required to help ground synthetic maturity. That is, as a synthetic adult, many times—you know, not long ago on my website someone asked me: why do you need God in order to be obligated to morality? I argue that without God there is no obligation to morality. Not as a matter of fact—there are many moral people who do not believe in God. I argue that on the philosophical level there can be no justification, there can be no validity to moral principles, without God in the background. That’s my claim. Now someone comes and says—and I won’t get into it right now—but someone comes and says: why? For me that’s an axiom. Morality obligates; that’s an axiom. I don’t need God for that. And that is actually a certain type of argument that is very natural given the move I described here. Because what am I saying? The teenager asks me, wait, who says so? So I answer him: it’s an axiom. I’m exempt from giving reasons, because what’s the problem? It’s an axiom. And after all, behind every justification there are always axioms in the background, right? That’s obvious. No one can offer arguments that are not based on axioms. So what’s the problem? I don’t need the argument at all. I’ll just say of the claim itself that it’s an axiom. They ask me who says there is a God? I say: for me it’s an axiom. So that’s it—what’s the problem? I’m exempt from giving reasons. Now, the move I described here—synthetic maturity—leads many people to make arguments of this type. And I want to say that this is going one step too far. Because that is really fleeing into comfortable territory, making life easy for yourself. You have no arguments, your arguments have run out—okay, so you declare it an axiom and all is well. But if the thing is not inherently reasonable, that is, from within itself, then it won’t help if you tell me it’s an axiom. Why are you adopting an irrational axiom? I mean, that doesn’t… You need to explain some kind of logic, or say it isn’t absurd and my intuition tells me it is true, and therefore I think it is true—that’s fine. But if the thing has a problem, that is, there is a difficulty with this position, you cannot dismiss it by saying “it’s an axiom.” Therefore I say that when the synthetic adult makes claims, he is not exempt from justifying them. The fact that he says it’s an axiom does not solve the problem. If the claim is problematic, you still have to justify it. Now what does it mean to justify? Justification does not mean only producing a logical argument. Producing a logical argument will send you back to the assumptions of the argument, and again the question will arise: so how do you justify those? There are forms of justification that are different. For example: in our world the concept of rhetoric is almost a dirty word. It’s a synonym for demagoguery. But that is a mistake. In the United States, I think maybe still, or at least once, rhetoric was a required subject in high school. Too bad we don’t have that here, by the way. First of all they should teach the teachers, and then have them pass it on to the students. This field is very important. And logic is a very limited field in what it can do. If you have certain assumptions, I can help you use logic to derive conclusions from them. But how do I get you to adopt a particular assumption? How do you adopt the assumptions themselves? And here it seems to me that the relevant tool is rhetoric. And rhetoric means that I look at the world, at the claim, and I can get a sense of whether it is reasonable or not. I cross-check it, I look at its implications, all kinds of things of that sort. I can’t prove it. The tools are not logical. But I show you one of its implications in a certain situation, this practical implication or that one, and from the implications, the practical consequences, the connections to other claims, I can form an impression of whether I accept it, whether the claim seems reasonable to me or not. And that is really what rhetoric does. Therefore rhetoric is a very, very important argumentative tool—much more important, by the way, than logic. Because usually our arguments are not about the logic. Usually in arguments neither side is making a simple logical error, that is, putting forward an invalid argument. Rather, he has assumptions that I don’t accept. So I have to discuss the assumptions, not the argument. But discussing the assumptions is not done with logic; it’s done with rhetoric. So rhetoric, for example, is a collection of tools that can help me examine things even though I have no certainty about them. I’m not sure, but it makes sense to me, it sounds reasonable. Beyond that, there are two additional kinds of tools of synthetic maturity. One is scientific tools—observations, generalizations, and the like. And the second is statistics. And that will eventually lead us to our topics too, but really all of this is our topic: the whole treatment of these complex situations. So the system of tools that I…

[Speaker E] Rabbi, when the Rabbi says rhetoric—what does that mean? I mean, rhetoric supposedly is only about conveying it onward, convincing the other person?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, rhetoric… If by rhetoric you mean how to express things, then in my eyes that’s superficial. The question is what you want to express. That is rhetoric. The language afterward—how to express it—that is language. I’m asking about the ideas themselves that you express; that’s what I call rhetoric, as distinct from logic. Logic is necessary connections between claims and conclusions.

