Free Will and Choice – Lesson 7
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- The problem of causality and the third category of free choice
- Breaking down the contradiction into two planes: physics versus reason
- Qualifying the principle of causality באמצעות lex specialis
- Determinism versus libertarianism and materialism versus dualism
- Possibilities in mind-body relations and the critique of workaround solutions
- Interactionist dualism versus attempts to build freedom into physics
- Chaos, prediction, and determinism: epistemic versus ontic
- Concluding questions: practical implications and clarification of Maimonides' view
Summary
General Overview
The text presents the tension between libertarianism and the principle of causality, and proposes a distinction between determinism, indeterminism, and free choice as a third category in which there is no cause but there is a purpose. It divides the difficulty into two planes: the transition from a mental desire to a physical brain event, which seems to break the laws of physics, and the birth of desire itself, which is not a causal result but future-directed. It proposes qualifying the principle of causality by means of lex specialis in order to preserve both the intuition of causality and the intuition of free choice. It then separates the question of determinism/libertarianism from the question of materialism/dualism, examines possibilities in mind-body relations, and rejects chaos as a basis for free will because it creates epistemic unpredictability rather than an ontic gap, preparing the way for a move to quantum theory as a more serious candidate.
The Problem of Causality and the Third Category of Free Choice
The text argues that the libertarian view seems to contradict the principle of causality because it allows the mental, desire, and the soul to change reality, and desire itself is not derived from past circumstances but directed toward the future. It formulates the distinction between “I want something in order to, not because,” and explains that volitional movement is not arbitrary but purposeful, and therefore fits the principle of sufficient reason even if it does not fit the principle of causality. It defines causality as an event derived from a previous event that is the cause that produced it, indeterminism as an event without a cause that just happens, and free choice as an event that has no cause but does have a purpose. It argues that many attacks on libertarianism assume only determinism or indeterminism and ignore the third possibility, and therefore “either way you look at it” questions collapse once one recognizes a third mechanism.
Breaking Down the Contradiction into Two Planes: Physics versus Reason
The text presents a model of a chosen action in which a decision to set up a meeting causes motor action and a phone call whose goal is a future meeting, and emphasizes a feedback line from the future goal back to the decision. It argues that the line from the future is not a causal line but a line of reason, and therefore the meeting does not produce the decision; rather, the desire for the meeting is what produces the chain of actions. It states that when we examine whether the laws of physics were “broken,” the answer is yes, because a neural brain event causes motor action, but the source of the brain event is a desire that is not part of the physical world, and therefore electrons in the brain move without a physical force according to Newton’s laws. It distinguishes between the birth of desire, which has no cause at all but only a purpose and is not a physical event, and the brain event, which does have a cause, namely desire, but not a physical cause. Therefore the problem vis-à-vis the principle of causality is “softer,” but still exists.
Qualifying the Principle of Causality by Means of Lex Specialis
The text states that a libertarian “cannot escape” qualifying the principle of causality, and presents this as an expression of the legal principle of lex specialis, the priority of the specific over the general. It illustrates this through the contradiction between “Do not murder” and the duty to execute Sabbath violators in the presence of witnesses and prior warning, and explains that the specific duty prevails so as not to empty the specific verse of content. It applies this to the philosophy of choice and argues that the claim of free will is specific to points at which a person chooses, whereas the rest of the world behaves deterministically, and therefore the specific principle overrides the general only there, while science remains correct in all other cases. It argues that this solution has a philosophical advantage over determinism because it preserves two powerful intuitions—causality and free choice—whereas the determinist gives up the intuition of free will and defines it as an illusion without sufficient evidence.
Determinism versus Libertarianism and Materialism versus Dualism
The text presents the question of consciousness as scientifically unresolved, but argues that even if one accepts dualism one can still be a determinist, because something non-physical cannot move electrons without violating the laws of physics. It distinguishes between two conceptually independent debates: materialism versus dualism as the question whether there is anything in the world beyond matter, and determinism versus libertarianism as the question whether everything is predetermined or whether there is free choice. It argues that conceptually one can be a libertarian materialist or a deterministic dualist, but “de facto” there is dependence because of the empirical finding that the laws of physics are deterministic. Therefore materialism practically leads to determinism, and dualism without interaction leaves the body deterministic and the soul without a causal role.
Possibilities in Mind-Body Relations and the Critique of Workaround Solutions
The text presents the main possibilities regarding the relation between body and soul: materialism, in which there is only a body; dualism without reciprocal influence, in which body and soul operate in parallel; and a view in which the body affects the soul but the soul does not affect the body, so as not to contradict the laws of physics. It argues that it is difficult to deny the body’s effect on the soul through pain and sensory perception, and brings the materialist claim that the soul’s effect on the body is an artifact in which a physical brain event causes both the feeling of depression and bodily consequences, so that the depression is a side effect that does not participate causally. It presents the double-aspect theory in the spirit of Kant, in which colors and sounds are phenomena of consciousness and the body and soul are two aspects of the same thing, and then criticizes it as paradoxical because it does not explain who the observer is in whose “consciousness” the soul is created. It compares this to the debate about contraction not being literal, and argues that an “illusion” requires a subject who is not an illusion. Therefore solutions of this kind are “mere empty words,” meant to escape the tension between physicalism and causality on the one hand and mental intuitions and free choice on the other.
Interactionist Dualism versus Attempts to Build Freedom into Physics
The text narrows the confrontation to two views: a view in which there is only matter and mental phenomena emerge from it or are its properties, and a view of interactionist dualism in which there is matter and the mental, with two-way influence between soul and body and between body and soul in accordance with the everyday intuition of pain and depression. It formulates the dilemma of how to reconcile the laws of physics with the intuition of mental-physical interaction, and then proposes an alternative direction: trying to build free will into physics itself. It presents three proposals he knows for that—chaos, quantum theory, and emergence—and says that he will argue that none of them really holds water, beginning in detail with chaos and preparing to move on to quantum theory.
Chaos, Prediction, and Determinism: Epistemic versus Ontic
The text explains chaos theory through the three-body problem and emphasizes that deterministic dynamic equations exist even if one cannot write an explicit solution, and therefore the inability to solve or predict does not cancel determinism. It gives examples of a ball on top of a hill, a feather or paper falling in the wind, and throwing a die, to show that sensitive dependence on initial conditions and complex calculation lead to practical unpredictability even though the dynamics themselves are governed by Newton’s laws. It quotes Dwayne Farmer from Gleick’s book and argues that Farmer confuses unpredictability with indeterminism, because the fact that one cannot predict does not imply that there is freedom in the system, and the philosophical question depends on the existence of prediction in principle, not on human computational ability. It formulates the distinction between epistemic unpredictability and an ontic gap in reality, and illustrates this with a halakhic example of agency for betrothal, in which “doubt” is a state where reality is defined but human information is lacking, as opposed to “betrothal not given over for sexual relations,” where the ambiguity is in reality itself. It cites Rabbi Shimon Shkop, who distinguishes between “a doubtful certainty” and “a certain doubt,” and argues that in the case of betrothal not given over for sexual relations there is no “one real woman” who is betrothed, but rather an ambiguous state in which each woman is “both my wife and my wife’s sister,” in a way that is “a quantum superposition.” Therefore even according to Maimonides, who rules leniently in Torah-level doubt, there is no leniency here, because this is not a doubt but a definite, though faint, prohibition. He concludes that chaos is at most an epistemic gap in the person, not an ontic gap in the object, and therefore is irrelevant to building free choice into physics, and presents quantum theory as seemingly the only candidate for an ontic gap, which he will address later.
