Brothers in Dispute #7: Michael “Miki” Abraham, 11.2.25 – Arnon Shahar

[Speaker A] Welcome to the seventh episode of Brothers in Dispute. Today I’m hosting Rabbi Michael Abraham, Miki, who agreed to join once again, and we had an excellent meeting that I’m happy to share with you. I also managed to clarify a bit more why I’m doing this podcast and what stands behind the idea of attentive conversation. And in the conversation with Miki we also managed to get to what I identify as a good point of disagreement, a strong, significant one, where it’s very clear that we think differently. And I believe that through that point of disagreement we’ll eventually be able to reach agreement, so enjoy. Good morning, and again thank you for being willing to do this meeting with me. With your permission, before we begin today’s conversation about the debate over determinism and free will, I’d be happy to tell you a bit about this podcast and once again try to explain the logic behind this principle of stopping the speaker. Okay. So first of all—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Brothers in Dispute, I—

[Speaker A] I assume you understand where the desire for this podcast came from, following the judicial reform and the demonstrations and of course October 7. According to my analysis, the problem in our people, in our country, is that there’s a big problem of trust. There’s a deep lack of trust between people, between people and the state, between… and this is a very serious problem, and it’s also not only our problem, it’s a problem all over the world. And I think the solution to this problem is a kind of combined solution of argument, where people who think differently talk about the things they disagree on. So that’s a necessary condition for creating trust. But another thing is this principle of attentive conversation, which in my opinion is also an almost necessary, if not necessary, condition for creating trust. Because if you look at debates, regular arguments on Piers Morgan or competitive debates too, there’s almost no direct connection between the debaters. It’s either mediated by a judge, or if it’s just two people then each one has time to speak. The problem with each side having time to speak is that during, say, the time you have to speak—let’s say you speak for three minutes or something—you can say a lot of things in those three minutes that I don’t agree with. And then when it’s my turn, either I choose to try to deal with all the issues, all the points of disagreement you raised, or I say, he’s talking nonsense, I’ll tell you what the truth is, and I say my things, and then the separation between us remains. With the principle of attentive conversation, where the moment I hear something I don’t agree with I stop you, that allows us both to examine the gaps between us point by point, one gap at a time. And the very act of stopping my speech in order to let the other side examine me and say something—that itself is an act that creates trust. I’m not blocking you—let me finish and da-da-da-da—but rather, okay, yes, come examine me, come examine my assumptions, maybe I’m wrong, let’s give—you know, I’m giving you an opportunity to examine me. So that’s the principle of attentive conversation, and it creates trust. And last time we spoke about the efficiency of this kind of discourse. Right, so attentive conversation is less efficient in the sense of presenting some orderly doctrine to the viewers, but it’s more efficient on the way to agreement. And that’s what matters to me—that in the end we reach agreement through creating trust and preserving that trust, and through the fact that it constantly allows the points of disagreement to surface and come up, because every time we stop each other and raise different points of disagreement. Then the discussion, the time of the discussion, gets concentrated on the points of disagreement between us and not on all kinds of things we want to say. And when the discussion focuses on our points of disagreement, then in terms of efficiency of our time and of the conversation, that’s the maximum time we can use in order to reach agreement. The more we discuss where we disagree, the closer agreement becomes. And to the idea of attentive conversation I added the Socratic structure of questioner and respondent, because I noticed that when there isn’t a leader in the conversation, it tends to drift toward some kind of—there’s a kind of tension where everyone pulls in his own direction, and it creates a bit of chaos. Chaos and anger. And this structure, in which either I lead or you lead, gives a bit of order, but an important point is that the leader is, in some sense, the listener and not the speaker. The leader is the one asking questions, not the one presenting things. And that also creates trust and makes it easier on the way to the truth or to the falsehood, to the issue itself, to the mistake of one of the sides. That’s it. I’m done.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine, we’re going with this, like I said. With these approaches we’ll try this thing and see. We already talked several—last time—about the advantages and disadvantages. I accept what you’re saying, except for one detail, the question of agreement. I’m not entirely sure that the goal really ought to be agreement as much as clarifying the positions. Meaning, if there’s a genuine disagreement it’ll probably remain, but at least we’ll know what it is. And therefore I’m not—yes.

