Free Will and Choice – Lesson 6

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the point is that the principle of causality, too, is basically something we derive from an intuition we have. The intuition that says things don’t happen without a cause. So what stands here opposite the libertarian intuition—that we have freedom, that there is moral significance to our actions—is a contrary intuition, namely the causal intuition. This is not science. It’s a causal intuition. Of course, the causal intuition underlies science. Science assumes it and proceeds on that basis, but science assumes it; science did not discover it. Okay? So at bottom what we have is one intuition against another intuition. Let me sharpen this a bit more. We spoke about three components in the causal relation: the time component, the condition component—that the cause is a sufficient condition for the effect—and the physical component, that the cause produces the effect. I already said that David Hume denies the third component. Since it has no observational basis—we didn’t derive it from observation—and David Hume was an empiricist, he accepts only things that have a basis in observation, so he didn’t accept that. He claimed that a cause is nothing more than something that comes earlier in time and stands in this condition relation to the effect. I just want to clarify that, first, even that still leaves intact the contradiction between libertarianism and causality, because you don’t need production in order to create the problem here. Say there is no production, but I know that if A happened, B will always happen. If A then B, since the conditional relation exists, even if production does not. That still doesn’t solve the problem vis-à-vis libertarianism. Because I still know that if A happened, then B will necessarily happen, and therefore it cannot be that I have a choice whether to do B or do C. It doesn’t matter right now whether A produces B or whether A merely predicts B. That’s enough. Okay? We’ll come back later to the difference between producing and predicting from another angle. So even if I adopt David Hume’s picture of causality, the contradiction between the principle of causality and libertarianism still remains. But I want to stress again: even the condition component is the result of intuition and not of information, not of observation. Why? Because suppose I see that people who kick a ball make the ball fly. And suppose I adopt Hume’s interpretation that the kick did not cause the ball’s flight, but that it always precedes the ball’s flight, and the ball’s flight always happens after I kick—so we have the time component and the condition component, that the kick is a sufficient condition for the ball’s flight. Still, how do I know that every time I kick, the ball flies? After all, I saw several cases where it happened. How do I know it’s always so? That’s what’s called the principle of induction. David Hume had two fundamental principles: the principle of causality and the principle of induction, and neither is the result of observation. Both are assumptions that we bring with us into the world of observations. Science assumes these two principles; it doesn’t discover these two principles. After all, induction can also be mistaken. The fact that we make a generalization on the basis of cases we’ve seen and determine a general law doesn’t mean that this general law is always true. We have an a priori assumption that if such-and-such events have happened until now, apparently that is a law that is always true. And once again, even in Hume’s formulation, we are still dealing with a principle that at bottom is a priori. It is not the result of observation. We assume it. And so, basically, what we have here—and I’m coming back to our issue—what we have here is a clash between two intuitions. One intuition is the intuition that we have free will, and the second intuition is the causal intuition, that every physical event in the world—or every event in the world, if you like—has a cause. And here there is a head-on collision between these two intuitions, and the question is what we do in such a situation. Because the libertarian basically claims that if you look at the process that happens in our brain before I make a decision that finally expresses itself, say, in the punch I described earlier, then you will suddenly see some electron moving without any force acting on it. It just moves. No force acted on it, because if a force acted on it, then the force created the electron’s movement—and in the end also the punch. If I assume that the punch is the result of my free decision, that means that somewhere in the process, if we go far enough back, there was some electron that moved without any force acting on it. Without a physical cause, without any cause at all, if you like. And the question is whether such a thing is possible. So here I want to sharpen the point even more, the point of the clash, and here I also want to soften the clash a bit—and I think many people just don’t notice this. What I’m really describing—look at the picture in front of you—is a spontaneous awakening of the will that causes a brain event, which is the decision or the expression of the decision. Really the decision is already in the awakening; it happens in the will, in our mental part. But it is translated by the brain into something physical that moves muscles and brings about action, and then an action occurs. So schematically I described it here as a three-stage process. Now let’s try for a moment to see where exactly the principle of causality is violated here. The brain event of the decision—it’s a physical event, right? There’s something here in the brain, some electrical current, an electric field occurring in the brain, something physical is happening here. What is the cause of that thing? The will. Meaning, the fact that I decided something, wanted something, produces some physical event in the brain. So is it correct to say that the physical event in the brain happened without a cause? The answer is no—it