Doubt and Probability—In Halacha, in Thought, and More Generally—Lecture 7

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re really in the midst of issues of probability and doubts, and I said that I divide this discussion into two stages that are really three. The first stage is laying out the map of possibilities. When I’m in doubt, I’m supposed to place before me, before my eyes, the different possibilities. There have to be several possibilities, otherwise there’s no doubt. The second stage is deciding that I really do have a doubt between the different possibilities, because there may be several possibilities, but in fact it may be completely clear which possibility is the right one. There’s no reason to hesitate. Earlier I brought Rabbi Kook together with the Talmud there in Shabbat 30. And so you need a reason in order to be in doubt, yes, Russell’s celestial teapot and the rest of the examples. And once I have the map of possibilities and I’ve decided that I’m in doubt between them, now the third stage is to try to understand what to do in situations of doubt. And “what to do in situations of doubt” is where the rules of doubt really come in; that’s the third stage. So I still want to finish the first two stages, of drawing the map and defining the state of doubt, and then we’ll move to the third stage, which is how to deal with states of doubt. So to complete the drawing of the map of doubt, I’ll remind you that last time—which unfortunately wasn’t recorded, that is, it was recorded, but by mistake I threw out the recording without first sending it so they could upload it to the web—so there’s no recording of last time. What I discussed last time was ontic doubt and epistemic doubt. In other words, I spoke about ordinary doubt, which is basically lack of information. Say I sent an agent to betroth a woman for me, and the agent died. He betrothed her and died. Now I don’t know who the woman is that he betrothed for me, but there is a certain woman in the world who is betrothed to me. I don’t know who; I’m missing information. For example, the Holy One, blessed be He, could tell me who she is. So in that sense this is the ordinary case of epistemic doubt, cognitive doubt. Epistemic means cognitive. In other words, it’s doubt from my perspective. I don’t know what reality is, but reality itself is one clear reality. So that’s the ordinary case of doubt. All the doubts we know are of that kind. But I said there is also, in Jewish law and in the physical-scientific world—there is also this in quantum theory according to the standard interpretations—another kind of doubt that I called ontic doubt or ambiguity. In other words, this isn’t really doubt but ambiguity. And that’s what happens, for example, in betrothal that was not fit for intercourse. Betrothal that was not fit for intercourse is when I give a prutah to a father who has two daughters and I say, “One of your two daughters is betrothed to me with this prutah,” and I didn’t say which of the two. So in such a situation, the way the Talmud and the commentators treat it is as a state of doubt. Suppose there are Rachel and Leah, so there’s a doubt whether Rachel is betrothed to me and then Leah is my wife’s sister, or Leah is betrothed to me and then Rachel is my wife’s sister. Now once I didn’t define which of the two is betrothed to me, it turns out that each one of them is possibly my wife, and therefore each one of them is also possibly my wife’s sister. And where’s the practical consequence? There is a prohibition against relations with one’s wife’s sister. So if I want to have relations with one of them, I can’t do it because each one is possibly my wife’s sister. That’s what is called betrothal that was not fit for intercourse. Abaye and Rava disagree about this. Yes, this is the kuf of ya’al kagam, where the law follows Abaye, that betrothal that was not fit for intercourse is valid betrothal. Of course you can’t continue living together, because marital relations are forbidden, so you have to give a bill of divorce to both of them. The betrothal is valid and you need to release them with a bill of divorce. Rava argues that this isn’t betrothal at all, no bill of divorce is needed, they’re simply not my wives. So there’s no problem. I noted there that the doubt—that’s what Rabbi Shimon Shkop points out—in that case is not epistemic doubt but ontic doubt. In other words, it’s not that there is one woman there who is really betrothed to me and I just don’t know which of the two she is. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, can’t tell me who she is. In other words, there isn’t one woman here who is really betrothed and I just don’t know who it is. That’s the ordinary case of epistemic doubt. In this case there simply isn’t one who is betrothed, one specific woman who is betrothed to me, and therefore this is a case where reality itself is ambiguous. It’s not that I’m lacking information about reality; I have all the information about reality. Everything the Holy One, blessed be He, knows, I know too, and still there is no definite woman here who is the one betrothed to me. You can call that a kind of doubt, but it’s ontic doubt; it’s ambiguity in reality itself and not doubt. One of the consequences, for example, is that even Maimonides would agree that we go strictly here, even though regarding doubts, in his view, at the Torah level we go leniently and only rabbinically do we go strictly. But in such a case, even at the Torah level we go strictly, because it’s not doubt. Each one of them is my wife’s sister, just my wife’s sister in a faint way. Okay? I said that another example of this exists in quantum theory, where too the question whether the particle passed through slit A or slit B isn’t really doubt. It’s not that it passed through one of the sides and I just don’t know which slit it passed through. It passed through both, just in a faint way. In other words, there is only one particle. It’s not that another particle was created and now there are two particles here, each of which passed through a slit. No. This is one particle whose state is a state of a sum of states of passage through each of the two sides. What’s called superposition. Okay, and therefore in quantum theory too—and that’s what is so confusing there—we’re not dealing with epistemic doubt but with ontic doubt. Epistemic doubts existed in the world long before quantum theory. Nobody gets confused by epistemic doubts. I throw a die and I don’t know on which face it will land. Every one of us knows situations like that, and we handle them the way we handle them, but there’s nothing confusing at all about that situation. There are various possibilities—six possibilities in the case of a die—and we don’t know which possibility will materialize. That’s epistemic doubt, and it doesn’t exist only in quantum theory; it exists everywhere, in physics, but not only in physics, in life too. Okay, a lottery drawing, whatever you want. So doubts as such are not what is confusing in quantum theory. What is so misleading in quantum theory is that it’s not doubt but ambiguity. In other words, it’s really a situation where the particle passes through both slits, not that I’m in doubt about which slit it passed through. That’s a simple case. The case that is hard for us to grasp is: how can it be that one particle—and it is one, it’s still one—passes through both slits simultaneously? That’s what is confusing. There is—

[Speaker C] There’s a question here: what is the status of twilight, and androgynus too?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those are questions that the later authorities discuss, and certainly there too possibilities of ontic doubt come up. In other words, regarding twilight there’s a three-way dispute, three tannaim in a baraita. Twilight is: possibly day, possibly night; neither day nor night; both day and night. “Both day and night,” in the simple sense, is basically ontic doubt or ambiguity. “Neither day nor night” just means it’s something third; it’s not doubt, it’s simply something third. And with androgynus, the same thing?

[Speaker C] You hear? Androgynus, the same thing?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, with androgynus too there is room to analyze it in the same way. There too three possibilities arise. There it’s harder for me to point to the three possibilities in the Talmud, but I think in the commentators you can see the three kinds of approaches. With twilight it’s explicit in the Talmud. So let me get back to us. What I wanted to say is that there is another kind of state that maybe by mistake or imprecisely is called a state of doubt, but really it would be more accurate to say these are states of ambiguity, not states of doubt. And states of ambiguity are not my lack of information, but rather that reality itself is not defined in a one-valued way. That is ambiguity as opposed to doubt, or ontic doubt as opposed to epistemic doubt. And in that context I also brought the sorites paradox, meaning that sometimes what stands before me is not two possibilities—either she is my wife or she is not my wife—but there can be a situation where she is 0.8 my wife. In other words, there is really a continuum of levels between zero and one of how much she is my wife. That too is really a different kind of map of doubt. So we have all sorts of maps of doubt.