[Speaker A] I’m interested in why you think that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because in my experience, in most cases people don’t reach agreement, and not only because of the methodology of the discussion. Meaning, I don’t think changing the methodology will lead to more agreements. It might lead to more listening, and even about that I’m not sure, to more focus on the points of disagreement—but focusing on the points of disagreement doesn’t mean agreeing. It simply means clarifying what we disagree about. That is, putting the two positions on the table more clearly, which in many places doesn’t really get sharpened, doesn’t really get clarified. So I’m not entirely sure that the goal ought to be agreement; rather, it ought to be exhausting the different positions and setting them opposite one another. Sometimes there will be agreement—excellent. It’s not that I’m fatalistic and think people can’t agree on anything. I’m just saying I don’t think I would set that up as the goal, or the central goal. If there’s agreement, then it’s worth discovering that there’s agreement, and if there’s disagreement, then discovering that there’s disagreement. In other words, discovering the real state of affairs—that seems to me a better definition than reaching agreement.

[Speaker A] Just on the matter of agreement, I do think agreement should indeed be the goal of every argument. And I also think that in the current state of the world and the current state of the country and Israeli society, agreement—or the difference between our ability to reach agreement on significant issues and our inability to reach agreement on significant issues—that’s almost existential, from my point of view. I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure I agree—speaking of agreement. I think that if we get to a state where the disagreements are laid out and each person understands the other’s position even without agreeing, we’ll manage together. My feeling is that we have reasonable mechanisms for moving forward in a shared life even if we don’t agree. And why isn’t that happening today? Not because we don’t agree. The whole idea of making shared decisions in situations of disagreement assumes there will be disagreements. What prevents us from functioning, from using those mechanisms and functioning, is that we aren’t willing to put the disagreement on the table. That is, the moment you think differently from me, then you’re a monster, evil, stupid, or something like that—and by the way, I think people really mean that; each side genuinely thinks that about the other. It’s not that someone is exploiting things, doing some demagogic process—he really thinks the other is evil or stupid. And why? Because he never bothered to seriously hear what the other thinks. And if he seriously hears what the other thinks and understands that there is some position here that he may not agree with, but there is a position here, then he’ll be willing to sit around the table and vote and see what to do in practice under disagreement. So in my view, what’s missing today is not agreements; what’s missing is listening. What’s missing is the willingness to understand that there are also other positions I don’t agree with. By the way, I’m not presenting some pluralistic position here, or anything postmodern, or anything from that family. That is, I think there is one truth, I’m a monist, and if the truth is with me, then someone who thinks otherwise is mistaken. But I do think that someone else who is mistaken—okay, that’s his position. I’m also not sure I’m right; that is, maybe I’m mistaken too, even though I have my own position. But assuming we have two different positions, we still have to live here together and make decisions together. And for that, what you said earlier is definitely needed: trust, which in my view is a much more important keyword than agreement, and also of course understanding what it is that I’m placing trust in—that is, what your position is. Once I understand your position, I can also somewhat—even if I don’t agree—refine my own position. You mentioned the disputes over judicial reform or any other issue whatsoever—if each side heard the arguments of the other side, I assume it would also moderate its own position, even if it didn’t agree. It would moderate its position because it would understand that there are good considerations on the other side too. And it’s not true that the other side is just a collection of fools and villains. So I don’t have to agree with them, but listening gives, first, trust and the ability to make decisions together, and second, some moderation or completion of my own position. That is, my position becomes more complete, more balanced, more attentive also to the opposing arguments. I have many examples of this, and I’ve talked about it many times and written about it many times. Yes, maybe I’ll give you one example. Once, a few years ago, a discussion arose about conversion in the state conversion system. There was a judge in Ashdod who invalidated all the conversions of the state conversion system across the board. We’re talking about thousands of people. That is, he turned thousands of people who had converted back into non-Jews from the standpoint of Jewish law because he did not accept the validity of the state conversion system. Never mind, all kinds of halakhic disputes—whether acceptance of the commandments is needed, not needed. Doesn’t matter, the debate began to unfold. Of course, this couldn’t just be accepted; it changes people’s status here. A judge in Ashdod can’t do such a thing. But that’s on the administrative level. I mean as to the substance itself, a discussion started. At a certain point people expressed positions this way and that, everything was going in all directions. Slowly you could see the discussion beginning to split—and I’m talking right now within the rabbinic world. The discussion began to divide between the Religious Zionist rabbis, who were against that judge, and the Haredi rabbis, who were in favor. And I asked myself: where did all the arguments each side had raised against the other side disappear to? They gradually disappeared. Some dispute began to emerge that was totally polarized. So I wrote an article for Makor Rishon, a short article, and I said, look—even without thinking for more than a moment, I can put on the table thirteen, I think it was thirteen, something like that, independent questions that you need to answer, each one of them, in order to formulate a position on this issue. Thirteen independent questions. Now how many groups—assuming each of these questions has respectable sides in both directions—I would have expected there to be two to the thirteenth power groups or positions in the population. That’s combinatorics. Two to the thirteenth is something like eight thousand. Eight thousand. How many positions were there? Two. Right? Those who answered all thirteen yes, and those who answered all thirteen no. And that exactly shows the price of the fact that you don’t listen to the other side without agreeing with it. Not in order to agree with it, but in order to understand that even if, say, you oppose these conversions, you oppose them because of questions one, two, five, seven, eleven, and thirteen. But on the other questions, specifically, I’m actually in favor. And then afterward I weigh things and come to my conclusions. But my position is then more balanced, more reasonable, more grounded, and less fanatical. And I also understand that someone who thinks differently from me has questions or aspects that support his position. Therefore in my view, getting to such a state, a clarification of the discourse, is a much more important goal, and also a more realistic one, than reaching agreement. And I think it’s the crucial condition if we are to live here and make decisions together, and not agreement. Because if agreement were the condition for that, it seems to me I don’t see much chance that it would happen.