happened with a cause. Its cause is the will. Therefore the problem is not with the principle of causality, but with the laws of physics, and that is not the same thing. Because there was a cause for the brain event, but the cause was not a physical cause; it was a spiritual or mental cause. My will produces something physical in the brain. So it is not correct that this physical thing in the brain happened without a cause. There was a cause: the will. It moved an electron or created an electromagnetic field in the brain or whatever it may be. It began the physical chain, and from there onward everything is physical cause and effect. So it is not correct that the beginning of the physical chain contradicts the principle of causality, because there is a cause. It contradicts the laws of physics, because the laws of physics say that in order for an electron to move there must be an electromagnetic field; physics does not recognize spiritual causes. Or in order for an electromagnetic field to be created, there must be sources of charge. It cannot be that a will creates an electromagnetic field. So there is a contradiction here with the laws of physics. Let’s go backward. Here I spoke about this stage. Let’s look at this stage. This stage is the spontaneous awakening of the will. What is the cause that produced it? There is no cause, right? It happened on its own. But this event is not a physical event; it’s a mental, spiritual event. So perhaps it doesn’t need to have a cause. For example, here there is no contradiction with the laws of physics, because the laws of physics say nothing about will. Will is a mental process; it is not physics, not electrons. Later it produces the movement of electrons, but in itself it is a mental event. It is not a physical event, and therefore the laws of physics say nothing about it. The fact that it happened out of nothing, without a prior cause, does not contradict the laws of physics. Here it contradicts the principle of causality. Because the principle of causality is not only about physics; the principle of causality says that nothing happens in the world, physical or non-physical, without a prior cause. Therefore the contradiction between the principle of causality and the laws of physics, on the one hand, and libertarianism, on the other, is much subtler. We need to look at the first two links in the chain. The first link is not physical, so there is no contradiction here with the laws of physics; there is a contradiction here with the principle of causality. In the transition from the first link to the second, a physical event is created, but here there already was a cause. The awakening of the will is the cause, so this does not contradict the principle of causality; it contradicts the laws of physics, because a physical thing is supposed to happen as a result of a physical cause. Therefore the contradiction between the principle of causality and physics, on the one hand, and libertarianism, on the other, is a complex contradiction. It’s a bit—not a sharp contradiction. Okay? Here, here the principle of causality is broken but not the laws of physics, and here the laws of physics are broken but not the principle of causality. Okay? So there’s a kind of division of labor here. Yes, this part takes on itself the breaking of causality, and this part takes on itself the breaking of the laws of physics, and thus an action is created here that, in the end, lacks a cause—and certainly lacks a physical cause. At the beginning there is no physical cause; in the middle there is a physical cause. That is the more precise description of the contradiction. Now I want to see how we move toward some understanding of what is nevertheless happening here. So in fact, I said that the fundamental clash here is a clash between two intuitions: the causal intuition and the libertarian intuition. We have an intuition that we have freedom to choose, meaning that there are actions we perform not because of causes but because we decided. And standing against it is the causal-physical intuition that says every event must have a cause, including a mental event. And a physical event must also have a physical cause. Okay, that’s what stands against the libertarian intuition. What do we do in a situation where there is a clash between two intuitions, and two strong ones? It seems to me we can agree on that—that the intuitions on both sides are very strong intuitions; it is hard to give up either one. What we do in such a situation is apply a philosophical principle that is used a lot in law, called in Latin lex specialis. When there is a clash between two principles—say, in law—there is a clash between two principles, the more specific principle overrides the more general one. For example, let’s take an example from Jewish law. Okay, on the one hand there is the prohibition “do not murder.” On the other hand there is an obligation to execute Sabbath desecrators when there are witnesses and prior warning. They are to be executed, but that contradicts the prohibition “do not murder.” Now suppose a Sabbath desecrator with witnesses and prior warning comes before me, and I am the judge. Should I sentence him to death? On the one hand there is the prohibition “do not murder,” so I must not. On the other hand there is an obligation to execute him, because he desecrated the Sabbath intentionally, with witnesses and prior warning, so I must execute him. Which of the two norms prevails here? I am in a legal conflict. Which norm prevails? The legal answer is: the second norm. Why? Because the obligation to execute him is a specific obligation regarding a person of that kind. The prohibition “do not murder” is a general prohibition applying to all human beings. When there is a clash between a specific norm and a more general norm, the specific norm always prevails. Why? Because there is simple logic in this. If I decide that “do not murder” prevails, then in effect nothing will remain of the norm obligating the execution of Sabbath desecrators—we will never be able to fulfill it. That verse