[Speaker C] I want to finish, I’m just going back to twilight. According to this, if there’s a doubt in, say, counting the Omer or something, then according to Maimonides it would be Torah-level and not rabbinic. Right, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Rogatchover says that this depends on the question—we’re talking about laws, say, that require daytime and are forbidden at night, and then the question is whether it’s permitted to do them during twilight, for example. So the Rogatchover says it depends on why daytime is required. Is daytime required because daytime is required and therefore night is forbidden, or is night forbidden and therefore daytime is required? Where would the practical difference be? Exactly in this question. Because if twilight is both day and night, ontic doubt, ambiguity, yes—then if day is required, there’s no problem. Even though it’s both day and night, it is also day. But if night is forbidden and therefore day is required, then no, because twilight is both day and night, so night is forbidden. Okay? So the practical consequence of ontic doubt—the Rogatchover is really talking exactly about this. He doesn’t formulate it that way, but that is really what emerges from his words. He is basically assuming that twilight is ontic doubt, or he’s speaking about that tannaitic view, which is ontic doubt. And if it’s ontic doubt, then he says there are two types of laws that require daytime. Laws that genuinely require daytime can also be done during twilight, because it is also day. True, it is also night, but it is also day. But laws that require daytime because they are forbidden at night—those cannot be done during twilight. Because twilight is indeed day, but it is also night, and if it is forbidden to do it at night, then it is forbidden to do it during twilight. Which very much sharpens the difference between ambiguity and doubt. Because if I’m merely in doubt whether it is day or night, then there is really no difference between these two types of laws. Whether day is required because night is forbidden, or day is required because day is required, in both cases Torah-level doubt is treated stringently. So there is no room for that distinction. And the similarity between these two situations, ambiguity and doubt, causes the Talmud and the commentators to treat ambiguity too as a state of doubt. But really that’s misleading terminology; it’s not worth using it. It’s not really doubt, and that’s why I also don’t like the term ontic doubt. It’s ambiguity, not ontic doubt. If it’s ontic, then it isn’t doubt but ambiguity. Reality itself is ambiguous. In other words, not that the ambiguity is in me, that I do not grasp the full reality, that I’m missing information, but that in reality itself there is ambiguity. So that’s regarding the maps of doubt. I want to finish one last point that has to do with the maps of doubt, and then I’ll move to the third stage of the series, which is the main one. Up to this point it’s only introductions. The third stage—I want to describe a situation that is a third situation, between ontic doubt and epistemic doubt, or between ambiguity and doubt, and I’ll call it pseudo-ontic doubt. What does that mean? So for that—I’ve spoken about this before—a short introduction. In the Talmud there is a dispute between tannaim, Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda, on the question of someone who does a forbidden act unintentionally. Say someone drags a bench on the Sabbath and makes a furrow. Dragging a bench is permitted on the Sabbath; making a furrow is forbidden on the Sabbath. If it’s in a field, it is because of plowing; if it’s in a house, it is because of building. Now if someone drags a bench—he wants to move the bench from one place to another—and he made a furrow, there is a dispute between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda. Rabbi Yehuda says he is liable, and Rabbi Shimon says it is permitted, meaning an unintentional act is permitted. Maybe I’ll just sharpen one point. Rabbi Shimon says it’s permitted not because he isn’t guilty, like an unwitting sinner—in other words, what can you do, he didn’t intend it. This isn’t an argument for lack of guilt; it’s an argument for absence of transgression. In other words, when I make the furrow in such a way, I simply have not committed a transgression. It’s not a question of lack of guilt. Because when I say here that I didn’t intend it, it’s not “didn’t intend” in everyday language. When I say I did something to you unintentionally, meaning I did something to you unintentionally, I mean I didn’t notice that I was doing it to you, I didn’t know I was doing it to you, sorry, mistake. Okay? The “unintentional” of the Talmud is not that at all. In the Talmudic unintentional act, I know exactly what I did, and I also know that a furrow may come out here. So why am I doing it? Torah-level doubt is treated stringently, no? If there is doubt whether there will be a furrow here or not, on the side where there is a furrow it is a Torah prohibition; on the side where there is no furrow it is permitted. Torah-level doubt is treated stringently. How can Rabbi Shimon say that I am allowed to drag the bench even though there is doubt that a furrow will be made? The claim is that there is no transgression here at all. It’s not a question of whether if it’s a doubt you may be lenient, but rather if it’s a doubt there is no transgression. The transgression exists only when you do the action in a state where you want the furrow, or if you don’t want it but it is certain that it will be made, what’s called an inevitable result. But if you make the furrow not for its own sake—you drag the bench not in order to make the furrow—then there simply is no transgression here. Even though you know that a furrow may be made, you don’t need to worry about that; you may do it. That’s Rabbi Shimon.

[Speaker D] Because the permission of an unintentional act isn’t because of the doubt.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s what I’m saying. In other words, it’s not because of the doubt, and it’s not because of lack of guilt like an unwitting sinner or something like that, but simply because such a thing is not a transgression.

[Speaker D] So maybe you don’t need to disconnect the bulb in the refrigerator on the Sabbath. You hear? Maybe you don’t need to disconnect the bulb in the refrigerator on the Sabbath.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are all sorts of implications; I won’t get into all those issues now. If you don’t disconnect the bulb, that’s an inevitable result, so there’s a problem. That’s my next point. If you drag a bench and a furrow is made—and a furrow is made—then if the furrow is not certainly going to be made in advance, that’s the ordinary case of an unintentional act. But if you drag a bench on loose soil, yes, where it’s clear in advance that if you drag the bench a furrow will be made, Rabbi Shimon agrees in the case of “cut off its head and it won’t die?” In other words, Rabbi Shimon agrees that even though you do not intend it—you still don’t intend the furrow, you’re dragging the bench because you want the bench somewhere else, not in order to make a furrow—but if a furrow will certainly result, then even though you do not intend it, Rabbi Shimon agrees that you are liable. Yes?

