Doubt and Statistics – Lesson 28
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Statistics, free choice, and the law of large numbers
- An analogy from physics: quantum theory, decoherence, and the classical average
- Emergence, the soul, and materialism: John Searle and liquidity
- A critique of the comparison to liquidity and the problem in neuroscience: correlations without explanation
- Yosef Ne’eman, sound and light: distinguishing between a physical cause and a mental experience
- Weak emergence versus strong emergence and the claim that it is unscientific
- Probability versus a “miracle” in the move from micro to macro, and the preference for dualism in consciousness
- Measurement of mental phenomena and psychophysics
- The topographical-outline model: determinism versus libertarianism
- Maimonides on the Egyptians: prophecy and statistical causation
- Incitement in Jewish law and the distinction between an individual and the public
- Tiny risks to the public: a ruling for the many, checking a weapon, and missiles
- Police on the Sabbath and “saving a society”: the collective as an organism
- The public, the soul of the nation, and the metaphor of a collective spirit
- Students’ questions: weakness of will, responsibility for letting go of the reins, and public life-threatening danger
- Moving on in the series: the laws of doubt
Summary
General overview
The lecturer continues from the previous lecture about using statistical tools to describe human behavior, and argues that this can work even if there is free choice. In fact, it even relies on the independence between people in order to get stable results on a large scale. He compares this to the transition from quantum to classical physics and to decoherence, and presents another example of moving from the individual to the collective through the idea of emergence in consciousness. But he criticizes the materialist claim of strong emergence as something that cannot be proven or refuted and is therefore similar to an unscientific claim. He then returns to the model of the “topographical outline,” which tries to explain how one can speak about collective laws in psychology without canceling free choice, and applies this to questions of incitement, public responsibility, and tiny risks that become real when addressing the public. Finally, he presents a distinction between two mechanisms of relating to the collective: the law of large numbers, as opposed to a situation in which a public functions as an organism with independent standing, and he ends with a discussion and questions about weakness of will and about halakhic and social justifications for operating public systems on the Sabbath.
Statistics, free choice, and the law of large numbers
The lecturer argues that it is possible to analyze human behavior using statistical tools without denying free choice, and that in some sense free choice itself, along with the independence between people, is what makes it possible to apply the law of large numbers and predict outcomes on large scales. He says this approach is used in psychology and explains that the theoretical difficulty exists alongside the fact that it probably works in practice. He mentions an example from Maimonides about the Egyptians as an illustration of the idea that one can speak of a collective pattern known in advance without attributing deterministic coercion to each individual.
An analogy from physics: quantum theory, decoherence, and the classical average
The lecturer presents a phenomenon in physics in which quantum particles behave in a non-Newtonian way, while macroscopic bodies composed of many particles behave classically. He explains this through the law of large numbers: each particle has a distribution of possible states, and the sum total of the behaviors produces an average that is well described by classical mechanics. He calls the disappearance of the quantum “craziness” on a large scale by the name decoherence, and argues that classical mechanics is, in a certain sense, an average over quantum mechanics.
Emergence, the soul, and materialism: John Searle and liquidity
The lecturer describes the historical dualist view according to which mental functions point to a non-material component in the human being, and opposite it the modern claim that the mental can be explained on a physical basis by means of emergence. He attributes to John Searle the claim that mental functions emerge from a network of neurons, even though an individual neuron has no thought, memory, or will, and he brings the example of liquidity: a single H2O molecule is not liquid, but a collection of water molecules does have a state of matter. He presents Searle’s claim that properties can appear at the collective level even though they have no instance at the level of the individuals, and therefore consciousness too can be a property of the physiological whole rather than an additional substance.
A critique of the comparison to liquidity and the problem in neuroscience: correlations without explanation
The lecturer argues that the example of liquidity is not parallel to consciousness, because in the case of liquidity one can explain and calculate the collective property from the properties of the individual molecules, for example by means of a phase diagram. He says that in the brain there is currently no explanation of how electrical currents and excitations are translated into mental phenomena such as will, feeling, and thought, and that all neuroscience presents is correlations between mental experience and activity in areas of the brain. He argues that there is not even a small step toward a language that would explain the transition from the physical to the mental, and therefore the physical analogy does not justify the lesson drawn from it.
Yosef Ne’eman, sound and light: distinguishing between a physical cause and a mental experience
The lecturer recounts a conversation with Professor Yosef Ne’eman of Tel Aviv University, whom he describes as an atheist materialist, who told him that he cannot manage to explain to his materialist friends that feelings and thoughts are not physical phenomena. He distinguishes between the claim that the mental is caused by physical processes and the claim that the mental is identical with them, and calls that identification a conceptual confusion. He illustrates this with the question: if a tree falls in a forest with no observer, does it make a sound? He argues that sound is a mental phenomenon created in consciousness as a result of pressure waves in the air, and is not itself the physical phenomenon. He also brings Bertrand Russell’s example of yellow light, and argues that the electromagnetic wave causes the experience of color in consciousness but is not itself the color, and therefore one should not identify cause and effect.
Weak emergence versus strong emergence and the claim that it is unscientific
The lecturer presents a distinction used by materialists between weak emergence, in which a collective property can be explained in terms of the individuals, and strong emergence, in which no such reduction can be made and yet it is still claimed that the property “emerges.” He argues that strong emergence sounds more mystical than a soul, and adds that in his view there is no example of strong emergence in the world, nor could there be, because if it can be explained then it is weak emergence, and if it cannot be explained one can always claim that there is an additional component such as spirit. He uses the metaphor of raspberry syrup in a glass of water to show that a new property can result from the addition of an entity, not from the collective itself. He argues that strong emergence is not a scientific claim because it is not testable or falsifiable, and criticizes the presentation of this claim in the name of science while attacking dualism for being untestable.
Probability versus a “miracle” in the move from micro to macro, and the preference for dualism in consciousness
The lecturer distinguishes between a situation in which the collective transition is an averaging and summing of the individuals, as in the law of large numbers and weak emergence, and a claim about the appearance of something new that is neither statistical nor explicable, which he describes as a kind of “miracle” of phase transition. He says that he himself does not believe in miracles of this sort, and therefore if there is no plausible physical reduction of consciousness, he prefers to assume that there is another component rather than to assume strong emergence. He adds that if in the future a reductive explanation is found, he may change his position, but on the basis of current knowledge dualism seems to him more reasonable than materialism with respect to mental phenomena, even though he agrees that biology itself advances in a more reductive direction.
Measurement of mental phenomena and psychophysics
The lecturer argues that mental phenomena cannot be measured in the way physical phenomena can, and brings the field of psychophysics and the book Psychophysics by Daniel Algom as an example of the problem. He explains that the research relies on subjective questioning about intensities of experience, and therefore disputes develop, such as the logarithmic law versus the power law regarding the relation between the intensity of a physical stimulus and the intensity of experience. He adds that the difficulty of measurement strengthens, in his view, the distinction between the physical thing that produces the effect and the mental experience, but he also argues that the distinction between the cause and the experience would remain valid even if measurement were possible.
The topographical-outline model: determinism versus libertarianism
The lecturer returns to the model of a “topographical outline” created by education, genetics, brain structure, and environmental influences, and argues that this is the space within which a person acts. He compares a little ball moving according to the slopes to a person who is influenced by forces but can decide to “climb the mountain” and act against the tendency at an energetic cost, and in that way he presents a libertarian position on free choice. He presents the determinist as someone who sees the person as nothing more than the ball, such that the outline determines the action.
Maimonides on the Egyptians: prophecy and statistical causation
The lecturer explains Maimonides’ words about the covenant between the pieces and the bondage in Egypt, and argues that the decree was on the collective and not on each individual Egyptian, and therefore personal responsibility is preserved. He says that the Holy One, blessed be He, can predict collective behavior despite individual free choice, similar to looking at the world “through Facebook windows” and to the law of large numbers. He adds that when it is said that the Holy One, blessed be He, “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” or “caused the Egyptians to enslave,” Maimonides allows us to understand this as statistical causation through a change in the topographical outline, so that the direction of enslavement became easier and more convenient for many, without coercing each individual.
Incitement in Jewish law and the distinction between an individual and the public
The lecturer presents the Jewish law according to which there is no prohibition of incitement to transgressions other than idolatry, and cites the reasoning, “the words of the Rabbi and the words of the student—which does one obey?” which places the responsibility on the one who chose to commit the transgression. He interprets incitement as a change in the topographical outline that increases the likelihood of a transgression but does not cancel free choice, and therefore the basic responsibility remains with the transgressor. He argues that when one incites a public, the law of large numbers changes the picture, because a slight change in the outline of many people guarantees almost with certainty that someone will commit the transgression, and therefore the inciter bears responsibility for the fact that the transgression will be committed even though he does not determine who will do it. He suggests that in the laws of idolatry there may be a distinction between one who incites or leads astray an individual and the case of an apostate city as a more severe form of public incitement, and raises the possibility that this is connected to the rationale of public incitement.
