Free Will and Choice – Lesson 10

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but still, still, you're basically hanging everything on the fact that the process is infinite. But the fact that we're constantly making progress means that you're really reducing more and more the place of God, and therefore I think that argument is unconvincing. It's a kind of evasion. Everywhere you see God today, in a hundred years you won't see Him there anymore. Because that we'll already understand. Then God will retreat one step backward. Then we'll advance a few more years, and again He'll disappear from there too. In the end, in the end, He'll remain inside some pinhead, I don't know, that maybe we won't understand. So that doesn't sound to me like a very convincing argument; it sounds more like escape, even a kind of infinite regress, I would say. Something similar also comes up in the context of vitalism, say in biology, in the context of the question of dualism. In the question of dualism, there was basically a common approach among many philosophers saying that in a living body there is something besides the matter in it. Besides biology, physics, chemistry, and biology. There's something else there, an additional substance. That's the view called vitalism. Vital means life, life-stuff, right? There's something besides atoms and molecules and cells and so on. No, actually cells already contain something vital. So there too, modern biology basically rejects this, and it says: we can explain all biological phenomena even without resorting to this assumption that there's vital substance. More than that, if we resort to the assumption that there's vital substance, that somewhat cripples research, because anything we don't understand in scientific terms—that's vitalism, and therefore everything is fine, so there's no need to keep investigating, because it doesn't belong to biology, it's some other field. And therefore, even on the methodological level, it's a very unfruitful assumption. It's an assumption that doesn't encourage doing research, and therefore there too there is some tendency among defensive vitalists to cling to a kind of vitalism of the gaps. Meaning, because biology hasn't finished the job yet, therefore we're still not in a position where you've proved that there is no vital substance, that everything is matter. And that's true, by the way—the biologists are a bit too optimistic in this discussion. I think I may have mentioned this once: as a methodological assumption, materialism is a very good assumption. In scientific research it is very desirable to assume that there is no vital substance, everything is biology, and to try to examine what that means. To turn that methodological assumption into a claim about the world—that there is only real matter and no vital substance—that is already a certain speculation. I doubt how far we are today really in a position to say that decisively even on the philosophical plane. As a methodological assumption for the progress of science, I think it's a correct assumption, correct in the sense that it is fruitful, useful. But the fact that an assumption is fruitful and useful still doesn't mean that it's true. But the main problem—and here I return to our issue—the main problem is how we relate to mental phenomena. Mental phenomena, after all—and I already talked about this—there's a tendency among materialists to deny the existence of mental phenomena. I explained that this is simply a conceptual confusion. People explain to me that love is a collection of hormones. Love is not a collection of hormones, period. It has nothing to do with the debate at all over materialism and determinism, no connection whatsoever. Love is not a collection of hormones. You can say that the collection of hormones creates the feeling of love or the state of love, but the state of love is not a collection of hormones. The state of love is some mental state that I feel, a mental psychological state that I feel. The same is true of wanting, learning, memory—all the phenomena, all our mental activities, are not a collection of neurons, nor hormones, nor anything else in biology. What the sober materialist can claim is that these mental phenomena are produced by the biological complexes, not that they are identical with the biological complexes, but that they are produced by the biological complexes. Now here we have to pay close attention. There are two different formulations that can be hidden under what I just said. You can interpret it in two ways. You can interpret it in a dualistic way, and say that there is matter and there is spirit, and the mental activities and relations belong to the side of spirit, and then discuss interactionism, determinism, and so on—we still haven't solved the problem of determinism. Another possibility—and this is what the more sophisticated materialists claim today, the prevailing approach among materialists—is what is called emergentism. Emergence means that mental phenomena emerge, right, emerge—they emerge from the material complex. Now here we have to pay attention to what exactly is meant. Maybe before that I'll sharpen it a bit more. Before I brought that example of Bertrand Russell, he asks: what is the color yellow? I see light of a yellow color, so they tell me: it's an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such wavelength. Wrong answer. That's not true. The electromagnetic wave, when it hits my retina, creates in my