[Speaker A] Okay, so first of all I hope that even if you’re right in that context, dayeinu—that would already be enough for us. And I agree with most of what you said, completely. But I think and hope that maybe I’ll manage to prove to you that we can reach agreement not in another thirty meetings but maybe today, or in another two or three meetings, we’ll reach a decision on the issue, on the matter of determinism and free will—that’s what I think. But maybe I’m wrong. Fine. So shall we begin? Okay. Okay, then—would you be willing, would it suit you, to lead today, to ask me questions, or would you prefer that I continue asking you—whatever you prefer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle I usually prefer to be on the answering side, but it’s not critical. It doesn’t really matter. Because overall I have a fairly orderly position on the matter. Maybe you do too. So the more natural thing for me is to be the respondent, but I don’t mind. We can play it however you think.

[Speaker A] Then maybe this time we’ll try your asking me? Okay. Yes, so I’ll remind you: you’re asking me in order to clarify my position and in order to challenge it or refute it, to lead me to where I’m mistaken. Please.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s start from the opposite side of what we dealt with last time. Basically I’ll ask you what you asked me, because you said something there that I didn’t fully understand—what exactly makes you a determinist? That is, I understand that it’s not only connected to the principle of causality, if I remember correctly from what we talked about last time, but that’s what I’d first like to hear.