Concluding Questions: Practical Implications and Clarification of Maimonides' View
The text includes a question about the practical implication of free choice and an answer that the implications are implications of attitude, which also generate practical implications, and that this topic was discussed in previous lectures. It includes a question about the possibility of being lenient and “taking one” according to Maimonides, and an answer that the case is not a doubt but a definite, though faint, prohibition for each one, and therefore this is betrothal not given over for sexual relations and cannot be treated like an ordinary doubt. It concludes with the blessings “More power to you” and “Shabbat shalom.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time, which was already quite a while ago, we basically left off—or began—with the problem of causality. And I said that in principle the libertarian view seemingly contradicts the principle of causality, because what comes out of this view is that the mental, my desire, my soul, can change things in reality itself. And more than that, it comes out that my desire itself is not a result, not derived from other circumstances, but is created out of nothing in some sense. I explained that it’s not exactly out of nothing, but rather directed toward the future and not coming from the past. I want something in order to, and not because. Meaning, it’s not that something causes my desire, but on the other hand my desire is not something arbitrary, something that just happens—because that’s usually how we relate to something that happens without a cause, as something arbitrary. Volitional movement has a purpose; even if it has no cause, it has a purpose. And I said this fits the principle of sufficient reason, even if not the principle of causality. That’s how I distinguished between determinism, indeterminism, and free choice. And I said that very often almost all the attacks against libertarianism are attacks that ignore the fact that there is a third possibility. They always assume that either you’re a determinist, and if not, then it’s indeterminism—meaning just some arbitrary matter. So where does free choice come in here? Where is there room for a third mechanism? And my claim was that there is a third mechanism. If I summarize briefly: causality is basically an event derived from a previous event that is its cause, that produced it. In other words, it’s an event that has a cause. Indeterminism is an event without a cause, meaning it just happens. And free choice is an event that indeed has no cause, but does have a purpose. In other words, it is directed toward something. And therefore it really is a third category, and according to that everything works out and all the “either way you look at it” questions basically fall away in this context.
[Speaker B] If possible, everyone should go on mute.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. I’ll just mute everyone. So in the end I finished with the point that the contradiction between choice and the principle of causality, between the free conception of choice—libertarianism—and the principle of causality, really has to be broken down into two different planes. Basically the chain—I showed you this in some sort of diagram, maybe I have it here so I’ll put it up again. One moment. I’m sharing the diagram again; we basically saw it last time. The claim is basically, let’s say I have some decision that I want to set up a meeting with my friend—that’s the decision. It causes motor action, my hands move, I dial the phone and make a phone call, and the goal is to have a meeting tomorrow. Okay, that’s basically the outline of a chosen action. Now notice this feedback line—yes, it’s feedback going back from the meeting to the decision, because in a sense the decision is, as it were, caused by the meeting. It’s not only that the decision creates the meeting, but rather the desire that tomorrow there will be a meeting is really what brings about the beginning of the chain of actions I perform. And so supposedly there is something in the future here that creates an event in the present. But notice: that line is not a causal line. These lines are causal lines, this and this—they are causal lines. This line is not a causal line; it is a line of reason. This is not the principle of causality but the principle of sufficient reason. I decide so that there will be a meeting, not because of the meeting. The meeting hasn’t happened yet; it can’t be the cause of what I’m doing. Rather, the desire that there be a meeting is the reason why I want, or is in fact the very decision I’m talking about. Therefore the meeting does not causally produce this desire, but this desire is born in order for the meeting to come about. It’s “in order to,” not “because.” That’s why this dotted line is drawn differently from the solid black lines, which are causal lines. Now we can divide the discussion into two parts. When I ask myself whether the laws of physics were broken here—and today we’ll talk about that a bit more, but for now I only gave the general outline—the answer is yes. Why? Because notice: this motor action, what happens here, is caused—you see this causal line—by a neural brain event. But where does the brain event come from? From desire. But desire is not part of the physical world. If desire moves electrons in the brain, that means those electrons moved without a force acting on them. That means Newton’s laws of mechanics were broken here. A particle cannot begin moving without a force acting on it; it cannot accelerate or decelerate without a force acting on it. So in fact this breaks the laws of physics. But desire—wait, sorry—yes, it breaks the laws of physics. On the other hand, desire itself, which later also moved electrons—but when I look at desire, at the birth of desire itself, where does it come from? It comes with no cause at all, only with a purpose. So now if I divide things up, because desire actually doesn’t even appear here in the diagram—here it’s already a brain event, and a brain event is already part of the physical side of the process. But at the basis of the brain event there is really a desire sitting there—let’s say, look at it here at the tip of the arrow, at the tip of this arrow there is a desire that produces a decision or a neural brain event. That desire is born with no cause at all. But that desire is not a physical event. True, but even something that is not a physical event I would still expect to be born as the result of some cause—just not a physical cause, right? There is no physical cause here, so that doesn’t bother me. But it’s true that there is no cause here at all. Regarding the question of the brain event, the brain event is born from the desire, so it does have a cause. That’s already a physical event, the brain event, and that event has a cause—the cause is the desire—but the cause is not a physical cause. Okay? So there is still a problem here vis-à-vis the principle of causality, but the problem is softer. If I move over—if I look at the seam between the decision, which is a mental event, and its brain expression, which is a physical event, then the brain event has a cause, but it is not physical. The mental event has no cause at all, only a purpose. Okay, but the mental event is not a physical event, so it bothers me less that it has no cause, because the principle of causality is something we are usually more convinced about in the physical context, in the context of material events. And therefore I say that the problem is softer, but still exists. And therefore in the end what I said is that there is no escaping the need to qualify the principle of causality. Anyone who wants to be a libertarian cannot escape this; you have to qualify the principle of causality. What are you really saying? I said that this is really an expression of a principle that jurists call lex specialis. Lex specialis is the priority of the specific. Yes, I said for example that there is a prohibition, “Do not murder,” a general prohibition, but there is an obligation to kill Sabbath violators. Someone who desecrated the Sabbath in the presence of witnesses and after prior warning is liable to death. What do you do when there is a contradiction? Now a Sabbath violator comes before us. On the one hand there is the prohibition, “Do not murder,” and on the other hand there is the obligation to kill Sabbath violators. Which takes precedence? Clearly what takes precedence is the obligation to kill Sabbath violators. Why? Because that is a specific obligation regarding Sabbath violators; the prohibition “Do not murder” is a general prohibition. The specific obligation always overrides the general prohibition. And the reason for that is that if I were to say that