Tiny risks to the public: a ruling for the many, checking a weapon, and missiles
The lecturer brings an example from an article by a student about dangers to the public and presents the topic of a glowing piece of metal in the public domain, where it is permitted to extinguish it on the Sabbath even without immediate tangible danger. He tells of a question posed to Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu about checking the unloading of a weapon on Friday night with a flashlight, and argues that what appears to be a negligible risk for an individual becomes significant when a ruling is directed to thousands of officers and millions of cases, so that a probability of one in a million becomes an event that will occur on average. He illustrates this also with instructions to enter a protected room during missile fire, and argues that the risk to the individual is very small, but on the scale of millions a definite number of casualties will result if everyone ignores the instruction, and therefore the public directive arises from a collective consideration.
Police on the Sabbath and “saving a society”: the collective as an organism
The lecturer describes an article he wrote about the permission to operate police on the Sabbath even in situations where there is no life-threatening danger to a specific individual, because without public order society would become impossible to sustain. He attributes to Yeshayahu Leibowitz a claim about operating public institutions on the Sabbath, and formulates a position according to which there are situations of “life-threatening danger for society,” in which the social organism falls apart even though no individual dies immediately. He explains that this is not a mechanism of the law of large numbers but a different way of relating to the collective as a functioning entity, similar to a body in which a person’s death is a collective phenomenon even if certain cells are still alive. He adds that Jewish law recognizes special considerations for public needs, and mentions the example of being allowed to give charity funds for public needs as expressing a value in the very existence of the public itself.
The public, the soul of the nation, and the metaphor of a collective spirit
The lecturer notes that mystics, and sometimes political conceptions as well, speak of the “soul of the nation” and of a “prince” or angel for each nation in the Sages’ tradition, and suggests seeing this as an expression of a phenomenon in which a collective functions as something beyond the sum of its individuals. He connects this to his earlier claim about consciousness in the brain, according to which the appearance of properties that are not derived from the individuals hints at an additional component, but he presents this mainly as a metaphorical explanation of the fact that there is collective conduct that is not always a simple sum of the individuals. He emphasizes that in physics he does not accept collective phenomena that have no explanation in terms of the individuals, but in relation to the social-halakhic treatment of the public he identifies manifestations in which the collective receives independent standing.
Students’ questions: weakness of will, responsibility for letting go of the reins, and public life-threatening danger
A student asks how free choice remains if the topographical outline also includes drives, needs, interests, and values, and challenges the idea by saying that even the choice to be “a person who chooses” itself stems from desires. The lecturer replies that this difficulty already came up in a previous lecture and that he himself struggles with it, but argues that a person can “let go of the reins” and live within a worldview that inwardly he knows is not correct, and that responsibility arises when this letting go of the reins leads to a grave transgression like murder, similar to driving after drinking. Another student argues that the collapse of a state would ultimately harm individuals as well, and therefore can be translated into ordinary life-threatening danger, and the lecturer replies that many halakhic decisors do in fact explain it that way, but he argues that there is justification even without always grounding it in danger to an individual, because the existence of a functioning public is a value in itself. Another student questions the extent of “causation” in public incitement compared with cases like a glowing piece of metal, and the lecturer replies that one can disagree and say that free choice leaves responsibility with the doers, but he understands the possibility of seeing the inciter as causing the result with high probability, similar to Maimonides’ words about the Egyptians, and notes that the Raavad disagrees with Maimonides on this point.
Moving on in the series: the laws of doubt
The lecturer concludes by saying that next time he wants to continue a bit more with the topic of incitement in Jewish law, and afterward to move on to the final part of the series, which will deal with the laws of doubt.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, last time I talked about—or really finished—the issue of statistics or probability, statistical considerations about human behavior. We saw the problematic side of it: on the one hand, the theoretical difficulty, and on the other hand, the fact that it apparently works. Meaning, people use it. The laws of psychology are based on the assumption that it’s possible to analyze human behavior with statistical tools, and that doesn’t necessarily mean a person has no free choice. In a certain sense, it’s even the opposite. Precisely because people have free choice, and because there is independence between individuals, statistical tools can be applied. Of course, if everything were deterministic, that would also be true, but assuming there is indeed something here that is not deterministic, then that very independence gives us the law of large numbers and the possibility of predicting outcomes on large scales. We saw this in Maimonides there with the Egyptians, and at the end I also noted that in physics, essentially, we see similar phenomena. When we talk, for example, about quantum theory, every small particle in quantum theory behaves in a completely crazy way. But large bodies, which are a collection of many small particles, behave in the regular way we know, in the classical way. And that too is basically, in a certain sense, the law of large numbers. Because it means that each particle has some kind of distribution, and it “chooses” one of the states within that distribution, and all the other particles do the same, but overall, when I look at the ball or the macroscopic object as a whole, it is the sum of the behaviors of the particles that make it up, and therefore it behaves classically, Newtonianly. Even though in quantum theory there are some very, very non-Newtonian crazinesses, on large scales that disappears—what’s called decoherence. In other words, the law of large numbers basically tells me that a collection of very many particles creates a collective with some sort of average behavior, yes, behavior that is described by classical mechanics, and classical mechanics is basically some sort of average over quantum mechanics. With large numbers, the average is a good description of what happens, and that is basically the claim.
I’m saying this because I want to make another remark that touches on this issue, because another example that comes up in connection with the law of large numbers, or a collective of many individuals that somehow gives me a different kind of behavior—yes, that’s really what I want to argue here. In quantum theory, the large scale behaves differently from what happens in the tiny details. The tiny details are quantum; the large scale is classical. And additional examples of this come up in discussions of the human soul, our free will for example, and all our mental functions. Not necessarily free will—free will is the hard problem—but all our mental functions. Usually people were accustomed throughout the generations to think that if human beings have mental functions, that means a human being contains another component that is non-material. In other words, there is a soul or a spirit or whatever you want to call it, but something beyond matter—what’s called a dualist conception, that there are two substances, yes, two components that make up the human being: the material component and the spiritual component, or the soul. The claim that has gained very strong resonance or status in the last generation is the claim that one can explain mental phenomena even without resorting to the existence of an additional spiritual component. It can be explained on a physical, or if you like physiological, basis, and this is basically through the idea of emergence. Emergence—emergence, yes, the idea that our mental functions emerge from the material whole. What does that mean? It means, let’s say, looking at the brain. The brain is a network containing a great many neurons. Each such neuron is some kind of cell, a nerve cell, yes, which is a very, very small body, and overall it’s just a biological cell. An individual neuron does not think, does not remember, does not want, and certainly does not choose, none of that. It’s simply a biological cell. But the network of neurons—which is really what makes up the thinking part of our brain—is suddenly characterized by mental traits. It thinks, feels, wants, remembers, and so on.
And the claim that began—I think John Searle presented it, I think he was one of the first to present it—in a book Mind, Brain and Science or something like that, I think that’s what it was called, it was also translated into Hebrew, some lectures he gave on the BBC. There he basically wants to argue that one can explain mental functions without resorting to a spiritual component. How? It’s simply a property of the physiological collective. Like the law of large numbers. In other words, each neuron behaves in some way like a material particle, but the collection of neurons, the whole, has some different kind of behavior. It develops various properties, and what we call today spirit is really just properties of the material whole. It isn’t an additional substance. It isn’t some other kind of entity or other matter, some sort of—well, I don’t know what to call it—another entity, or another kind of being. No, these are properties of the material whole. The example he brings for this is a property like liquidity. An H2O molecule, yes, a water molecule, is not liquid. A single molecule is not liquid; it has no state of matter at all—not liquid, not solid, and not gas. States of matter are not properties of individual molecules. But a collection of water molecules is liquid. And if you freeze it, then it’s solid; if you heat it more, then it’s gas—but it has states of matter. In other words, states of matter are properties that are properties of the whole, of the collective, of a collection of many water molecules, even though each water molecule on its own cannot be liquid, solid, or gaseous. In other words, these properties exist only on the collective plane and not on the plane of the particulars, of the individuals that make up the collective.
And the claim—Searle’s claim, basically—is that we see from here that there can be properties that emerge from a collective, even though they characterize none of the components of the collective. They appear only at the collective level. But at the collective level, suddenly, there appear certain properties that have no hint at the individual level, yes, of the particulars that make up the collective. And therefore his claim is that perhaps our mental functions too—memory, desire, feeling, thought, all these things—may simply be complex functions that appear at the level of the neuronal whole, even though it is made up of many neurons and each neuron by itself does not have these functions, does not have these properties. But in the whole, it appears. Fact is, we see it. A human being is some sort of collection of neurons, and he assumes a materialist assumption, yes, that a human being is basically just his biology, that’s all. And if so, what we are seeing here is emergence, yes, of properties on the collective level even though they do not exist at the individual level. That is basically his argument.