[Speaker E] Right. So then what does rhetoric mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rhetoric is non-necessary tools that lead you from here to there.

[Speaker E] What, like considerations that make sense but are not necessary?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Induction, analogy, plausibility, various kinds of intuitions—yes, all that is rhetoric. Therefore rhetoric is not on the linguistic plane. The linguistic plane expresses the rhetorical argument, but there is a rhetorical argument that language only expresses, and that’s what I’m talking about. In logic too, after all, it’s not the language. Logic—the language expresses the logical argument, but the logical argument is an argument. It’s not on the linguistic plane; it’s on the plane of ideas. So this collection of tools, as I said, also contains two more toolboxes—or maybe these two toolboxes are part of this world that I can call rhetoric. One toolbox is the scientific toolbox, and the second toolbox is the statistical toolbox. And of course statistics is also used in science, but I want to separate them so it will be clear what is being discussed.

[Speaker B] In the scientific toolbox… what? I have a question about the scientific toolbox. Just two examples. There are people who say that not a leaf falls unless the Holy One, blessed be He, or an angel tells it to—that there are no laws of science. And second, if there is a dispute, let’s call it, between the Talmud and science, the Talmud is always right and science—fine, he doesn’t believe in science; the Talmud says something very strange, and that’s true.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something you need to ask the people who say it, not me. I can’t defend positions I don’t agree with.

[Speaker B] The question is, how do I deal with it? Someone says…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t deal with it. That’s fundamentalism. That’s exactly the claim I made earlier. Fundamentalism means there is some source of authority—never mind who, at the moment. That’s fundamentalism. You can’t deal with fundamentalists; there’s no way. At least I don’t see such a way. But I do want maybe to say—this reminds me, you reminded me—I have a friend who once said, I haven’t actually seen the book inside, that in Rabbi Wolf’s book, the one who founded the Haredi Wolf seminary for girls—some Yekke, one of those fanatical German Jews, you know, the most fanatical Haredim are the Yekkes. With them it often also comes together with general education; there are phenomena there… the Yekkes are an unbelievable people. Anyway, in any case, his book begins—so my friend told me, I didn’t see it inside—”Science is false and our Torah is true.” That’s how the book begins. Yes, so you reminded me of that immortal sentence. Okay, anyway, back to our topic. What I basically want to say is that the scientific toolbox includes observations, generalizations, right, the formulation of theories, everything that is done in the scientific realm. Why do I include it in the synthetic toolbox? Because unlike logic, it’s clear that science is not built on necessary arguments. Right? Meaning, the scientific result, the scientific law, the scientific finding, is never an absolutely certain finding. Meaning, it could be that there will be some experiment in the future that refutes our theory. And therefore people often relate to science as a source of certainty, but that too is fundamentalism. Science cannot give us certainty. Science itself is built on a system of tools that is not certain. Even the direct observations—when I see something with my own eyes, like I said earlier—even my eyes deceive me. It’s just practical certainty. Meaning, I say: if I see a wire here, then apparently there’s a wire here. I have practical certainty about that, even though it could be mistaken; but practically speaking it seems clear to me. But the general law that I derive from direct observations—and we’ll come back to this a lot—the general law that I derive from direct observations is not certain. You can make a great many generalizations; it may be that there is no correct generalization at all. That’s generalization, induction, David Hume’s problem of induction, or the problem of causality—the assumption that every event must have a cause, right, the principle of causality. Where does that come from? That’s an assumption of reason; it’s not something certain, it’s not the result of observation, and yet it is a basic tool in scientific thinking. Meaning, scientific thinking is built on many tools, assumptions, reasoning that is not observational but also not certain—it’s not logic. Yes, the assumption in physics that there can’t be action at a distance between bodies, right, action at a distance. Two distant bodies cannot affect each other. If there is a law of gravitation between two masses distant from one another, then something has to pass from one to the other—gravitational waves, gravitons. Okay? It can’t happen from a distance. Meaning, that’s an assumption, an assumption in physics. Where does that assumption come from? Why can’t it be? Because reason—reason tells me that it can’t be. Exactly like the principle of causality. It’s that kind of assumption.