[Speaker E] But how does the Rabbi understand that? Is it a category within unintentional action?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, but this is true in every—

[Speaker E] Case. The fact that we don’t know the data and therefore in our awareness we feel that we don’t know whether it will happen, that’s only because we don’t know. It’s like a die.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, you’re taking me one step further; I’m getting to that in a moment. So the claim is basically that there is a difference between whether a furrow will certainly be made and whether a furrow will not certainly be made. Okay? “Inevitable result”—the term means that you cut off the head of a chicken in order to give the head to a child so he can play soccer with it. So you say, okay, I didn’t intend to kill the chicken, I only intended to give my child its head to play soccer. So he says to him: “Cut off its head and it won’t die?” You cut off its head and it won’t die? In other words, it is clear in advance that it will die. So what if it’s clear? I didn’t do it in order to kill the chicken; I did it so that my child would have a game. Right, but if it is clear in advance, then even though you didn’t do it for that, you are acting unintentionally, still you are liable. Rabbi Shimon agrees that you are liable. All right? There are various explanations for this; I won’t get into all the details of the passage here, I’m only using it as an example. Now the Taz says, yes? following an inference in the Tur and in the Shulchan Arukh, it doesn’t matter—the Taz says: what happens if you have a box, your box, and now you want to close the lid of the box, there are things in it, I don’t know what, and you want to close the lid of the box. Now it may be that there are flies inside it, and if there are flies inside it and you close the box on the Sabbath, then you are trapping the flies. Trapping is one of the thirty-nine primary categories of labor, and therefore you are forbidden to close the box because you are trapping. So he says, wait, but I don’t intend it. I’m not doing it for the trapping; I’m doing it in order to close the box, to protect the utensils there from dust or something like that. I want to close the box, and it is unintentional that I trap the fly. But no—this is an unintentional act with an inevitable result. In other words, if there is a fly inside, then it is certainly trapped if I close the box, and therefore even though I do not intend it, there is still an inevitable result here and therefore it is forbidden to do it. What happens, asks the Taz—and up to here this is Shulchan Arukh—what happens, asks the Taz, in a case where I do not know whether there is a fly inside or not. Maybe there is, maybe not; I don’t know. The Taz says: you do not even have to inspect and verify that there is no fly inside the box. You may calmly close the box even if you have a concern that there may be a fly inside it. And I remind you of the previous stage that I talked about: if you have no concern that there is a fly inside, then the whole discussion doesn’t arise at all; it has nothing to do with the Taz. Why? You are not obligated to verify that there is no fly inside the box if you have no real concern that there is one. A state of doubt arises only where I have a reason to doubt. Remember Rabbi Kook? Yes? In other words, you need a reason in order to define a situation as doubtful. The fact that there are two possibilities—either there is a fly or there isn’t a fly—is not enough to define this situation as a doubtful one. What is also needed is a real concern that there is a fly there. Concern—it’s not certainty, because then again it wouldn’t be doubt—but you have reason to suspect there may be a fly there. I don’t know, there are lots of flies flying around the room, so you have reason to suspect that maybe one of them went into the box, and only then is this defined as a state of doubt. Fine. So now you are in a state of doubt. What happens in such a state? Ostensibly, Torah-level doubt is treated stringently, right? You have a doubt; maybe you’ll trap the fly. It’s not actually Torah-level because that species is not normally trapped, but let’s assume for the moment that the fly is of a type that is trapped. I’m ignoring that dimension, which for some reason the Taz also more or less ignores. So ostensibly, if I have real concern that maybe there is a fly inside, I should stick my head in and make sure there is no fly before I close the box, okay? Because otherwise I’m getting into Torah-level doubt and I have to be stringent. The Taz says no, you don’t have to do that. Why don’t you have to do that? Because if you don’t know whether or not there is a fly inside, then even if you close the box it’s not certain that trapping will take place here, because if there is no fly there then nothing will be trapped, and if there is a fly there then yes, it will be trapped. Since it is not certain that trapping will occur, therefore this is really not an inevitable result, and since you’re doing it—if you are closing the box in order to trap, if that is the reason you are closing it—then even if you’re in doubt whether there is a fly there or not, you are obligated to verify, because full Torah-level doubt is forbidden. Again, Torah-level for the sake of discussion. But if you’re closing the box because you want to close the box and you do not want the trapping, okay, but there is concern that maybe there is a fly there—in such a case, the trapping is done unintentionally, like with the bench that I drag and it makes a furrow. Here I close the box and trapping also occurs, trapping also takes place. So this is an unintentional act. And an unintentional act, if it’s an inevitable result, is forbidden. In other words, if it is certain that there is a fly there and I will certainly trap it, then it is forbidden even though I am doing it unintentionally. Because if it is an inevitable result, then Rabbi Shimon agrees regarding an unintentional act—also in an unintentional act, if it is an inevitable result, that it is forbidden. But if I do not know whether there is a fly there or not, in such a case Rabbi Shimon permits an unintentional act. Therefore, says the Taz, you don’t even have to look inside and verify that there is no fly, even though it costs you no effort. You simply don’t have to, because if you close the box, you have not committed a transgression. This of course sharpens for us the point I made before, that the exemption for an unintentional act is not an exemption of lack of guilt—I’m under compulsion, what do you want from me, I couldn’t do anything. Because if that were the kind of exemption, then obviously you can look inside and verify it. Don’t say you’re under compulsion; look and see that there is no fly there. What’s so hard about doing that? What kind of compulsion is that? If you don’t have to try at all to verify that there is no fly there, that means the basis of the exemption is not duress, but simply that this is not a case of transgression. In other words, if you do it unintentionally, this is not what the Torah prohibited. So there is no reason to refrain from that kind of act or to make sure there is no fly there. No need. Even if there is a fly there, if I do not know that in advance, then it is a doubt. If it is a doubt, then it is not an inevitable result. If it is not an inevitable result, it is permitted. And this does not come under the heading of Torah-level doubt being treated stringently. Okay. That is what the Taz says. Rabbi Akiva Eiger—in Orach Chayim, in the laws of Sabbath. Rabbi Akiva Eiger in Yoreh De’ah speaks about cooking in utensils that I took from a non-Jew, where the concern is that the utensil absorbed forbidden food, or a utensil where there is concern that it absorbed milk and I want to cook meat in it, okay? So Rabbi Akiva Eiger says that there, in the Shulchan Arukh, it is written that one must be stringent and it is forbidden, forbidden to cook. Rabbi Akiva Eiger asks: why? It’s not certain that it absorbed milk or that it absorbed forbidden food. Maybe. Maybe yes and maybe no. So if you’re not sure, and after all you are cooking not in order to cook what was absorbed in the pot—you are cooking in order to cook your dish. It’s only that unintentionally perhaps also what is inside the pot gets cooked, assuming there is something inside the pot, okay? But you don’t know whether there is or isn’t. So if that is the case, then this is really not an inevitable result that a prohibition will be done here. Since it is not an inevitable result that a prohibition will be done here, therefore it is permitted. Yes, he speaks about meat and milk, not just forbidden food, because with meat and milk there is also a prohibition against cooking it, independently of whether you eat it. Cooking what is absorbed in the utensil is itself a prohibition, okay? And then he says: you’re not sure that meat and milk are absorbed inside, and therefore it is not certain that you are doing a prohibition. So what—Torah-level doubt is treated stringently? No, this is not Torah-level doubt treated stringently. Since you are cooking not in order to cook what is inside the vessel, you are cooking in order to cook the food that you put into the vessel itself. What is absorbed inside the vessel is being cooked unintentionally. So if it is unintentional, then only if it is an inevitable result is it forbidden. But after all, you don’t know whether meat and milk are absorbed inside or not absorbed inside. So since it’s a doubt, this is not an inevitable result, because it is not necessarily the case that the prohibition of cooking meat and milk is being done here. And since it is not an inevitable result, therefore it should be permitted. So why does the Shulchan Arukh say that it is forbidden?

