Free Will and Choice – Lesson 19

Table of Contents

• The framework of the discussion: determinism and Jewish commitment
• Professor Haim Sompolinsky and the claim of compatibility
• Emptying things of content and a deterministic “facade”
• Maimonides, the Maharal, and the verses about choice as a foundation of the Torah
• Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, deterministic claims, and the critique of contradiction
• Hasidic writings, “everything is in the hands of Heaven,” and the claim that there is no systematic position here
• The internal contradictions in Rabbi Tzadok and the criticism of “mere chatter”
• Coercion, inadvertence, intention, and the foundation of Jewish law as presupposing choice
• Intention in acquisitions, conversion, and an effective versus ineffective legal acquisition
• Repentance, regret, resolve for the future, and annulment of vows
• Reward and punishment, the World to Come, and correction within materialistic determinism
• The passage “and you shall choose life” and the absurdity of persuasion and manipulation
• The purpose of creation, Rabbi Kook, and the claim that choice is the essence of the human being
• The existence of God, materialism, and the problem of spirit-matter interaction
• Interim summary: the problem becomes even worse for a believing Jew
• Tosafot in Yevamot: prophecy and the conditions of choice
• Tosafot in Shabbat: prayer, prior decree, and the implications for foreknowledge and choice
• Final questions, dialogue with students, and a distinction within compatibilist determinism

Summary

General overview

The speaker moves from a general philosophical-scientific discussion to the question of whether determinism can be reconciled with Jewish religious commitment, and argues that the issue of free choice has to be decided with intellectual honesty even if that creates a contradiction with religious commitment. He presents Professor Haim Sompolinsky as an observant Jew who defines himself as a determinist and claims there is no contradiction, and in response argues that this kind of reconciliation requires emptying religion and Jewish law of their content and leaving only a facade. The speaker brings major sources that present free choice as a foundational Torah principle—Maimonides, the Maharal, and the verses of “and you shall choose life”—and opposite them he presents sources that seem deterministic—Crescas and Hasidic writings—but argues that they are contradictory or fragmentary and therefore cannot serve as a basis for a consistent position. He goes on to argue that Jewish law, almost casually, presupposes choice through categories like coercion, inadvertence versus intentionality, intention, repentance, and annulment of vows, and that materialistic determinism also undermines reward and punishment, the World to Come, the purpose of creation, and even the very possibility of the existence of God and revelation. Finally, he cites Tosafot in Yevamot and in Shabbat to support the claim that absolute foreknowledge cannot be reconciled with choice.

The framework of the discussion: determinism and Jewish commitment

The speaker asks whether one can be a determinist and still be a committed Jew, and emphasizes that in his view there is no necessary connection between clarifying the issue of free choice and the need to defend religious commitment. He says that if a person honestly arrived at a deterministic conclusion and it contradicts his religious commitment, then he will have to decide which one takes precedence, but the contradiction is not itself an argument against determinism. He says he does want to clarify what “the picture that emerges from the sources” is, and what is required in order to hold determinism and Jewish commitment together.

Professor Haim Sompolinsky and the claim of compatibility

The speaker presents Professor Haim Sompolinsky as head of the Institute for Neural Computation at the Hebrew University, a kippah-wearing observant Jew who defines himself as a determinist for scientific-philosophical reasons and is committed to Jewish law. The speaker says that Sompolinsky claims there is no contradiction between determinism and Jewish law and that “intellectual honesty requires” holding both. He notes that he disagrees with Sompolinsky both on the scientific-philosophical level, because in his view there is no evidence for determinism, and on the religious level, because in his view this reconciliation requires draining religion of all content.

Emptying things of content and a deterministic “facade”

The speaker argues that the deterministic response to objections against determinism is a retreat to a position that replaces ideas with words and leaves the external behavior unchanged but empty of meaning. He says the determinist will continue to speak about judgment, responsibility, and punishment, but will explain that all of these are merely “illusions” or external practices without any real basis in choice. He argues that the same mechanism is likely to appear in the religious sphere as well, so what remains is a skeleton of faith and observance of Jewish law without any real content.

Maimonides, the Maharal, and the verses about choice as a foundation of the Torah

The speaker quotes Maimonides in chapter 5 of the Laws of Repentance: “Permission is granted to every person… and the Holy One, blessed be He, does not decree upon a person from the beginning of his creation that he should be righteous or wicked,” and presents this as a “great principle” and a “pillar of Torah and commandment,” supported by the verses “See, I have set before you today” and “See, I place before you today.” He adds that the verse “and you shall choose life” makes clear that a person is required to choose and therefore has the ability to choose, and that these demands are addressed to him because choice is possible. He quotes the Maharal in Derekh Chayim, that man was created in the image of God and because of this he is “under his own authority” and possesses choice, similar to God, “who does what He desires.”

Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, deterministic claims, and the critique of contradiction

The speaker presents Rabbi Hasdai Crescas in Or Hashem as someone who adopts determinism for two reasons: a theological reason, namely that the knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He, dictates choice, and a “scientific” reason, namely deterministic laws of nature. He quotes Ravitzky, who wrote that there are two sections in Crescas’s book on the subject of choice and that they contradict one another, and he describes a more moderate section that tries to argue that actions are fixed in advance but “how to relate” to them depends on the person. He rejects this and argues that the attitude itself is part of nature, and that if God knows that attitude in advance as well, then it too is not in the person’s hands; and if He does not know it in advance, then the assumption that determinism is necessary because of foreknowledge collapses. He concludes that Crescas’s position is “simply a contradiction,” and therefore can be ignored as a position.

Hasidic writings, “everything is in the hands of Heaven,” and the claim that there is no systematic position here

The speaker says that Sompolinsky mainly cites Hasidic writings of Izbica and Rabbi Tzadok, and brings the phrase “everything is in the hands of Heaven, even fear of Heaven” in the name of Mei HaShiloach as a conception of absolute determinism. He quotes Rabbi Tzadok in Tzidkat HaTzadik, that the essence of repentance is “until God enlightens his eyes,” and that “everything he sinned was by the will of God, may He be blessed,” and presents this as subordinating the sin itself to the will of God and turning repentance into something that God does to the person. He raises, from within the text itself, questions about the meaning of repentance and of reward and punishment when “everything” is attributed to God, and argues that in Hasidic writings one does not expect consistency because they are “fragments” and not a systematic treatise, and so it is difficult to derive conclusions from them.

The internal contradictions in Rabbi Tzadok and the criticism of “mere chatter”

The speaker quotes Rabbi Tzadok later in the same passage, on “knowledge and choice,” in the name of the Ari: “In the place of choice there is no place for knowledge, and in the place of knowledge there truly is no place for choice,” and argues that this is a bundle of contradictions that does not clarify whether God knows what a person will do or not. He says one can also find in these writings explicit statements about free choice, even extreme ones in a libertarian direction, and so the opposing quotations are not decisive. He concludes that in his opinion, quoting books of Hasidut in this context is “throwing sand in people’s eyes,” because you can “load onto them” whatever you want and also find the opposite.

Coercion, inadvertence, intention, and the foundation of Jewish law as presupposing choice

The speaker argues that “Jewish law, as if speaking innocently,” assumes a libertarian conception, and as proof he cites the exemption of a coerced person from punishment, learned from the verse “and to the young woman you shall do nothing.” He says that exemption in cases of coercion makes no sense under determinism, because according to determinism every action is the result of compulsion. He distinguishes between external coercion, which can perhaps be explained in deterministic terms as a case where there is no need “to correct” the person, and internal coercion, such as “an impulse that cannot be controlled,” which in his view would actually justify corrective punishment within a deterministic conception. He adds that the whole halakhic system of distinctions between inadvertent and intentional action, unintentional and intentional, involved and uninvolved, and also the rule that “commandments require intention,” loses its meaning if mental processes are merely a deterministic byproduct of the brain.