consciousness an image of yellow, of light of a yellow color. But it's wrong to identify yellow-colored light with the electromagnetic wave. That's simply nonsense. The electromagnetic wave is a physical phenomenon, and yellow-colored light is a conscious phenomenon, a mental phenomenon. Therefore these two things should not be identified. At most you can say that the electromagnetic wave creates the image of yellow light, but not that the image of yellow light is an electromagnetic wave—that's simply confusion. Just as sound is not an acoustic wave. Sound is the conscious phenomenon created in me when an acoustic wave hits my eardrum. But it's incorrect to identify the cause with the effect. You can argue that there are causal relations between them. You cannot argue that there is identity between them, that it's the same thing. The same, in my opinion at least, with regard to mental phenomena. With mental phenomena, you can say that the material complex creates the mental phenomena; you cannot say that it is the mental phenomena. But here I still haven't said dualism. I still haven't said dualism, and that's an important point. Why? Because the claim is basically—and here maybe I'll bring it in the formulation of John Searle, an American philosopher who has a little book that was even translated into Hebrew, called Mind, Brain and Science, published by Ofakim of Am Oved, where you can read this—he didn't yet call his approach emergentism, what it's called today, but he was essentially one of the pioneers of this conception, one of its first formulators, and he basically argued as follows. Think, say, about water. Water has the property that it is liquid; it's a liquid. Okay. Can you say about one H2O molecule, one individual water molecule, that it is liquid? Obviously not. A single molecule cannot be liquid, nor solid, nor gas. Liquid, solid, and gas are states of matter—or in other words, states of an aggregate of molecules. They are not states of an individual molecule. Therefore liquidity is a property of an aggregate of water molecules, not of an individual molecule. Does that mean that in the collection of molecules—when I look at a glass of water—besides water molecules there's something else there? Some vital substance that causes them to be liquid? So John Searle says no, absolutely not. It only means that there are properties of a collection of items that do not exist at the level of the individual item. In the move from the individual to the collective, to a collection of individuals, there can appear, emerge, properties that do not exist on the individual level. Therefore a single water molecule cannot be liquid, but wait a second—an aggregate of water molecules can be liquid. But that still doesn't mean that when I have liquid in a glass there is something there besides a collection of molecules. None of the molecules is liquid, but the collection of molecules is liquid. That means that there are, basically, properties that appear only at the macroscopic level, only at the level of the aggregate, and they do not characterize the individual component, the individual item composing that aggregate. And still, that does not mean that there is anything in the aggregate besides simply the collection of individuals. Because the point people often fail to notice is that not every macro-level property can also appear at the micro-level. It may be that on the micro-level it is not even defined, does not exist, but on the macro-level it appears—and that does not mean there is some additional substance here. What there is here is just a collection of molecules, that's all. And still, suddenly a property called liquidity appears, it emerges. That's basically the explanation of emergence. Now John Searle's claim is that mental phenomena, our mental activities, emerge from the material complex. They are properties of the material complex. You understand that this is basically a materialist formulation, not a dualist one. It's a sophisticated materialist formulation. Meaning, the foolish materialists say there is no such thing as mental phenomena; mental phenomena are basically electrical currents. That's nonsense. Mental phenomena are not electrical currents; one can say they are produced by electrical currents. But what John Searle wants to claim is that mental phenomena still do not mean that in the brain, or in us—not necessarily in the brain but in us generally—there is something besides a collection of neurons. It may be that a large collection of neurons creates mental phenomena just as a collection of molecules creates the phenomenon of liquidity, and therefore these phenomena are basically collective phenomena of biology, not anything beyond that. So you can still remain within a materialist worldview, but a sophisticated one, one that does not deny the existence of a mental dimension in a person, but claims that this mental dimension does not mean there is dualism here, that there is something besides matter; rather, it is a collective property of matter, it emerges from matter. Okay, this claim—I think at least, from the impression I get—is the most widespread approach today among brain researchers and philosophers dealing with this topic; this is the prevalent approach. Basically, when we confront or try to compare the two views I described earlier, between libertarian interactionist dualism and materialist determinism, we are basically confronting two conceptions. One conception says: there is only matter in us, and mental phenomena emerge from the material complex, and of course everything is deterministic if that's so, because matter dictates it, and matter is deterministic. Water doesn't flow wherever it wants; water flows where Newton's laws take it. The molecules that compose it. Therefore this doesn't give me libertarianism; it's thoroughgoing determinism. That's one side of the coin, the deterministic side. The other side says: no, there is something else in us, called spirit, which is in interaction with matter, the neurons if you like, in the head, in the brain, and that interaction also allows the spirit to conduct itself in some way not dictated by matter. It has a way of acting freely, choosing freely, deciding freely, and influencing matter, moving it and causing results through our decisions or through our mental activities. There are two claims here: one claim is that there is another kind of substance, another kind of existence besides matter, and second, the libertarian claim, that there is freedom here. And we will have to deal with both of those planes. Maybe one more example that will clarify things in a way a bit closer than water, because water sounds a little too banal as an example. So think of an example that I think I took from Leibowitz, if I remember correctly. He has a little book on the psychophysical problem. He doesn't deal there with choice, by the way; he deals with the question of body and soul, only the question of dualism versus materialism. The example concerns a computer. Look at a computer, for example. We can describe the computer standing before us at several levels. We can begin at the level of elementary particles in physics. All in all, this computer is a material body composed of particles; it has atoms and subatomic particles that somehow compose larger, macroscopic materials, and somehow in the end a computer is formed. When we look at the micro-micro-micro level, we can describe each particle of the computer—what state it is in, at what speed it is moving, what force it exerts on its surroundings, where it is located, and so on. If I give you the full description of all the particles composing the computer, that is a description of what is going on here, a complete description at the level of the basic physics of elementary particles. There is a level of less basic physics, a higher level of integration, which talks about electrical currents, Newton's laws, somewhat more macroscopic physical phenomena. After that we can move to the logical level, logical gates, and I can describe the computer in terms of being built from connections of logical gates. Then I move to the functional level, and I say: there is a CPU, there is a processing unit, and memory, and an interface—an interface with the user, right—and so on. And that too is a description of this computer. Now notice: all these descriptions, each one of these descriptions, uses a completely different conceptual system that does not talk to the others. All these descriptions are true. And yet, from the description of microscopic physics, you cannot derive the logical description. You cannot derive the logical description. If, say, some object like this were standing before you and you didn't know what a computer was—an object like this stands before you and I give you a description of every particle in that object, exactly what state it's in, where it is, what its speed is, what forces act on it, everything. I give you all the descriptions. Would you be able, from that, to understand that this is a computer? Absolutely not. There is no way to understand that, even though this is a computer; I'll give you everything. The computer, basically, when I grasp it as a computer, I relate to it on the functional level. When I relate to the particles composing it, I relate to it on the physical level. In the middle there is the logical level, hardware, software, and so on. Meaning, there are different levels of integration at which I describe the same object. And these are different descriptions that use different languages. But the important point is that there is no additional substance whose existence must be assumed in order to describe the logical plane beyond what I assume on the physical plane. It's not that on the logical plane I think there is something in the computer besides particles. No, there are only particles in it. But the logical plane now relates to the particles in some broader way, at a lower resolution, where I look at a certain collection of particles that creates an AND gate. So I say: here I have an AND gate connected to an OR gate, and so on. So it's not looking at the level of a single electron but at the level of logical units. But every such logical unit is a collection of electrons. There is nothing there besides the electrons. The computer is perhaps an example a bit closer to what emergentism claims regarding the human being. In a human being too, basically, the claim is the same claim. When you look at his elementary particles, you're speaking about him at the level of physics. When you look at his non-elementary particles, say atoms and so on, you're still looking at him at the level of physics, but higher-level physics. You speak about kinds of materials—that's already an even higher physics level, solid state and so on. Then you move to chemistry, then biology, and eventually physiology, okay? And after that there are already mental phenomena, leave that