in the Torah will be erased. But there is such a verse in the Torah; you cannot erase it. On the other hand, if I adopt the obligation to execute Sabbath desecrators, the prohibition “do not murder” is not erased. It remains in other circumstances—when the person before you did not desecrate the Sabbath and you just murder him, that is forbidden. The Sabbath desecrator is an exception. If I carve out the specific case from the general norm, that is the preferred solution in such a case. And why? Because this solution leaves both norms intact as broadly as possible. When I have two norms to which I am committed, I try to find a solution that leaves both of them in place as fully as possible. As much as possible—you can’t always do it, because in this specific case I do have to choose. But I choose in such a way that the prohibition “do not murder” remains in force, because there is such a verse in the Torah. And the obligation to execute Sabbath desecrators also remains in force, because there is also such a verse in the Torah. The only way for me to do that is to prefer the specific norm of executing a Sabbath desecrator over the general norm of “do not murder.” If I prefer the general norm, then the norm of executing Sabbath desecrators simply will have no application at all. I will have completely given it up. But I am committed to all the verses of the Torah. So my only option is to qualify or exclude the particular case from the general norm. That is called lex specialis, or the priority of the specific, of the special. So that is the principle. Now I want to apply it to our case. What I basically want to argue is this: I have two intuitions, and both seem true to me; I am committed to both of them. By “committed” I mean intellectually now, not legally. So the question is what we do in such a case. My answer is that we apply lex specialis here. Let’s see what happens if we prefer the causal intuition. Then we will have to give up libertarianism completely, right? We give up libertarianism entirely, because once everything has a cause, there is no libertarianism. None. It is erased. We erased the libertarian intuition if we decide to prefer the causal intuition. But if we decide to prefer the libertarian intuition, we have not erased the causal intuition. We are saying that events in which a person chooses are events without a cause. That does not mean the principle of causality is not true. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent of the events in the world are events that all have causes. The principle of causality is true. I am excluding from it those actions that are human choice. Actions that are human choice are actions done without a cause. Do you see that the principle of lex specialis here necessarily leads to libertarianism? The moment I adopt these two norms, or these two philosophical principles, these two philosophical intuitions together, and I am not willing to give up either one of them, because I believe in the scientific picture of the world and I also believe in my libertarian intuition—and the question is how I reconcile them in the least bad way, how I give up the least from both of them—the only answer is libertarianism. Because if you are a determinist, you have given up the libertarian intuition entirely. Human beings have no free choice, because everything has a cause. By contrast, if I prefer choice, the principle of libertarianism, then I say that when a person chooses freely, the action he performed is an action without a cause. I exclude these actions from the general principle of causality. In all other actions, even those of people, and certainly those of inanimate objects, the principle of causality holds, and the laws of physics also hold—but I exclude this. Okay? It seems to me this is the intellectually required solution: lex specialis. Therefore lex specialis in this case, if I decide that I am committed to these two intuitions, in my opinion leads to libertarianism. Now I want to move one step further. How do I look at this action, what I marked here, the spontaneous awakening of the will? I’ll remind you that we saw the dilemma argument of van Inwagen, that Dutch philosopher, who said—he claimed—that human beings cannot have free choice, because, he said, one of two things must be the case: either what I do has a cause, and then of course it is not free choice, or what I do is without a cause, and then it is just arbitrary, indeterministic, and that too is not free choice. Because free choice is something reasoned; it’s not something that just happens arbitrarily and randomly, right? It comes out of some sort of deliberation; a person is responsible for what he does. If something just suddenly happens to you arbitrarily, that is not something you are responsible for; that is not what we call free choice. So his argument was that either your action has a cause, and then it is deterministic, or it has no cause, and then it is indeterministic. Either way, it is not free choice. So I said there that van Inwagen begs the question in his argument, because he assumes from the outset that there cannot be any possibility other than the deterministic and the indeterministic one. If you assume that, you don’t need the dilemma. If there are only two possibilities, then of course there is no third. You are begging the question. The libertarian claims there is a third possibility. The libertarian claims that if you have ruled out determinism, it still does not follow that you have reached indeterminism; there may also be choice. And therefore that either-or argument collapses. But I still had not filled this with content. What is this third thing? I now want to give it content. And for that purpose I want to define what Leibniz called the principle of sufficient reason, which looks very similar to the principle of causality, but is fundamentally different from it. Leibniz basically said this—I’ll read you his wonderful wording: “And that of sufficient reason, by virtue of which we hold that no fact can be true or existent, and no proposition true, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise, although for the most part we cannot know these reasons at all.” All right? That’s what Leibniz claims in his book The New System and Other Writings on the Monadology. That’s what he argues there. What does that mean? For him, this is how he proved the existence of God. He says that for the world that exists there must be some reason why it is this way rather than another. And that reason is God; apparently something created it. But notice, it’s easy to confuse this with the principle of causality. The principle of causality basically says that everything must have a cause. But sufficient reason is something broader than the principle of causality. A cause is only one kind of reason. There are other kinds of reasons too. Let me give you a few examples. Let’s look at the laws of physics. We have the four fundamental forces of physics: the strong force, the weak force, electromagnetism, and gravity. Those are the four basic forces of physics. Now I ask myself: who created them? That is a causal question. Who is the cause of their existence? The Holy One, blessed be He. Then Aristotle comes and says no, these laws were never created; they always were. These laws are primordial. They were always there. So there’s no need to look for a cause or producer, for who created them, because they always existed. Leibniz says: true, but still, since we are talking about four very special laws, that calls for a reason. Why are they specifically like this and not otherwise? How did exactly these four special laws come about, rather than seventeen non-special laws, or twelve special laws, or two non-special laws—whatever you want? Why did it come out to be exactly these four laws that also make possible the emergence of life and all kinds of very special phenomena in our world? Now notice, I’m asking this question even if the laws always existed. They are primordial; they were never created. The principle of causality is not relevant here, because there is no cause that produced these laws. There is no legislator who legislated these laws; they were always there. But even if I accept that they were always there, still, if they are special, I absolutely need to ask myself why they are specifically like this and not otherwise. That is the question of reason. What is the reason that these laws are as they are and not otherwise? That is not a question of cause; it is a question of reason. Now this reason can be given not in terms of cause but, for example, in terms of purpose. For example, I say that I pick up the phone in order to set up a meeting with my friend tomorrow morning. What is the cause of my picking up the phone? There is no cause. I simply decided to pick up the phone. There is no cause for my decision. I remind you of the picture on your screen. It is a spontaneous awakening of the will. I decided I want to meet with him; there is no cause for that. Is this an indeterministic action, as van Inwagen says? Just something random, some arbitrary move without any—clearly not. After all, our sense is that there is some act of deliberation here. We decided what we want, and as a result we picked up the phone. There is deliberation here. What does that mean? It means that this action has no cause, true, but it does have a reason. And that reason is a future-oriented reason. This action was done in order to create the meeting tomorrow morning. It is an “in order to,” not a “because.” “Because” is cause. Something prior produced the thing. When I say “in order to,” that is another kind of reason. It is a reason that is not a cause; it is something else, a purpose. I picked up the phone in order to bring about the meeting tomorrow morning. And therefore you cannot say that this action is just some meaningless action. A meaningless action is done neither for a purpose nor because of a cause. It is done just arbitrarily, randomly, something accidental. Okay? An action of choice is an action done for the sake of a purpose, even if not because of a cause. It is done in order to achieve something, even if not because of something. And so my claim is basically—I’ll show you now another slide like this. Good. How would the determinist describe this meeting? There is some external or internal physical factor, it doesn’t matter, that caused me to decide that I want a meeting tomorrow morning with my friend. Then comes the decision, which is some brain event. That factor caused it, and afterward there is a brain event that is the decision to have a meeting. Then I pick up the phone—that’s a motor action, I take my hand, dial, pick up the phone. Well, not dial anymore, never mind, those are old telephones. And as a result the meeting comes about. Okay? That’s how the determinist describes it. There is no violation here—of course, if you go backward from here, you reach the Big Bang. This is a continuation of what we saw earlier. But look how the libertarian describes it. You see? The decision starts the process. It brings about a motor action. The motor action causes the meeting. But notice this dashed arrow going backward to the decision. There is feedback here, right? A kind of feedback loop. In effect, the meeting that occurs in the future is what produces the decision in the present. I want there to be a meeting tomorrow morning, and therefore I decide now to pick up the phone. So what produced my decision to pick up the phone? The desire for the meeting tomorrow morning. In effect, the meeting that will happen tomorrow morning is, as it were, the cause of the present decision. But it cannot be a cause, remember? Because one of the components of a cause is temporal priority. And the meeting happens tomorrow. That is why we have what is called will. Will is this wondrous human capacity that turns purposes into causes. I want to attain the purpose of a meeting tomorrow morning. The will takes that future purpose, translates it into a present decision that begins to bring about events that will eventually realize the meeting. One thing leads to