Intention in acquisitions, conversion, and an effective versus ineffective legal acquisition

The speaker says that in legal acts of acquisition, “if I did not intend to acquire,” that means “I did not acquire,” and he gives examples of a convert who accepts the commandments as a condition of conversion, and of acts of conversion performed without intention that are ineffective. He rejects the suggestion that intention in acquisition is merely functional for the management of commerce, and argues that if intention were not in a person’s hands, one could have ruled that the act of acquisition alone is decisive—and that would even have been clearer, because “actions are a clear thing” whereas intentions are hard to verify. He cites the sugya at the beginning of Bava Metzia about “his son fell on the found object,” and the discussion of “an acquisition that is effective and one that is not effective,” to show that Jewish law gets itself entangled precisely because of its dependence on the dimension of intention in relation to a legally valid act.

Repentance, regret, resolve for the future, and annulment of vows

The speaker argues that repentance requires regret and acceptance for the future, but under determinism both the sin and the repentance are not in the person’s hands, and so the conditions for atonement become meaningless. He says that the position attributed to Rabbi Tzadok turns repentance into an event in which “God enlightens his eyes,” so that no reason or meaningful possibility remains for human repentance. He adds that in the annulment of vows, “regret and an opening” are required, but if both the vow and the process of regret are deterministic, then “the whole concept” becomes irrelevant. He stresses that annulment of vows is one of those areas that are “mountains hanging by a hair,” and therefore it is unreasonable to explain it away as some irrational scriptural decree.

Reward and punishment, the World to Come, and correction within materialistic determinism

The speaker argues that a materialistic worldview undermines non-material concepts like angels, demons, the World to Come, Paradise, and Hell. He adds that even if one assumes the existence of the World to Come, deterministic punishment is understood as correction rather than recompense, and therefore there is no point in punishing after death, when the brain and body no longer exist and there is no one left “to correct.” He also presents a more general claim: it makes sense to threaten punishment in order to deter people in this world, but it makes no sense actually to carry out punishment in the World to Come when nobody in this world sees it and the person can no longer change his deeds.

The passage “and you shall choose life” and the absurdity of persuasion and manipulation

The speaker quotes at length the passage, “See, I have set before you today life and good… and you shall choose life,” and argues that the Torah is trying to persuade a person to choose the good, which makes no sense under determinism. He says the determinist will interpret this as a kind of brain manipulation, but then the question arises why God does not simply “wire” the person in advance for the good instead of writing verses that persuade him, and why the manipulation actually fails when people sin. He asks why God rebukes Cain for murdering Abel if God Himself “did it” through Cain’s brain, and presents this as an inconsistent puppet theater in a deterministic picture.

The purpose of creation, Rabbi Kook, and the claim that choice is the essence of the human being

The speaker says he does not know how to explain fully “what we were created for,” but argues that the ability to choose is probably the reason for human existence, because if God had wanted robots He would have created robots. He mentions Rabbi Kook on “perfection and self-perfecting,” and on “service for a supernal need,” and presents the idea that a person can perfect himself and become more whole, in contrast to God, who is perfect and does not become perfected. He states that without choice, “this whole world is a facade”—not only the Torah and Jewish law, but the entire human system.

The existence of God, materialism, and the problem of spirit-matter interaction

The speaker presents a question that was asked to Sompolinsky in a course: how can God exist in a world where “there is only matter, only material stuff,” and he describes Sompolinsky’s answer as basically “that’s obvious,” without any real response. He argues that if one denies spiritual entities, there is no basis for making an exception for God Himself, and adds that revelation at Sinai and the creation of the world require interaction between spirit and matter, the very possibility of which the materialist denies. He concludes that a deterministic-materialistic worldview does not coherently allow for the foundations of faith.

Interim summary: the problem becomes even worse for a believing Jew

The speaker says that he has problems even with atheistic determinism, and he does not accept that science, philosophy, or intuition compel him to adopt it. He argues that when we are talking about a believing Jew, the problem “becomes doubly severe,” because determinism is not “compatible” with belief in God, with the Torah’s verses of “and you shall choose life,” with commitment to Jewish law, and with spiritual beliefs such as the survival of the soul. He says he does not understand how “a quotation from Rabbi Tzadok” taken from a contradictory text could solve these deep problems.

Tosafot in Yevamot: prophecy and the conditions of choice

The speaker cites Tosafot in Yevamot 50a on the dispute whether prayer adds years to a person’s life, and the discussion of Hezekiah and the verse “and I will add fifteen years to your days,” and also the prophecy “behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah shall be his name.” He quotes Tosafot’s difficulty: if Hezekiah had not prayed, “a prophecy would have been nullified,” and then Tosafot’s answer: “A prophet prophesies only that which is fitting to be, if he would not have sinned.” The speaker concludes from this that Tosafot hold that prophecy is not deterministic knowledge of what must happen, but rather of what is expected to happen if the person does not choose otherwise.

Tosafot in Shabbat: prayer, prior decree, and the implications for foreknowledge and choice

The speaker cites Tosafot in tractate Shabbat on the wording of a prayer for the sick and the difficulty according to Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda, that everyone is judged on Rosh Hashanah and the decree is sealed, from which it would seem that “according to Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda, prayer is of no use.” He quotes Tosafot’s resolution that this refers to “the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” but emphasizes the principle that if something is “fixed in advance,” there is no possibility of changing it, and therefore prayer would not help. He concludes that in order for choice to be entrusted to the human being, one cannot attribute to God foreknowledge in a sense that dictates the result, and he connects this to Tosafot in Yevamot, which limits knowledge to what is fitting to occur “if he would not have sinned.”

Final questions, dialogue with students, and a distinction within compatibilist determinism

At the end of the lecture, students ask about the meaning of the Torah narratives, Moses’ “Va’etchanan,” and the possibility of explaining everything as a “pedagogical” role that shapes the brain, and the speaker replies that this remains a kind of mediation that grants no real meaning if everything is dictated. One student argues that these difficulties are serious mainly against “the determinism that directly determines everything,” and not against “compatibilist determinism,” and the speaker replies that passing things through “mental actions” changes nothing, because they too are byproducts of prior processes. In the dialogue about punishment and exemption in cases of coercion, it is argued that the exemption applies to someone who is not normative and that punishment would not affect him, and the speaker replies that the deterministic criterion of punishment as successful correction does not hold water, and that even public deterrence and the death penalty have not been shown to reduce crime.

Okay, what I said I want to do now is get a bit into the question—until now the discussion was a fairly general philosophical-scientific discussion, and now I want to get into the question of how this fits with religious commitment, Jewish commitment in particular. Can someone be a determinist and a committed Jew? And here I just want to preface things with a few sentences: at least in my view, there is no connection between the two questions. Meaning, the discussion about free choice is something a person has to conduct with himself honestly and see what conclusion he reaches. If he reaches a deterministic conclusion and as a result it turns out that this doesn’t fit with his religious commitment—fine, then it doesn’t fit, what can you do? He has to be intellectually honest, and therefore I’m not conducting this discussion in order to convince someone that being a determinist is heresy and therefore he has to abandon his views and adopt a libertarian one. I do think there is value in seeing whether a deterministic position is compatible with a Jewish position or not. If it’s not compatible, then a person—even if he’s honest—will still have to make decisions. If on the one hand he accepts Torah commitment or his Jewish religious faith, and on the other hand he has reached a deterministic conclusion—assuming these two things contradict each other—then he’ll have to decide which of the two, in his view, prevails. But obviously I do not mean to present this here as an argument against determinism. That is, if I show that it contradicts the Jewish worldview or Jewish commitment, that is not an argument against determinism; it only means that the person will have to formulate a position and make decisions. Okay.