Now, on the face of it, this sounds very much like what I said earlier about the law of large numbers. Yes, there is something in collective behavior that is essentially different from the behavior of the individuals that make up the collective, and I tied that to the law of large numbers. Now here we need to pay close attention, because the dependence Searle proposes is of a different character—that’s why I’m bringing this example. Why? The claim, basically—let’s take a liquid for a moment. How do I explain the liquid state of a liquid on the basis of the components of the liquid, the individual molecules? Anyone who studied physics or chemistry—more physics—knows that this collective property can be explained by means of the properties of the individual molecules. In other words, if you tell me what the field around the individual molecule looks like, I can derive from that what the properties of the collective will be, at what temperature and pressure it will be liquid, gas, or solid—what’s called a phase diagram. I can calculate the phase diagram from the property of the individual molecule. Now true, the individual molecule cannot itself be liquid, solid, or gas. In that sense, there really is some sort of emergence of a different property here. But that emergence can be fully explained on the basis of the properties of the individual molecules. It is indeed a different property, but that different property can be calculated and explained very clearly and unequivocally from the properties of the individual molecules.
And therefore the example of liquidity is really a bad example, because in the lesson you want to draw from it—the liquid is the parable, and in the lesson itself—you cannot actually explain how exactly a collection of neurons manages to want, feel, think, and so on. Everything that brain research does—they do not explain how thought happens and how it translates into mental phenomena. What they show is what happens in the brain when I feel or when I think, which part of the brain works, what pattern of activity there is in that part of the brain or those parts of the brain. But they do not explain why these electrical currents in the brain, or these electrical excitations in the brain, actually create the mental phenomena—what we call will, feeling, thought, all those things, which of course are not physical phenomena but mental phenomena. Now how these phenomena come out of electrical currents in different places in the brain—nobody today, not only knows how to explain it, that obviously not—nobody today has even taken a small step toward an explanation, nobody even understands in what language such an explanation would be given. There is no explanation for this. All neuroscience does is find correlations. In other words, what they do is show that when you feel this or that, these and these parts of the brain are active, and they explain how it happens and how it passes from here to there, but the translation of all these physical processes into phenomena that we know as mental phenomena does not exist. All we know how to do is point to a correlation. When there is this mental phenomenon, what happens physically in the brain is such-and-such. When there is another phenomenon, the brain does such-and-such. But why when the brain does such-and-such there comes out this kind of mental phenomenon—there is no way to explain it, nobody explains it, nobody knows how to explain it, they do not try to explain it. There isn’t even a language that manages to do such a thing.
I think I may have mentioned here once that there was a professor at Tel Aviv University named Yosef Ne’eman, in the life sciences. He died a few years ago. He was a very committed atheist materialist, and active in public writing about these things and so on. In my book God Plays with Dice, the book about evolution, I referred to a number of things he wrote and criticized them. After the book came out, a year or two later, I got a phone call from him, and we spoke on the phone, and along the way we talked about various things. A very nice man, by the way, and intelligent, and it was a pleasure to talk with him. And in the course of the conversation he says to me—this was before I wrote The Science of Freedom about free choice; it was after God Plays with Dice—he says to me, listen, I have materialist friends like me, he says, who insist on saying that emotions, desires, thoughts are simply physical phenomena. Materialists. Now Ne’eman says to me: I can’t manage to explain to them—intelligent people—that they’re talking nonsense. And he says this as a materialist. Why? Not because he thinks there is a spirit—he’s a materialist, not a dualist. But he understands that mental phenomena are not physical phenomena. You can’t identify an emotion like hatred, fear, love, I don’t know, all sorts of things like that—these are not physical phenomena. Maybe they are caused by physical phenomena in the brain. Maybe. But that is not identity. Meaning, the thing itself is not a physical phenomenon; it is a mental phenomenon.
A bit similar to what I once mentioned here, yes, that example of sound or light. Yes, where I ask: when a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, does it make a sound? The answer is of course no. It does not make a sound. It merely moves the air and creates pressure waves in the air. If there is an ear there with an eardrum, and those pressure waves in the air strike the eardrum, then in the consciousness of the person with that ear, a sound will be created. But sound is a mental phenomenon. Sound is not a physical phenomenon. The physical phenomenon is the pressure wave in the air. The sound is a product caused by the impact of the pressure wave on my eardrum. If I were built differently in my head, if I were wired differently in my head, if my ear were connected to the visual center rather than the auditory center, then I would see that pressure wave made by the falling tree rather than hear it. There is no essential connection between hearing and the physical phenomenon of a pressure wave in air. The connection is created only because of the structure of our brain.
What I mean through this example—or think of yellow light, yes, Bertrand Russell’s example. He asks: what is yellow light? So people say it’s an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength. Nonsense, of course. An electromagnetic wave of a certain wavelength, when it strikes the retina, creates in consciousness an image of yellow light. But yellow light is not out there in the world and it is not identical with the electromagnetic wave. The electromagnetic wave creates yellow light in the consciousness of the one who has the eye, yes, when it strikes the eye, then in the consciousness of the person with the eye yellow light is created. But yellow light is not an electromagnetic wave. Yellow light is a mental phenomenon. The electromagnetic wave brings it about, creates it, causes it—but it is not it. And you cannot identify the cause with the effect; the cause and the effect are not the same thing. The cause brings about the effect, but they are not the same thing.
So in our context, returning to the conversation with Ne’eman, the claim, basically, is that he cannot explain to his materialist friends that mental phenomena are not physical phenomena. Even if you are a materialist, someone who says otherwise is simply talking nonsense. This has nothing to do with materialism or non-materialism, with philosophical debates; it is simply conceptual confusion. You can say that the physical phenomena in the brain generate the mental phenomena. But not that the mental phenomena are physical processes. What nonsense is that? There is some process of conversion, yes, of causation, whereby these currents in the brain produce in me mental phenomena—emotions, thinking, desire, memory, yes, all the mental functions we have. But those functions are caused by the currents in the brain. They are not the currents in the brain themselves. Currents in the brain are currents in the brain; they are no different from any other electrical current.
And the amazing thing is—I really, even before talking with him, I had met people like this—and I simply cannot understand these creatures. It is just a ridiculous mistake by very intelligent people, some of them very intelligent, but they are so captive to materialist conceptions that it leads them to insane conceptual confusions. Now Ne’eman’s point—and in principle he is right—is that he can remain a materialist even without getting confused in that way. An intelligent person can be a materialist. In my opinion he is mistaken, but someone who is a materialist does not have to be unintelligent; in my opinion he is mistaken, but he can still be an intelligent person. What does that mean? He says: mental phenomena are not physical phenomena, but they are generated by physical phenomena as some kind of emergence, yes—they emerge from a physiological whole. They are properties of the physiological whole, but they are not electrical currents. That is basically the claim.
Now I’ll explain why I don’t agree even with this more moderate claim, this less far-reaching claim than Ne’eman’s—meaning why I think Ne’eman too is mistaken. By the way, shortly afterward he died, and I even received—they apparently sent all his correspondents—a notice of his passing. I actually wanted to come, but I couldn’t make it. In any case, why don’t I agree with his claim either? So I return to John Searle’s proposal, yes? Why isn’t it like liquidity? So I said: because if you claim that this is a phenomenon of emergence, then show me how you explain the collective phenomenon on the basis of the properties of the individuals that make up the collective. With water and liquidity I know how to do that, but in the case of the brain, nothing—no phenomenon can be explained through a physical process, there just are no such explanations.
Now this claim has basically been well known in recent years, at least. And what the really stubborn people answer—the materialists who decide to insist anyway—is that there is what’s called weak emergence and strong emergence. Weak emergence is a situation in which the collective phenomenon can be explained in terms of the properties of the details, of the individuals that make up the collective. That is weak emergence, like liquidity and water. In the brain and in mental phenomena, they say, this is strong emergence. In other words, it is impossible to explain or reduce the collective mental phenomena to the properties of the details, of the individual neuron, but it still emerges from there. Meaning, something emerges—a new something that cannot be grounded in the properties of the details. The collective has certain properties that characterize the collective, but they are not the sum of the properties of the details, they cannot be explained in terms of the properties of the details—they simply appear at the collective level in some way. And I have to say, this starts sounding more mystical than the claim that there is a soul. But that is basically the claim, that there is such a thing as strong emergence.