another. So the will basically turns purpose into cause and starts a causal chain that is rooted in the future, not in the present. And therefore my decision has a reason, but not a cause. The reason is purposive—what I want to achieve in the future—but there is no cause. This is the libertarian conception, okay? This is the libertarian conception. In short, what I now want to answer, to complete the answer to van Inwagen, is this: my claim is that there are three mechanisms. One mechanism is the deterministic mechanism that we saw up above. This mechanism basically says that everything is in a linear chain from past to future: cause produces effect, effect produces another effect, and so on, until we reach the meeting. It started at the Big Bang. In the middle I got on the train; the train caused some decision in my brain, but I am just a stage on the train. I didn’t decide anything; I just got on at some stage along the way. And in the end it reaches the meeting. That’s how the determinist sees it. There is indeterminism. Indeterminism is basically the picture that says: it starts here, but there is nothing before it. It doesn’t come from the Big Bang; it just starts here. Suddenly it popped up—I don’t know—from a random cause, a dice throw. Nothing. There is no deliberation, no cause, nothing. That is indeterminism. But there is a third mechanism, and it is the libertarian mechanism, and that is this. And this basically says that this thing does not occur as a result of the Big Bang; there is no prior chain here. It starts a new chain. But it is also not just some random arbitrary thing that simply happened by itself. It is something that is the result of deliberation. My deliberation, in which I decided that I want a meeting tomorrow morning, and therefore my will translates that future meeting, creates a cause that starts setting in motion a causal chain until we reach the meeting. This ultimately produces the meeting. The will is our capacity to translate a future event and turn it into a cause for a chain of events that will lead to it, that will realize it. Will and planning are basically cousins. We plan something in order to attain a future event. And there is no prior cause here. But on the other hand it is also not indeterministic, not something that just happens; rather it is something rooted in reason, not in cause. The reason here is purposive reason, not causal reason. Just to shed a bit more rational light on this, look: it is often accepted that purposive reasons are a fiction. Because if we look at physics, say, we look in physics at a particle standing at the top of a mountain, and it rolls downward because the potential energy is lower below, and it seeks to reach lower potential energy. Notice that I am speaking here in a language in which the particle “seeks.” A kind of language that personifies it. As if the particle seeks various places. The particle seeks nothing. The particle moves deterministically; forces act on it and as a result it moves. The purposive description is Aristotle’s description. That is how Aristotle described physical events, by means of purposive explanations. But in today’s physics we know that there are causal explanations. When the ball is at the top of the mountain, there is a force acting downward on it and therefore it moves downward. The particle seeks nowhere. It seeks nothing. And therefore, if you ask physicists, they will tell you that the purposive explanation is only a borrowed expression. The real explanation is a causal explanation. Okay? And in the nineteenth century there was a certain period when a French mathematician and physicist named Lagrange created another formulation of mechanics, the laws of mechanics, the fundamental laws of physics, and it was a teleological formulation, a purposive formulation. That is, he showed that all the actions of physical objects can be described in purposive language, not in causal language. In other words, that this thing happens in order to achieve such-and-such a result. The best-known example of this, which I think was even before Lagrange, is Fermat’s principle. Fermat’s principle basically says that light—we have the laws of geometric optics, and I assume many of you know them—light passing from air to water or from one medium to another bends its angle. That is, it comes at a certain angle and the angle bends when it passes from air to water or from water to air. Snell’s laws determine exactly how to calculate those angles; there is refraction and diffraction and all sorts of things of that kind, the laws of optics. It turns out there is a parallel formulation of all the laws of optics, discovered by Fermat, and Fermat says: all the laws of optics can be described in a completely different way. Light always moves along the path that will take the least time to reach its destination. That principle is completely equivalent to all the laws of geometric optics. This can be proved. That is, the laws of geometric optics can be described causally: when light passes from air into water, that causes it to bend its angle; that is a causal effect. Or they can be described purposively: light wants to reach its destination along the shortest-time path, and therefore it bends the angle. That is a teleological perspective, a purposive perspective. Okay? Now again, people—and that was also what Lagrange found—found parallel formulations for mechanics via the Hamiltonian, the Lagrangian, for those who know, teleological formulations of mechanical processes just as Fermat did for optics. Now on the philosophical level, if you ask physicists, they will all tell you this is just an anecdote. True, there is a teleological way to describe it, and it is equivalent to the causal way, but that is a mathematical anecdote. Obviously, on the philosophical level the correct explanation is the causal explanation, and the teleological explanation is not. A body or a ray of light does not calculate where it aspires to go or what it wants. Human beings aspire and want, but a stone or a ray of light neither aspires