[Speaker B] But specifically now, in quantum theory, they don’t accept that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—even in quantum theory it’s not at all clear what it says about that issue. It’s what’s called locality. But the question of what locality means, whether there is or isn’t locality in quantum theory—that’s a question of interpretation. Well, I’m not going into that; it’s complicated. In any case, the point is that at the foundation of scientific thought sits a collection of tools that are not certain. But on the other hand, no one would say that science is not fundamentalist because it isn’t certain, but on the other hand it’s also not skeptical, hypothetical, speculative—no. Overall we do trust scientific findings. We get on airplanes on the basis of that trust and build on it.

[Speaker E] Once when I talked about this with a postmodernist, he told me that it comes from psychology. Again—when I talked about this, about that claim, with a postmodernist, that supposedly we do accept what this is, then he always started explaining that maybe it only comes from psychology—that we need stability and security.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ve heard that from dozens of people. Of course, that’s what they always say. I know—it’s because my psychology is like that. I don’t believe him, but fine, that’s what he said, so okay. I don’t know. With my psychology, I wouldn’t jump into a fire, even if my psychology told me to jump into a fire. But maybe he has a different psychology, I don’t know. To me, those are answers that come out of distress. After all, no—it goes beyond the question of psychology. There’s also an empirical question here. Meaning, if it’s only psychology, then how do you explain the fact that you’ve never crashed in an airplane? Is that only psychology? The plane really could crash; there’s no guarantee that it won’t crash, right? So why doesn’t it crash? It doesn’t happen. Airplanes crashing is a super-rare event.

[Speaker E] No, it’s not that, Rabbi—it’s not like they even doubt on that level, that the fact that the plane doesn’t crash means anything at all. It means nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There comes a certain stage where I stop talking with a person—meaning, once our language no longer expresses the same things.

[Speaker E] Right, but it seems to me that that’s the issue there, this deconstruction of language, and they’ve lost everything, so to speak.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, then good health to them. They haven’t lost everything; they only say they’ve lost everything. Fine, okay. I said—it’s a certain type.

[Speaker E] But the Rabbi says that the Rabbi doesn’t really believe their claims, the Rabbi doesn’t think they’re really like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t believe them one bit, of course not. They’re lying to themselves and to me, obviously. That’s the point. You can’t deal either with the postmodernist—with the mature skeptic, the skeptic—or with the fundamentalist. You can’t argue with either of them. Because every argument you raise to the skeptic, he’ll say, who told you that? And every argument you answer the fundamentalist with, he’ll say, yes, but Allah told me otherwise. You can’t deal with them. The synthetic adult tries to formulate a position on the basis of arguments. For both of those guys, there are no arguments; arguments are irrelevant. So that’s exactly the point. So I don’t believe there really are such skeptics. I don’t know, maybe there are a few mutations for whom psychiatric treatment might actually help, but most of them talk that way. What’s going on inside them—I have my suspicions that it’s not what’s going on there—but that’s how they talk. Yes, of course, it’s what you described earlier—I hear it at every turn. Okay.

[Speaker E] Yes, Rabbi, and regarding the fundamentalist plane there, let’s say—it seems to me that it’s pretty common too.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There it is authentic. There it is authentic.

[Speaker E] Right, Rabbi, but also—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They believe what they say.

[Speaker E] Yes, clearly, there it’s true. And also—but also regarding what the Rabbi says, that this plane is pretty common, this method of saying, like, just as I don’t begin doubting life itself, the very fact that I’m alive—which it seems to me the Rabbi also agrees with—in the sense that I don’t need to doubt the very branch I’m sitting on, that there’s a limit to every claim. I think. Right, so they say that in the context of Judaism, that this is the branch I’m sitting on. So I’m asking the Rabbi whether the Rabbi calls that fundamentalist thinking.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, completely. It’s connected to what I said earlier: those who turn the puzzling thing into an axiom, and then they’re exempt from having to justify it. They ask you—as if you’re a synthetic adult, meaning, look, you don’t need certainty, so what is an axiom from my perspective? It’s not a fair game. Meaning, you pull axioms out of your sleeve when you run out of reasons. Meaning, if you have something that isn’t logical and you hold onto it as an axiom, then that requires an explanation of why that is your axiom.