[Speaker A] Excellent, thank you. And stop me wherever there’s a problem. So actually I was an indeterminist for most of my life. Popper was an indeterminist and wrote quite a bit about it, and I thought like him. It seemed obvious to me that determinism was a mistaken idea. Then some time ago I saw a program by Jim Al-Khalili—do you know him? No. Jim Al-Khalili is a British physicist who makes these popular science programs where he makes various things in physics and mathematics accessible to the general public. And he did a program like that on chaos theory and I don’t remember what else, where he gives two theses. One thesis is connected to God, where he talks about a paper by Alan Turing, who wrote—who mathematically proved how, given simple chemical conditions… and a few physical rules, something like that—I didn’t read it and I don’t know how to explain it well, but it’s an important article for our discussion and for later discussions. It explains how, necessarily, on the basis of mathematical probability, complex structures will arise. How this explains in a mathematical evolutionary way how something as complex as a human being can come into being without a creator. That’s one thesis that comes up there. And another thesis is that one of the essential characteristics of the universe is chaos. And that unlike what Newton thought—Newton imagined the world as some kind of sophisticated deterministic clock—chaos is what really rules the universe. And chaos is something indeterministic. But during his discussion of that, I thought about the fact that chaos doesn’t contradict causality. There is still causality within chaos; things happen causally. But the fact that something seems disordered to us, seems chaotic to us, doesn’t mean that chaos—the concept of chaos—is a concept of the observer. It looks chaotic or ordered to me. That there isn’t chaos and order in an absolute objective sense. It’s something relative—ordered and chaotic. And that in fact there is determinism, there is a cosmic order in my view, there is an absolute cosmic order, predetermined, total, but we don’t understand it because it’s so complex and so chaotic in our eyes, so it appears to us as, say, non-deterministic.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, let me sharpen the points a little more here. First of all, the two points you brought in his name—point one, the first point, that something complex can be created without a guiding hand—to that I devoted a book, so I assume it’s connected to experiments with cellular automata and all kinds of things like that. I disagree with it. That’s one thing. But it really doesn’t concern us here. The second point is important for our issue, and I want to sharpen a bit what follows from what you said, or what I still feel is missing from what you said. Because when I asked you why you’re a determinist, you told me that when you looked at chaos you saw that behind it there is still causality. Therefore chaos isn’t really stochastic, it isn’t really random the way it appears in the eye of the observer. But notice that this doesn’t really give me the reason. Because what you’re basically saying is: look, I’m basically a determinist, except that chaos shows me maybe I’m wrong because there’s a lot of mess there? No, it doesn’t show me I’m wrong, I can reject that because behind the chaos there is also causality. I’m asking how you got to the starting point—not why chaos doesn’t undermine it. Do you understand? You explained to me why chaos doesn’t undermine your starting point. But I’m asking: why is that the starting point in the first place? And one more point, yes? One more point is that chaos in principle—and this really isn’t connected to the discussion at all, and I also wrote about this in another book—chaos is a completely deterministic process. There’s no dispute about that. That is, it isn’t even the issue. Chaos is simply computational complexity, that’s all. There’s nothing there that contradicts causality, and for some reason even people who understand chaos get this wrong, but it’s a simple fact. I’m talking about classical chaos, not quantum chaos right now, because quantum mechanics brings another whole affair into the story. So in my view chaos isn’t relevant to the story; we agree about it completely. So I return to the question I asked before: leave aside whether chaos does or doesn’t undermine your deterministic view—where does that view itself come from, before I ask whether chaos undermines it?

[Speaker A] Excellent. So my deterministic view comes from the idea of causality—that I believe everything in the universe happens causally, on the basis of laws, and therefore there is no freedom, yes. That’s the source of my determinism: causality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And where does that—causality—come from?