So I want to start, really, the motivation for this discussion lies with people who, let’s say more plainly, Chaim Sompolinsky—Professor Chaim Sompolinsky, the head of the institute, he was the head of the institute, maybe still is, I don’t know, for neural computation at the Hebrew University—who is a Jew who wears a kippah, observes commandments, committed to Jewish law. I also studied with him for a period at Bar-Ilan before he moved to Jerusalem; actually in Jerusalem too I took a course with him before I wrote the book on free choice—I went to hear a course of his on neuroscience and free choice. And he gives interviews in various places and writes and describes himself as someone who is a Jew committed to Jewish law and a determinist. He’s a determinist for scientific-philosophical reasons, and committed to Jewish law, and he claims there is no contradiction at all—on the contrary, honesty requires both this and that, and therefore he holds both. So beyond the argument I have with him, which I described until now—which is an argument on the scientific and philosophical plane, because I think there is no scientific or philosophical evidence for determinism—I also have an argument with him on the question whether this is compatible with a religious worldview, at least within certain limits. Meaning, we’ll see that in order to accept both religious commitment or the religious worldview and also determinism, you’ll have to empty it out of all content completely. You can remain with some skeletal façade of religious faith, but behind it nothing can stand. And this is very typical, by the way, of the deterministic defense against all the arguments we’ve seen throughout the different lectures: the determinist always retreats to some position that replaces ideas with words. We don’t judge people—we only say that we judge people, or think that we judge people—but the determinist will still say, we’ll continue behaving as usual, just as the determinist behaves like the libertarian. Only what? Everything he does is simply empty of content. So this same type of deterministic excuse-making continues into the religious context as well, and this emptying-out of all content from everything we do while leaving the façade as it is—we’ll behave the same way, think the same way, but really everything is empty, everything is illusion, empty of content, just some external things with nothing truly behind them—so we’ll see that this is what happens on the religious playing field as well.

Okay, so first of all, maybe a good starting point. Again, I remind you once again of the preface I just gave: I’m not bringing these things as proofs against, rather I’m trying to present the picture that emerges from what we might call the Jewish sources. So Maimonides writes in chapter 5 of the Laws of Repentance: “Permission is granted to every person. If he wishes to incline himself toward the good path and be righteous, the permission is in his hand; and if he wishes to incline himself toward the bad path and be wicked, the permission is in his hand. And the Holy One, blessed be He, does not decree upon a person at the beginning of his creation that he be righteous or wicked.” And in his view this matter is a great principle, and it is the pillar of Torah and commandment, as it says—meaning this isn’t Maimonides’s own statement, Maimonides says it is written in the Torah—as it says: “See, I have set before you today life,” and it says: “See, I set before you today”—meaning that the choice is in your hands, and whatever a person desires to do from human actions, he does, whether good or bad. “But know without doubt that a person’s action is in the person’s hand, and the Holy One, blessed be He, neither pulls him nor decrees upon him to do such and such, and for this reason it is said in prophecy that a person is judged for his deeds according to his deeds, whether good or bad.”

Yes, he didn’t bring the most significant verse here. After “See, I set before you today life and good, death and evil,” the verse also says, “And you shall choose life.” Meaning, the verses themselves are basically telling us that we are required to choose—meaning, that we have the ability to choose. The Torah tells us that the demands are directed to us because we have the possibility of choosing. It is written in the Torah; Maimonides describes it here as some kind of foundation of the whole Torah. Okay?

The same thing—the Maharal too, in a passage in Derekh Chayim, writes: “Man was created in the image of God and in this he resembles the Blessed God. A man who was created in the image of God has this quality, that he is under his own authority, just as the Blessed God does whatever He desires; and so too a person has permission in his hand to do whatever he wishes, and he is the possessor of choice.” So the Maharal too sees our ability to choose as some sort of expression of our being in the image of God, and parallel, somewhat, to what Maimonides says—that this is really the foundation of the whole Torah, or what is demanded of us is basically to resemble the Holy One, blessed be He, and to make use of our ability to choose just as the Holy One, blessed be He, does, so to speak.

Now there are other sources that present a deterministic position. For example, Rabbi Chasdai Crescas in Or Hashem presents a deterministic position for the two reasons we discussed throughout these lectures: for the theological reason that God’s knowledge dictates our choice—if the Holy One, blessed be He, knows in advance, then we have no choice—and for the scientific-deterministic reason, because nature has laws that govern it, deterministic laws, and therefore it is impossible for a person to have the ability to do one thing or another under given circumstances. Meaning, he accepts both types of arguments in favor of determinism: the religious argument—that religiosity requires determinism, not just that it doesn’t rule it out or contradict it, but that religiosity requires determinism—which is the problem of divine foreknowledge and choice, since the Holy One, blessed be He, knows in advance; and also the determinism I’ve been talking about all along, scientific determinism: because the laws of nature are deterministic, what happens happens necessarily.

Ravitzky already wrote about Rabbi Chasdai Crescas that there are two sections in his book dealing with choice, in the first part and in the second part, and he says there is a contradiction between the two sections. In one of them he expresses himself more moderately, in the other more sharply and more extremely. In the moderate section he says that the way we relate to what we do is indeed handed over to us. What we do is predetermined—that’s determinism—but how to relate to what we do depends on us. We sin because the Holy One, blessed be He, determined that we would sin, but whether we are happy that we sinned or regret that we sinned—our attitude toward the sin is handed over to us. That is Rabbi Chasdai Crescas’s claim. Of course that can’t really be said, simply because our attitude toward things is also part of nature. Now the question is whether the Holy One, blessed be He, knows in advance not whether I will sin, but how I will relate to the sin that I commit. If He doesn’t know that in advance, then that basically means there are things He does not know in advance. So what? Why does it bother you to say He also doesn’t know in advance what I’ll do, and not only how I’ll relate to what I do? After all, if you already accept that there are things the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know in advance, then what’s the problem? So the whole pressure that forced you to build this strange theory collapses. So accept that He also doesn’t know what I’ll choose, not only how I’ll relate to it. And if you say that He does know how I will relate to what I do, then that too is not in my hands. Because after all, you assume that if He knows in advance, then what He knows in advance is not subject to my choice. So just as you say about the action itself that it is not handed over to me because the Holy One, blessed be He, knows it in advance, so too my attitude toward what I did is not handed over to me because the Holy One, blessed be He, knows that in advance. Therefore this whole distinction is a strange distinction; I don’t understand it, and I don’t think one can say such a thing.

Rabbi, what about purpose?

What do you mean, purpose?

I mean, according to someone who says it’s deterministic, then what is the purpose of the whole business?

I don’t know. Why does he have to give me an answer about the purpose of the whole business? Ask the Holy One, blessed be He. Maybe I’ll comment on that a bit later.

In any case, the first source, the first Torah source that could speak of determinism is Rabbi Chasdai Crescas. But I’ll say again: at the end of the previous lecture someone asked a question and I answered—because I elaborated there on this matter—that not everything printed in Rashi script and bound like a holy book is a Torah position. Sometimes there are mistakes printed in Rashi script and bound in golden letters. So Rabbi Chasdai Crescas too—just because he expresses a contradictory position, that doesn’t mean there is a deterministic position in the Jewish world; it means his position is not a position. Meaning, it is simply a contradiction. Therefore it can be ignored.

There are other sources, which by the way Sompolinsky tends to quote in interviews he gives and so on. I also had quite a few personal debates with him, but I also hear things he says and writes publicly, and there he quotes mainly Hasidic writings, yes, from Izbica and Rabbi Tzadok and that whole school of the oxymoronists—I don’t know, all those people who like to mislead with words. And for example, Rabbi Tzadok—well, the Mei HaShiloach writes: “Everything is in the hands of Heaven, even fear of Heaven.” Meaning, everything is in the hands of Heaven, including fear of Heaven. That sounds like a fully deterministic worldview—that’s the Mei HaShiloach. Rabbi Tzadok, who is his student, writes as follows in Tzidkat HaTzadik: “The essence of repentance is until God enlightens his eyes such that deliberate sins become merits. That is to say, that he recognize and understand that all the sin he committed was by the will of the Blessed God. As the Sages said: three verses, etc., ‘And You turned their heart backward,’ ‘For I have caused evil,’ etc.” “I have caused evil,” the Holy One, blessed be He, says. Meaning, the sins you commit are actually by the will of the Holy One, blessed be He—He decided them. This is an extreme deterministic view, because it basically says everything is in the hands of Heaven, including fear of Heaven, as his rabbi writes. The transgressions too, not only the commandments. Meaning, even when you do acts that are supposedly against the will of God, they aren’t acts against the will of God; that was the will of God. If you did it, apparently that’s what the Holy One, blessed be He, really wanted.