[Speaker D] And ostensibly, if there is meat and milk, then in any event it’s like intentional, because it’s an inevitable result. No, inevitable result doesn’t make it intentional; inevitable result means it’s forbidden.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. But it’s a category within intentional action, ostensibly. It’s like intentional; it’s forbidden. Forget “like intentional”—why say that? It’s forbidden. There are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who say it’s like intentional, but in my opinion that doesn’t matter. It’s forbidden. Okay.

[Speaker D] But you don’t know whether—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is meat and milk.

[Speaker D] Yes, but ostensibly the doubt starts earlier. I have a factual doubt whether there is here…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe you know the topic; I’m getting to it now. So Rabbi Akiva Eiger claims that really this should have been permitted. He challenges the Shulchan Arukh: why does the Shulchan Arukh forbid such a thing? And then he says no, this is a case of doubtful inevitable result, and an inevitable result is a Torah prohibition; a doubtful inevitable result is forbidden. What does he mean? He says like this: on the side of what you just said, on the side that there is meat and milk inside, let’s go back for a moment to the Taz with the fly, it’s easier to see it there. Assuming there is a fly inside the box, the moment I close the box it is an inevitable result that I trap the fly. Right? Except what? I don’t know whether there is or isn’t a fly. Fine, but in reality either there is a fly or there isn’t a fly; reality is one thing. Okay? So therefore, if there is a fly, why should it matter that I don’t know? If there is a fly, then obviously closing the box will trap it, so that is an inevitable result. Ah, I don’t know whether there is or isn’t a fly, so Rabbi Akiva Eiger says: that is a Torah-level doubt, and we rule stringently. If there is a doubt whether there is a fly, then it is an inevitable result and it is a Torah prohibition; if there is no fly, then it is permitted. That is exactly a case of Torah-level doubt, and we have to rule stringently. And he says the same thing about this utensil with meat and milk. If there is meat absorbed in it, then obviously the reality is either that there is meat and milk there or there isn’t. I don’t know, but in reality there is. Let’s say there is meat and milk absorbed inside. If so, then it is an inevitable result that I am cooking the meat and milk absorbed in the utensil. The fact that I don’t know whether there is meat and milk there or not only means that I am in doubt whether there is a prohibition here or not. That kind of doubt is a Torah-level doubt, and we rule stringently. So you might ask: then what is the difference between this and dragging a bench and making a furrow? Simple. Because there it is not a question of what I know and don’t know; there it is in reality itself. In reality itself, you do not know whether dragging a bench over this kind of ground will make a furrow or won’t make a furrow. Some formulate it, although in my opinion that’s not the right formulation, as though this is a doubt about the future and not a doubt about what already exists. You don’t know whether a furrow will be formed or not formed, and therefore it is not an inevitable result. But here, you don’t know whether there is or isn’t a fly, but if there is a fly then it is an inevitable result that it will be trapped. Such a thing is a doubtful inevitable result, and a doubtful inevitable result is no different from any other doubt about a prohibition.

[Speaker E] But with the furrow too, right now you’re dragging and you… wait, that’s obvious.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You already raised that earlier; I’ll get to it in just a moment, I’m on the way there. So Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s claim is that the Shulchan Arukh there in Yoreh De’ah comes out against the Taz. And that the Taz claims that when I don’t know whether there is a fly inside the box or not, that is called not an inevitable result. If that were so, then with meat and milk absorbed in a utensil it should have been the same thing. If I don’t know whether there is meat and milk inside the utensil or not, then it should have been permitted because it is not an inevitable result. The Shulchan Arukh forbids it, therefore Rabbi Akiva Eiger says the Taz is mistaken. In what is he mistaken? So Rabbi Akiva Eiger says like this: there are two kinds of doubt. This is exactly ontic doubt or epistemic doubt. What does that mean? If you have an epistemic doubt, you don’t know what is happening in reality, but reality itself is not vague; it is clear. In that case, then this is not… it is forbidden. Why? Because if in reality there is a fly, then that is trapping, because it is an inevitable result. If there is no fly, then it is permitted. You don’t know whether this is the case or that is the case, so you are in doubt about a prohibition. But as far as reality itself goes, it is clear that if a prohibition is created here, then it was clear from the outset that it would be created, and if not, then not, so there is no problem at all. Okay? That is called a doubtful inevitable result. In contrast, with the bench and the furrow, the situation is different. With the bench and the furrow, the claim is that this is an ontic doubt. In reality itself, on this kind of ground it is not certain that a furrow will be formed. And since it is not certain that a furrow will be formed, that is exactly a case that is not an inevitable result. Because it’s not certain… cut off the chicken’s head, but not every time you cut off the head the chicken dies, let’s say. That is a case that is not an inevitable result. Yes, but if I have a doubt whether this chicken died or did not die, that is just an ordinary Torah prohibition doubt, and we have to rule stringently. In other words, he is making here a distinction—again, this is my language, because the later authorities call it a doubt about the past or a doubt about the future, which is simply not right; it is a misunderstanding. There is a very major Bi’ur Halakhah about this and more. The question is whether it is ontic doubt or epistemic doubt; that is the correct definition. In other words, if it is epistemic doubt, then basically, says Rabbi Akiva Eiger, it is like any other doubt; it is a doubt about a prohibition, and we rule stringently. And if it is ontic doubt, meaning if the vagueness is in reality itself, then it is not called an inevitable result, and therefore it is permitted. Now when you ask whether there is a fly in the vessel or not… a fly in the box or no fly in the box, obviously that is an epistemic doubt, not an ontic one, right? It’s not that in reality itself there both is a fly and isn’t a fly. I don’t know what reality is, but in reality either there is a fly or there isn’t. That is the standard case of epistemic doubt. Same thing with meat and milk in a utensil. I don’t know whether there is meat and milk or not; that is epistemic doubt. Therefore in both of those cases one has to be stringent; that does not take the situation out of the category of inevitable result.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, also… with the bench too, seemingly it’s not… I mean, I understood the difference, but it’s not… can you really call that ontic doubt? No… you can’t.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s also the weakness in the argument, in my attack that’s coming in a moment. So that is Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s distinction, and practically speaking it’s clear to me in terms of logic that he is right. Clearly he is right; it’s simply not at all similar to what the Taz says. You can even bring proof for it. There is a beautiful proof from Rabbi Shimon Shkop on this in Sha’arei Yosher. He says there, he brings a dispute among tannaim on the question whether it is permitted to sweep the house on the Sabbath with date-palm brooms, meaning with palm branches. That was their broom. Why? One tanna says it is forbidden, because certainly some of the palm leaves will be detached, and therefore it is forbidden; it is an inevitable result. I’m not doing it in order to detach the leaves, so it is an unintended act. But since the leaves will certainly be detached, then it is an inevitable result and it is forbidden. The other tanna says no, it is not certain that the leaves will be detached, and therefore it is permitted. So Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks: think about the tanna who forbids. The tanna who forbids sees in front of him a tanna who permits, meaning a tanna who is not concerned that leaves will be detached. So how can he himself say that in reality leaves will definitely be detached here? After all, here is a very intelligent person who thinks that maybe leaves will not be detached, that it isn’t certain. How can you be certain? What does Rabbi Shimon Shkop say? From here there is proof for Rabbi Akiva Eiger. The question is not epistemic. If the problem were as the Taz says—just a second—the problem would be in your perception, whether you know that this thing will happen. After all, the Taz assumes that if the problem is epistemic, if the problem is in my perception, then it is not an inevitable result. Right? I don’t know whether there is or isn’t a fly, so it is not an inevitable result. Meaning, the whole issue of yes inevitable result, no inevitable result, depends on the question of what I as a person know; it is an epistemic question. Okay. If that were the situation, then he says, what do you mean—how can you forbid me to sweep the house with date-palm brooms if I think it is not certain that a leaf will fall off here? It may be that in fact you are right that a leaf will certainly fall off, but if I don’t know that, then from my perspective it is not an inevitable result, because the whole thing is epistemic. From here there is proof from both sides of the dispute—he brings this proof, which is what is nice here. He says that from the very existence of the dispute, there is proof that Rabbi Akiva Eiger is right, that the point is not epistemic but ontic. And if in reality leaves will certainly be detached, then even if you don’t know that, you must be stringent, because the fact that you don’t know does not matter; in reality leaves will be detached, and that is an inevitable result. And if you don’t know, that is a doubtful inevitable result. Okay, so therefore from the very existence of this dispute Rabbi Shimon Shkop brings proof for Rabbi Akiva Eiger against the Taz, but that is just an anecdote in passing.