Now, what I say against this is that in principle it could be so, but first, we do not know of any such phenomenon, and second, we also cannot know of any such phenomenon. In principle, in my view, never in the future, with whatever scientific development may come, will they succeed in showing that there is strong emergence. It is conceptually impossible. Why not? Because suppose we are now looking at a person’s mental functioning, yes, the person’s mental phenomena, and you claim that this is strong emergence, and I say to you: who says so? It could be that the new properties that appear in the human being are the result of his having a soul. They are not properties of his material whole. And that is far more plausible: if I cannot explain it on the basis of the material whole, why assume that it is a property of the material whole? Apparently it is a property of something else, of the human spirit, which is connected somehow to his material whole but is another component in this structure called a human being, and these properties really characterize that, the soul, rather than the material whole. That is the dualist proposal.
Now when the materialist says, no, no, that’s not it, there is no such additional component, this is strong emergence, I’ll say to him: tell me, do you have even one example in the universe, among all the phenomena you want, of strong emergence? The answer is no, and there won’t be one either—like the stubborn and rebellious son, it never was and never will be. It cannot be. I’ll tell you why. Because every time they bring such an example, one of two things will happen: either they will succeed in showing me the collective phenomenon on the basis of the properties of the details, but then that is weak emergence because they have succeeded in explaining it; or they will fail to show it, but then I will argue there too: who says that this property is really a property of the whole and not of a spirit that is within the whole? After all, as long as you have not shown me that you can explain this property on the basis of the properties of the details, you cannot prove to me that this property is really a property of the collection of details. Who says? Maybe there is an additional component there, and that is the property that belongs to it.
And by definition, once the emergence is strong—if it is weak, then I’ll say: you brought me an example of weak emergence; that does not prove that there is strong emergence in the world. But if you bring me an example of strong emergence, you will never be able to show me that there is strong emergence, because strong emergence by definition is something that cannot be shown. You cannot show me that the collective property comes out of the properties of the details—that is exactly what strong emergence means: you cannot. Who says that the collective property really comes out of the properties of the details? Maybe this collective property differs from the details because there really is something else there besides the details.
Yes, it’s like looking at a glass of water to which raspberry syrup has been added. Now someone comes and says: once you fill a whole glass with water molecules, suddenly they turn red. The red color is a property of the collective of water molecules. What nonsense—the red color is there because there is another component there, the raspberry syrup, besides the water. Now if someone says that this is a property of the collection of water molecules, then one of two things: either he will have to explain to me how the red color is created by gathering together, yes, a mass of water molecules; or if he cannot explain it, then we will always remain with two possibilities that cannot be decided between. Either this is a property of the collection of water molecules that cannot be explained, cannot be reduced to the properties of the individual molecule, or there really is another component here that gives the red color. And once you speak of strong emergence, by definition you have not made a scientific claim, because it is a claim that cannot be tested or refuted.
And what is strangest in this whole business is that the people who make this claim make it in the name of science. Because usually in these debates, whenever someone is a dualist, they always attack him from a scientific point of view. They say: scientifically we know how to explain all the phenomena of life with biology; there is no need to assume that there is another component in the human being, yes? Vitalism. The vitalist view is practically a dirty word today in biology. Fine—you do not need to assume the existence of some additional component in order to explain these phenomena, and therefore in the name of science they say there is no need to assume there is anything more. But now, in the name of science, you are actually making a claim that cannot be scientifically tested or refuted. So how are you different from my claim when I say there is also spirit here, and you attack me by saying the existence of spirit cannot be scientifically tested? Your claim cannot be scientifically tested either. So the whole way this debate is conducted is a kind of entrenchment inside a materialist dogma. You insist on being a materialist and raise claims that contradict one another, simply because you have to be a materialist. In other words, you insist on remaining with materialism against all—without letting reality confuse you.
And it’s strange that they continue presenting this as the thesis grounded in science. Yes? The person who is grounded in science, the person who is an empirical scientist, is supposedly meant to be a materialist. So where do mental properties come from? Emergence. Ah—but emergence is a claim that cannot be refuted; it is a claim that by definition is not scientific. Somehow nobody noticed that. I don’t know. People—I haven’t even seen anyone address this. I wrote this argument in my book, but I don’t know anyone who referred to it. This is a very strong argument, especially when the one attacking dualism does so in the name of science. You cannot, in the name of science, cling to a claim that cannot be refuted or proven.
[Speaker B] What exactly is the conceptual difference between strong emergence and soul, vitalism, dualism? What exactly is the conceptual difference?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The claim is that on the ontological plane there isn’t some additional thing here. It’s only a property of the neural whole, but it really is a completely new property, one that is detached from the properties of the individual neuron.
[Speaker B] And if we decide to call that property, in the dictionary, “soul”…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That property is not an entity; it’s a property. Meaning, let’s say the material whole dies, then he—the determinist, the materialist, sorry—would not need to assume survival of the soul. I claim that if there is something besides matter, then even if the matter dies, that additional something may still exist. But if you’re talking to me about a property of the material whole, then the moment the material whole no longer functions—when it dies—then it has no properties, so there’s nothing, nothing exists. That’s not saying the same thing, but I agree that it suffers from the same difficulties. The claims are not identical; they’re different claims. But you’re not making a stronger claim, it’s not preferable in any way to my claim, so what do you gain? It could be that Ockham’s razor says you should assume the existence of as few entities as possible, and he assumes the existence of one entity, whereas I assume the existence of two kinds of entities. Maybe that’s his advantage. But on the other hand it’s very, very implausible. Very, very implausible that suddenly some property emerges that has no connection whatsoever to the properties. In the brain there is nothing except a collection of neurons, and still from the properties of the neuron you cannot derive how a brain behaves. Why not? What, why? How can that be? You’re forced to say that there is probably something else there. In my eyes that is a very, very sensible consideration. The alternative of emergence seems very implausible to me. Now why am I bringing this whole story here? Because here too we’re basically talking about the appearance of some property on the macroscopic, collective plane, which is made up of many individual details. But notice, that is exactly the difference. In weak emergence, it’s basically similar to the law of large numbers. If you sum up what each molecule does, you get that the collective is a liquid. There’s nothing here beyond averaging. Summation and averaging are the same thing, right? Averaging is summation divided by the number of individuals. So summing and averaging are exactly the same operation, up to N, yes, dividing by N. So when you sum over the properties of the particulars, you get the collective property in weak emergence. That’s similar to the law of large numbers. But strong emergence has nothing to do with the law of large numbers at all. It basically says that something appears, comes into being out of nothing, when there is a collection of individuals, but it is not a statistical property of the individuals. You’re not taking an average over the distributions of each individual separately; rather, it’s something completely different. On the contrary, you can’t explain it by means of statistics. Rather, something—some miracle—happens when many neurons come together. Some kind of transition to another phase occurs, to something completely different. Why? Miracle. I have no explanations, I have nothing, but it happens. Okay? So here, for example, is an instance of a claim that moves from the micro to the macro not by means of the law of large numbers. And what I claim is: there is no such animal. There is no such thing. If all there is here is neurons, then I can explain the general phenomenon by means of the phenomena of the individual neuron. It may be that I don’t know the explanation. Someone can come and say, “Right, there is an explanation, they’ll find it in the future.” For now we still don’t know the explanation. That’s a claim one can hear. But someone who tells me, “No, no, even if they don’t find the explanation, that doesn’t matter because it’s strong emergence”—that I do not accept. If in the future someone finds some explanation, maybe, I don’t know, then maybe I’ll retract and agree to materialism, yes? Science progresses over time. That can happen. Today, with the data we have today, it’s not just that there is no explanation; there isn’t even a direction that anyone knows to look in, where one could even begin to look for such an explanation. In what language it would even be formulated. There’s nothing at all—it seems, at least given the state of knowledge we have today, simply something completely absurd. If someday there’s some revolution and they nevertheless find something, maybe that’s true. But if you ask me, on the basis of the knowledge we have today, which thesis is more plausible, there’s no doubt that dualism is more plausible than materialism. Which runs contrary to everything brain researchers and almost all biologists say. But in my opinion they’re all mistaken. They’re asserting a very implausible thesis. I’m not talking about biology; I’m talking about mental phenomena. Therefore, from the biologists’ point of view, biology they can explain by means of biology. Biology is indeed produced by processes of weak emergence. Meaning, biological phenomena can be explained—or at least many, many steps have already been taken in that direction—from physics to biology. There there’s already almost a reduction. Okay? So there that’s fine. But when I move to mental phenomena, yes, when I move to psychology, not biology, then there is no transition at all from here to there. It’s just a vacuum. Okay? And therefore biologists don’t like vitalism within biology, and with that I can agree. Biology may perhaps be explainable even without the existence of a soul. But psychology, I think not. I’m sure not.