the general prohibition overrides the specific obligation, then nothing would remain of the specific obligation. The obligation to kill Sabbath violators always involves killing, and therefore if I prefer the prohibition on murder over the obligation to kill Sabbath violators, then there would be no possibility of killing Sabbath violators at all; that verse in the Torah would come out unnecessary. On the other hand, if I prefer the specific principle, then I am basically saying that the prohibition on murder exists—it is not canceled, even though here it is set aside in favor of the obligation to kill Sabbath violators—but it still exists, it is not nullified. Where does it still exist? In other contexts, regarding someone who is not a Sabbath violator, just an ordinary person not liable to death—it is forbidden to kill him. Specifically regarding a Sabbath violator, the obligation to kill him overrides the prohibition “Do not murder.” So the advantage of the specific lies in this: if I prefer the specific over the general, then both principles are still in force; I don’t need to throw one of them in the trash. If I preferred the general principle, then the specific principle would be thrown in the trash—nothing would remain of it—because in no specific situation could I ever apply it, since the general principle would always override it. Same thing here. I have a general principle, the principle of causality, that everything must have a cause. This is one intuition that I think every rational person strongly identifies with. The second intuition says— And the dilemma is which one to prefer. So determinists prefer the principle of causality and say there is no free choice. But what does the libertarian do? The libertarian says: I adopt the principle of lex specialis. I basically say: I prefer the specific. The claim that I have free will is a specific claim only regarding my desire. The rest of the world behaves deterministically. But specifically when a person makes a decision, there there is an exception to the deterministic principle, to the causal principle. And therefore I prefer the specific principle—that I have free choice at the points where a person chooses—over the general principle, which is the principle of causality. And I say that in those places where human beings choose, the general principle of causality does not really apply. I qualify it. What is the advantage of that over the deterministic solution that prefers the general principle? The advantage is the principle of lex specialis. The advantage of the specific, as we do in every ruling. The advantage of the specific here means that according to my ruling both intuitions remain true. I can keep both of them. Both the causal intuition and the intuition of free choice. Only the causal intuition has to undergo a certain qualification. In the place where a person chooses, there indeed the principle of causality does not work. But everything else, the entire rest of the world, proceeds causally; science is correct, everything is correct. I can keep both intuitions. By contrast, the determinist prefers the causal intuition and is left with no intuition of free will at all. For him free will has no existence whatsoever, because every act of free will contradicts the principle of causality. And therefore here too I think there is an advantage to the specific, and in my view there is a clear philosophical advantage to the libertarian view over the deterministic view. The libertarian view remains with both intuitions in hand. It does not need to give up either of them. The deterministic view has to give up a very powerful intuition we have, that we have free choice. The determinist gives that up. He says it’s an illusion; it can’t be true; it’s simply a mistake. If there is no good reason to give up a strong intuition I have, I don’t give it up. In other words, anyone who wants to tell me to give up a strong intuition I have should bring evidence.
[Speaker D] Can I add something? Yes, yes. From what I understand according to science, the whole idea of consciousness—it’s unknown what it is. Even according to science without philosophy, it’s something the determinist doesn’t know what it is either.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I spoke about that a bit, and maybe I’ll speak about it again in a moment. That’s a question of, say, body and soul more broadly. In other words, the question whether this consciousness is something in the body, some additional substance, something else, spirit or soul or something like that—that’s one issue. But here I’m talking about something else. Let’s say even if you are a dualist. I’m already—this is really the next chapter I’m now going to begin. But let’s say you’re a dualist and there really is consciousness. You can still be a determinist. Why? Because you are basically saying that it can’t move electrons if it isn’t physical. After all, that thing is non-physical. If it is non-physical, it can’t move electrons, because the principle, the laws of physics, say that an electron won’t move unless a force acts on it. So even if I am a dualist, the principle of causality still says I need to be a determinist. So I’ll be a deterministic dualist. And that’s what I’m now actually going to talk about. Look, I’ll do this briefly because this chapter is only in parentheses, I’m not going to do it at length. Here really enters the question of the relation between body and soul, which I haven’t really discussed yet. I touched on it a little, but didn’t really discuss it. And very often people connect these two questions—determinism versus libertarianism, and materialism versus dualism. These are two questions that many people see as two sides of the same issue. Materialism versus dualism means: is there anything in the world beyond matter? The materialist says no, there is only matter, only material stuff. The dualist says there is matter and spirit. There is something else too, another kind of substance in the world, another kind of thing in the world that is not material. All right? That’s the debate about materialism. There is another debate, which is the debate about determinism: determinism versus libertarianism. The question is whether everything we do is predetermined or whether we have free choice. Seemingly these are two independent questions. There is no connection between them. Why? On the conceptual level there is no obstacle to my being a libertarian materialist, thinking that the whole world is matter but that I still have free choice. Conceptually there is no contradiction there. And there is no obstacle to my being a deterministic dualist. Yes, that’s what I said earlier. I can be a dualist, believe in body and soul, and still think that everything proceeds in a deterministic way. Therefore these two questions are conceptually independent. And the identification people make between them is the result of an assumption—and we’ll discuss this later—it is the result of the assumption that if in fact there is only matter in the world, then there is no place for free choice, because the laws of nature, the laws of physics if you like, that govern matter are deterministic. But that is not a conceptual matter; it is an empirical finding. Our empirical finding says that the laws of physics are deterministic. Therefore if there is only matter in the world, then if you are a materialist, you can no longer be a libertarian. You cannot believe in free choice. If you are a materialist, then you need to be a determinist. But again, conceptually there is no necessity; it is only because we know that the laws of physics are deterministic, and I’ll talk about that in a moment. Regarding dualism, same thing. I can believe in body and soul and still think the whole business is predetermined, that I have no free choice. It’s not connected. For many reasons—for example, because the laws of physics determine what the body will do, so why should I care that in parallel there is a soul? The soul cannot affect the body. Because if it affects the body, that means something non-physical created a physical effect, but that goes against the laws of physics. So even if there is a soul, it is supposed somehow to act in parallel to the body and not affect it, according to that view. And then it turns out that although we are dualists, we believe in body and soul, the body still behaves in a completely deterministic way; when a person performs an action it always has a physical explanation, all the way back to the Big Bang, right? It’s a physical chain. The soul cannot intervene in this chain, because otherwise at the point where it intervenes the laws of physics are violated. Okay? That’s what I spoke about earlier regarding the principle of causality and the laws of physics.