[Speaker E] But Rabbi, let’s say the Rabbi does agree—but if I now tell the Rabbi that I say as an axiom the very fact that I’m not doubting my life, the Rabbi won’t tell me that I need proof for that, because it really is understood. The Rabbi says, right, you have a correct intuition. Right,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I have that as a religious person too.

[Speaker E] Exactly. So if it’s in the religious context—meaning, let’s say I see this as someone to whom prophecy was revealed or something like that—then he really doesn’t need proof.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, then that’s fine, but that’s a reason. He says: I encountered it, I saw it—that’s something else. But if he tells me, look, for me this is an axiom, that doesn’t help with anything. It only means: I’m exempt from justifying it.

[Speaker E] There’s someone who’ll tell you, for example—I think the Calvinists—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Basic belief. I’ve said this and spoken about it more than once. A basic belief is a belief in every sense of the word; there’s no real difference between it and the belief of a philosopher. All in all, the path from the assumptions to the conclusion is shorter; the assumption itself is the conclusion. But it’s the same thing, as long as the assumption is something you genuinely hold, that there is genuine justification to believe in it. But a baseless assumption—you can’t hold onto it just because that’s your axiom. That’s just wordplay. Okay, so again: the fact that certainty isn’t required doesn’t mean reasonableness isn’t required.

[Speaker E] It says the same

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] thing.

[Speaker E] So someone who says that for him God and Judaism and Torah are something very intuitive, very sustainable within him—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what’s called a basic belief. Excellent. What’s wrong with that?

[Speaker E] And that isn’t considered a fundamentalist argument?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not at all—as long as he says, listen, but if I brought him good arguments against it, he would indeed be willing to reconsider his position. Yes, right. So it’s a foundational assumption because they really think that way, because it really is justified from their point of view—not because they can’t justify it, so they say, this is an axiom. You understand? It’s a subtle distinction.

[Speaker E] The non-simple believers—so the non-simple believers, the Rabbi says that basically we greatly narrow the axiom.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. Non-naive faith is naive faith in the axioms, from which you then set out and arrive at faith in God. In the end that too is naive faith. It’s just naive faith in the principle of causality, not in God.