[Speaker A] Wait, so the dispute is whether leaves will be detached or not detached in both cases as a matter of reality? Yes, it’s a dispute about reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. You can push it a little and say: obviously there is some chance that leaves will be detached; the question is whether that some chance is considered enough to take you out of the category of inevitable result or not. And then it is not a dispute about reality, but a halakhic dispute. A lot of disputes that look like disputes about reality can be translated into a dispute over where the threshold lies. Meaning: is the threshold of certainty ninety-five percent or ninety-eight percent? Let’s say there is a three percent chance that leaves will be detached, okay? So someone says, look, anything above two percent is already a doubt; it is no longer an inevitable result. And someone else says no, anything under five percent is still an inevitable result; it is not significant; it is called an inevitable result. Okay? You understand that here this is already a halakhic dispute, not a dispute about reality. Everyone agrees that there is a ninety-seven percent chance that the leaves will be detached, but there is a three percent chance that they won’t. The question is whether three percent is enough. And that is not a factual question; it is a halakhic question.

[Speaker A] That sounds more reasonable.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In yeshivot they tend to translate every dispute about reality into a halakhic dispute, because there is some example—not a good example, but such an example—that there are no disputes about reality, because in disputes about reality necessarily one side is wrong and one side is right, and we always want to think that both these and those are the words of the living God, that there is no one wrong and no one right. Therefore in yeshivot it is customary to say that there is no such thing as a dispute about reality.

[Speaker D] Also because you can check.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, although there are such disputes, but that is one of the techniques they use. Whenever you bring a dispute about reality, they always say no, no, it’s a dispute about where the threshold lies.