[Speaker B] So that empties the soul of content?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It empties it of causal content, yes, but in principle such a view could exist. So I’m saying, that’s why I say, the questions are in principle independent. In other words, there can be four principal views. There can be a materialist who believes in free choice and one who doesn’t believe in free choice; there can be a dualist who believes in free choice and one who doesn’t. There is independence between the two questions in both directions on the conceptual level. But de facto that’s not true. In other words, de facto there is dependence between the questions, and therefore the real confrontation is between a materialist view and a libertarian dualist view. And now I’ll spell this out a bit more. That brings us to what is called the question of body and soul. And notice: the question of body and soul is not the question of free choice; it is another question. The question of body and soul is the question whether there is a soul, and if so, what the nature of its relations with the body is. Is there interaction between them? Can the soul affect the body? Can the body affect the soul? That is the body-soul question. The question whether we have free choice, as I said earlier, is another question. The body-soul question is connected to the question of materialism, not the question of determinism, okay? The question whether there is something beyond matter, beyond material stuff. Now regarding the relation between body and soul, various possibilities arise. I’ll mention only a few of the main ones, because in the end nobody really believes any of this today. Every book always lists all the possibilities, but really these options are not alive anymore. So I’ll just do it briefly. One option is to say that there is only a body, of course—that is materialism. A second option is to say that there is a body and a soul, but there is no influence between them. All right? This is basically a parallel view: both operate in parallel, but neither affects the other. Okay? These are two realms, two spheres, each operating on its own without connection to the other. There is another option: to say that the body determines the soul. What does that mean? Basically, the body dictates what will happen to the soul. If something happens in the body, then I feel pain; if something happens to my body, then I become depressed. In other words, there is influence from body to soul, but no influence from soul to body. What is the motivation to say such a thing? Because influence from soul to body contradicts the laws of physics. Because the moment the soul affects the body, that means something happened in the body that is a physical event, and its source or cause is non-physical. That contradicts the laws of physics. But to say that the body affects the soul—there is no problem with that. There are no laws of physics governing the soul. It could be that the body affects the soul. By the way, it is very hard to deny the fact that the body affects the soul. After all, when I get hit, it hurts. Pain is a mental event. The blow is a physical event. These are everyday occurrences; all the time, every moment, we feel how the body affects the soul. My perception of the world is the body’s effect on the soul. When I perceive that there is a fan here, the fan is a physical object that affects my consciousness, my perception, which is a mental event. Okay, so every second we basically see the influence of the body on the soul.
[Speaker D] But it’s also known that depression affects the body.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, correct, but here you have to pay close attention. There’s a certain trick here. Why? Because it’s true that we also know that the soul affects the body, but the materialists will say that this is an artifact. In other words, what caused the depression was some physical event, say a brain event. And that brain event is what affects the body. It just has a side effect. In other words, once that brain event happened, I also feel depression, because it affects the soul. But it’s not that the depression—say I lose weight as a result of my depression—the materialists’ claim is: no, the brain event that created the depression also caused you to lose weight. In other words, your weight loss has a biological or physical cause, a natural cause. The depression is a side effect. The depression is a secondary result, yes, a result that comes out of it, but it’s not that the depression did something. We just describe it in our language as though the depression caused me to lose weight, but no—the depression is only an indication that something is happening in me, some physiological process that causes me to lose weight. But what causes me to lose weight is the physiology, not the depression. That is how materialists explain the influence of the soul on the body—again, those more sophisticated ones; we spoke about those who deny the existence of such things altogether, but that’s nonsense. But those who do not deny the existence of these things, because these are really facts that are hard to deny, still say that this is all some kind of artifact or side effect, some secondary result that does not really take part in the causal process. There is another view of the relation between body and soul. This view basically says that the body and the soul are really two aspects of the same thing. When I look at the body, I supposedly see mental phenomena. Of course I cannot look at other bodies and see their mental phenomena. The only mental phenomena I see are my own. So I look inward and I see mental phenomena, but really this is just the distinction Kant made between the thing in itself, the noumenon, and the phenomenon, the world of appearances. When I see the color yellow—we spoke about this, I think—when I see the color yellow, it is obvious that in the world itself there is no yellow color. Yellow exists only in my consciousness. In the world there is an electromagnetic wave. An electromagnetic wave of a certain wavelength, and the structure of our brain is such that if a wave of that wavelength strikes my retina, it gets translated in my consciousness into yellow light. Okay? But if my consciousness were built differently, it would be translated into Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Or into some sensation I don’t even know. In other words, yellow light is only something that exists solely in the human mind. In the world itself there is no yellow light. By the way, there are no sounds in the world itself either. Because if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, the question is whether it makes a sound. The obvious answer is no. It makes no sound. It moves air. There is an acoustic wave. But as long as there is no eardrum for the acoustic wave to hit, no sound can be produced. Because sound is a phenomenon of consciousness. When something hits my ear—a pressure wave, yes, an acoustic wave—hits my eardrum, a sensation or consciousness of sound is created in me. The sound is in my head. In the world itself there is an acoustic wave; there are no sounds. If they connected my ear to my eye, from what we spoke about—if they connected my ear to the visual center in the brain, for example—then the acoustic wave would be translated into an image, not into sound. Therefore there is nothing objective here in light. Light is a subjective matter; sights or sounds are completely subjective matters. And basically Kant expanded this further, and he argues that everything we perceive in the world is only the picture of things as they appear to us. But in the world itself, the things in themselves are not characterized at all by sound, appearance, color, or all the properties we attribute to objects as though those properties are there. They belong to the world of our concepts and consciousness. And the things in themselves—you can’t talk about them in those terms. So wait, what is the real color of the thing, what color is the thing really, not the color as I see it? That is a meaningless question. The thing in itself has no color. Color exists only in consciousness; color is a phenomenon of consciousness. And the same is true of sound. Now there are those who claim—this is the double-aspect theory—that body and soul are also really the same kind of thing: the body is the thing in itself, and the soul is how it appears when I observe it. Therefore it is the same Kantian distinction between phenomenon and noumenon; one can also apply it to body and soul. I’m showing you this only so you can see what nonsense people come up with in order to deny—to deny simple dualism, because you should understand that this thing is paradoxical. Because when I ask myself: who is that one who observes the body and in whose consciousness the soul is created? What is that consciousness that observes the body and in which mental sensations, psychic sensations, are created? What is it? Is it itself a bodily organ—a bodily thing? If it is a bodily thing, then we are back to the same question. In other words, you’re telling me—it’s like saying—you know, in the debate about contraction, yes, usually people associate with it the dispute between Hasidism and its opponents: the Vilna Gaon and the Baal Shem Tov, or the author of the Tanya if you like. Yes, where the Hasidim say that the contraction is not literal. The Holy One, blessed be He, “fills the whole earth with His glory,” He is present everywhere, “there is nothing besides Him.” In other words, only He exists; we are an illusion. And the opponents say no, of course not—the contraction is literal. In other words, the Holy One, blessed be He, withdrew from here in order to allow the world and us to exist. And the question that arises here is: what does it mean that the contraction is not literal, that the contraction is an illusion? An illusion for whom? After all, if we ourselves do not exist and are an illusion, then whose illusion is it? Do you mean to say that it is my illusion? In other words, the one for whom this is an illusion probably does exist; he himself is not an illusion. Because otherwise you just regress backward again. Therefore this claim that the contraction is not literal is simply nonsense, mere empty words. It’s like Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin defines it—from his point of view and ours, yes, in Nefesh HaChayim—that the contraction was from our perspective but not from His. Fine, but if the contraction is from our perspective, then that means we ourselves probably really do exist, unless we too are an illusion—then you still haven’t explained whose illusion it is. And if you can tell me whose illusion it is, that means there is someone who is not himself an illusion. Well then—you’ve already reached the conclusion that the contraction is literal. In other words, there is something besides the Holy One, blessed be He. It is not true that there is nothing besides Him; there is something besides Him. Okay? So it’s exactly the same thing. In other words, all these retreats are attempts to escape a philosophical tangle. Yes, after all, why do the Hasidim arrive at this view that the contraction is not literal? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, is infinite. And an infinite thing—once there exists something that is not it—that means it has some boundary, that there is some thing or place or something that is not it. In other words, that it is limited; it is not there. So that is philosophically problematic. Therefore they say: no, it’s all illusions and really it is all Him—everything in order to solve tangles. Same thing with the double-aspect theory. The double-aspect theory also comes to solve a tangle. It wants to remain attached to the physicalist worldview—that everything is physics and matter—but not deny mental phenomena, like I said, unlike the unsophisticated materialists I spoke about in the previous lecture. So—how do you do that? So you say: no, everything is matter. It’s just that if one looks at it, then in the observer’s consciousness mental phenomena arise. And of course they do not explain to me who this observer’s consciousness is. Inside whom are the mental phenomena created? Is he himself a material thing, or is he himself a mental thing? If he is a material thing, then we’re back to the same question. And if he is a mental thing, then there you have it: there is something mental that is not just in someone’s consciousness; consciousness itself is a mental thing. So therefore the double-aspect theory can join the trash can of what is called mere empty words. In any event, all these contortions are really meant to show you the kinds of things people produce in order to escape this contradiction between the material world and the laws of physics and the principle of causality, on the one hand, and the clear feeling we have that we have a mental dimension and that we have free choice. How—how do you connect these two—these two views, which is an expansion of what I said earlier about the contradiction between the principle of causality and free choice. Just a moment. Okay, yes, sorry.
[Speaker D] Maybe also this—there’s a view that all of us are just part of some game of people or something more intelligent in another world, and we really don’t exist; we’re part of some cosmic game or something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Matrix.
[Speaker D] Yes, exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. I’m saying this because these are all kinds of things people try in order to escape what seem to me to be the necessary conclusions. So what does this actually mean? Let’s try to throw all the other possibilities in the trash and ask: what are we left with at the end? What can still stand here? What can stand here, basically, are two conceptions facing one another. One conception is that there is only matter, and mental phenomena somehow emerge from matter, or really are properties of matter, and I’ll define that a bit more later. And the second conception is what I’m now calling interactionist dualism. Dualism means that there is the mental and there is matter; there are two things, two substances, and there is interaction between them. And when I say there is interaction between them, I mean in both directions: interaction from soul to body and interaction from body to soul. That’s simply the basic intuition. Right, if I’m depressed then I lose weight. So that means there is an influence between the soul and the body. If I get injured, then it hurts. That’s an influence from the body to the soul. So I think this is the simple view of every ordinary person, as long as he doesn’t try to get too sophistical about it. That’s the basic intuition. Of course, what stands against it is the laws of physics. In other words, how could mental phenomena affect things that happen in the body? What happens in the body is material business, material events, and according to the laws of physics there ought to be physical causes or material causes for that. So the question is: how can mental events or mental things affect this? So in the end, this is the dilemma I’m putting on the table now: how to reconcile the laws of physics with our everyday intuitions, which point to interactionist dualism.
The first possibility people raise is to try and bring in—now I’m going back to the problem of determinism, not the problem of materialism, okay? The problem of determinism. How do you insert free will into physics? Maybe it’s possible, and then I don’t need to arrive at the idea that we really have both body and soul, at a dualistic conception. Maybe I can insert it into physics. And there are many, many attempts about this, many, many proposals and endless studies—it’s endless. Here I’ll do it briefly, but I do want to go through the various directions briefly. I’m doing this in order to reject all of them; I’m going to claim that none of them hold water. But you have to understand them, because these are things that come up a lot in this discussion.
Where can we insert free will into the physical world? It can enter in three ways. These are the three proposals I know. One proposal is through chaos. A second proposal is through quantum theory. And a third proposal is what’s called emergentism. I’ll go through them now one after the other.
Chaos is a theory that was born more or less—its roots go back to the beginning of the twentieth century, but of course it really developed deep into the twentieth century before it solidified. And it’s basically some kind of conception—not a conception, really, but a collection of phenomena in which physics seems to behave in a non-deterministic way. It started from a problem physicists call the three-body problem. When I have three bodies, say three masses, for the sake of discussion point masses, okay? M1, M2, and M3. And these three masses exert gravitational force on one another. Right, every two masses attract each other. The question is, given certain initial conditions, can I write the trajectories of motion of the three masses, the three bodies? It turns out that this question is extremely difficult, to the point of being impossible. Three masses—not ten thousand, not ten to the hundredth power. Three. That’s all. A problem for which they haven’t managed to find a solution, and there is a strong suspicion that maybe no solution exists. That is, maybe you can’t write the solution explicitly. But I don’t know where that stands at the moment. In any case, as far as I know, so far they haven’t found one, except for really esoteric cases with very simple initial conditions or something like that. Otherwise it can’t be solved.
Poincaré was the first to formulate this problem and analyze it very beautifully. Those who know—various phase diagrams and so on—he tries to characterize the solutions without writing them explicitly. In other words, to see what they will look like, say, over a long time, what their general properties will be. You can use conservation laws; for example, energy has to be conserved, so that already gives us certain constraints on the solutions. So you can learn about them, and an entire field began with Poincaré: how one can learn about these solutions without writing them explicitly, without solving them. Okay.
But obviously the equations that determine the dynamics do exist. There is no problem writing those equations. Each body has Newton’s second law: its acceleration times its mass equals the two forces exerted on it by the two other bodies. Right? The net force equals the mass of the body times its acceleration. Okay? If we write those equations, they are differential equations for the three bodies; they are three coupled differential equations, as they’re called, because one affects the other. Fine? The equations are written down. Once initial conditions are given, the equations determine what will happen at every moment. The fact that we can’t write the solution explicitly—even if we say it’s not just that we aren’t smart enough, but that no explicit solution exists, for the sake of discussion—it changes nothing. In our sense, in the philosophical sense, this is a completely deterministic problem. The fact that I don’t know how to predict where the bodies will go or what they’ll do—that’s my problem. But once there are equations, what do the equations say? The equations say: give me the position and velocity at a given moment, and I’ll tell you the position and velocity at the next moment, and the one after that, and the one after that, and so on. These are dynamical equations. So if that’s the case, then once there are equations, there is deterministic dynamics here. It doesn’t matter whether I know how to solve them or not.