Notice, there is an interesting point here altogether. According to this, one could ask—and I’ll get back to it later—what does it mean to repent? On two levels. First, what am I supposed to repent for? If the Holy One, blessed be He, committed the sin, then let Him repent—why should I repent? Second, what does it mean at all to repent? After all, even the act of repenting is something that apparently I don’t do, but rather the Holy One, blessed be He, does. Meaning, according to this view there is no reason to repent and there is also no possibility of repenting. So look what he writes. I return to that same passage we just read. What is “the essence of repentance”? “Until God enlightens his eyes.” Meaning, a person’s repentance is actually repentance that the Holy One, blessed be He, performs on him. The Holy One, blessed be He, enlightens his eyes, and that is what is called our repenting.

What does he say about reward and punishment?

What do you mean, what does he say? Is there reward and punishment? I don’t know. I assume he thinks there is.

How can there be reward and punishment if everything is the Holy One, blessed be He?

Automatically. Meaning, all the mechanisms—the Holy One, blessed be He, also gives the reward. The Holy One, blessed be He, decides on the sins, and afterward I also get hit for it because that too is part of the process, and it’s all some deterministic routine like that. This is also what… as we discussed the question of how determinists explain punishment in the courts. So I said that determinists do not deny that criminals need to be punished; they simply give an explanation that empties it out, empties it of content. They say: fine, first of all I the judge am compelled to punish just as you were compelled to sin; I too am human. And second, there is also a justification for punishment because punishment corrects you. It gives you some negative reinforcement that will prevent future criminality. So this is all—this is what I said all along—you can see it: determinists completely shadow the libertarian worldview. Everything we think and do remains the same. It just gets emptied of content. What remains is that outwardly everything looks the same, but when you ask yourself what is the reason, what is the basis, why—there’s nothing, there are no answers. It’s all empty of content, and this is consistently the deterministic worldview or deterministic apologetics.

There is some feeling in the world that the libertarians are the ones engaged in apologetics. That’s an intellectual joke. The ones engaged in wild apologetics here are the determinists. And determinists keep explaining that everything we think and do—yes yes, it is really right even though it is empty of content because they have some hair-splitting argument. It’s really a crazy apologetic process. It’s strange that this is perceived as the rational position in general discourse, and specifically the libertarian view is taken to be the mystical, irrational, defensive one. That is simply nonsense. It’s propaganda. Nothing more than that.

In any case, here there really is a very extreme position. Now of course asking what he says about reward and punishment—because you asked what he says about reward and punishment—isn’t very serious, because in Tzidkat HaTzadik it’s these fragmentary bits, and in general with Hasidic writings you don’t expect consistency. Again, I’m not—even—I also have criticism of them, because I think they really are inconsistent. What I mean here is, I’m talking about the genre. This is not criticism. What I said is simply that this is a genre of fragments; it doesn’t present a full and consistent picture. So he won’t write in the next paragraph what his position is on reward and punishment. He has one fragment that says everything is in the hands of Heaven including fear of Heaven, and after that he moves on to talk about what happened with Zilpah and Bilhah. Meaning, this is not a book that presents a systematic picture. Therefore it is very hard to understand what he says on another issue that might be related to the matter. There is no essay here laying out some systematic picture. It’s simply not the right genre. The belief some people have that there is some consistent picture behind the book, even if the genre doesn’t reflect it because the writing style doesn’t reflect it—I don’t believe that either. But here of course one can argue.

You can see other places in those same writings themselves that flatly contradict the point. There are several statements by both the Izbicer and Rabbi Tzadok that write unequivocally about human free choice. On the contrary, they take it in directions so extreme that they go much further than the most extreme libertarians I know. By the way, these were very original figures, very innovative, very independent in thought. And that too doesn’t really fit with some kind of deterministic worldview where the Holy One, blessed be He, does everything. Though anything is possible. It may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, made them very original and innovative. Meaning, He chose to bring down all His innovations into the world specifically through them and not through us. Fine, okay. I said—there can always be these sorts of excuses that empty things of content. The problem is that once a book or a philosophical doctrine contains logical contradictions, then it is hard to draw conclusions from it. You can bring quotations from the Izbicer or from Rabbi Tzadok explaining that they think a person has no free choice, but there are other quotations saying that he does. So then what is it for them? The question is what to do with such a thing. This is some mystical, fragmentary doctrine. There is nothing systematic there, and therefore in my view quoting Hasidic books is just throwing sand in people’s eyes. Generally, not only in this area. In general Hasidic books are, as far as I’m concerned, transparent. They say nothing. There is no point quoting them because they say nothing. If you want, you can load onto them whatever you like; you’ll find the opposite in the same book. There is nothing there.

In any case, I’ll bring you just one example so you can see that I’m not just slandering. Look here: later in that same passage—not somewhere else, in the continuation of that very passage: “And the meaning of knowledge and choice that the Ari explained at the end of the book Arba Me’ot Shekel Kesef—that both are true, each in its own place. In the place of choice there is no place for knowledge, and in the place of knowledge there is indeed no place for choice. And when one apprehends this tremendous light, then all his deliberate sins are not outside the depth of the knowledge of the Blessed God, and He and His knowledge and His will are all one. And since the Blessed God wanted it so, then all is merits, and he attains complete atonement on Yom Kippur.” Anyone who understands this passage—I think even he didn’t understand this passage. This passage is simply a collection of contradictions. This thing is a round triangle in one place and an elliptical square in another, and therefore it doesn’t contradict one thing—it’s just some kind of text that says nothing. Really. It sounds terribly deep and profound, and these Hasidic writings are studied today with great enthusiasm—it’s simply an intellectual scandal, what is going on here. Words are being tossed into the air, there is a contradiction between every sentence and the next one, no one bothers to reconcile these things, because apparently they cannot be reconciled, and that’s it, and everyone gets away with it. So what am I supposed to infer, what conclusion can I draw from such a text? Nothing—simply that there are contradictions.

But the problem of knowledge and choice exists also in Maimonides, and there too it remains unresolved.

No, but Maimonides says—Maimonides does not, does not resolve it. Whether he resolves it or not is a question; we discussed that. But Maimonides doesn’t say yes yes, I have an answer. Knowledge and choice are in one place; knowledge is in one place and choice is in another—what does “in another place” mean? Do I have choice or not? Does the Holy One, blessed be He, know what I’m going to choose or not know? What are you telling me stories about places for? What does it mean that in one place there is knowledge and in another place there is choice? So does He not know what I’m going to do or does He know? This is just meaningless verbiage, simply a pile of nonsense. That’s all—a pile of nonsense. I have no other word for these strange things. I don’t understand—people deal with this and get so excited about the wondrous depth in these things. Of course, anyone with any crazy approach, no matter how wild, can always find some quote from Rabbi Tzadok, and then it sounds very deep, original, and even connected to Jewish sources. The connection between this and Jewish sources is about the same as the connection between it and Hinduism. It’s connected to nothing, because it says nothing. So you can connect it or not connect it to whatever you want.

Take, for example, again, Tzidkat HaTzadik of Rabbi Tzadok.

This is Rabbi Tzadok of Lublin?

What?

This is Rabbi Tzadok of Lublin?