[Speaker D] I also have maybe the point of how, say, to measure pain—for example, that’s something impossible. Meaning, mental properties are not measurable like, for example, in physics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s obvious. This is what’s called psychophysics. There’s a very nice book by someone named Daniel Algom—he was a lecturer, maybe still is, in psychology at Bar-Ilan and on the University of the Air—called Psychophysics. Worth reading, a very interesting book, where he really talks about the great problem of measuring mental phenomena. You’re always fed by questioning. You ask people: how strong is the light that you see? And that’s what you can try to describe; you can’t tell a person at what intensity of light he sees. You can know what field intensity exists in the world, measure it—that’s a physical phenomenon. But when it hits the retina and creates light in consciousness, the intensity of light in consciousness is something that cannot be measured in any way. All you can do is ask the person whether it’s weaker than the previous light, stronger, by how much it seems stronger to him. But even I myself, in my opinion, if they asked me, I wouldn’t know how to say whether it’s twice as much, or one and a half times, or three times. How can I know such a thing? And the question of the relation between the intensity of the psycho and the intensity of the physical is an age-old dispute. There was the logarithmic approach and there was the power-law approach. There’s a claim that the relation is logarithmic—that is, if you multiply the intensity of the electromagnetic field by two, then the light I see has only another log two added to it. Meaning, it rises more weakly. And there are claims that the law is a power law, and there are arguments over what exactly the power is. But where do all these arguments come from? Why can there be arguments? Measure it and see! No, you can’t measure it, because you ask people what the intensity of the light is and you’re fed by what they tell you, but they themselves can’t really say whether it’s double or five times. So therefore this is basically a field built on stilts, all of it. And when you read the book it’s very interesting—he also tries to explain the problematic nature, but also to try to move forward. And in my opinion he doesn’t really succeed in moving forward. You can’t move forward there because it’s something that has no foundation. But that is a difficulty in measuring the thing. I’m making a more fundamental claim. First of all, understand that these are two things. It may be that even the inner thing could be measured, but still the inner thing is not the external thing that arouses it, that generates it. Meaning, one has to understand that these are two things. The claim that the inner thing also can’t be measured—that is another claim, and it may even strengthen the fact that these are two things. Because factually, this is not measurable and that is measurable, so of course that strengthens even more the claim that we are dealing with two different things. Okay, but that claim is a claim that could be true even if you could measure it—it’s not the same claim. So this is simply a remark regarding the law of large numbers or the transition from the particular to the collective that is formed from them, that these transitions are not always—or at least there are such claims—not always just the law of large numbers. Sometimes there are these miraculous transitions. Now I personally, precisely as a person, as the mystic against the scientists, don’t believe in miracles. I don’t think there are such miracles. I think that if it’s only a collection of neurons, then there should be some explanation that makes a reduction without miracles. And if there is no such explanation, then that means there is simply something else here, and not that there are miracles. And the materialists who speak in the name of science are speaking about miracles. It’s really a strange thing. Actually it’s worth a column, to think about it, to write about it sometime.
[Speaker D] It could be wishful thinking more than a theoretical thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be. Look, it’s not really fair to judge people based on their psychologies and motivations. They can do that to me too. I judge their arguments. I’m saying their argument is weak. Why they hold a weak argument—now you can get into psychologies, what causes them to do that—that doesn’t interest me. Each of us has weaknesses; it’s not their exclusive property. I’m sure I have weaknesses too, and I assume even you do. We’re all human beings. But one can deal with arguments, and the argument is a weak argument—that’s what I want to claim. What psychology leads to that is another discussion; hitting below the belt isn’t fair. Good, so that’s what I wanted to complete regarding the law of large numbers. I now want to move on, still in this context of the law of large numbers in psychology—that is, the explanation of psychological laws on the basis of behaviors of individual people. There the law of large numbers does work, and despite the fact that every person has free choice, the claim is that on the collective level one can describe certain laws. And I explained this through that model of the topographical layout. The topographical layout is some kind of environment within which a person acts, created by all the things acting on him: education, genetics, brain structure, environmental influence, whatever you want, all these things—nature and nurture. And this whole complex creates some kind of topographical layout within which the person acts. And my claim is that unlike a little ball, for which the topographical layout basically dictates where it will roll and at what speed and where it will reach, a person—the physical forces acting on him are exactly like on the little ball. But a person, unlike the little ball, can decide דווקא to climb the mountain and not slide into the valley. Of course he’ll pay an energetic price for that because he is a physical creature. But he can make the decision to go against the forces that the layout exerts on him. So that’s basically the claim. The libertarian claim. By contrast, the determinist says that a person is nothing but a little ball. Meaning, once the layout is there, I can tell you what will happen to the person or what the person will do. Yes, I described that last time. Now as a result of that, one can see—I explained that the whole motivation for this model in our context was Maimonides’ words about the Egyptians. How the Holy One, blessed be He, caused the Egyptians to enslave Israel, and at the same time—or together with that—free choice remained for each of the Egyptians. But still the Holy One, blessed be He, could say to Abraham our forefather at the Covenant Between the Pieces: “Your seed shall be strangers… and they shall enslave them and oppress them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they shall serve I will judge.” Meaning, they have free choice and they bear responsibility, even though I said in advance that this is what would happen, says the Holy One, blessed be He. How does that happen? So Maimonides basically says that the Holy One, blessed be He, decreed this upon the Egyptian collective and not upon each Egyptian individually. And therefore each Egyptian individually who chose evil deserves punishment, has responsibility for what he did. Even though on the collective level it was possible to know in advance that there would be a certain number of Egyptians who would enslave Israel—if you remember the view from Facebook windows, yes, onto the world—it’s exactly the same thing. And the claim basically is this: that the Holy One, blessed be He, foretold the collective behavior of the Egyptians, even though each Egyptian had free choice. On the collective level I can indeed say what will happen. That’s the law of large numbers. Now then what is meant when it says that the Holy One, blessed be He, hardened Pharaoh’s heart, for example, or caused the Egyptians to enslave Israel? If just ordinarily, say, two peoples live side by side, in principle there’s no reason that one people should enslave the other. In the normal case that won’t happen. The Holy One, blessed be He, says: yes, but I will make sure that it happens. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, not only knows in advance what the Egyptians will do; He is the one who brought about what the Egyptians did. He caused them to do it. Now how does causation happen if it’s not deterministic? If You caused it, then it’s deterministic, so what do You want from them, what responsibility do they have for what they did? You caused it. So Maimonides’ claim is that the causation here was statistical causation. The causation was making sure that on the collective level there would be enough Egyptians who would enslave Israel. But each Egyptian individually has free choice, and still on the statistical level there will be enough Egyptians who will enslave Israel. Or in other words, what the Holy One, blessed be He, basically did here was to change the topographical map within which the Egyptians acted. Once you lower the slope, or reduce the angle, on the map in the direction of enslaving Israel, then more Egyptians will choose to fall downward because it’s more comfortable to fall downward. Each one still has free choice, but statistically I can say that out of a million Egyptians, more Egyptians will choose that path. Meaning, when you change the relative weights of all directions on this topographical map—or yes, make the mountain steeper or less steep, or the valley steeper or less steep, or turn a mountain into a valley or a saddle, or whatever, you change the topographical layout—then even though a person has free choice, it is still obvious that what you did affects the result. It does not determine the result, but it affects the result. On the collective level it already almost determines the result; there is the law of large numbers. But on the individual level it affects the result. Okay, that is basically the claim. Now I want to show an example, or applications of this idea, so that it will be clearer. I want to talk, for example, about the concept of incitement, a very popular concept in our region lately. What is incitement? After all, the crime of incitement is a very problematic offense. In Jewish law, for example, there is no prohibition against inciting. There is a prohibition only against inciting to idol worship, but there is no prohibition against inciting to transgressions. Why not? The Talmud says: “The words of the master and the words of the student—which words should one obey?” Meaning, if I incite you to commit a transgression and you know that the Holy One, blessed be He, forbids doing that thing, then if you chose to listen to my incitement—that’s really on you, it’s your fault. You decided to listen to my incitement and not to the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. So the responsibility is on you. What do they want from me? Therefore the inciter is basically not seen as a criminal. The criminal is the one who chose to listen to the incitement. Unless of course you coerced him, if you did something he could not choose to resist, that’s something else. But if you incite him—inciting is nothing. What does it mean, incite? You incited him. In the end he has to make a decision, and if he made a bad decision, the responsibility is on him. That is the reasoning of “the words of the master and the words of the student—which words should one obey?” That is at least the accepted explanation of that reasoning. There is a dispute about it; I hope to get to that later.