Therefore there is a very common mistake people make about chaos: they think chaos deviates from determinism, and that’s a mistake. Chaos does not deviate from determinism. Chaos is a completely deterministic phenomenon. What is it then? Because we have very complicated problems, or problems that depend very sensitively on initial conditions, we don’t know how to predict what will happen in the long run.
I’ll give you an example. Look at the drawing now on your screen. There’s some kind of mountain here—yes, this is my artistic skill, so you have to be forgiving. There’s some kind of mountain here, and a little ball is sitting up at the top of the mountain. And suppose it’s perfectly symmetrical, meaning the little ball is standing there. Now I ask you: where will the little ball be in a day? In principle, if no force acts on it, it will remain in the same place. Right? It’s standing there, the net force on it is zero, there’s nothing to cause it to start moving. But obviously in the world there are always all kinds of things—suddenly some small gust of wind will come from one side or the other—and therefore in the end it will fly off to one of the sides. Either it will be on this side, or it will be on that side. I don’t know. One second, there’s background noise suddenly. Okay. So either it will be on this side or that side. I can’t predict that in advance. Does that mean this problem is non-deterministic? Obviously this problem is completely deterministic. Given the wind and the circumstances, I can tell you where the little ball will end up. The only thing is, I don’t know from which direction the wind will come. So all this amounts to is some lack of knowledge on my part. I’m not really pointing here to any gap, some gap in the laws of physics, assuming that the wind itself also arises from physical causes. Therefore there too, in the end, there is some deterministic chain that determines which wind. It’s just so complicated, and I don’t know how to calculate it, so I don’t know when the first wind will come, or whether it will be from the right or from the left. That’s why I can’t predict it.
Look at something else. Suppose someone is standing on the third floor of a building and holding a stone. Now he lets go of the stone and it falls downward. I think I can tell you pretty accurately where the stone will be after a minute, right? It will be down below, at about the place where it is expected to fall. What happens if I do the same thing with a piece of paper or a feather? I let go of a piece of paper or a feather, and now I ask: tell me where it will be in an hour, after it’s already on the ground. There is no way you can tell me in any form; it could reach many places, the range is very, very large. Why? I have no way of predicting the path that feather or piece of paper will take, because the winds are a very, very complicated phenomenon and can carry it in all sorts of directions. Does that mean there is something non-deterministic here? Of course not. It is completely deterministic. If you give me the wind map, the shape of the paper, the height, everything going on around it, in principle I can tell you where the piece of paper will end up. The fact that I don’t know how to do the calculation is simply for two reasons: first, the calculation is very, very complicated; and second, it may depend very sensitively on the initial conditions. Meaning, if I place the paper here or move it one centimeter to the right, it could be that the result will be a kilometer away from the previous result. If I had dropped it from here it would have landed in one place, and if I drop it from here, half a centimeter to the right, it’ll be in Kamchatka. Okay? That is what’s called sensitive dependence on initial conditions. If the initial conditions change a little, then after a long time—as time grows exponentially—the distance becomes exponential. The distance becomes very, very large. That’s what chaos is called. But you have to understand that chaos is nothing special from our point of view. Chaos is simply a deterministic domain in which the deterministic laws are such that our computational ability and our information are not sufficient for us to know what will happen.
Take, for example, a die. We roll a die. We are used to treating this as a statistical event, right? We handle it with statistical tools. There’s a one-half chance it lands on an even number, a one-sixth chance it lands on five. We speak in terms of probabilities. Probabilities are statistical. Okay? But in fact, rolling a die is a completely deterministic process. Take the die, let go of it, give me the whole structure of the air, where you dropped it, the shape of the die and everything, and I can do a calculation and tell you where it will land. It’s completely deterministic. So why do we use statistical tools? Because the deterministic calculation is very complicated and depends very sensitively on the initial conditions. Meaning, if I throw the die like this or throw it like that, it may land completely differently. And therefore practically, you can’t really do the calculation. But how do I know it is deterministic? Because the equations that govern the die’s dynamics are existing equations—they are Newton’s laws. The fact that I don’t know how to solve the equations for this case is only my problem, because it is complicated. That’s all. Once the equations exist, the dynamics are deterministic dynamics.
I’ll read you a passage from a well-known book by Gleick on chaos. It was translated into Hebrew too, and he’s a popularizer of chaos, okay? He describes there how this field was born and its characteristics and so forth. So this field is generally thought to have started with a group of young students, doctoral students at the University of Santa Cruz. I think this was in the 1960s or something like that. And one of them there, Doyne Farmer, says this: “On the philosophical level, when they suddenly discovered this phenomenon of chaos, on the philosophical level it seemed to me like a practical way to define free will in a way that lets you reconcile ‘permission is given’ with ‘everything is foreseen.’ The system is deterministic, but you can’t say what it will do at the next moment. Here there is one coin with two sides. Here there is order out of which randomness emerges, and one step away there is randomness with order underlying it.”
Okay, the randomness and order part is less important for our purposes. What was he really trying to say? He was trying to say: there are deterministic laws of physics and nevertheless there will be free will. Nevertheless you won’t be able to predict the outcome, what will happen, despite the deterministic laws—really, “everything is foreseen and permission is given.” This is of course complete nonsense; the man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In chaos he probably understood, but not in philosophy. Why? Because he confuses—and many people do this, by the way—he confuses, and we discussed this in the first lectures, the question whether one can predict with the question whether the events are deterministic. If the events are non-deterministic, then you won’t be able to predict in advance what will happen. Say a person chooses freely—you can’t predict with certainty, I mean, you can’t predict with certainty in advance what he will do. That is true. But if you say you don’t know how to predict what he’ll do, does that mean he has free choice? Not necessarily. It could be that I don’t know how to predict because the process of calculation or prediction is very complicated. That’s why I don’t know how to predict. That doesn’t mean he has free choice. It reverses the direction of the correlation. In other words, it is true that if there is a degree of freedom, if there is free choice, then one cannot predict. It is not true that if one cannot predict, that means there is freedom in the system. In the world of chaos there is no freedom whatsoever in the system. No freedom. It is a completely deterministic world. It’s only because it is complicated and its dependence on initial conditions is very sensitive—so a small change can produce a very, very large difference in the long run—that I don’t have the ability to do the calculation. I don’t know how to predict, but the fact that I don’t know how to predict doesn’t mean this is non-deterministic. After all, the philosophical question of determinism does not depend on whether I know how to predict, but on whether a prediction exists. Whether the Holy One, blessed be He, knows how to predict—not me. That’s what matters. So the fact that I have computational problems is not relevant in any way to the philosophical question. Therefore chaos is simply irrelevant to this issue.