[Speaker D] It’s a little true, because the sages of the Talmud could simply have checked it in the field.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They could have checked a lot of things in the field and didn’t do it. Awareness of the need for empirical checking was not at its peak in those times; that’s a more modern matter. Aristotle too could have checked whether a heavy stone falls faster than a light stone and would have discovered that it doesn’t, but he didn’t bother to check. You don’t need a particle accelerator for that; you can take two stones to the second floor and throw them. He didn’t bother to check because it was clear to him that if it made sense, then that’s how it was. This awareness that everything has to be tested empirically is an awareness of modern science; it did not really exist back then.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, I didn’t understand exactly Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s question. How can you be sure that leaves will be detached if the tanna…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the problem is epistemic. If you as a tanna say that this is forbidden, right? As a result, you are also telling me not to do it. I think it is permitted, but you tell me I am mistaken, it is forbidden, right? Because you are issuing a halakhic ruling for everyone, not just being stringent for yourself. You are expressing a halakhic position that is correct for everyone. And I ask: how can you tell me that it is forbidden? After all, according to my own view I am not certain that this will happen. Now, according to your view I am wrong, yes? The reality is that it really will happen. But if I don’t know that it will happen, and the whole problem is an epistemic problem, then from my perspective it is not an inevitable result, so it is permitted. So you cannot forbid it to me either. Not only am I not talking about the fact that you yourself would act stringently, but how can you instruct me that it is forbidden? Clear. But this is only an interesting anecdote. I once collected a few examples of situations in which the very existence of a dispute resolves it. Meaning, there are situations in which the very existence of a dissenting opinion proves that you are not right. There are people who think it is always like that, what’s called peer disagreement, yes? In philosophy this is a topic: if there is a real disagreement, two experts disagreeing about something, then someone tells you, look, he is no less smart than you and he thinks differently, which means you are not right, or means there is no truth here, there is no way to get to the truth, or something like that. I am far from that nihilistic view, but there are certain disputes in certain subjects where indeed the very existence of a dissenting view refutes your position. Meaning, there are several examples of this. Anyway, for our purposes, now the question arises that at least two people here already asked in the course of the discussion. Regarding… yes, it’s similar to that but I won’t get into it, yes. Regarding dragging a bench and making a furrow—I noted to the chat, yes. Regarding dragging a bench and making a furrow, I saw that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman comments on this, but it is an obvious question. In practice Rabbi Akiva Eiger seems very right logically, but apparently he is not right at all. Why? Because there is no such thing in the world as ontic doubt. There is no ontic doubt in the world at all, as our master said, yes? Meaning there is no such thing; all doubts are epistemic doubts. Why? Think about the bench that I drag over the ground, yes? Now let’s say a furrow is formed. If a furrow was formed, what does that mean? That on ground of this kind, when you drag a bench over it, a furrow will be formed. Well, but if so, then it was clear from the outset that a furrow would be formed. Except what? I didn’t know that the ground here was the kind of ground where, if a bench is dragged over it, a furrow will be formed. Now it turns out that this is the case. So all that happened here is that I didn’t know. But in reality itself it is clear that with this specific ground it is not that there are two possibilities, either a furrow will be formed or a furrow will not be formed. Given the conditions of the dragging, the weight of the bench, the way it is dragged, and the nature of the ground—given all those data, it is completely clear in advance whether a furrow will be formed. True, I didn’t know, because I’m not a soil expert and I don’t know exactly how to do the calculation and determine whether on ground like this a furrow will or won’t be formed. But that is epistemic doubt, not ontic. In other words, apart from quantum theory, in reality we do not know of ontic doubts. All doubts are epistemic. And if Rabbi Akiva Eiger claims that with epistemic doubt it will always be a doubtful inevitable result—and not that it will be permitted because it is not an inevitable result—then when is there a case that is not an inevitable result and is permitted? There is no such case. Every case you bring is really only epistemic doubt, not ontic doubt. I do not know reality as it truly is, but if I knew everything then it would be clear in advance that this happens. Yes, I’ll go back again to the ground. What is the difference between the case of the bench and furrow in the ground and the case of the flies? It is exactly the same thing. With the flies, I don’t know whether there is a fly inside the vessel or not. And with the ground, I don’t know how soft the ground is. But the datum about the softness of the ground is one definite datum. It is not that there are several possibilities, that the ground is both soft at level 0.8 and at level 0.5. If I asked the Holy One, blessed be He, He would tell me: it is 0.8. I don’t know. So what is the difference between that and the fly? Again, it is doubt in my knowledge. It is epistemic doubt, not ontic doubt. Yes, the practical test is always: if I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, could He answer me? Or if I ask an expert, could he answer me? If yes, then it is epistemic doubt. So I don’t know because I’m not an expert. So what? It is still epistemic. So where could there even be a case of ontic doubt, that would not be considered an inevitable result? There is no such case. So according to Rabbi Akiva Eiger there is really no case that is not an inevitable result. Every case is either an inevitable result or a doubtful inevitable result if I don’t know. That’s it. There are no cases that are not inevitable results. And of course that cannot be. The Talmud says—this is the dispute about unintended acts between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda—the whole dispute exists only where it is not an inevitable result. So here there is no choice: we must say that there is, and this is why I said this whole thing, a third kind of doubt. There is epistemic doubt, there is ontic doubt, and there is pseudo-ontic doubt. What does that mean? There are certain doubts where, when you ask ordinary people—when you ask people about the fly in the box, you say to him, tell me, we don’t know whether there is or isn’t a fly in the box. In your opinion, is that ontic doubt or epistemic doubt? Your own doubt that you don’t know whether there is a fly in the box or not. Do you think that is doubt in your information about reality, or doubt in reality itself? Any normal person will tell you, obviously it’s doubt in me; I don’t know whether there is a fly or not. In reality either there is a fly or there isn’t a fly; that’s clear. Right? Any reasonable person would answer that. Except maybe someone who is totally twisted, postmodern, and who knows what. Those are confused people; we don’t bring proofs from confused people. But if you ask a reasonable person off the street, not an expert, when I drag a bench over this ground and I don’t know whether a furrow will or won’t be formed—is that epistemic doubt or ontic doubt? Most people will tell you that it is ontic doubt. On ground like this, a furrow may be formed and it may not be formed. So the two possibilities can happen. It is not just that I don’t know what will happen; obviously I also don’t know what will happen because both possibilities can happen, but that doesn’t start with me. It starts with vagueness in reality itself. This is ground of the sort where either a furrow will be formed or it won’t; you can’t know in advance. There are grounds where you can know in advance—too soft or too hard. This ground, a furrow may be formed or may not be formed. The layman, yes, the ordinary non-expert person you ask, will tell you this is ontic doubt and not epistemic doubt. Now of course he is mistaken, because the expert will tell you: what are you talking about? If I knew all the data about the ground and could do the calculation, I could tell you in advance whether a furrow would be formed here or not. But that is the expert. The ordinary person, when he looks at this, from his perspective it is ontic doubt and not epistemic. The expert will tell him: no, in reality itself everything is clear; this is classical physics, not quantum physics. Everything here is determined in advance; it is deterministic. You don’t know—that’s epistemic doubt. But that is the expert’s view. The simple person’s view, what is called the reasonable person, is a view of ontic doubt. Rabbi Akiva Eiger claims that Jewish law relates to pseudo-ontic doubt—that’s what I’m calling it now, pseudo-ontic doubt. It is not really ontic doubt, but people think it is ontic doubt. Yes? Jewish law relates to it the way people see it. If people see it as ontic doubt, then it is ontic doubt, even though in truth it is epistemic doubt. So this is a third kind of doubt. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman in his responsa talks about eating fruit when there is concern that there may be a worm inside. Okay? In Minchat Shlomo he says again: this is a doubtful inevitable result, right? Because if there is a worm inside and I eat, then I ate a worm. If there is no worm inside, then I did not eat one. Now I am eating not for the worm; I am eating the apple. So it is an unintended act. And this is an unintended act and an inevitable result, because if there is a worm inside then I will certainly eat it too. And therefore—but you don’t know whether there is a worm or not, so it is a doubtful inevitable result. So he makes it depend on the dispute between the Taz and Rabbi Akiva Eiger.

[Speaker D] And does he himself say there too that this is also pseudo-ontic? What? The worm too is like the ground? No,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand.

[Speaker D] So the worm too is like the ground? Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He writes there—I’ll explain. He writes there that basically this is a doubtful inevitable result, and Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Taz disagree about it. But why? Because only an expert can know whether there is a worm inside the fruit or not. He has special measuring tools, X-ray, I don’t know exactly what, and he can know whether there is a worm inside or not. The ordinary person cannot know whether there is a worm inside or not, so from our point of view it is ontic doubt.

[Speaker E] But according to what you said, no—it’s not pseudo-ontic. Ask an ordinary person and he’ll say, I know either there is a worm or there isn’t; it’s like the flies.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, on the contrary, that is exactly what Rabbi Shlomo Zalman says. Since the ordinary person sees it as ontic doubt, even though the expert can use measuring tools to see whether there is a worm inside or not, we follow the layman’s perspective.