Yes. “Sometimes a person stands in such a great trial that it is impossible for him not to sin, as they said: ‘What shall the son do and not sin?’ In this he is considered fully coerced, and the Merciful One exempts one under coercion. And also when the evil inclination incites with such great force that it is impossible to overcome it, coercion applies.” Did you hear? There can also be a situation where you have a very, very strong impulse or your trial is very, very strong. By the way, that’s not two situations, it’s the same situation itself, because the intensity of the trial is always measured according to the intensity of the inclination. So these really aren’t two things; it’s the same thing. But never mind—for his purposes it’s two things, and in both of them I am basically exempt because it is coercion. “And see what they said regarding one whose beginning was under coercion, even if she laughs at the end—that if she says, ‘Had he not left me, I would have hired him,’ she is still permitted to her husband.” Yes, that woman who was raped there, she remains permitted to her husband even if she laughs and says that even if he had not raped her she would have paid him to do it—I want it—still she is permitted to her husband. Why? “Because the impulse clothed her.” Thus this is considered full coercion even though it is of her own will. Why? Because where there is an impulse that cannot be overcome, some very very strong inclination, then you are considered coerced. Okay? “In any case, such a great inclination a person cannot subdue, and it is full coercion, and there is no punishment here even though he committed a prohibition, since he was coerced. But a person himself cannot testify about this regarding himself, because perhaps he still had the power to subdue the inclination,” and so on—I heard on this, not important.

What is the meaning of this? According to his own view, a person is coerced in all situations. A person has no free choice. Everything he does is an irresistible impulse—it is a result of internal impulses or of manipulations that the Holy One, blessed be He, performs on him. So what is the meaning of this exemption in a case of “the impulse clothed her” or in a case of an irresistible impulse? All human actions are an irresistible impulse. In one of the last lectures I talked about the legal implications of determinism and libertarianism, and I said there that people often ask determinists how they explain, how they justify punishment in the courts—judging a person and punishing him. And I said that they have plenty of explanations for that. My question is exactly the opposite: how do they explain exemption from punishment in places where we exempt a person from criminal responsibility? If he had a strong inclination, an irresistible impulse, I don’t know, a momentary psychosis, or things of that sort—why do I exempt him there? Because according to the determinist, every action of a person is done that way. These are not exceptional actions. Every action of a person is done because something arose within him that caused him to do it. After all, he believes that a person has no choice. So the question is not why punish him when he isn’t coerced—the question is why not punish him when he is coerced. What does it mean to be coerced? According to a determinist view, a person is always coerced—or not coerced, call it what you like—but how do you distinguish between a situation of coercion and a situation that is not coercion? So what does this mean? It means that this passage is really assuming we have free choice. How does that fit with the passage above that says we have no free choice? Rabbi Tzadok has the answer. It’s in one place—apparently when he says this place is choice and that place is knowledge, he means a place in the book. There’s one place in the book where the view is deterministic and another place in the book where we have free choice. I really can’t understand these texts. It’s truly astonishing.

Now this reminds me of something. There is a wonderful line by—what’s the name of that linguist? Noam Chomsky. He has a great comment about the French philosophers. He says: I’m generally considered an intelligent person. When I’m given a text, even in a field I don’t understand, if someone explains it to me, I’ll understand it. Meaning, sit down with me and explain it, and I’ll understand. Somehow with these sorts of texts by the French philosophers, they can’t explain it to me—I just don’t get it. So now I don’t know what to do with this: either think I’m not smart enough to understand it, or perhaps there is another possibility. And he leaves it with three dots. So I would say similar things about many Hasidic texts.

Anyway, that’s why I’m telling you that these quotations from various Hasidic books do not impress me very much. Both because these books contain many contradictions and because the fact that something is printed in Rashi script still doesn’t mean it isn’t a mistake. Meaning, it doesn’t trouble me much. The question whether one can see such a thing as a legitimate Jewish position because there was Rabbi Tzadok and the Izbicer and so on—that’s already another question, I don’t know. In my view it isn’t a position, so automatically I don’t think there is much to discuss about whether it is Jewish or not. Let them first express a position, then we’ll see whether it’s Jewish. Quoting someone from a passage in a contradictory book—I don’t know what that gives. It doesn’t seem very significant to me.

In any event, beyond this general discussion about the direct question itself—whether we have choice or don’t have choice, where we see that the Torah itself says “and you shall choose life,” which is what Maimonides then brings, etc.—overall it seems to me there is almost a full consensus throughout the history of Jewish thought that there is free choice. And again, as I said, in my view this is not an argument in itself; I’m only describing the situation. A person can think otherwise even if there is consensus. I know one or two people in whom that sometimes happens. In any case, the discussion can also continue when we deal with Jewish law speaking innocently, so to speak. When we look at Jewish law speaking innocently—not in direct discussions about whether a person has choice or doesn’t have choice—it seems to me that Jewish law, in passing, clearly tells us that there is some anti-deterministic assumption here. A libertarian assumption, sorry.

We already talked, with Rabbi Tzadok, about the exemption of one who is coerced from punishment. The assumption throughout all of Jewish law, agreed by everyone everywhere, that a person under coercion is exempt from punishment—“and to the young woman do nothing” is learned from a verse. Now this exemption from punishment is very hard to understand in a deterministic worldview. Why is a person exempt under coercion? All my actions, all the actions I do, are actions under coercion. So what is special about situations of coercion that doesn’t exist in other situations? There is no reason to exempt the person. There may perhaps be room here to distinguish between external coercion and internal coercion. If someone threatens me with a gun and because of that I perform a prohibited act, one could say that here there is no point imposing punishment on me even in the deterministic view, since the purpose of punishment in the deterministic view is to correct me, to change my brain structure so that in the future I won’t come to commit the sin, because that is what caused me to commit the sin—the faulty brain structure. So punishment will correct it, it will introduce deterrence and correct the neural network in my head, and that way I won’t sin in the future. But here, if I did it under coercion, then in such a case clearly there is nothing wrong in my head, nothing to correct. I didn’t do it because I wanted to; I did it because someone else threatened me. At most you should punish the one who threatened, not the one who sinned. Therefore here one can understand exemption from coercion even in the deterministic view.

But internal coercion, as we mentioned earlier—an irresistible impulse, an error in perception, or things of that sort—that of course is not an exemption in any way. Internal coercion means precisely that my brain structure or personality structure caused me to sin. That is exactly the reason why I need to be punished in order to correct that brain or personality structure so that I won’t come to sin in the future.

For example, yes, the saying of Rabbi Ilai. I think I already talked about this: Rabbi Ilai says that if a person sees that his evil inclination is overpowering him, he should wear black, go to a distant place, and do what his heart desires. Okay? So Rabbi Ilai of course is speaking in a situation where a person assesses that his evil inclination is overpowering him. But that is always the situation. It is not an exceptional case where I have some irresistible impulse. It is always the situation. So in fact Rabbi Ilai has nothing to say. If a person sees that his inclination is overpowering him—then his inclination is overpowering him, that’s all. Let him go to a distant place—he’ll go if he decides to go, if his inclination takes him to a distant place or not. There is no point giving guidance to such a person. This is not a different state; in any case it is also not in your hands. Everything completely loses its meaning in this picture.

More than that, there is an entire system of psychological concepts that accompanies Jewish law. The distinction between one who sins inadvertently and one who sins intentionally, between one who intends and one who does not intend, between one who is merely occupied and one who is not—all these things lose their meaning entirely in a deterministic worldview. What difference does it make whether I was merely occupied or not? I am compelled to do what I did either way. So what difference does it make whether I paid attention to it or didn’t pay attention to it? The fact that I paid attention is, as it were, a mental event. After all, according to the deterministic-materialist worldview, that is an epiphenomenon. Remember? I explained this: in deterministic-materialist views, mental processes are derivatives of the physical brain actions. The feelings I have—as if I want, or decide, or get emotional, or fear, or whatever feelings I have, or that I think—it doesn’t matter—all that is a side effect, a by-product of biological processes. So why does it matter whether the person had the mental processes or not? What matters is what he did. The mental processes are in any case some deterministic result of what is happening in his brain. So why should I care now whether he intended or did not intend, whether he was inadvertent or not inadvertent?

The same with positive commandments, by the way, not only prohibitions. Even with positive commandments there is the rule that commandments require intention. Why is intention required? Why is the intention of interest? The intention too is only a result of deterministic processes happening in me or not happening in me. The Holy One, blessed be He, does it in any case. The Holy One, blessed be He, also produces my intentions, not only my actions. So this appeal to a whole system of mental concepts, psychological concepts, seems entirely incomprehensible in the deterministic worldview.