[Speaker E] And that’s like—you’re saying that you believe in something more widespread, that more people believe in, let’s say.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s clearer to me. It doesn’t matter right now whether people are the criterion or something else. So the scientific system of tools belongs to synthetic maturity, because unlike the child—who accepts things because a parent said so, or a teacher said so, or whatever—that’s basically a type of fundamentalism. The synthetic adult also accepts things without having proof, but he has justification. Meaning, it’s reasonable. He is willing to reconsider it and give it up or replace it. In that sense, he hasn’t gone back to the stage of childhood. That’s one system of tools. The second system of tools is the statistical, probabilistic system of tools. Again, I’m saying: science uses that too, but I’ll define it here as an additional system of tools. So now there is empiricism, generalizations, and a priori conjectures—that’s the scientific toolbox—and the statistical-probabilistic toolbox, which is basically another system of tools for handling situations of uncertainty. What happens when I have several possibilities before me and I need to decide which of them is correct, but I don’t have a sufficient basis to know which one is correct, even on a synthetic level? That is already a system of tools that is more—I’d say, I don’t know if lower or higher—but it’s one floor above, I would say. The scientific system of tools is a system that ultimately brings me to a conclusion. The probabilistic and statistical system of tools very often merely tells me how to behave in a place where I don’t have a conclusion, or what is more reasonable to assume even though I can’t know, can’t really know it. So the probabilistic system of tools is how I maneuver in a situation where I haven’t reached a conclusion. And therefore in that sense it is a system of tools that is on a level one floor above, I would say. But all these tools are essentially tools of the mature synthetic adult. Now the goal, in the end, is also to get to doubt and probability. So here in fact we’re touching the point. Once I don’t have certainty—when there’s no certainty, that means there are several possibilities, right? That’s what it means that there’s no certainty. There are several possibilities. What do you do in a situation where there are several possibilities before you? So here, as I said before, the scientific toolbox tells me: okay, I choose this possibility. It’s not certain, but I still reach this conclusion, like the law of gravitation. The law of gravitation I wouldn’t assign to the world of probability or statistics. The law of gravitation, for me, is a conclusion, a scientific conclusion. It’s true. Let’s call it practical certainty, even if not certainty on the logical-philosophical level. Statistics is a situation in which I cannot rule out the second possibility, but it makes sense to go with this possibility. It has a higher plausibility, a higher probability. That’s something else. Maybe I’ll give an example to sharpen the difference between them a bit. The Talmud in tractate Shabbat 30b brings—maybe I’ll show you. Here. The Talmud in tractate Shabbat 30b—it’s famous thanks to Rabbi Kook, in Ein Ayah he has a well-known passage on this Talmud. This Talmud says as follows: Like this—it doesn’t matter right now what the context is—like this one who came before Rabbi and said to him: Your wife is my wife and your children are my children. Your children are my children. He said to him: Would you like to drink a cup of wine? He drank and burst. Yes, he came to Rabbi and said to him: I actually had relations with your wife, and the children attributed to you are in fact mamzerim, they’re my children. Rabbi said to him: Would you like to drink a cup of wine? Do you want to drink a cup of wine? Cheers. He drank and burst—died, or evaporated from there, however you want to interpret it. There was another who came before Rabbi Hiyya, a similar case. He said to him: Your mother is my wife and you are my son. Yes, I actually had relations with your mother and you are a mamzer, you are my son. He said to him: Would you like to drink a cup of wine? He drank and burst. Yes. And they bring this in the context—yes, they also wanted to hide away the book of Proverbs because its words contradict one another. Why didn’t they hide it away? They said: Didn’t we examine the book of Ecclesiastes? Here too. In short, what does it mean that its words contradict one another? It is written, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly,” and it is written, “Answer a fool according to his folly.” There is no difficulty: this one refers to words of Torah, that one to worldly matters. And then they bring these examples, which are worldly matters, and in those cases you don’t need to answer a fool according to his folly; you don’t need to answer him at all. What does that actually mean? So Rabbi Kook talks about this Talmudic passage in Ein Ayah, and he basically says: sometimes there are questions where you do not seek an answer for how to resolve the question. These are nuisance questions. You simply tell him: get lost, don’t waste my time. Okay? When you come and tell a person, listen, you’re not your father’s son, you’re a mamzer, you’re my son—then I don’t start discussing, wait a second, what are the statistics of mamzerim, and what are the statistics of adulterous women or adulterous men or something like that, and I check: okay, there’s a ninety-five percent chance that I’m my father’s son, and therefore I’m my father’s son because I have a probabilistic calculation. That’s not how it works. I don’t make the probabilistic calculation. I simply don’t begin to doubt. There are questions that simply fail to arouse doubt at all. Okay? If someone tells me, look, but maybe the law of gravitation isn’t correct, they ran experiments and we see—well, who knows, maybe it’s something, I don’t know exactly what. So what would you tell me? To make a statistical calculation and tell me there’s a ninety-nine percent chance that it’s correct? No. I don’t make a statistical calculation. I simply tell you: get lost. Don’t waste my time.

[Speaker E] The law of gravitation really isn’t correct, is it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The law of gravitation is correct. Why not correct?

[Speaker E] In the description, I mean—what is the law of gravitation exactly?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Relativity theory with geometry is just an alternative description. It’s the same thing, it doesn’t matter.

[Speaker E] The Rabbi doesn’t distinguish between them? No. This matter—what does that

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] mean? There are explanations in relativity theory and all that, let’s say, but that doesn’t mean the law of gravitation isn’t correct. The law of gravitation is correct; it has a geometric description. Okay, fine, so what?