[Speaker E] There isn’t a madiach, one who suborns false witnesses—isn’t that an offense?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. There is hiring false witnesses; if you pay them, then there are discussions in Jewish law about what exactly—you may indeed be liable. Because here you’ve not only incited them, you’ve pushed them. But incitement—nothing, there isn’t. You can incite whomever you want to whatever you want, except idol worship. Mesit and madiach applies to idol worship. And an idolatrous city as well is basically also the result of incitement to idol worship. But that’s it, only idol worship. We’ll see later: the Yad Ramah perhaps wants to claim that there is incitement in other matters too, but he himself says it’s probably not true. And the idea behind it is exactly this. Because when I incite this person, in the end he decides what to do. When I incited, what did I actually do? I changed the topographical layout within which the person acts. I created a stronger impulse to go in the forbidden direction.
[Speaker F] But if I profited from it? If as a result of it I gained something? Doesn’t that matter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then I did…
[Speaker F] So I’m not responsible?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The prohibition is on the transgressor. Incitement changes nothing in Jewish law. Now what happens is—what does incitement do? I’m explaining this in the previous model I described. It basically changes the topographical layout around the person. It turns the situation in which he acts into one in which it is easier for him, he is more drawn, to commit the transgression. But he still has free choice whether to do it or not. Only what I did is not completely neutral. I changed the weights. Meaning, I created a higher probability that he would commit a transgression. But the decision is still in his hands, and therefore the responsibility is also his. And if it was hard for him to cope, maybe those are arguments about punishment. We might say he deserves a less severe punishment. But the basic responsibility is on him. The moment he decided to do it, he decided—the responsibility is on him. But what happens if I incite a public, not an individual? If I incite a public, the picture changes completely. Why? Because once I incite a public, that’s exactly like the Holy One, blessed be He, with the Egyptians. When I incite a public, I am basically changing the topographical map for all the people. In some way giving them an additional push in the criminal direction, to commit the transgression. Now each person individually has free choice. And if he did it, he will be judged. The responsibility is on him; he could also have refrained. But according to the law of large numbers it is clear—or almost clear, 99%—that there will be people who do it. Even though each one has free choice, or maybe even because each one has free choice, the distribution will be such that basically some will commit this transgression and some won’t. If I had not incited, then nobody would have committed the transgression, let’s say for the sake of discussion. I incited, so out of the thousand there will be three who do it, or out of the million there will be ten thousand who do it. Because everyone has free choice, but there is a distribution, and if I look at the general picture the transgression will be committed. Meaning, if I now incite a public to murder someone, that someone will be murdered. Because if So-and-so doesn’t do it, Then-so will do it, and if ten thousand don’t do it, then these three will. But out of the million whom you incited, there will be three who murder him. And therefore there is a very, very big difference—and this is exactly that same phenomenon of the psychological law of large numbers. There is a very, very big difference between inciting a single person and inciting a public. I think the law also makes such a distinction, I think—I’m not familiar, but I think so. In a basic sense that is very logical. Because incitement of a single person merely leaves the choice in his hands and the responsibility is on whoever did it. But incitement of a public—even though for each member of the public the choice is in his hands—the transgression, broadly speaking, will be done. And therefore in the case of inciting a public, one can see the inciter as someone who really brings about this result with his own hands, despite the fact that each person has free choice. And that is a very important implication. Because in principle you might ask, according to the same line of thought we discussed before, if every individual in this public has responsibility for his actions and has free choice, then even if I incited the public, each person in the public who committed the transgression—the responsibility is on him. What do they want from me? Even if I incited a public, I didn’t do anything. Each one who committed the transgression—the transgression is on him. That’s true. I’m not responsible for any particular person in the public who committed the transgression, but I am responsible for the fact that the transgression was committed. Because the transgression would be committed by some percentage of the public, even though I did not determine who—that was determined by their free choices. But I did determine, or create a situation, in which some certain percentage of the public would commit the transgression, meaning that the transgression would be committed. And in that sense the inciter bears a kind of almost deterministic responsibility for the result if he incites a large public. Now, I don’t know of any treatment in Jewish law of public incitement as forbidden as opposed to private incitement. Usually the conception is that incitement is not forbidden except incitement to idol worship. But in idol worship one does see such a distinction, because inciting a single person is the matter of mesit and madiach. Incitement of an idolatrous city is a more severe offense. And it may be that the reason is that we are dealing with public incitement. And in public incitement, if you don’t act harshly here, then the transgression will be committed by someone from within the public. And therefore maybe—I don’t know, in the details I don’t know whether this works all the way through in the details of that law—but maybe that is some sort of rationale for the distinction between the incitement of an idolatrous city and mesit and madiach to idol worship of a private individual. But in general Jewish law does not see incitement as an offense. Even desecration of God’s name—it, desecration of God’s name is in public.
[Speaker C] The severe desecration of God’s name is specifically in public, before the many.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not connected to our discussion, but that’s…
[Speaker C] No, maybe it’s because of the influence—when you desecrate Heaven’s name before everyone, then you influence them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not because of influence. It is forbidden to desecrate Heaven’s name. Desecration of God’s name.
[Speaker C] But why specifically in public? Why specifically in public?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Desecration of God’s name. It’s not from the law of an inciter. Desecration of God’s name in front of many people—more evil, more severe.
[Speaker C] So why if I desecrated Heaven’s name in private chambers everything is fine, but desecration of God’s name in public is a catastrophe—what’s the difference? I enjoyed that transgression the same way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said that in private chambers everything is fine? It’s forbidden in private chambers too; as a rule at least rabbinically. But still it’s obvious that it is less severe, because when you desecrate the Name in the eyes of the whole world it is more severe than desecrating it in the eyes of two people or inside a room. Fine, but that is not connected to the law of large numbers and the statistics I spoke about earlier; it’s simply the severity of the transgression. It’s not because a collection of particulars accumulates.
[Speaker C] But the severity of the transgression is because of the effect on the public, the public consciousness that you created by desecrating the Name.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re assuming that desecration of God’s name is a kind of offense like incitement, because basically I am causing people to commit transgressions. No. Desecration of God’s name is an offense in itself, not because I cause people to commit transgressions. It is itself an offense, even if I caused nobody anything. Who said? Who said? From where—
[Speaker C] Rabbi…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the straightforward conception of desecration of God’s name. Otherwise you can talk about indirect causation, you can talk about other things—I think that’s not… I know of no indication whatsoever that conceives the prohibition of desecration of God’s name as something that causes transgressions. Causing transgressions is incitement, and that is forbidden only in idol worship. And if desecration of God’s name were forbidden because it causes transgressions, then incitement too should have been forbidden because it causes transgressions in the same way, perhaps even more so. But there is no prohibition of incitement, and there is a prohibition of desecration of God’s name. For our purposes, what I want to say—I’ll bring another example, but it’s parallel. I had a student, I once had a student who wrote an article arguing that one should travel by public transportation, that it is forbidden to travel in private cars because of the danger of traffic accidents and the like. And within that article he analyzed a bit how one should relate to dangers to the public. And he brought, for example, the topic of a glowing piece of metal in the public domain. The Talmud says that regarding a glowing piece of metal in the public domain, even though there is no concrete danger right now that someone will be harmed by it, it is permitted to extinguish it on the Sabbath. According to the Geonim, even by a Torah prohibition. According to most opinions, no, but according to the Geonim even by a Torah prohibition. So one sees that there is some special relation to dangers toward a public. Now dangers toward a public are divided into two types. It was from discussions I had with him then that the penny dropped for me on this, and later I wrote about it in other contexts too. Dangers, or preferential treatment for the public, can happen through two different mechanisms. For example, he brought there in the article a question that was asked to Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu. Some army officer told him that the instruction in the army is this: when the officer has to check the unloading of the soldiers’ weapons when they come down from guard duty, the officer checks that the weapon is unloaded, yes, so that no bullet will be accidentally discharged in the sleeping quarters. Okay. Now the rule is that at night you have to check with a flashlight in order to see that no bullet remains in the chamber. Meaning, it’s not enough just to put a finger in and feel around; you have to see with a flashlight. That’s the army instruction. Now an officer asked Rabbi Eliyahu what to do on the Sabbath, on Friday night at night. The army instruction is to check with a flashlight, but it’s obvious that the danger is negligible. Meaning, put in your finger, make sure there’s no bullet, then there’s no bullet—the danger is negligible. Rabbi Eliyahu told him to check with a flashlight. So he asked me, this student who wrote the article, he said: what is the logic of that? After all, this is not life-saving at a level that justifies Sabbath desecration. It’s utterly negligible life-saving concern. Clearly the difference between sticking in a finger and shining a flashlight is such a tiny risk that if one desecrates the Sabbath for that, one can abolish the Sabbath. There is nothing that doesn’t involve risk at that level. I told him that I think the claim is that if an individual person had come to ask Rabbi Eliyahu, then he would have told him not to turn on a flashlight. But once he publishes such a ruling, then he is addressing thousands or tens of thousands of officers over many hundreds or thousands of days. Do you understand how many cases that is, how very, very many cases? Now suppose the chance that you miss it with your