And again I say: this is not an argument against determinism. Because if the person has reached a deterministic conclusion, he can say: fair enough, then the Sages were mistaken. The Sages did not know that the world is deterministic, and therefore they set up an entire system of considerations—unintentional, occupied, unintended, all kinds of things like that—when in fact today it turns out to us scientifically that these concepts have no meaning. So you can say that this whole business is a mistake. Fine. What ultimately remains from the system is some empty façade. You can remain with all of it without justification, without basis, without meaning, without anything, and continue in some routine to observe what is written in the Shulchan Arukh for some reason. Well, not for some reason—according to your view because you are compelled to do so. So you don’t even need justifications. Fine—but then what’s the point of talking with such a person? What’s the point of arguing? The reasons he raises are not really the reason he thinks what he thinks, so the whole discourse is emptied of content.

I spoke about intentions—let’s talk about intention in the area of acquisitions, not in the area of positive and negative commandments. When I perform an acquisitive act and do not intend to acquire, then I have not acquired. A convert who intends to accept the commandments is a convert, but if he performs all the acts of conversion and does not intend to accept the commandments, he is not a convert. What is the meaning of that intention? That intention is just some result of physiological processes in the brain that don’t depend on me. I have no choice. The question is whether the current in the brain flowed here or flowed there. So if the current in the brain flowed here, he is Jewish or he acquired the object, and if it flowed there, then not? Why? Why does that matter? You can say, that’s the scriptural decree, but—someone commented before?

Yes, Rabbi, regarding acquisition, maybe intention in acquisition is more functional. Maybe one could claim that in acquisition it’s functional, because we need it as a norm so that people conduct commerce properly, transparently, and so people need to intend their acquisitions.

But that’s exactly the point. If it’s not in my hands, I could just as easily have established that intentions are not needed, and it would still function properly and everything would be fine. Once I performed an act of acquisition, the object becomes mine, whether I intended or not. That is a perfectly orderly system; everyone knows who it belongs to. On the contrary, that is a clearer and more unequivocal system, because go find out what his intentions were. Actions are clear and unequivocal things.

More than that, there is also the discussion at the beginning of Bava Metzia about an effective and ineffective acquisition, Rabbi Akiva Eiger is well known on these matters: a person fell onto a lost object. Someone saw a lost object and fell on it. Fine? Now he thought that falling onto the lost object acquires it for him. He is ignorant, he doesn’t know the laws of acquisition; he thought that falling onto the lost object acquires it. Now the truth is that he could have acquired it through the acquisition of his four cubits in the public domain. So he intended to acquire the lost object, but he intended to acquire it by falling on it—and falling does not acquire. One’s four cubits do acquire, but he didn’t know about that and didn’t intend to acquire through his four cubits. There is an entire discussion there about an effective and ineffective acquisition—whether he acquires the object or not. Now here there was both an intention to acquire and also a valid, acceptable act of acquisition, except that the intention was not to acquire through the valid act. So what? Here there was already an intention to acquire, so everything you want is present. Still, what is the problem? Just say: if a valid act of acquisition was done, then it’s yours; if not, then it isn’t yours. Why appeal to all these mental dimensions, these intentions, when they really only complicate the situation and complicate the picture? The picture would have been much simpler if you based everything on actions. Did you do such-and-such an act? Yes. “Touch it and it’s yours,” as they say in chess. Meaning, you grabbed the piece—you have to move it. Finished. I don’t care what your intentions were, whether you intended or didn’t intend. There are clear rules and that’s how one can function. So this whole story is a bit implausible, illogical.

Maybe more than that: earlier we spoke about concepts like repentance, regret. Within repentance I am supposed to regret what I did and undertake not to do it again. What is the meaning of regret and repentance and undertaking for the future? After all, all of these are deterministic processes. Either they happen to me or they do not happen to me; it’s not in my hands. Okay, so neither the sin was in my hands nor the repentance I do over it is in my hands, so why are they needed? What value is there in such a thing? What difference does it make whether I intended to repent or didn’t intend to repent? That too belongs to the same family of psychological or mental concepts. Okay, why is repentance a condition for atonement or exemption from punishment or things of that kind? It seems to have no importance at all.

More than that, how can one even repent at all? After all, it’s not in my hands. Do you want the Holy One, blessed be He, to repent for me? As Rabbi Tzadok writes in the passage we saw above. What am I supposed to feel—some kind of illusory sensation that I am repenting, even though really I’m not doing it and it’s not repentance; it’s just this or that neural activity? What is the whole story for? You see here that this whole story is emptied of content. It doesn’t help at all.

What about vows? Yes—a person makes a vow, and then according to Jewish law he can go to a sage who will release the vow. Now when the sage releases the vow, this requires regret and an opening—he checks whether he regrets it and whether there is an opening, meaning that had he known something he would not have vowed. Now what does this mean? He vowed because the neurons caused him to vow. There is no deliberation in which he decides yes or no. So the whole concept of releasing vows is not relevant. Again, you can say scriptural decrees and there is no logical meaning to it, but that is what the Torah decreed and this whole story is a collection of scriptural decrees. But first, in the case of vows there really is no source—it is “mountains hanging by a hair,” as the Mishnah in Chagigah says. Releasing vows—there is annulment of vows: “her husband may confirm it and her husband may annul it” regarding a woman whose husband may confirm or annul her vow, but releasing vows has no clear source in the Torah. There is some tiny hint on which they build the whole story. So this whole story is illogical; on that hint I wouldn’t build anything. Fine, if the Torah explicitly said something. But to build a completely illogical scriptural decree when there is no compulsion to do so—why? Not to mention that the sage who releases the vow is also compelled to do what he does, just as I was compelled to do what I did. The whole picture, do you understand, is utterly bizarre.

I’m not even talking only in the halakhic context. One can now discuss it also in the faith-metaphysical context. First of all, spiritual concepts like angels, demons, the World to Come, paradise and hell, and so on—these of course stand under a great question mark in the materialist worldview. By the way, on this matter I too am under a question mark even apart from materialism. But clearly there is no point talking about all these things in a deterministic worldview, in a materialist worldview—they do not exist, all these things do not exist, because they are not material. Okay?

More than that, regarding reward and punishment. So what are you really telling me? You are basically telling me that in the World to Come we will be punished or receive reward. First of all, there are no such things because there is also no one who will arrive in the World to Come, because in man too there is nothing that remains after the body is destroyed. So what will arrive in the World to Come? I would say more than that: in the deterministic worldview, punishment—and even punishment that the Holy One, blessed be He, imposes—its purpose is basically to correct the person, right? Not to educate the person, because there is no such thing, but to correct him, to change some brain structure so that he won’t sin. So I ask you: what is the point of punishing in the World to Come? My brain no longer exists and my body no longer exists—what exactly do you want to correct with this punishment?

I would even say more than that—and by the way, this reasoning exists in any case—I would say that logic would suggest threatening punishment without carrying it out. Because the threat of punishment can deter the person and correct his head and cause him not to sin. But why carry it out afterward? Suppose somehow there is after all a soul and I arrive in the World to Come, okay? Why punish me? Who benefits from that? After all, no one sees that I’m being punished. Those living in this world do not see what happens to me in the World to Come, right? So they won’t be deterred by it. I myself am already there; that’s it, I’m done for. What I did, I did; what I didn’t do, I didn’t do. So what is the point of carrying out this punishment at all? There is a point in threatening, but not in carrying it out. By the way, that argument is true even without determinism; it is genuinely hard to understand what the point is of punishing in the World to Come. Meaning, what do you gain from it? There is a point in telling me in this world that I am liable to reward and liable to punishment in the World to Come, because that will cause me to act correctly or not to act incorrectly. But carrying out these threats gives nothing. Why? Why simply harm a person when you gain nothing from it? That is simply a major question about reward and punishment in general, but according to the deterministic worldview it has no meaning whatsoever, because the whole purpose of punishment is only to correct. And correction is no longer relevant after I die and after no one even knows what happens to me in the World to Come. So what is the point of this whole story?