aside. So all these are different levels of integration and different forms of description and discourse that use different conceptual systems. But that doesn't mean that on the biological level there is something besides physics. Rather, biological description cannot use physics alone. You cannot describe biological phenomena by describing what each particle is doing on the physical level. You won't understand anything from that on the biological level. It's simply a flood of information that won't help you in any way. You know where ten to the fiftieth power electrons are standing, and what each one's speed is. How could you know from that that at this moment I am performing the operation one plus one equals two? There is no chance you could know that; it's over-information. Meaning, you cannot know such a thing. What you need is some description with less sensitive eyes, looking more at the larger scales, at higher levels of integration, in order to understand that some logical operation is actually taking place here. Okay, but, John Searle claims, this does not mean that there is something in us besides elementary particles. There are still only elementary particles in us; it's just that one can discuss them at the logical level, one can discuss them at the physiological level or the functional level—what the brain does, memory, thinking, emotions, and so on. But these are only different levels of discussion; it is not discussion of a different kind of reality, of matter. That, in short, is the emergentist claim. Now I want to focus the discussion of emergentism on two planes. First, I want to talk about the materialist versus dualist plane, the question whether we have spirit or whether we don't have spirit. After that I will talk about the question of determinism versus libertarianism, the question of whether we have free choice. Because there are those who want to put free choice too into emergentism. That is, to claim that it allows free choice within physics, in a materialist, physicalist world. I'll begin with dualism. The language we use to describe the transition from micro to macro was actually developed in physics in the field called statistical mechanics. Look, for example, let's take the example of a gas, a free gas. I have a collection of particles marked here A, B, C. And each one of them is in some place inside a container. What is described here, for the sake of simplicity, in this container there are two places, the right place and the left place. Of course in space it is continuous, but I'm speaking about a very, very simple model just to clarify the idea. So each such particle can be found either in region X or in region Y. Okay? This is region X and this is region Y. All right? So it has one of two locations. Besides that, it has some velocity described by the arrow. This is the velocity of C, this is the velocity of particle B, and this is the velocity of particle A. This arrow describes both the magnitude of the velocity—here the speed is low because the arrow is short—and the direction of the velocity, which is this way. Here the speed is higher and in this direction. And here the speed is medium in this direction. Okay? So such an arrow describes the velocity of each particle, direction and magnitude. Speed and velocity, what physicists call them. Speed is the magnitude of the velocity, how many kilometers per hour, and velocity also includes the direction. Now think that in an ordinary gas, of course, I don't have three particles, I have a huge number of particles, huge, huge, huge, huge numbers of particles, billions upon billions upon billions of billions of particles. Okay? For each one of them, in principle, I can give a description as I explained earlier, at the level of where it is and what its velocity is. As described here. Right? In principle. Of course ignore quantum theory for a moment—you can't know where it is. So for each particle, one can know its location and velocity. From those data one can derive macroscopic properties of the gas of particles; in fact that's why this whole model was built. For example, what is the pressure in the container, of all this gas, the temperature in this gas container. All kinds of properties of the aggregate of particles, like, for example, liquidity and solidity, what I described earlier. Those properties are called macroscopic properties of the gas. They are of course derived from the state of the basic particles; there is nothing in the gas besides a collection of particles. But the macroscopic properties do not characterize the individual particle, as John Searle told us. There is no pressure of a single particle or temperature of a single particle or liquidity, state of matter of a single particle. All these properties are properties of the aggregate of particles and not of the individual particle. Okay? But still, at the macro level I can speak about the properties of the gas and I don't need to assume there is anything in it beyond the collection of particles. Now there is an important point that is critical for our discussion. We distinguish—look here, say, at the example drawn before you. We have three particles. What would happen if I switched the names? That is, particle A would be C and particle C would be A. Say this particle A here, okay, would move here, be here, and get this velocity. And particle C would move here, stand here, and get this velocity. Would anything change? Only the name. Only the