finger whereas with a flashlight you would have caught it—the chance is one in a million, let’s say. Okay. Now if there are a thousand officers checking over a thousand days people, or a thousand people, fine, over a thousand days one person—it doesn’t matter—then basically there are a million cases. In one of those cases on average a bullet will be discharged because you checked without a flashlight and only with your finger. Therefore on the collective level there is basically a certain danger here, an almost certain danger. On average a person will be killed as a result of this. So when you ask the question as an individual person, you will basically receive a different answer from the answer that will be published to the public, because the answer published to the public addresses everyone. And when you address everyone, a one-in-a-million risk, when you address millions of people, is a significant risk. Yes. In the same way, for example, think about the missiles that came in the Gulf War, when missiles were fired here at Israel, and then the instructions were to go into rooms, safe rooms, sealed rooms, and all kinds of things like that. A sealed room is an issue of non-conventional weapons, but in the end it turned out they fired only conventional weapons, and then the instruction—as in Gaza, as in the Gaza envelope to this day—the instruction is to go into safe rooms, yes, fortified rooms. Now the chance that I will be hit is negligible. I, as a person walking around the city here while missiles are being fired at me from Iraq, or even from Gaza missiles are being fired at me, the chance that I’ll be hit is negligible. I don’t change a single breath because of that risk; it’s nonsense. I go on cheerfully humming a tune and doing what I want; there’s no fear at all. When the missiles from Iraq were falling and all that, I walked around in the street and not a drop of fear stirred in me. Why? Because the chance of it is negligible—not because I’m very brave, but because the chance is negligible. There’s no real danger. So why still go into the fortified rooms? In my opinion you should. Why should you? Because we are millions of people. The chance that I will be hit is zero, or one in who knows what, one in 100,000—not a risk I get excited about; otherwise I also wouldn’t drive a car. But when there are a million people moving around in the area and the chance is one in 100,000, then if everyone keeps walking around, ten people will be hit. There is a certain chance concerning ten people. We don’t know which ten people they are; therefore all million have to go into fortified rooms. Even though I, as an individual person, if everyone goes into fortified rooms and I continue walking around in the street, nothing will happen—but that’s the categorical imperative, that each person should do what he wants to be a general law. And therefore I too, as an individual, have to obey the instruction and go into a fortified room, and this whole story is really only the collective consideration. Because on the individual level I would whistle a thousand whistles. It doesn’t interest me at all; it’s zero risk. Okay, and in the Gaza envelope too, by the way, in the Gaza envelope too the risk is zero, really zero. The chance of your being hit is tiny. But what—there are many people, many communities. In the end, in fact, every so often it does hit somewhere and someone can die. So therefore the consideration is a collective one. When you direct a consideration toward a public, even very, very small probabilities become a tangible risk. You have to treat that as a tangible risk, and that is the same phenomenon of the law of large numbers. It really is the law of large numbers, as I said earlier. There is a relation to the public that is different from the relation to an individual—that’s strong emergence. It has nothing to do with the law of large numbers. For example, I once wrote an article—in fact there were also columns on the site about it—about whether it is permissible to operate a police force on the Sabbath. Now I’m not talking about situations where there is life-saving involved, yes? That’s obvious, life-saving overrides the Sabbath. I’m talking about situations where there is no life-saving at all, nothing. A thief comes to take money and run away; there is no concern at all—I’m a big tough guy, he won’t be able to overpower me, won’t kill me or anything, but he’ll take the money. The question is whether I’m allowed to call the police, and whether the police may desecrate the Sabbath in order to come catch the thief or protect me. And in the optimistic view the police even show up to catch thieves—it doesn’t happen. But let’s say it did happen, okay? Even if you tell them the thief is in my hands and I caught him and he’s here, nobody will come—they simply don’t come. Even if you do live in Lod, they don’t come. The claim is that if there is no active police on the Sabbath, our lives will become hell. Nobody will die, for the sake of discussion, okay? Nobody will die. But life will become hell. Meaning, you can’t leave the house, you have to guard your money, you can’t live like that. People will make noise; my neighbors will make noise—they know on the Sabbath I won’t call the police—they’ll do what they want, they won’t let me sleep all night. The world will become ownerless chaos. Now nobody will die; no one dies from not sleeping one night. I claim that for that one can desecrate the Sabbath; one should desecrate the Sabbath. Meaning, police should desecrate the Sabbath in order to maintain public order, protect people and their rights, with no concern whatsoever for life-saving. Why? Because you can’t run a society any other way. By the way, that’s a claim of Yeshayahu Leibowitz originally. He spoke about operating the Foreign Ministry on the Sabbath and things like that. But the claim I want to make is that there are situations in which this is life-saving for society, not life-saving for an individual. Society will die. No individual person will lose his life, but society will fall apart; people will leave for Australia; you can’t live in a place like that. You know, usually in the religious population there are no police officers. There are almost no religious police officers, because religious people don’t join the police due to the problems of Sabbath desecration and so on, and somehow the mentality is that religious people don’t join the police. A few years ago the rabbi of the police, Rami Berachyahu, whom I was also in touch with around this article and in general, began activity to bring more religious people into the police. And he really succeeded; by now it has entered more. Part of the issue involved exactly these discussions. And that article was very useful to him in this context too; that’s why we spoke. And the claim is that basically it is permissible to desecrate the Sabbath. Now it is not because of the same mechanism I spoke about earlier. The mechanism I spoke about earlier said: the chance is one in a hundred thousand; if I have a million people, ten will be harmed—so that’s just a statistical consideration, the law of large numbers. Here it is not a statistical consideration; it is strong emergence. Meaning, I am not claiming that society is basically the sum of what happens to the individual citizens. I am claiming that society dies as a society; it ceases to function; the social organism dies. And for that too one may desecrate the Sabbath. And the glowing piece of metal in the public domain—there is room to discuss whether that is interpreted like Rabbi Eliyahu’s flashlight or like what I want to claim here. It can be taken in both directions. But that was basically my claim. I brought all kinds of proofs and all kinds of examples for it, but here what matters to me is to show that the same two dependencies between the collective level and the level of the individuals appear in this context too. The law of large numbers is the first mechanism. The second mechanism is some kind of strong emergence. When you speak about a public, there is some completely different kind of relation than to individuals, and even than to a collection of individuals of the same number. Once they are defined as a public, which functions as some sort of organism, something new is created here. Just as the collection of cells that creates a body—the body is not just a collection of cells, it is an organism. It is a collection of cells that functions in a certain way—yes, there is some cybernetics here, some symbiosis between the different cells and the different organs, and it functions as one whole. And when a person dies, his cells can still be living cells, but the person is dead. The person as a person, the collective, is dead. In the end the cells too will somehow die, but that is only a consequence. The death of the person is not the death of cells. The death of the person is a collective phenomenon. Afterward it passes to the plane of the individual cells. And therefore the claim I want to make is that sometimes the different relation to the collective as opposed to the relation to the particulars is not a result of the law of large numbers. Sometimes the collective deserves a different kind of treatment not because it is many particulars, but because the collective as an organism is something else. It is not merely a collection of particulars. Yes, in this context people talk a bit—mystics talk about the soul of the nation; fascists also talk about this, about the soul of the nation. What is meant by the soul of the nation? The soul of the nation—I don’t know if there is such a thing—the angel of each nation; in the literature of the Sages that’s how it appears. There is the angel of Esau and the angel of Edom; there is a ministering angel over each nation. Where did they invent this whole idea from? The claim is that once you see the nation, which is a collection of people, as a collective, as an organism, then there has to be some soul that turns that collection of particulars into a whole. Exactly as we saw with the brain—that this collection of neurons functions as a whole; the mental phenomena are because there is a soul that creates this thing. Because otherwise, if it were just a simple collection of neurons one next to the other, phenomena would not appear that cannot be explained in terms of the properties of the individual neuron. And the claim is that if indeed in the collective context there is something that cannot be explained in terms of the individual human being, then apparently there is in the collective something besides a collection of people. And mystics claim that this is some kind of collective spirit, something Hegelian, or some kind of soul of this body called a people. But for me at least this is only a metaphorical expression for the fact that we see here a kind of collective conduct and not just a collection of particulars. And the relation to the collective is not always merely the sum of the relations to the particulars; there is in it something that can sometimes appear only at the collective level. And that is in relation—not in physics. In physics I do not accept that there can be phenomena on the collective plane that cannot be explained in terms of what happens to the particulars. Okay, I still wanted to talk a bit more about the topic of incitement in Jewish law, but maybe I’ll do that at the beginning of next time, and then we basically move to the final part of this series, which is the legal principles of doubt. Until now we’ve been talking about statistics, and now we’ll talk a bit about—and after that we’ll talk about the legal principles of doubt. Okay.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, can I ask two questions? Yes. First, still, why—I asked this last time too—I didn’t fully understand it. Regarding this model, the model of the topographical map: if the topographical map also includes within it the drives and needs and interests and values and everything you believe in, then in the end what is really left to the individual in terms of choice? After all, he wants what he wants. And also from what I heard the Rabbi explain, that a person can choose whether to be a little ball or to be a person who chooses—but that too is his decision. In the end he decides that this is what he wants. If he wants to be a little ball, then he is a little ball and functions like a little ball, so what…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That goes back to the problem of weakness of will.