nor wants. Therefore the purposive description is a mathematical anecdote; it does not really describe what is happening. That is the accepted view. Once I gave a seminar in the physics department at Bar-Ilan—I had already come from the yeshiva, this was after I had left that world—and I argued that in modern physics, from quantum theory, field theory, and so on, there is no causal formulation at all; there is only a purposive formulation. Let’s go back to that body standing high above the mountain, the ball standing above the mountain. I said there are two formulations for why it falls downward. One formulation is causal: gravitational force acts downward on it and therefore it falls. There is a purposive description: it seeks to arrive at the place of lowest potential energy. In other words, a description in terms of potentials is a purposive description; a description in terms of forces is a causal description. Okay? Now which of these descriptions is correct? In principle they are equivalent; physics cannot decide. But philosophically, if you ask, all physicists will tell you the causal description is the correct one. Obviously it moves because of a cause, not because it wants something, not for the sake of some purpose. Fine? But in quantum theory, which describes the same event—a particle standing at the top of a mountain or a potential hill—I ask why it moves downward. In quantum theory there is no description of forces at all. There are no forces in quantum theory; there are only potentials. In other words, in quantum theory there is no causal description at all, only a purposive description of that motion. So if in ordinary mechanics there is a causal description and a purposive description, and people say, fine, that’s just a mathematical anecdote, obviously philosophically the causal explanation is the correct one and the purposive explanation is an amusing anecdote—we found an equivalent description that is also correct, but it doesn’t really describe reality—in quantum theory there are not two possibilities. Only the purposive description exists. The causal description doesn’t exist at all. Not to mention field theory, where it is obvious that this is so. So in fact there are no causal descriptions there at all, only purposive descriptions. Which means that apparently the purposive view of physics is not so anecdotal after all. The fact is that modern physics uses only purposive descriptions, not causal descriptions. Richard Feynman, that American Jewish Nobel Prize winner in physics, in a fairly well-known paper once developed the concept of force in quantum theory. But he did it in such an artificial and indirect way that it was obvious to everyone that that was the mathematical anecdote, and not the purposive description. The purposive description is quantum theory. Somehow he managed, in a very specific case, to produce a description of force even within quantum theory, but basically there is no such thing. Quantum theory speaks about potential energies, about potential, not about force. Why am I telling you all this? Because people have some feeling that when we look at the world, the more we move from the inanimate to living things and society and so on, we move from causal explanations to purposive explanations. Right? In the inanimate world, a body moves because a force acted on it—a causal explanation. When we get to human beings, what is a psychological explanation? A person acted in such-and-such a way because he wanted to achieve such-and-such. That is already a purposive explanation. A person did something “in order to,” not “because.” Or not only because. There are also purposive explanations. You know what—even in biology, when you ask a biologist why we have an appendix, there’s a problem for the biologist with that. Why? Because today we don’t know a cause for why it exists. Although today there are already hypotheses, I heard, but at least until a few years ago people thought there was no reason at all why the appendix exists. So that’s a problem for the biologist. Why is it a problem? It exists because it came into existence. No—the biologist thinks purposively. I have a certain organ because it is supposed to perform such-and-such a function. Notice: that is a purposive explanation, not a causal one. Biology—or at least physiology, not biology as such, but physiology—speaks in purposive language. Not to mention psychology, where I do things in order to get attention, okay? So these are explanations of “in order to,” not explanations of “because,” purposive explanations. Not to mention social psychology or sociology and anthropology and all kinds of social customs that were formed in order to fulfill certain functions. There too it is all purposive explanations. So notice: in physics explanations are supposedly causal; we move up to physiology—it already begins; chemistry is still causal, biology maybe somewhat, biochemistry and biology—I’m doing this at a coarse resolution, yes? We get to physiology, which is after all just biology and chemistry, and suddenly we already begin speaking in purposive language. The more it reaches the human being, the more we begin speaking in purposive language. Certainly when it comes to society, to a group of human beings, we begin speaking in purposive language. But after all we are just a collection of atoms and electrons or molecules. Okay, so how does this leap happen from causal explanation to purposive explanation? The materialist determinist says it’s just a fiction. In fact everything is causal, everything is physics; it’s just that at higher levels of integration it is worthwhile for us, or more convenient for us, to speak in purposive language—but that’s just an anecdote. But as I have just told you, even in physics it is not an anecdote. Not only in biology and the social sciences, but also in physics it is not an anecdote. In modern physics too the formulations are only purposive; there are no causal formulations. Which means that one cannot belittle a purposive explanation just because there is no causal