name, right? If, for example, I put here two particles with different positions and velocities but which sum to this, and I put other particles that sum to this and this—that is, arranged things differently, but still when I summed the result over all the particles I got the same result—then you understand that the macroscopic properties of the gas would remain the same. And what this basically means is what is called multiple realizability. All right? Multiple realizability means: a macroscopic state of the gas, I describe it with a capital A, you see here—say it has such-and-such pressure, such-and-such temperature, and it is in a state of matter of liquid, of gas—in the case of gas, of course, it's gas. Okay? This thing, the macroscopic state, does not tell me what the microscopic state of the gas is. The microscopic state means where each particle is and what its velocity is. Here you see there is lowercase a1, a2, a3, a4. Each of these is a different microscopic state, but when we sum the properties of all the individual particles we get the same macroscopic state. Okay? And for each macroscopic state there are many, many configurations of the individual particles that will yield it. Therefore the relation between microscopic states and macroscopic states is not just that we are dealing with two modes of discourse and two equivalent descriptions of the same reality. This description is much more sensitive than this description. This description cannot distinguish among these six states. If I tell you that the gas has such-and-such pressure and such-and-such temperature and it is in a gaseous state, you will not know how to tell me whether the particle state is a1, a2, a3 up to a6. Because they all give the same macroscopic state A. That is what is called multiple realizability. Meaning, every such microscopic state is a realization of the macroscopic state above. There are multiple realizations. Okay? Now the claim is as follows. On the plane, in the claim of an emergentist conception, the claim is basically that the macroscopic state is simply the sum over all the particles in this microscopic state or this one or this one—the sum gives the same thing. Right, that's basically the claim of emergentism. The results—now let's look at this not as the statistical mechanics of a gas but as a human being. So here there are brain states. Brain state a1 means one neuron is in an on state, neuron two is in an off state, neuron three is off, neuron four is on, and so on. State a2 describes a different vector of neurons, but gives me the same macroscopic state. And so on. There are very many microscopic states corresponding to the same macroscopic state. There is some crab, by the way, a spiny crab, that doesn't know how to do anything except walk in various ways. And it has a small number of neurons, and it has I don't know how many millions of configurations of brain state, because it has a small number of neurons—millions of configurations is very little. But it only knows how to do, say, one hundred thousand movements. So if it only knows how to do one hundred thousand movements and it has, say, ten million brain states, then that means there are one hundred microscopic states corresponding to the same movement. One hundred times one hundred thousand is ten million. Okay, so there, for example, they even succeeded in quantifying how many realizations there are for each macroscopic state. In simple systems we know how to do this; in a human being there is no chance of doing such a thing because the number of possibilities is enormous and the number of functions we know how to perform is beyond counting. So there is no way to divide one by the other. Now the claim is basically this. Emergentism claims, first, that the human being is a material creature, meaning all there is in us is simply a collection of neurons, and the mental states are simply a macroscopic description of the neuronal states. Second, the additional claim is that because—not the same people make this claim, but now there are those who claim that despite our being materialists we can advocate free choice. Why? Because a person can be in state a1 and then be angry. Okay, the macroscopic state is angry. That is the state of the neurons, the vector of neurons here. But now this vector of neurons also symbolizes an angry state, so he can move to this vector of neurons, okay? And then the state will remain angry. But now, after all, the laws of physics take this configuration here and move it to another configuration. This configuration they would move, say, to b1; this configuration they move to, say, state b2. But b1 and b2 are not equivalent to the same macroscopic state. They may be equivalent to another macroscopic state: this one to state B, this one to state C. And therefore, basically, a person can be in—say, a person got punched. All right? Now he is angry; that's his macroscopic state. Now what is the claim of free choice? That he can punch back because he's angry, but he can also restrain himself. And the fact that he is angry does not tell me what he will do in the next moment. So the emergentists claim: there, I'll explain to you why this is so without arriving at dualism. I'll explain to you why this is so. Because it may be that he is in state a1, which is also angry, and then that will move him to state b1, which corresponds to macroscopic state B, meaning punching back. But he could also be in state a2, which is a different microscopic