Now, as I said earlier, this matter of choice already appears in the Torah itself, as Maimonides points out. Look here—you can’t completely ignore this. A very powerful passage: “For you will listen to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes written in this book of the Torah; for you will return to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. For this commandment that I command you today is not beyond you and not far away. It is not in heaven,” etc. “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances,” etc. “But if your heart turns away and you do not listen, and you are drawn away and bow down… I have told you today… I call heaven and earth to witness against you today: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse, and you shall choose life, so that you and your offspring may live, to love the Lord your God, to listen to His voice and cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days, to dwell on the land,” etc.

So the Torah is trying to persuade me to choose the good. Now this whole story in the deterministic worldview is bizarre. Because what will the determinist say? That the Holy One, blessed be He, is basically trying to manipulate my brain so that I do the right thing. Yes, that is basically how he will explain it. Because after all I don’t really choose; there is no point in persuading me. What can be done is to manipulate me. Okay? Now I ask: if the Holy One, blessed be He, is manipulating me to do the good, why all this whole story? Let Him simply arrange my brain by Himself, not through verses in the Torah. Let Him create me in such a way that I won’t sin and will only do good. So what will you say? Like Rabbi Tzadok—that He also wants the sins and also performs them through me, the Holy One, blessed be He. So why did He write me these verses of “choose life” if He wants me to commit the sins? This whole story is completely bizarre. In that worldview, it is utterly bizarre.

More than that, the Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t even succeed. He tries to manipulate us to do good, and in fact people still sin. What a failure. After all, everything is in His hands. He can program my brain, He can create me as He wants, right? So why does He need to try to persuade me in the Torah to do good, when in this whole story I have no choice in the matter at all? I have no discretion in the matter at all. All He is doing is manipulating me. Fine—if He wants to manipulate me, it is much easier just to create my brain in one way or wire my brain differently, so that in the end I will do only what should be done. He isn’t even capable of doing that? That really raises a serious issue about abilities and intelligence. The whole story is so… Then they’ll say, yes, a scriptural decree, the Holy One, blessed be He, decided specifically this way. Fine, one can always hide behind a scriptural decree. This whole story is bizarre—utterly bizarre.

I’m not even talking about the question asked earlier: what is the whole story for, why were we created? That really is a good question. Because in the end I also don’t know how to explain why we were created, but I can point to the fact that our ability to choose is probably the reason we were created. What we do with it and why it helps and so on—I don’t know. But it is quite clear that this is why we were created. Because if the Holy One, blessed be He, had wanted automatic robots to do what He needed, then He would have made automatic robots to do what is needed, or He wouldn’t have made anything at all. So in the end we—those of you with whom I spoke about… I don’t remember if I spoke about it in this series—the difference between perfection and becoming perfected, what Rabbi Kook says about service for a higher need, where he says that the Holy One, blessed be He, created us because we can become perfected, yes? Become more complete, which the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do because He is already perfect, so He cannot become more perfect. Meaning, there has to be something we can do that He cannot. Now that does not exist if we have no choice. And again, without committing myself and without knowing what we achieve through choosing good or choosing evil, I don’t know. But it is quite clear that this power to choose is the essence of the matter—it is the reason we are here. Once that doesn’t exist, this whole world is a façade. Not only the Torah, not only Jewish law, not only human feelings—the whole story is simply bizarre. Who needs it?

Again, all this is not arguments—it is not arguments against determinists. It only means that if you are a determinist, it is very implausible to remain a committed Jew. Okay? Yes, the Torah condemns wrongdoers, imposes punishments, tries to get us not to sin. What’s the problem? Change the wiring in the brain and we won’t sin—that’s all, what’s the story? Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, even rebuke Cain for killing Abel? The Holy One, blessed be He, did it. Through Cain’s brain, He simply killed Abel—that’s all. So what are all these rebukes? Basically an attempt to cause Cain not to commit sins? Well, look—you failed; he killed Abel. So what is the point of taking an approach that doesn’t work? Use methods that certainly work. Give him different brain wiring and that’s it, and then he’ll do exactly what needs to be done. The Holy One, blessed be He, can’t even create this puppet theater in which He can play with us as marionettes and carry out everything He wants. The whole story is really bizarre.

And above all, above all, I ask myself whether the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself can exist in such a worldview. The Holy One, blessed be He, Himself is also a non-material entity. By the way, that was asked of Sompolinsky in that course I attended. Two of his children were there—he has twins. This was a course for graduate students at the Hebrew University, from various departments. One of his children asked him: so how does the Holy One, blessed be He, exist in a world in which there is only matter, only material stuff? And he said, “that’s obvious,” some sort of answer without answering. Really a great question. I hadn’t even thought of it. A great question. Meaning, if you don’t accept the possibility of the existence of spiritual entities, then why do you accept the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He? Now I’m no longer talking about Jewish law and Torah verses—I’m talking about the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. If you think that all that exists is matter, then why do you assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, does exist? After all, you as a believing and deterministic materialist believe in the Holy One, blessed be He. Forget what He wants from me and why He did it—but how do you believe in Him Himself? How can there be revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He, at Sinai giving us Torah? That is an interaction… an interaction of matter with spirit. The Holy One, blessed be He, gave Torah there—He, a spiritual being—and thereby changed our brain, which is a material thing, and as a result caused events to happen in the world. Not to mention creation of the world, of course—that the Holy One, blessed be He, as a spiritual entity created a material thing. There you have interaction between matter and spirit—the psycho-physical problem, yes, what the materialist denies is possible. So this whole story simply cannot exist within a deterministic-materialist worldview.

In any case, if I sum up this point, then maybe yes, I’ll sum up this point. I’m saying that I have problems with the deterministic worldview of atheists. I don’t agree with them that science requires it; I don’t agree with them that philosophy and intuition lead to it. On the contrary, I think it is a puzzling position. But what I tried to show today is that when we are not dealing with an atheist but with a believing Jew, the problem is intensified doubly and redoubly, because there it is really not compatible. Meaning, you cannot be committed to this whole system—to faith in God, to Torah with that whole passage of “choose life,” certainly not to Jewish law, nor to beliefs in spiritual things and the survival of the soul and so on—and at the same time be a materialist and a determinist. It is beyond me how a quotation from Rabbi Tzadok—a quotation from a contradictory passage in Rabbi Tzadok—can solve all these deep problems.

Maybe I want to conclude with two comments of the Tosafists on this issue, which are very interesting. Wait. Tosafot in Yevamot says as follows. The Talmud there discusses the question whether prayer can add years to a person’s life or not. And then the Talmud says: “If he merits, they complete for him; if he does not merit, they reduce for him”—these are the words of Rabbi Akiva. And the Sages say: “If he merits, they add for him; if he does not merit, they reduce for him.” They said to Rabbi Akiva: but doesn’t it say, “And I will add to your days fifteen years”—yes, to Hezekiah there with Elisha—so fifteen years were added to his life. He said to them: they added from what was his. So Rabbi Akiva answers: no, no—they completed for him; they did not add. Those fifteen years were already planned in advance. The Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to subtract them, and as a result of his prayer He restored them to him. But through prayer one cannot add. Why? “Know, for a prophet stands and prophesies: ‘Behold, a son is born to the house of David, Josiah is his name,’ and Manasseh had not yet been born.” That prophet prophesied this even before Manasseh, the father of Josiah, was born. So that means we know in advance that Hezekiah will be given fifteen years, a son Manasseh will be born to him, and to Manasseh Josiah will be born. Right? That’s the Talmud’s argument. Therefore it is clear that those fifteen years that were added to him were actually planned in advance, and therefore the prophet could have prophesied it in advance. Except that because of the sin they thought to take them away from him—over procreation there—and then they decided to add them back after all.