[Speaker E] No, but why would the layman say it’s ontic doubt? Why should he? After all, he…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not an exact formulation, but rather: what the layman sees as an essential doubt is considered ontic. Meaning, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman does not say exactly what I’m saying, but the pattern of thought is the same. In other words, he says: even if an expert could tell me whether there is a worm inside or not, I still see this situation as a doubtful one. And I translate that as ontic doubt, which is not exactly right. Okay, I am only showing that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman too goes in this direction, that you do not go by what the factual truth is, but by how human beings view it. And his proof is exactly the proof I brought earlier. Because if you do not say that, then dragging a bench that makes a furrow should also really be a doubtful inevitable result. And according to Rabbi Akiva Eiger there would be no room for the dispute between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda. Because ask the experts and they will tell you whether on ground like this a furrow will or won’t be formed. Therefore, this proves that we do not go by the experts; we go by how people see it. You ask me—for myself, I think the worm really is a different case. It is a different case because there the doubt is clearly epistemic. Even ask an ordinary person and he will tell you there is epistemic doubt here. True. But still, the idea that we follow how people see things and not how an expert sees them—that exists also in Rabbi Shlomo Zalman. Okay. Anyway, for our purposes, what does this mean? It means that if I divided the doubts in the world, the map of doubts we are talking about, into two types—epistemic doubts and ontic doubts or vaguenesses, yes—and really from here on we will focus on epistemic doubts, because that is where probability is used and our subject is doubt and probability. I’m doing this in order to set the ontic doubts aside. One has to notice that there is also this intermediate category here, namely pseudo-ontic doubts. Doubts that really are epistemic, because every doubt is epistemic, but people tend to see them as ontic doubts. Now so that you won’t think that this is just some primitive way of thinking by old-fashioned people, I’ll give you an example of scientists who do exactly the same thing—I don’t want to call it an error, but the same conceptual mixing. From their perspective, and justifiably, it’s not an error, but it is conceptual mixing. So look, for example, when we talk about evolution and the existence of God—the eternal argument between creationists and neo-Darwinians. The creationists basically say: look, a complex thing does not arise by itself, it does not arise by chance, spontaneously. Therefore clearly there is a component… this is the physico-theological proof for the existence of God. Then the neo-Darwinian comes and says: what are you talking about? Evolution shows that there are processes that can create complex things even without outside involvement, spontaneously. So why is that a refutation of the physico-theological proof? A very important point in this discussion is that in the evolutionary process, I would say, okay, but the laws of evolution are the guidance of the Holy One, blessed be He. Those laws that bring about evolution are what prove that there is outside involvement. The involvement is through the laws. Meaning, you assume the existence of the laws, but I ask where the laws themselves came from. Who is responsible for the fact that these are the laws that make evolution possible? He says no, but within the laws there is a random component. Right? How is evolution built? There is the formation of, say, a protein chain. That chain undergoes various mutations. So now there are various versions of it, yes? Various small deviations from the structure of the original chain. And here there are all kinds of possibilities; each such deviation creates a different creature. Some of these creatures die out because they do not manage in the struggle for survival against the environment. And the one that survives, as it were, is more successful in the struggle against the environment—basically his genes are the ones that survived. And now when he produces offspring, the offspring will receive the superior traits of the father genetically. And here, the next generation comes out better than this one. In a nutshell that is the description of one link in the evolutionary process. And from there on it continues onward. That more sophisticated thing again undergoes splitting into mutations, natural selection, coping with the environment, genetics. Mutations, natural selection, genetics. Every link has these three components, and that is how it proceeds to more and more sophisticated and complex creatures. Now within this process there are several components that are random components; they are not determined by the laws. For example, natural selection. Meaning, suppose two kinds of monkey are formed here. One knows how to climb trees and one doesn’t. Now a lion comes here, so the one that climbs the tree will survive and the one that doesn’t know how to climb will be eaten. But if a lion doesn’t come here, and instead some predator that runs at a certain speed comes here, then specifically the monkey that stayed below—if it knows how to run fast—will survive, and the one that climbs the tree will not survive, because that predator also knows how to climb trees and he doesn’t run fast enough to escape from it. Yes, you know the joke about two guys who see a lion and realize they need to run, so one of them puts on running shoes beforehand, and the other says to him: are you crazy? With or without shoes the lion will catch you. He says: I’m putting on shoes not in order to outrun the lion, but in order to outrun you. Meaning, the claim is that the one who survives is the one who runs faster, even if he runs slower than the lion. Okay? So now it depends very much on what predator happens to show up here. That is a random matter. If the predator is one that runs fast, then speed will be the determining factor. If the predator is one that can climb trees, then tree climbing will be the determining factor. So that is one random component in evolution. The second random component is the formation of the mutations. Yes, the mutations that the protein chain undergoes are a random matter. It can be because of temperature, because of this or that environmental influence; things can happen in various ways and the chain undergoes mutations. That too is a random process. Since this process contains components that are random, accidental, then you cannot tell me that the Holy One, blessed be He, is responsible for what happens here, because the fact is that it happens randomly, and still it succeeds in arriving at creatures that become more and more sophisticated. Okay? I’m really doing this in a nutshell. The basic mistake here—and by the way there are some debates about this now—but the basic mistake here is that there is no random component in evolution at all. There is no random component at all. Even though all the experts on evolution will tell you there is. There isn’t. Why? Because they look at it as biologists and I look at it as a physicist. And as a physicist I know that on the everyday scale, on the large scales, there are no quantum processes. If there are no quantum processes, that means everything is determined according to classical mechanics, classical physics. If everything is determined according to classical physics, then everything is deterministic. Meaning, the mutation that the protein chain undergoes is not a quantum matter. And about this I said there are some debates today. But in principle it is not a quantum matter; it is the effect of temperature, the effect of other things, which is a completely deterministic effect. Except what? It is very complicated. Because it is complicated, methodologically I prefer to treat it with probabilistic tools. But that is not really because there is genuine randomness here. There is no randomness here at all; it is simply more convenient for me to deal with it using probabilistic tools because I do not know how to do the calculation; the calculation is terribly complicated. So I call it as if these are really random processes, and the tools I use to deal with it are tools of probability. But that is only because the deterministic treatment is complicated. At the principled level, there is a deterministic calculation that would tell you whether a lion comes here or a tiger comes here. That is a deterministic matter. I don’t know because it is terribly complicated; it depends on many factors. So therefore I say: okay, this is a random matter—either a lion will come here or a tiger will come here. But that is only because the calculation is a complicated calculation. As an example, when we roll a die or toss a coin, usually these are considered the canonical examples of random processes. Right? You don’t know the result; it could be one, two, three up to six. It is random, right? There is nothing random there. It is Newtonian mechanics. Meaning, give me the structure of the die, give me the initial force and the initial direction, and I will tell you on which face the die will land. That is a completely deterministic calculation, Newton’s laws. There is nothing random here. So why do we use a die—a fair die, yes—as something that has a uniform statistical distribution, a one-sixth chance for each face? There is nothing random here, so why use statistics? The answer is that the deterministic calculation exists, but it is very, very complicated. It is highly sensitive to initial conditions, and therefore it is difficult to extremely difficult—nobody knows how to do it—to make the precise calculation and tell us on which face the die will land. But there is such a calculation; we just don’t know how to do it. So what do we say? We say: okay, then this is a random matter and we use probability. But that is not because there is something random here; there is nothing random here at all. Okay? And the whole of evolution is basically the same. What does that mean in practice? That even experts, yes—evolutionary researchers, scientists—take a field that is really deterministic and say no, these are random processes, and they use probability. Why? Because it is pseudo-ontic. They see it as something random, but really there is nothing random. In truth it is a completely deterministic matter, like the bench and the furrow. From the standpoint of reality, either a furrow will be formed or it won’t; it is fixed in advance. Because of the complexity of the calculation, from our perspective it is random. Either it will be formed or it won’t be formed, and therefore we call it ontic doubt, but it is really pseudo-ontic doubt. In essence it is doubt. The more correct approach is to see this as ontic doubt, even though it is not really such. And if so methodologically, then Jewish law also chooses to relate to it in the same way. And from the standpoint of Jewish law it will be considered ontic doubt, even though in truth it is epistemic doubt. One final remark I’ll add. I asked earlier why we use probability to analyze the results of a die, or to analyze the results of an evolutionary process. One has to notice carefully that in all the cases where we use probability, it is like this. All the cases where we use probability are cases where the doubt is epistemic doubt, because there are no ontic doubts. All doubts are epistemic. Therefore the whole assumption with which we entered the discussion is incorrect. Wait, why are you using probability? After all, this is something epistemic; it is not something ontic. What do you mean? Probability is the tool for dealing with epistemic doubts. With ontic doubts one uses—I spoke about this last time—fuzzy logic, not probability. Now what happens is that probability serves as fuzzy logic, and that is what confuses people about quantum theory. People think quantum theory is a probabilistic theory. No. Quantum theory is fuzzy logic. It’s just that probability serves as the fuzzy logic in quantum theory. The fuzzy logic of quantum theory just happens to be a probabilistic theory. That’s all. But it isn’t really probability. Real probability is probability that helps me deal with things I don’t know about reality. When reality itself is vague, there is no point in doing probabilities. It’s not probabilities between several possibilities. All the possibilities exist, as I said earlier about betrothals that were not given over to intercourse, both women are betrothed to me. It is not fifty percent probability that this one is betrothed to me and fifty percent probability that that one is betrothed to me. Therefore when I use probabilities, I am inherently talking about epistemic doubts, not ontic doubts. On the contrary. With ontic doubts, in principle one should not use probability. And the fact that in quantum theory probability is also used is simply because the fuzzy-logic theory relevant there is a probabilistic theory. That’s all. But probability as such is really meant to deal with problems of lack of information. When I don’t know everything about reality and I have several possibilities, I use probability to solve my problems, to know how to act. Okay? And that brings us here—I have finished the first two parts of the series, drawing the map of doubts, and I am moving to the stage of dealing with a state of doubt: the rules of doubt and so on. An important point we need to take with us, which I just noted, is that probabilistic rules always deal with epistemic doubts. They deal with a situation in which I do not have full information about reality, and then they tell me, okay, so how is it proper to act in such a case? And you can already hear, when I say ‘how is it proper to act,’ that does not necessarily mean I am saying what is correct, what the correct possibility is in reality, but only how it is proper to act. In the world of Talmudic analysis this is called rules of conduct and rules of clarification. Rules of clarification look for what is correct; rules of conduct say how I am supposed to act. And probability can function both as one and as the other. But that is already the next stage of the series. It’ll be best.