explanation. And when I say—and I’m coming back to our issue of will—that the awakening of the will contradicts the principle of causality but does not contradict the laws of physics, remember that, right? Because the will is a mental event, not a physical one, so it need not have a physical cause. But it does contradict the principle of causality because it has no cause. And I say: true, but it does have a purpose. In other words, the awakening of the will has a reason; it has no cause, but it has a reason. Okay? After the will awakens, it produces a certain brain state, which is already a physical event. Here the principle of causality is not broken, because the brain state has a cause—but the cause is a spiritual cause. What is broken is the laws of physics, because the cause is a spiritual cause and not a physical one. Right—and here I applied lex specialis and said: true, but in order to preserve the libertarian intuition, I have to assume that events of free choice do indeed start chains without a physical cause—not without any cause at all, but without a physical cause. That is the lex specialis. I exclude the laws of physics and say that the electrons that begin a process of free choice indeed move without a physical force. That is basically the libertarian picture. And now you can see that even if I see that there is a contradiction between the libertarian intuition and the causal intuition, first of all the contradiction is softer than people usually present it: it is intuition against intuition, not intuition against science. Second, even the clash between the intuitions is softer, because if I divide the awakening of the process of choice into stages, there is the awakening of the will, after that the brain state, and after that the action. The awakening of the will is not a physical event at all, so it does not contradict the laws of physics. It contradicts the principle of causality. That is true, but it upholds the principle of sufficient reason. Because the awakening of the will has a reason; it has no cause. But it has a reason. The reason is rooted in the future, a teleological reason. After the will awakens, I say it now produces a brain state. Here there is no problem with the principle of causality, because there is a cause for the brain state: the will, that is the cause. So what is contradicted here? The laws of physics, since the will is a mental event; it is not a physical cause. I say true—but lex specialis says that if I have a clash between two principles, I must exclude acts of choice and say that there I do not apply the principle of causality. There I exclude the principle of causality, and indeed that is where this thing happens. And therefore I say that in the end there are basically two possibilities. One possibility is to adopt the causal-physical picture completely, and then deny the intuition of freedom of the will. That is a coherent possibility, but I think it pays a heavy price and it very, very strongly contradicts our intuition, and there is no real reason—no real reason—to adopt it. Okay? Reason says to adopt the opposite view: to say that the principle of causality is true, but libertarianism is also true. We do have free choice. Apparently very specific events—and again I say this is ten to the minus-I-don’t-know-how-much of all events in the world—happen without a physical cause. Not without a cause, without a physical cause, but because of the will, not because of a physical force. Okay? And this is an exception to the principle of causality. This exception allows me to remain with both the causal intuition and the libertarian intuition, and therefore in my view it is preferable on the philosophical level; it is more reasonable to adopt it. And one last sentence: think about the three mechanisms I described earlier. There is the causal mechanism, there is the indeterministic mechanism—something that just happens by itself—and there is the mechanism of free choice, which is teleological deliberation for the sake of a purpose. Now, which of these three is familiar to us in an immediate way? In a direct, unmediated way? Only the third. People think causality is certain, and free choice maybe you can argue about. In my eyes it is exactly the opposite. The principle of causality, as David Hume said, has no observational source. So why are you so sure about the principle of causality? Are you an empiricist? Are you clinging to science? Science does not give you that. It is your assumption. Why is that assumption better than the assumption of free choice? I don’t see why. And therefore even without lex specialis I do not understand why one should prefer the causal intuition over the intuition of choice. On the contrary, of the three things, of the three mechanisms, the causal mechanism is something that is our intuition; we have no observational source for it. The random accidental mechanism—we don’t know that from reality at all. Can any of you think of an event that happened and has no cause whatsoever? Never in your life. We have seen nothing like that. When quantum theory talks about such a thing, people tear their hair out from frustration. Which means that this thing is totally contrary to our intuitions. The causal thing too is an intuition, but it has no observational source; it is not a scientific finding. Indeterminism is even contrary to our intuitions—why assume there is such a thing at all? What remains? Free choice, deliberation, or this feedback loop I described earlier—that we know in the most intimate and immediate way. Every person experiences in himself that he has free choice. So that is what you choose to deny? Really—you accept that there is a causal mechanism, that there are indeterministic mechanisms, but there cannot be free choice? The two things, one of which contradicts every intuition and has no observational source at all, and the other does not contradict intuition—there is such an intuition, causality—but it has no observational source. And here we have something of which we are aware in the most intimate way, and