Tosafot asks the obvious question. “Know, for a prophet stood” and said in advance that a son would be born. “And if you say: but if Hezekiah had not prayed for himself, he would have died and the prophecy would have been nullified?” You’re telling me that the prophecy was in advance about Manasseh being born and then Josiah, but if Hezekiah had not repented—if he had remained in his sin and had not prayed—then he really would have died, and Manasseh would not have been born and neither would Josiah. So where does the prophet’s prophecy stand? Tosafot says—and this is Tosafot that Yeshayahu Leibowitz was fond of—“Rather, we are forced to say that the prophet prophesies only what is fitting to happen if he would not sin.” All right? Tosafot says the prophet prophesies not what will happen, but what is expected to happen; but if you choose otherwise, then it won’t happen. Exactly what I said in the name of the Shelah in our discussion of knowledge and choice—in fact it is written in Tosafot. Tosafot writes that the Holy One, blessed be He, and the prophet do not know in advance what a person will do. A person has free choice. That is one source.

Wait, a second interesting source is Tosafot in tractate Shabbat. I’m juggling between screens here because I don’t know. Okay, so in tractate Shabbat it says as follows: what does one say when visiting the sick? Rabbi Yehudah says: “May the Omnipresent have mercy on you and on the sick of Israel”—that’s here. That is how one should pray for the sick person. Rabbi Yosei says: “May the Omnipresent have mercy on you among the sick of Israel.” Tosafot asks: Rabbi Yehudah says, “May the Omnipresent have mercy on you”—Rabbeinu Tam finds it difficult: what benefit does prayer have according to Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah, who say in the first chapter of Rosh Hashanah that all are judged on Rosh Hashanah and their verdict is sealed on Yom Kippur—these are the words of Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Yehudah says: all are judged on Rosh Hashanah and the verdict of each individual is sealed at its proper time—on Passover for grain, and for a person on Yom Kippur. Rabbi Yosei says: a person is judged every day. Okay? And there it says, Rav Yosef said: according to whom do we nowadays pray for the sick and the ill? On whose view can we pray now for our harvest? He says: according to Rabbi Yosei. Meaning, it implies that according to Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah, prayer is not effective, because it is fixed in advance.

So he says: one can say that here we are talking about the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Fine. In short, the claim is that prayer really is not effective according to Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah because it is determined in advance. Now I ask: according to this Tosafot, according to this Tosafot, that means that if something is fixed in advance there is no possibility of changing it, right? Therefore prayer also doesn’t help—nothing will help. Now I ask: what happens with human choice according to this Rabbeinu Tam? If the Holy One, blessed be He, knows it in advance, it won’t help you to choose otherwise, because that is what will happen. Necessarily, Tosafot says that if choice is indeed handed over to me, then the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know in advance what I will do. Exactly as we saw in Tosafot in Yevamot, which says that when the Holy One, blessed be He, informs the prophet or the prophet comes and prophesies, he prophesies what is expected to happen unless a person chooses to do something else.

Now, it is a little embarrassing that one has to bring Tosafot for this, but people are so convinced that saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know in advance because we have free choice is heresy, that I think Tosafot can be helpful.

Yes, right, there it is decree and not knowledge, but still, knowledge in the same sense also dictates the matter. Fine—here we already enter the famous dispute. But the bottom line is: in Tosafot in Shabbat, tractate Shabbat, we are speaking about decree; in tractate Yevamot we are speaking about knowledge.

Yes, I was talking about Shabbat.

Okay, we see that it doesn’t matter which. Fine, I think I’ll stop here. We still have one more session on this topic and then we’ll really finish.

Rabbi, what is the point of the Torah narratives? What is the point of all the stories about Abraham if everything is deterministic? Why did the Torah tell us about Abraham?

It’s not non-deterministic. Those stories are part of—it has an educational role, like punishment. If you read those stories, it shapes your brain in such a way that you will act properly.

And what about Moses’ plea in Va’etchanan? What is all this speaking with the Holy One, blessed be He? He is compelled to plead and pray, and then the Holy One, blessed be He, does what was going to happen anyway.

Yes. Nothing has any meaning. Right. I said, it’s possible to explain everything with some scriptural decree, some kind of fatalism with nothing behind it, and then as if everything is resolved. But understand that this is also what we saw throughout all these lectures—this is also how it works on the philosophical plane. I ask the person: tell me, why do you condemn the wicked? What do you want from him? After all, you know—you’re a determinist. I ask the determinist: what do you want from Hitler? That’s how he was built, that’s how he acted. Right—but I too am compelled to condemn him. Understand: it’s the same scriptural decree not only in the Torah context, but also in the philosophical context. It’s just that you empty everything of content and keep behaving as usual. So yes, you can say that everything is one huge conspiracy or manipulation with nothing behind it. The question is what is more plausible. I’ll leave that for you to think about. Okay, more power to you, Shabbat shalom.

Can I ask something?

Yes, yes.

Most of the questions you asked today were really about materialist determinism or about determinism that determines everything in a direct way. Regarding compatibilist determinism, most of those questions are not difficult.

Translation into Hebrew?

Determinism that says everything goes through mental acts. So then there really is an effect of all the things that are mental acts, and through that you choose the good.

What are you talking about? And what affects the mental acts? The fact that I get angry at you and that I give reward and punishment—all these things—where does the anger come from? It’s true that in the last analysis everything comes from God—that’s true.

Or from the body, it doesn’t matter whether you believe this or believe that, but everything comes from somewhere. So why should I care that it passes through mediation—we discussed this in previous lectures—that it passes through the mediation, the epiphenomenon, that it passes through the mediation of the mental? It’s only a mediator; it’s not important. So why is the whole discussion on the mental plane relevant? It is merely a side product of the physical processes or of the processes of the Holy One, blessed be He.

The question is which question we’re talking about. If we’re talking about the purpose of creation, then really I don’t know the answer.

No, that’s a weak question, because in any case it’s speculation to think what—

Right, therefore it doesn’t trouble me. But questions about law and punishment—I can answer that the judicial process has a real effect.

And regarding the question why I exempt someone who is coerced—

No, you can’t.

Why not?

If you say punishment has an effect—I discussed this earlier and I mentioned it also in the lecture before the previous one. It is true that punishment has an effect, but then the question is why in coercion you don’t do it.

“Coerced” means someone who is not among the normative people. So punishing him won’t affect either him or others.

Why won’t it affect him? If you twist his brain it will change. What do you mean? Every person is coerced. Right now I’m speaking about a person—in civil court, why does it exempt the coerced?

I’m talking about that too. So I’m saying one can explain why it exempts the coerced.

How would you explain it?

Because all the effects of the court when it punishes are on normative people. It needs to punish a person in order to correct his brain, and then he won’t behave badly that way.

Why should I care whether you’re normative or not? Correct his brain.

In principle you also don’t need to punish; send him to a brain surgeon if we had the technology. That’s all.

If it were possible to speak—but right now there isn’t.

No, but we do have prison technology. Even a non-normative person—put him in prison so that his brain changes. If the question is whether it will help—

Why not? Let’s say with ordinary criminals it helps; there too it doesn’t help. So what? It helps to the same degree. It may help the general public, not necessarily the criminal himself. The ordinary calculations—I gave entire lectures about this—I discussed that according to determinists, punishment is contingent on success. And by the criterion of success, it seems to me we fail miserably. Punishment does not work in general, except in very rare cases. Therefore the whole deterministic justification for punishment is very very problematic. In a libertarian worldview, punishment is a kind of desert even if it doesn’t succeed—you deserve it because you sinned, because you were not okay. But in a worldview where punishment is correction, then really it has to be measured by parameters of success. And by parameters of success, it really doesn’t hold water.

Even regarding the rest of the public who fear prison, that doesn’t hold water?

No. There are studies that speak, for example, about the death penalty not reducing the number of murderers. Imposing the death penalty. They tested this in many places.

Okay, thanks.

Okay. Anyone else? Shabbat shalom. Okay, Shabbat shalom.