[Speaker E] No, for example once someone talked to me about this when we were discussing a passage in Bava Kamma, “another force is involved in it,” so why don’t we say that gravitation is “another force is involved in it”? So he said, because in the conclusion it’s like Einstein and not like Newton.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, that’s Tosafot-style pilpul. It’s closer to bringing the Tosafot in Bava Kamma—you know, the Purim Tosafot. Since it says there—let’s start: in the book of Esther it says, how does it go there, “And Haman hurried to his house, mourning and with his head covered.” So what does “mourning and with his head covered” mean? So the Sages say that his daughter was cleaning the house, and she poured out the chamber pot, the dirty water, downward, and it hit her father’s head. When she saw that it hit her father’s head, she jumped out the window and committed suicide. So he was “mourning and with his head covered.” He was mourning for his daughter, and with his head covered because… yes. So people ask: why “mourning and with his head covered”? First he was with his head covered, and afterward mourning. Meaning, first the water hit him and only afterward did she jump. Right? After all, the law of gravitation says that if the water left before she did, then it would also reach the ground before she did. It’s not like Aristotle, where it depends on mass; the speed is universal. All masses fall at the same speed. So the water reached the ground before she did, so first he was with his head covered and afterward mourning. So they resolve it according to the Tosafot in Bava Kamma. Tosafot in Bava Kamma says that if you shoot an arrow, if you throw a vessel from the top of a roof, then we follow the initial state, and the vessel is considered—there’s a side there, it doesn’t matter, two sides, but we follow the initial state—and the vessel is considered broken from the moment it left your hands. It doesn’t need to reach the ground; it’s already broken in the air. The practical implication is if someone shot an arrow at it and broke it, he broke a vessel that was already broken, so he is exempt if we follow the initial state. In contrast, Tosafot says, if I shoot an arrow at a vessel and now someone comes and smashes the vessel, the vessel is not considered broken. Now they say that the Rosh disagrees with him, the Ketzot discusses this, never mind—that’s Tosafot. So when you shoot an arrow at a vessel, it’s not broken. When you throw a vessel from a roof, it is broken from the moment it set out. What’s the difference? The claim is that this takes me back to gravitation—by the way here it’s not a joke, it’s a real claim. The claim—yes—so they bring this Tosafot regarding Haman, because when she jumped from the roof she was already considered dead from above. But when the water went toward Haman, he was not with his head covered until the water actually hit him, because it’s like an arrow going toward the vessel. Therefore he was first mourning and afterward with his head covered. Fine, that’s good for Purim. In any case, for our purposes—for our purposes this is also the answer to what you said earlier. That’s why gravitation is not considered “another force is involved in it.” Gravitation is a state where the result is already embedded in the object itself. When a falling object falls by the force of gravitation, it is already considered broken now. In contrast, when you shoot an arrow at it, the vessel is not considered broken from the first moment; it is only expected to break—when the arrow hits it, then it will break. Gravitation is considered part of the nature of things themselves, not something else acting on you. It’s just a way of looking at it, doesn’t matter. In any case, how did we get to all this? Ah, yes. I was talking about the fact that there are questions I don’t bother answering. For example, I once was in Bnei Brak, and in our synagogue someone gave a Torah talk in honor of his son’s bar mitzvah, and he discussed the question of what happens if you see a boy there and you want to count him for a prayer quorum. So you ask him: tell me, are you bar mitzvah age? He says: yes. Fine, and then “And He, being compassionate, forgives iniquity,” and they start the evening service; there’s a quorum. Who says he’s believed? Maybe he’s not believed? We need to discuss: one witness is believed in matters of prohibition, does he testify about himself, does he not testify about himself. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a concern for lying, no concern for lying. He made whole pilpul discussions there. Now anyone who hears something like that understands that it’s nonsense and vanity. Why is it nonsense and vanity? Because my trust in that child is not built on halakhic principles and laws of evidence. If he said he’s bar mitzvah age, he’s probably bar mitzvah age. That’s all. It belongs to the category of questions of: don’t waste my time. Now, and these things carry weight. The Talmud says that people are executed and stoned on the basis of presumptions. “Executed and stoned on the basis of presumptions” means that if I strike my father and mother—“one who strikes his father and mother shall surely be put to death”—who says this is my father? Maybe I’m a mamzer. So what will you say? There is a majority; most acts of intercourse are attributed to the husband. Fine—but do we execute on the basis of a majority? It says, “And the congregation shall save”—the smallest excuse to avoid executing a defendant. So what’s the problem?

[Speaker E] In order to doubt, a doubt has to arise.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Meaning, the claim is that once

[Speaker E] there is a situation

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] established in the world that I am the son of so-and-so, then I am the son of so-and-so. And if someone claims otherwise, that is not enough to define the situation as a doubt. In order to doubt, you need a reason. Okay?