[Speaker D] So what does the Rabbi say about quantum theory then? What, there it really is genuine doubt?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to the accepted interpretations, yes, it is ontic doubt. Meaning, the particle passes through both slit A and slit B. It is not that I have a doubt which slit it passed through. Therefore it also makes no sense to talk about probability here. Someone who says there is a fifty percent chance it passed through slit A and a fifty percent chance it passed through slit B does not know what he is talking about. The particle passed through both slits. Probability comes in only with the measurement results. Meaning, if I place a detector that tells me through which slit the particle passed, then there will be collapse. And then it will turn out that the particle passes only through one slit. And here there is a fifty percent chance that it will be slit A and a fifty percent chance that it will be slit B. But in the state of superposition—not collapse, in the state of superposition—when people say the particle is fifty percent through slit A and fifty percent through slit B, these are not percentages; rather, it is both through slit A and through slit B. One can say that fifty percent of the particle passes through slit A and fifty percent of the particle passes through slit B. But that is not probability. Probability is that there is a fifty percent chance that the particle will pass through slit A and a fifty percent chance that the particle will pass through slit B. I don’t know which of the two possibilities is correct. That is only regarding collapse, right. Meaning, what the result of the measurement will be. There I can use probability. But when I discuss the question of what the wave function looks like, for those who know, how this whole thing behaves up to the measurement or before the measurement, we use the language of probability, but that is a mistake. And that is part of what confuses things here. Because it is not probability. It passes both here and here. It is not fifty percent that it will pass here and fifty percent that it will pass there. That is all the confusion in quantum theory. I don’t know if all of it, but a lot of the confusion in quantum theory.

[Speaker C] Have a good day. About the pseudo-ontic in Jewish law—it seems very vague to me, because that’s it, what do the people say? One decisor will say this, and another decisor will say no. Do you take a survey or something?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know—what you think, what the reasonable person thinks. What do jurists do when they need to know what the reasonable person thinks? Usually they look in the mirror. In the mirror. Okay? That’s what they do in Jewish law too. Today you could do surveys, but then a debate would start over what percentage in the survey counts as a reasonable person. Sixty percent is the reasonable person? Eighty percent is the reasonable person? You’ll never get out of the arguments. But there’s no choice; normative systems have to resort to these kinds of determinations of what the reasonable person thinks—every system, not only Jewish law. Okay, any other comment or question?

[Speaker E] A small comment regarding the example the Rabbi brought about evolution, regarding the physico-theological proof. The Rabbi always brings the laws that created evolution, and then that kind of restores the proof to its place. But I don’t think that’s entirely right, because when people come with the physico-theological proof, they are coming from complexity. The association is like a watch: someone sat and assembled each part, one piece after another. To think that each part out of hundreds of parts came together by chance seems unreasonable, so therefore somebody sat and made it. But once they come and tell you no, nobody sat there, nobody exerted himself, nobody used a magnifying glass; rather, he threw in something as simple as can be, some law or a few constant laws, and from that complexity arose—here the element of investment and all that isn’t there. So true, that may be an ontological proof, but not a physico-theological proof.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In our case, in our case this is only an example; the details of the physico-theological proof are not connected to what we discussed today. But regarding the question of the proof itself, all you are really doing is bringing the old formulation of the argument, and you are right. The old formulation of the argument does not hold water, so I propose a new formulation of the argument, and this new formulation does hold water. What will you call it? Will you call it physico-theological or call it some other name? Call it whatever you want.

[Speaker E] No, it’s more ontological than physico-theological.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t care. In the end it doesn’t matter what it’s called. The proof from… I call it the proof from the laws and the proof within the laws. The proof within the laws, what you formulated earlier, indeed falls in light of evolution—I agree. But the proof from the laws still remains. Except what? Even regarding the proof from the laws, people claim: fine, but it’s not only the laws doing this, because there are random components inside this process, and that is what I talked about today. Okay? That is another discussion.

[Speaker E] But also regarding this issue of pseudo-ontic, logical positivism also basically goes a bit in that direction. It says that if a person says there are a billion ants or a billion and a half, he hasn’t really said anything, even though you could in principle determine it exactly—you could ask God—but in practice you can’t.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A similar approach—I agree. And they too, ostensibly, go by how people look at things. In reality itself there is some specific number of ants, but if nobody has any way of determining that, then the statement has no meaning. Like with the worm and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman. In reality, either there is a worm inside or there isn’t. But if we have no way at all to verify it, then from our perspective it’s an ontic doubt. Really a positivist approach, yes. That’s why, by the way, I don’t accept it—not Rabbi Shlomo Zalman either. Because I don’t agree with the positivists on this issue. But that mode of thinking is present in his view as well, as I said earlier.

[Speaker F] What’s the story with the class that takes place on Fridays—sometimes it hasn’t been taking place lately?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I didn’t hear?

[Speaker F] We had three consecutive Fridays when there was a class.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The origin of this class is actually in Ra’anana. And in Ra’anana my class is given once every two weeks, and once every two weeks it’s Rabbi Algazi from Kerem B’Yavneh. So right now Rabbi Algazi wasn’t able to, so I’m giving the class in his place. In principle, the people in Ra’anana have a class every week. My class is once every two weeks. That’s in person—the class of Rabbi Algazi.

[Speaker D] So is there also a class next week?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, next week I think it’s Rabbi Algazi. Okay, thank you very much, Shabbat shalom. See you, Shabbat shalom.

[Speaker D] Shabbat shalom.