state, and the laws of physics will take him to microscopic state b2—to c2, sorry. But c2 corresponds to macroscopic state C, which means restraining himself and not punching. Therefore, basically, you can move between microscopic states while remaining in the same macroscopic state, and that supposedly means that we have free choice. There is such a claim. So I want to begin with the first claim—both are incorrect. I want to begin with the first claim. The first claim basically says that the fact that we have mental abilities and processes within us does not mean that there is something in us besides matter. Since there are emergent phenomena like liquidity, what we spoke about before, like statistical mechanics. But there is a big difference between the claim about the emergence of the mental from the neural, from the brain, and the claim about the emergence of liquidity from molecules. What is the difference? It's very simple. The moment you give me the states of the molecules, I know how to explain whether this will be liquid or not liquid. True, a single molecule is not a liquid, you can't describe it in terms of liquid, but I can tell you that if the molecule has such and such properties, such an aggregate of molecules

[Speaker C] will be.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That means I have a way to calculate what will happen on the macroscopic level if I have data about the microscopic state. In brain processes, the emergence of mental phenomena out of the neuronal system, the nervous system, there I have no way to calculate it. Nobody knows how to do that; there is no way to calculate such a thing. So to say that there are properties that exist on the collective macroscopic plane, and that this doesn’t necessarily mean there is something else there—that’s true. But all the examples we know from the scientific world are examples where I can do the calculation and show you how the collective properties emerge from the microscopic plane. You can’t conclude from that that mental phenomena also merely emerge from the neural whole. Who told you that? I claim that there is also spirit there. So after that claim is raised—which is of course a correct claim—they say, the emergentists say: right, so let’s distinguish between weak emergence and strong emergence. Weak emergence is emergence like liquidity. Meaning, the property of being liquid does not characterize a single molecule. But still, from the properties of the individual molecule I can understand and calculate what the property of the cluster of molecules will be, and whether it will be liquid or not. That is called weak emergence. But they claim that in the brain we have strong emergence. The neuronal system creates collective phenomena that have a mental character. I have no way to reduce the mental phenomena to the neuronal system. Therefore, this is strong emergence. But it is still emergence; there is no need to assume the existence of anything beyond the neural aggregate. That is basically the claim of the proponents of emergence on the first question, the question of materialism. Why is that a problematic claim? And I’ll tell you why. It’s not only that we have no examples in physics of strong emergence. There cannot be such examples. There cannot be— a priori there cannot be. Why not? Think about it. In order for you to find, in the scientific world, an example of strong emergence, what has to exist? You need to take something, some system that has many items in it, many particles let’s say, where on the macroscopic level certain phenomena appear or certain properties appear that cannot be explained on the basis of the properties of the individual elements, of the micro-level. But I also know that there is nothing there except the collection of the individual elements. But there is no such thing. Because every time you fail to explain the macroscopic properties in terms of the microscopic reality, I can always claim: then there’s something else there. It’s like—you know—the example I brought in the book: raspberry juice. Right? Take a glass with water and concentrate, raspberry concentrate. Then the emergentist comes along and looks there and says: there are water molecules here; apparently a collection of water molecules, when they are inside a glass, creates a red color. A collection of molecules creates a red color. Nonsense. There is concentrate there. The concentrate colors them. The collection of molecules would have remained transparent. There is something else there causing the red color. What the emergentist is really claiming is this: if we see a phenomenon where we add water into a glass and a red color appears there, and I don’t know how to explain how the red color arises from the properties of the water molecules, then I’ve found an example of strong emergence. But I will always claim that if you have no explanation for how the collective phenomenon arises out of the micro-level, then maybe there is something else there. How do you know there isn’t something else there? And if you do know how to explain how it arises from the micro-level—then there is no need to assume that there is something else there, because the micro-level is sufficient to explain the macroscopic properties—but then that is weak emergence. Therefore, by definition, there can never be a scientific example of strong emergence. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It only means that you won’t be able to bring me a scientific example of it. It will always remain a philosophical assumption, one that can be debated. And therefore their claim about the brain as well—the examples of liquidity are examples, but unsuccessful ones. And so too with all the examples brought in this context. All of them suffer from the same flaw. All of them are weak emergence. But that’s not accidental, because there cannot be scientific examples of strong emergence. There can only be examples of weak emergence. So that’s no great insight. Weak emergence, I also know. If there is a property like liquidity that I know how to explain on the basis of the molecules, then why would I assume there is something there beyond the water molecules? Obviously, the water molecules alone are enough for me to explain liquidity. But in a place where I have no way at all to explain mental phenomena on the basis of neurons—not only do I not know how to explain them, there isn’t even a language with which one could explain this matter. There is no one in the world who even has an idea of a language that could be used to explain this. So there, to assume that there is nothing else and that there are only neurons here, and they are what create the mental phenomena, when you don’t even have a language to explain it—that’s not just a gap, not just a gap in scientific knowledge. It’s something essential; you have nothing. So here, to come and claim positively that this is only emergence—that’s nonsense. Well, what do I mean by nonsense? I mean, it could be true, but it is completely ungrounded. It remains a philosophical dispute. Neuroscience changes nothing about this. Neuroscience merely says that if there is strong emergence, then maybe the neuronal system can explain all the mental phenomena. Very nice, but the whole debate is over whether there is strong emergence or not. Neuroscience adds nothing to that issue. Since I can always claim that the brain state is not enough to explain the mental phenomena, and that something else is needed—the soul, the spirit, or something like that. That’s regarding the debate between determinism and dualism. The debate about the… yes? Just one second, I only want to finish the second point and then there will be room for questions. The second point is the issue of free choice. People want to claim that in this mechanism one can also insert free choice into physics. Even though what we saw is that in chaos and in quantum theory that can’t be done. How? As I said earlier, what they want to claim is simply this: since there are several microscopic states, and each such state tells me what the state of each and every neuron is—A1 means neuron one is firing, neuron two is firing, neuron three is off, neuron four is firing, five is firing, six is off, and so on. The connections between them give me the whole map. That is the little A1 state; that is the microscopic state. A2, whoops, gives me the other microscopic state. All these correspond to the same macroscopic state. Both of them are a state of anger at someone who hit me. Okay? All these states—and there are many, I drew six, there are of course millions of them. Okay? So now they tell me this: since the process itself, according to the emergentist view, takes place at the neuronal level, the process itself takes place at the neuronal level. I have neurons in a given state. Now the laws of physics cause this one to fire, that one to turn off. There is some dynamics of the neurons according to the laws of physics. Meaning, this state A1 will, according to the laws of physics, move to state B1. State B1 means restraining myself on the macro level; big B means restraining myself. Okay? So, restraining myself, and then I restrain myself. But if state A2 is the state of anger and not A1, then the dynamics will bring me to C2, okay? which parallels the state of throwing a punch back. Macroscopic state C means throwing a punch back. Therefore, in the same given state, a state of anger A, I have two possibilities for how to develop: either restrain myself or hit back. So here we supposedly see that within the physical world, within the world of the laws of nature, there is a possibility of two different reactions following the same state. Actual free choice. But that is of course simply a mistake. Why? Because when I am angry now, I have no way to choose whether to be in little state A1 or little state A2. Either I am in A1 or I am in A2. I don’t know—I am in one of them. But I am only in that one; I have no way to jump to another. And the state I am in—let’s say it is A2—the laws of physics say that it will become B2, that is the next state, according to the dynamics of the neurons. So if that is the case, it dictates the macroscopic response B. I have no way to choose. Where exactly am I choosing here? After all, the dynamics is really taking place at the neuronal layer here, in the little states. The macroscopic state is a derived state. After I am in a certain microscopic state, one can do the calculation for what macroscopic state corresponds to it, but the dynamics, the transition from state to state, happens here. So if I am in A3, then A will move to D3. If I am in A2, it will move to C2. If I am in A1, it will move to B1, and so on. Okay? Therefore, being in one of these—and I can only be in one of them—dictates what the next state I will be in is. There is no place here to insert choice. It is simply a conceptual mistake. This way of looking at things does not allow