[Speaker E] What the Rabbi says regarding a minor, though—is there such a presumption that everyone doesn’t lie? Like, a presumption that minors don’t lie?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again—what is a presumption? Are you asking me whether such a presumption appears in the Talmud? There is such a presumption in the world. Not in the Talmud. The Talmud too takes its presumptions from the world; it didn’t receive them from Sinai. It looked at the world and said: this is a presumption, this is obvious.

[Speaker E] That was already discussed in the previous series. What? Rabbi, are presumptions things that exist in the world, or are they because of Torah from Sinai, these presumptions? Ah, okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case, one second—I just want to finish because we’ve already reached the end of the time, so I’ll just finish and then after that. So what I basically want to say is that although there is a formal similarity between the two situations—in both cases there is a question and I decide it according to reason—both Jewish law and, I think, common sense distinguish between two different situations. There are situations in which the question does not arouse doubt at all, and therefore I do not look for answers or reasons or explanations or justifications for the answer I propose to the question. It’s “Would you like to drink a cup of wine?” and he burst—you don’t answer such questions at all. There are situations in which the question does arise, and I use rules of one sort or another—laws of evidence, reasoning, statistics, whatever it may be—in order to decide the question, or at least to know how to behave among the possibilities if I don’t have an answer to the question. And these are two different situations. In order to use statistics, you have to be in the second situation. First of all, you have to decide that you are in a state of doubt at all before you begin to handle the question with statistical tools. And therefore when we go up to the floor of statistical tools from the scientific floor, then ostensibly it isn’t clear why these are two different floors. On the scientific floor too we use, all in all, various inferences from observations; we make a generalization; that too looks like statistics. We use statistical tools in science. Yes, but in the end we do not relate to the result as a statistical result. It is practical certainty. Meaning, the law of gravitation is practical certainty; it is not a statistical result. The question has been resolved. In contrast, in the question of whether I will die from this illness or not die from this illness, even if ninety percent of people die, you cannot tell me with certainty that I will die. That’s statistics: ninety percent die, ten percent don’t die. It’s not that we resolved the question and this is practical certainty—not at all. These are statistical tools for dealing with a situation where I have no certainty. I have several possibilities. So I use statistical tools. Therefore statistical tools are not only for a situation where there is more than one possibility, but for a situation where there is also a reason to assume each of the two possibilities. You cannot dismiss one of them outright. Because in the first situation it is science; in the second situation it is statistics. Okay? That’s the claim. Fine, I’ll stop here.

[Speaker D] Rabbi,

[Speaker B] Rabbi, I have a story about Rabbi Chaim of Brisk. Some priest came to him and said, there are more Christians than Jews, so why don’t you…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The story about Rabbi Yonatan—the story about Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz originally. All the good stories are about him, yes.

[Speaker B] Yes, so he said: that’s only if there’s a doubt; there is no doubt.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On that, by the way, we’ll get there later—that’s not a joke, that’s a very serious claim. And it is definitely connected to what I said here. Meaning, I use tools for resolving doubt, such as majority for example, once I’ve decided that I am in doubt. If I am not in doubt, what help is it to me that the majority is against me? I have a position of my own. But I’ll talk about that later.

[Speaker D] Yes. Rabbi, so according to this it comes out that this implication—whether I feel doubt or not, whether I doubt or not—after all, statistics are statistics, chances are chances, probability is probability. What changes the two situations—whether I start answering and calculating, or whether I just give him wine and get him drunk—is what I feel. So that gives important and central force to what I feel, whether I doubt or don’t doubt. It’s not a scientific matter; it’s a matter of what I feel.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a good question, and I’ll get to it, but later on in the series. And I’ll try to show there that there is also an objective basis for this distinction; it isn’t just a feeling. And I spoke about this—on my website I spoke about statistical majority, about statistical evidence in law. And I showed there that there are differences between situations even though the statistics are the same statistics: a certain piece of evidence will be accepted in court and another piece of evidence won’t be accepted. So there are those who will say, yes, it’s only a feeling. And I tried to argue in those columns: no, it isn’t only a feeling; there is something genuinely substantial here. But we’ll talk about that later. Okay. Goodbye, Sabbath peace, good news.