that is precisely what you deny the existence of, while the other two you accept? That is absurd. I cannot understand all these people who argue in favor of causality. They choose two mechanisms that are the least reasonable and reject the reasonable mechanism—for no reason—by the force of the unreasonable mechanisms. Why do that? If I can reconcile the reasonable mechanism, the mechanism I know, that of free choice, and with lex specialis I can also preserve the causal intuition for all cases except events of choice. And indeterminism doesn’t even exist at all; there is no such thing. Nothing exists without a cause—so my intuition tells me. Maybe with quantum theory—we’ll talk about that next time. All right? So if that is so, it seems to me the conclusion is obvious. The conclusion of lex specialis is that we have free choice, and the principle of causality holds in all other events, not events of choice. And I already said that even a person acting does not always act out of free choice. A person too very often acts for reasons that are without free choice. Only actions of a person with respect to which he has free choice, where he actually exercised free choice there—only there do I qualify the principle of causality. Okay, so that is the picture, and here I think I have neutralized—let me just summarize in a word where we stand now. I have finished the stage of describing the two pictures, the causal one and the libertarian one. After that I brought a priori arguments, non-scientific arguments, for and against the two pictures. I showed that intuition points in favor of free choice, and today I brought the main argument in favor of determinism, namely the argument from the principle of causality, and I showed that even if one takes this principle into account, the libertarian intuition should prevail over the causal intuition. The price is small, and it is more reasonable to keep both intuitions together, with one of them slightly qualified. So on the philosophical level, in my opinion at least, the obvious conclusion is unequivocally libertarian and not deterministic. Now we need to see what we do with science. Do we nevertheless have some problem with science on this issue? So that is our next topic. Neuroscience, quanta, and chaos. Those are basically the next three chapters. Okay, so up to here. If anyone wants to comment or ask, now is the time.

[Speaker C] I have a question. Yes. Mainly about two things. I didn’t understand: in quantum theory there are equations, there’s the Schrödinger equation and others, but what you learn from quantum theory is that all intuition is wrong. All of quantum theory goes against intuition. We don’t understand anything there—what it is or how it happens. There’s what’s called entanglement and all kinds of things that they measure, but they don’t understand why.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So first of all, I’ll answer that in two ways. First, we’ll have a chapter on quantum theory, and there I’ll talk about the significance of quantum theory for our topic. I argue that it has no significance, but beyond that, the fact that we don’t understand something should not, in my opinion, change the basic outlook. The burden of proof is still on the one who says something that contradicts intuition. We don’t understand many things—you know, many times when people argue with theists about the existence of God, you say: look, but there is a world; who caused the world, who created this interesting and wondrous world? So they say, for example, that we don’t understand. So is the fact that we don’t understand a reason to assume the existence of God? And the fact that we don’t understand is not an explanation—it’s just that we don’t understand. Okay, but we still don’t give up our causal intuition, right? In other words, in the end we remain with a causal intuition. The same thing here. The fact that we don’t understand quantum theory only means that in the world of small things, in quantum theory, all kinds of things happen that go against our intuition, and still, in all other areas I’ll continue thinking in the usual way. And therefore all these things here are novelties. In the field of quantum theory there really are various pathologies, but in all the other non-quantum contexts I continue to think normally. No one would even think, while walking down the street, if he suddenly saw a ball that had been lying on the ground jump into the air, that it just happened for no reason because there was some quantum effect here. Never in a million years. You’d look for what caused it, right? It’s obvious to you that there would be a reason for it. Why? After all, quantum theory says there is some small chance that such a thing could happen without a cause. Yes—for an electron, not for a basketball. In other words, the fact that in the realm of small things I have a few things I don’t understand does not break my general intuitions, unless you show me that this is something more general. But after all, we know that in the realm of large things everything remains as usual; it only happens in the small things. But I’m saying this is only a framework—we’ll talk about quantum theory, and there I’ll explain why, in my opinion, it’s irrelevant. Anyone else?

[Speaker B] Yes, Rabbi, first of all thank you for the lesson. I’d be happy to hear what you think. There’s an approach that sort of accepts the contradiction you presented to physics—that a mental event can trigger some action in the physical world—but they can still say that every mental event you have is simply the result of some previous mental event. I’d be happy to hear what you think about that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You mean to say that there could be dualistic determinism. Yes. Determinism that believes in the existence of spirit and body together. We’ll talk about that. Okay. Anyone else? Okay.

[Speaker B] Sabbath, Sabbath shalom.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sabbath shalom, goodbye.

[Speaker B] Thank you very much, Sabbath shalom.