More simply, I’d put it this way: the question of chaos basically speaks about a lack of predictability that is epistemic and not ontic. What do I mean? I’ll give you—maybe I’ll illustrate this a bit, because it’s also an introduction to quantum theory, which is the next section I want to deal with. I don’t know if I’ll manage today already; we’ll see. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, and ontology is the theory of being; it’s part of metaphysics. Okay? Ontology deals with the world, and epistemology deals with my knowledge of the world. Okay? Again, the epistemic is about knowledge, and the ontic is about existence in the world itself.
Now let’s take a halakhic example. Okay? A person sent an agent to betroth a woman for him. And the agent went to a man who has two daughters, and he says to the father: Take a perutah—Rachel and Leah, okay?—take a perutah for Rachel; I want to betroth Rachel to my sender. Fine. The father agreed, everything was okay. Rachel, nobody asks her; she’s of no interest. So the father received the perutah, the agent gave him the perutah, they both agreed, and then a terrible tragedy happened: they both died, the agent and the father. Now I ask myself: who is my wife? Rachel or Leah? I don’t know. Nobody else knows either; even Rachel and Leah don’t know, they weren’t asked. The father and the agent were the only ones who knew, and they died. So I’m in doubt, right? What is doubt? Doubt means that Rachel is really my actual wife, only I and no one else know who it is. So I’m in doubt whether it’s Rachel or Leah. Who does know who it is? The Holy One, blessed be He, right? He knows that Rachel is my wife. But people don’t know. That is called doubt.
Now I’ll give you a different picture, a different scenario. The agent comes to the father, gives him a perutah, and says: Take a perutah for one of your two daughters—I don’t care which one. They’re both very nice, it doesn’t matter to me. Whichever one it is. The father says: Fine, one of the two—give me this perutah so I can go buy Bazooka bubble gum—one of my two daughters is betrothed to your sender. And that’s it. Now they don’t even have to die. They can stay alive, everything is fine. This is what’s called betrothal that was not given over for intercourse, a topic in tractate Kiddushin: betrothal not given over for intercourse. Why is it betrothal not given over for intercourse? So the medieval authorities explain that there is doubt here. We don’t know whether Rachel is my wife or Leah is my wife, because it wasn’t defined there. And then what happens? After all, I can’t have relations with Rachel. Why? Because maybe Leah is my wife and Rachel is my wife’s sister. I’m forbidden to have relations with my wife’s sister. But I also can’t have relations with Leah, because maybe Rachel is my wife, and then Leah is my wife’s sister. Since these betrothals are not given over for intercourse—you can’t realize them, you can’t have intercourse—there is a dispute between Abaye and Rava whether such betrothal takes effect or does not take effect. Betrothal not given over for intercourse. By the way, that’s the “k” in the mnemonic Ya’al Kegam—meaning that here the Jewish law follows Abaye, that these betrothals are indeed valid betrothals. What does that mean? After all, you can’t have relations with either of them. They both get a bill of divorce. Out of doubt, there’s no choice: you give both of them a bill of divorce. According to Rava, these betrothals are not valid, because betrothal not given over for intercourse is invalid altogether. That’s the dispute between Abaye and Rava.
But I want to ask you a different question. Why is this defined at all as betrothal not given over for intercourse? Let’s take the view—you know there is a dispute among the medieval authorities regarding Torah-level doubt requiring stringency. The Ran and the Rashba say that in a Torah-level doubt one must be stringent by Torah law. This itself is a Torah-level rule; the rule that tells us to be stringent in a Torah-level doubt is itself a Torah-level rule. Maimonides says that Torah-level doubt requiring stringency is a rabbinic rule; by Torah law one could have been lenient in a Torah-level doubt. The rabbis were stringent and said one must be stringent in doubts involving Torah prohibitions, and that is a rabbinic law.
Back to our case. According to Maimonides, I betrothed one of two women, two sisters. This is betrothal not given over for intercourse. Why? Because each of them is in doubt whether she is my wife or my wife’s sister. Right? But according to Maimonides, a Torah-level doubt is treated leniently by Torah law; it is only a rabbinic stringency that one must be stringent. By Torah law I could have been lenient. So what is the problem? Why is this betrothal not given over for intercourse? By Torah law it is given over for intercourse; only rabbinically it is not given over for intercourse. So she should be betrothed to me by Torah law even according to Rava. Why does the Talmud say this is betrothal not given over for intercourse?
Now Rabbi Shimon Shkop does not ask this question; he arrives at it from other directions. But in my opinion this question presents the issue well, and what Rabbi Shimon Shkop says answers it. Rabbi Shimon Shkop argues that in this case of betrothal not given over for intercourse, this is not a case of doubt at all. There is no doubt here. What doubt? It is not that there is one woman who is betrothed to me in reality and I simply don’t know who she is. In the first case there was a specific woman who was betrothed to me, only I don’t know who she is; I’m missing information—whether it is Rachel or Leah. The Holy One, blessed be He, knows; I don’t know, and no one else in the world knows. That is called a state of doubt. A state of doubt is one in which, in the world itself, reality is clear, but I don’t know it; I lack information about it. So I have several possibilities, and therefore I’m in doubt among the possibilities. Here the laws of doubt apply.
But Rabbi Shimon says that in betrothal not given over for intercourse, it is not that there is one woman who is betrothed to me in the world and I simply don’t know who she is. There is no one woman in the world who is actually betrothed to me. In the world itself there is a kind of ambiguity, fuzziness—yes, there is some kind of indeterminacy in the world itself. This is not a problem of my information about the world; rather, in the world itself, reality itself, there is no one defined woman who is betrothed to me. If I ask the Holy One, blessed be He, and He sends me an answer through Elijah the Prophet, He will have nothing to tell me. He also cannot tell me who the woman betrothed to me is. Why? Because there is no one woman betrothed to me. What you have here are two women, each of whom is a doubt—it’s not really a doubt, rather each of them is somehow betrothed to me in some sense, but there isn’t one real one and I just don’t know who it is.
Rabbi Shimon Shkop says this is not a state of doubt. There is no doubt here. Doubt is when I lack information about reality. Here I lack no information about reality. I know reality completely. In reality itself there is something that is not fully fixed, okay? In yeshiva language, this is called the difference between “uncertain certainty” and “certain uncertainty.” Right? “Uncertain certainty” is the case of ordinary doubt: there is something definite in reality, and I am uncertain which definite thing exists in reality—which woman is my wife in reality. That is a state of doubt. But here it is “certain uncertainty”: I certainly know everything there is to know about reality, only reality itself is uncertain. So in this case this is ontic ambiguity, ambiguity in reality itself. It is not epistemic ambiguity. Epistemic ambiguity is doubt: in my cognition I don’t know, I lack information, so I am in doubt. But if the ambiguity is in ontology itself, in the world itself, not only in my knowledge—this is in the object, not in the subject. Okay? In such a state this is not called doubt.