one to insert choice into the system of the laws of nature, into physics. That is point A. Point B: the question of interactionist dualism versus materialist determinism remains open, since it is a question of strong emergence. And strong emergence has not been found in physics to this day, and I assume it also will not be found, because conceptually it cannot be found. Therefore this is not an accidental gap; it is an essential gap. You won’t succeed in finding it. Okay, so the point is that emergence—or really neuroscience—these are all basically emergent sciences. They are trying to derive from the different brain structures what we do on the mental level. Yes? How the brain structure dictates what a person does on the mental level, on the cognitive level, on the emotional level, and so on. So emergence created in people a hope that maybe this could decide the debate between materialism and dualism. We saw that it cannot decide it. As for the possibility of inserting free choice into the laws of physics, it’s not only that it cannot decide it—it is simply not true. It’s just confusion. The first issue is simply undecided; it remains a philosophical question. Science contributed nothing. Here it is simply just a mistake, because it introduces no element of choice. It cannot introduce any element of free choice here. Every neuronal system behaves according to the laws of physics. And if I have a given neuronal state, then the laws of physics say what the next state will be. And consequently they also dictate what the next macroscopic state will be, or the next mental state. Therefore there is certainly no free choice here. And we are left, basically, with the conclusion that this description of the brain infrastructure underlying our mental activity has, so far, not advanced us—neither regarding materialism versus dualism nor regarding free choice. What I’ll do next time is get into the Libet experiments. The Libet experiments are experiments done in the context of neuroscience, where they tried to show empirically that a person has no free choice. So that will use the infrastructure I described here, but in a more concrete way, in order to try to decide this question in the laboratory. All right? Which is really the essence of our whole move here. That’s it, up to this point. If anyone wants to comment or ask, you can do that now.

[Speaker C] Wait, just a small question. All of statistical mechanics is built, once again, on probability. It doesn’t really dictate anything; it’s just a very high likelihood or something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. The law of large numbers, for physicists, is deterministic. Of course we are talking about infinitely many degrees of freedom. Statistical mechanics is defined over infinitely many degrees of freedom. And with infinity, the law of large numbers reaches a result with probability one.

[Speaker C] Okay, but it’s not infinity, it’s a large number.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, it’s a mathematical theory. Right, in principle, even in quantum theory. In principle, when you throw a ball at a wall, it could pass through the wall to the other side of the wall; it’s just that the probability of that is ten to the power of minus I-don’t-know-what, so it has no realistic chance. But yes, in principle it could happen.

[Speaker C] But I didn’t completely understand the difference between what we’re talking about here and what we started with—when people say that science doesn’t know everything, then in every generation God just gets pushed farther and farther away.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I said that I—

[Speaker C] So here it’s the same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think not. Because in the context of strong emergence, my claim is not that more scientific research is needed to complete this, but rather that this is an essential gap. There won’t be a scientific example of it. Therefore it is much stronger than saying, okay, let’s wait another hundred years and see. It’s like what I asked regarding the proofs for the existence of God. So people tell me: look, but evolution explains how life came into being; you don’t need the assumption that God created it. So I say, fine, but evolution has holes in it, it has gaps. Okay? So there too they say: this is God of the gaps; if we research more, we’ll fill in the gaps. I ask—here I think this is not God of the gaps. It’s a good argument. Why? Because it’s an essential gap. Meaning, physics will not discover how the laws of physics were created; it operates within the framework of the laws of physics. Therefore this is a much stronger claim than a claim that merely requires more scientific research to close a gap. When there is an essential gap, the claim is better. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m right. It only means that science does not succeed in deciding it, and it remains an open philosophical question. That’s all. I am certainly not claiming that I’m right. And the fact that you didn’t manage to prove that I’m wrong does not mean that I’m right. It only means that you and I are in the same position: we have a philosophical dispute, and science hasn’t contributed much to this dispute. Anyone else?

[Speaker C] Okay, happy new year.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Happy new year, goodbye.

[Speaker B] Happy new year, happy new year. More power to you. Happy new year. Sabbath שלום.