[Speaker B] Yes, but I don’t see the solution. I tried, I read, I’m not succeeding.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s not something I can answer in a short answer; it’s a who—
[Speaker B] No, I even listened to the Rabbi’s lecture from yesterday or today on the issue of repentance. Still, his desire to be a little ball—he thinks that it’s an ideal to be a little ball, and most people are like that. The overwhelming majority.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In that lecture this difficulty came up, and I said that I myself am actually a bit torn about it, although I do think it gives an answer. I explained it there, and that’s what I know how to explain; I don’t know how to explain more than that. What I want to argue is that closing your eyes, or letting go of the reins, is something a person really can do as long as he doesn’t understand that in the end it will lead to murder. Okay? So that he really can do. If in the end it leads to murder, then the fact that he let go of the reins places responsibility on him for the murder that happened as a result, like drinking and then driving. Now you can ask the same question—and I talked about this there in the lecture—about the very decision to let go of the reins, to do the same analysis about that as well. I argue that that analysis is not correct regarding that, because letting go of the reins in itself is not a forbidden phenomenon. It isn’t forbidden to let go of the reins. What is forbidden is what will happen as a result of letting go of the reins. So here I am not doing something that I think is forbidden, even though of course I am closing my eyes to the possibility that after I do this, I’ll end up doing forbidden things. But that is something that is possible in weakness of will.
[Speaker B] And that’s the decision to close your eyes while at the same time you know—it’s in your awareness, after all—that in the end you could run someone over.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and that’s the indic—that split consciousness, where I basically know deep down what is right, but I allow myself to live inside a worldview that I’ve built, even though deep, deep down, at some half-conscious half-unconscious level, I know it isn’t true. That’s why I brought up the indic there in the lecture.
[Speaker B] A second question regarding the issue of the individual parts and the majority. Again, if there is something that won’t allow a state to exist—it’s not that we need to create for the people or for the state some metaphysical something—but if the state won’t hold together, if one day a week the place will be Sodom and Gomorrah, wild and lawless, then in the end the individuals too will be harmed. If not in the short term, then in the long term. A state can’t function six days a week.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I agree. Usually the halakhic decisors bring this consideration. The halakhic decisors basically always end up with saving life in the end. Except that undermining the institutions of government ultimately leads to murder too, or can ultimately lead to murder. And therefore in the end you have to stop it already here because it is saving life. And therefore they don’t make the move that I make. They argue that in the final analysis everything is considerations of saving life. And I argue that no. I argue—not that that’s incorrect; it could be correct—but I argue that there is permission even without that. Because saving the public fabric is also saving life.
[Speaker B] But does the public fabric have importance in its own right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, yes.
[Speaker B] There’s a question here of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The existence of a functioning public, even if all the individuals will survive. After all, we could dismantle the—at the end of the day, what? We can solve this problem, and there won’t be any issue of saving life. Each one of us will move to another country, where the non-Jewish police will protect us and everything will be fine; no one will die. So we can solve the problem of the individual person. But that’s not a solution, because we live as a collective, and we also want the collective not to fall apart, not just to make sure that none of the individuals dies. That’s my argument. Now, I brought examples there of that kind of approach. I think it can be shown—I brought examples there from halakhic decisors who say that charity money can be given for public needs. Just as the public is not poor and doesn’t need that money—it has the money—but charity money can be given for public needs, because sustaining the public is itself some kind of—it's like keeping someone alive. That is charity by definition, not because the people in that public are needy. I brought several other halakhic examples there too, of course, but they show this type of approach in the article “Do Not Fear,” which you can look up on the website. Yes, there were also columns on the website, actually. Fine, thank you. Thank you. Anyone else?
[Speaker G] Rabbi, regarding the law of large numbers, in terms of weakness of will there really is an essential difference between the examples the Rabbi brought, between, say, the wayward city and, say, a burning metal ember. With a burning metal ember, once enough people choose not to choose, then statistically you can say deterministically that someone will be hurt. As opposed to incitement… choose not to choose? They should be careful! What, people aren’t careful in the street? No, because not necessarily does everyone choose to be careful of the ember. Some people just walk by. Statistically there are X people who choose not to be careful.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think it depends precisely on choice; rather, there are people who will make a mistake, and therefore they will be harmed.
[Speaker G] No, but when you leave the ember there, you know that statistically there is a certain percentage of people who choose not to choose, and therefore statistically for sure someone will be hurt.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Unlike, for example, the wayward city…
[Speaker G] I wouldn’t call them choosing not to choose; they make mistakes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know if that’s connected. Choosing not to choose—I’m not sure about that connection.
[Speaker G] No, but there, there you can make some statistical calculation that says that for sure someone will be hurt. Unlike, for example, the wayward city, where in the end if everyone chooses correctly, then nothing happens. It’s utterly unlikely, but it still could happen.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Okay, and what’s the question?
[Speaker G] No, so I’m saying, this isn’t exactly the same kind of case under the law of large numbers, because the Rabbi described it as if you can deterministically punish someone for inciting the public because deterministically, according to the law of large numbers, someone will sin.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Think of it this way: there is some chance that the person who is careful will nevertheless get hurt because he’ll make a mistake, let’s say, okay? Or he won’t notice, or something like that. Some chance. Now, for a single person that chance is negligible, but if there are a million people, then they will get hurt. That is exactly the law of large numbers.
[Speaker G] No, that’s clear. I’m talking about the wayward city. In the wayward city you can’t say that deterministically someone will be incited to idol worship, because you can say that you have some contributing factor there, but you can’t say that because of the law of large numbers you are doing it with your own hands. Why? Because each person still has free choice. If they choose not to choose, then they are still guilty.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In Egypt, “your offspring shall be strangers”—He knows with certainty that the Egyptians will enslave the Jewish people. Why? Because there are enough Egyptians, and if the weights are sufficiently tilted, then there will be enslavement there. It’s never at a probability of one, so it’s at a probability of 0.98. Fine, okay, but that is causation in every sense; at that kind of probability it is already called causing.
[Speaker G] There too I have trouble accepting the answer, so I prefer to say, as the Rabbi said for example, that it’s a prediction about the statistics, but still practically there could have been a situation in reality where the Egyptians…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I still say: of course, there could have been another situation, but since the prediction is at the level of 0.98 or 0.99, almost absolute certainty, then first, you can say that it will happen, and second, you can also punish the one who incites, because in the end he caused it directly—not at probability one, but at probability almost one. Like when you say: I throw a basketball at this wall—I’m willing to bet my life that it won’t pass to the other side, but that too is only the law of large numbers. In principle there is a chance that it will pass through. Because every particle, after all, can pass through the wall, except that here the law of large numbers means it doesn’t pass through. And still it is so clear that it won’t pass through—0.9999—so it’s clear, so that’s one.
[Speaker G] But here the parameter is free choice, also…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? Still. This is the miracle I talked about in previous lectures: how can it be that when every individual item is governed not randomly but by free choice, you can still apply statistical tools? It really is some kind of miracle, but it works.
[Speaker G] I don’t understand what necessity there is, but it seems to me simpler to say that even the prophecy that the Holy One, blessed be He, gives to Abraham does not compel the Egyptians to do anything, and also someone who incites the public is still not considered criminally guilty, because as long as free choice is involved, and this is not a burning metal ember or a ball that will pass through the wall,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] there is no necessity to it.
[Speaker G] Obviously you can say that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My claim was that you can also say otherwise. Meaning, it is not far-fetched to say that even though they have free choice, I am still the cause of what happened. Now, if someone won’t accept that, fine, you can hear such a claim, that he doesn’t accept it, because if each one has free choice then the responsibility lies with the one who chose otherwise and not with the one who incited them. But here I’m saying: there is also room for another conception, and that is the conception Maimonides presents regarding the Holy One, blessed be He, and the Egyptians. And the Raavad in fact disagrees with him exactly on this point. And I think I am willing to understand the Raavad, but on the other hand I also completely understand Maimonides. I’m not claiming you have to think this way; I’m claiming that you can think this way. I also tend to think this way, but that can be debated. Thank you. Okay then, have a good Sabbath and goodbye.
[Speaker G] Good Sabbath, thank you.