Rabbi Shimon Shkop says: according to this, it is clear that the question I asked according to Maimonides falls away. Maimonides too, in this case, would say that one is forbidden to have relations with either of them, despite his position that Torah-level doubt is treated leniently. Why is one forbidden to have relations with either of them? Because neither of them is a doubt. It is certainly forbidden to have relations with her. She is certainly my wife and certainly my wife’s sister; both are certain. This is a quantum superposition. She is both my wife and not my wife. And by the way, this is not just a metaphor—it’s the same thing, it’s a quantum superposition. This is not a metaphorical expression; that is the situation, exactly the situation. Okay?
[Speaker E] Rabbi, why isn’t this a doubt? I didn’t understand. Why isn’t it a doubt, and why are both of them included?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying there isn’t one woman here who is my wife. After all, he betrothed one of the two daughters without defining which one. And the father also didn’t define which one. No one defined which one. So one of them is betrothed to me, but it isn’t one concrete person. It’s not like the first case, where Rachel was betrothed, and now I just don’t know whether it’s Rachel or Leah because I’m missing information. Here I’m missing no information at all. I know everything that happened. The husband is alive too, the father is alive, sorry, and the agent is alive. Everyone is alive. “And you who cleave to the Lord your God are all alive today.” Everyone is alive. Fine? All the information is known. And still it’s impossible to determine who my wife is. Why? Because what is missing here is not information. The determination itself is not determined. The determination is not complete. It’s not that I don’t know, okay? This is not the laws of doubt. Here, halakhically, she is both my wife and my wife’s sister. Certainly—not doubtfully. She is both my wife and—not “perhaps my wife, perhaps my wife’s sister.” She is both my wife and my wife’s sister. Only in a faint way. She is faintly my wife, and a faint wife’s sister, and the other one too is faintly my wife and faintly my wife’s sister. But Maimonides says fine, so it’s a faint prohibition, but it’s still a prohibition. It isn’t doubt. It is a certain prohibition, only fainter. Okay? But still, even a faint prohibition has to be guarded against. Maimonides says that in such a case too this is betrothal not given over for intercourse; one may not have relations with either of them.
[Speaker C] Isn’t this the same thing people say about twilight on the Sabbath, that some say it is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Big question, that’s a big question. Because in twilight, in the simple conception of twilight, seemingly there is a moment of transition between day and night, only I don’t know what it is—at exactly which moment it happens. Across the whole range of my doubt, I call it twilight and I treat it as doubt. There is a three-way dispute among the tannaim: whether twilight is both day and night, neither day nor night, or doubtfully day and doubtfully night. So it would probably depend on that dispute. But the question is whether that dispute is only about the halakhic status of twilight, or whether there is really some disagreement in physics about what happens at twilight. I think, in the simple understanding, it’s about the halakhic status. It’s not about reality itself. It’s a question of how to relate to this type of doubt. But you can discuss it; it’s a matter of interpretation and maybe depends on the disputes.
[Speaker G] But in any case, she isn’t both my wife and my wife’s sister. She is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] She is my wife—I’m saying, when we talk about quantum superposition, quantum superposition is the next part. We’ll talk about quantum superposition and then I hope it’ll be clearer. This is an English-English dictionary: we explain one unclear word with other words that are even less clear. But yes—the claim is that she is both my wife and my wife’s sister simultaneously. Basically I’m combining here two states: one state in which Rachel is my wife and Leah is my wife’s sister; the second state is that Leah is my wife and Rachel is my wife’s sister. The real state is state A plus state B. That is the real state. Okay? That’s what is called superposition in quantum theory. Now that is why, even according to Maimonides, who says Torah-level doubt is treated leniently, here we go stringently because this is not a doubt; it is certainly my wife and certainly my wife’s sister. Only certainly my wife in a faint sense, and certainly my wife’s sister in a faint sense. Fine? But still, even a faint prohibition, Maimonides says, has to be observed. A doubtful prohibition one may be lenient with, but here it is certainly a prohibition, only a faint one. Fine? A rabbinic prohibition, let’s call it that; it doesn’t matter, half a Torah prohibition. Obviously that too has to be observed. Therefore this is called betrothal not given over for intercourse.
For our purposes, what I want to say is that when reality itself is not defined, that is an ontic doubt. It is a doubt in the metaphysics of reality. Reality itself is not fixed. When the doubt is an epistemic doubt—if I had all the information about reality—then it is ordinary doubt under the laws of doubt. I want to claim that chaos is an epistemic doubt, not an ontic doubt. In reality itself, it is perfectly clear and fully defined where that little ball will be tomorrow morning, or where the piece of paper I threw from the third floor will end up. I don’t know it. It’s an epistemic doubt because the calculation is very complicated and I don’t know how to do it. So the doubt is only in me, in the subject. It is an epistemic doubt. But in order to say that the world is non-deterministic, one has to find a gap in physics itself, not in my information about physics. One has to find an ontic gap, not an epistemic gap. And that leads us to quantum theory.
Quantum theory, basically, on the face of it speaks about an ontic gap, and that is really the only serious candidate for inserting free choice into the world of physics. So we’ll deal with that next time. If anyone wants to comment or ask, now is the time.
[Speaker H] Yes, I want to ask. Yes, yes. What practical difference does it make whether there is free will or there isn’t free will?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We talked about that in previous lectures. The practical difference is mainly for betrothing a woman.
[Speaker H] No, no, I mean philosophically even. Can you punish someone who did something bad?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are no practical differences; there are differences in attitude. But differences in attitude create practical differences. We discussed that at length in the previous lectures.
[Speaker H] Okay.
[Speaker C] I didn’t understand the question about Maimonides even without Rabbi Shimon Shkop. Why is it stringency here for some reason?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The stringency is that one may not have relations. What? The stringency is that one may not have relations with either of them. Each one is doubtfully forbidden to me, so out of doubt I may not have relations with her.
[Speaker C] Yes, but if I have relations with one, then I’ll be forbidden to the other. So I—what is that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll be forbidden to the other, say. What difference does that make? That’s a leniency for one and a stringency for the other. So what? So I’ll be lenient regarding one of them. By the way, in my opinion one could be lenient regarding both of them.
[Speaker C] It’s only a question of contradictory leniencies.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But in principle one could be lenient regarding both. But suppose not; suppose you can’t do contradictory leniencies. Then I’ll take one. Fine, and the other will be forbidden to me, she’ll be my wife’s sister—what’s the problem? Why is this betrothal not given over for intercourse?
[Speaker F] But if according to Maimonides Torah-level doubt is treated leniently, why not just take someone? That’s leniency, it’s a doubt.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it’s not a doubt. It is a certain prohibition. A faint certain prohibition, not a doubtful full prohibition.
[Speaker F] It’s a faint certain prohibition. No, it’s not certain. There is a prohibition on each one—there is a prohibition, yes, I get it now.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyone else? More power to you.
[Speaker F] More power to you, Sabbath peace.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you, Sabbath peace. Sabbath peace.