[Speaker A] Causality comes from some kind of—I think causality is some kind of—we talked about this in one of the previous meetings—that I identify causality as a logical principle. I can’t manage to think of, to conceive of, some occurrence without a cause. It seems to me like an absurd thing. Am I right or am I wrong? I don’t know. But to my common sense, to the way I perceive the world, how I look at the world and see that things happen, there’s no such thing as something happening without a cause.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So here maybe I’ll make a few comments, question-comments. I’m straying a bit perhaps from my role as questioner too, but—

[Speaker A] No, no, excellent, excellent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First point: I think you experience this too, but I think most human beings experience this—that there are points at which we choose freely. As a personal feeling, regardless of the question whether it’s an illusion; maybe we’re mistaken, but that’s the feeling of very many people. Now, the moment you say, look, I can’t think of or grasp a situation in which I act without a cause, you’re denying very basic feelings that exist—I don’t know whether for you, you tell me—but for many of us, and certainly for me. Therefore in a certain sense, in my view, this is begging the question. That is, you assume that in every place where there is a feeling of free choice, of non-deterministic action, that’s probably an illusion. And now you say, okay, so if that’s the case, all I know is deterministic action, so in any case there can’t be non-deterministic actions, and if there are, they are an illusion. There’s begging the question here. Since there are points at which we experience, I think very clearly, that our action is in our hands. It is an action that is the result of choice. That’s the first point. The second point beyond that—and this is a very common argument in favor of determinism, and here I want to sharpen it because there we can sharpen the disagreement. There’s an argument that goes like this: every event that happens either has a cause or it has no cause. If it has a cause, then it happened deterministically, because the cause dictates the result; the cause is a sufficient condition for the result. If it has no cause, then it’s indeterministic. That is, it’s some sort of thing that just happens for no reason, without any regularity, without any—just like that. Arbitrary, random, whatever you want to call it. Now since there is the law of the excluded middle—either there is a cause or there isn’t a cause, there’s no third possibility—therefore either the world is deterministic or the world is random, but there’s no room for free choice. Free choice is neither of those. So since in fact we only have two possibilities and no third possibility, one possibility is indeterminism in the sense of randomness, yes, or determinism, then there simply is no third mechanism. That’s basically the claim. There isn’t even a way to define the concept of choice—not just that it doesn’t exist. In the conceptual world, either you’re deterministic or you’re random-indeterministic, and there is no third possibility. Do you accept such a thesis? I assume you do, but—

[Speaker A] I don’t know, I don’t know. Wait, but ask me—so are you asking me about, wait, let’s hold off on the experience of free choice, and you’re asking me about the three possibilities?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whether there are three or two. Because I feel that many times deterministic conceptions—I don’t just feel it, I know it because I’ve read and heard it—many times deterministic conceptions are based on this, on the analysis I just made: there are only two possibilities. Now, you can reject randomness, you can choose not to reject it, but randomness can at least be defined on the conceptual level. You can say it doesn’t happen, it can’t happen, but on the conceptual level it exists: an action without a cause. An action with a cause also exists. But what is choice? Choice is neither this nor that, therefore there is no conceptual room at all for a mechanism of choice, even before the question whether it is actually realized. First explain the mechanism to me at all; after that we’ll ask whether it is also realized in the world. And the problem is a problem on the conceptual level. Because I’ll tell you more than that—and this connects to my first question—if we solve the conceptual problem, meaning if we understand that on the conceptual level there is room for a mechanism of choice, then it seems to me there would also be no reason to reject the immediate experience we have that we choose. We reject it because in our opinion such a thing simply can’t exist, so of course it’s an illusion. But if I show you that conceptually such a thing can exist, then you also won’t reject—or won’t need to reject—your immediate experiences of yourself as a chooser. So the first question and the second question are connected to each other. That’s what I argued.

[Speaker A] Yes, so wait, let me make sure I understood you, okay? Tell me, correct me if— You’re saying first of all that we have an experience of free choice. Right? That’s first of all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Otherwise the discussion wouldn’t arise, right? The discussion arises because people feel there is such an experience. Now the question is whether that’s true or not. Yes.

[Speaker A] And then the determinists come and say, look, sorry, either there is determinism or there is causality. And if there is causality then everything is deterministic because causality means laws and everything happens necessarily. Or there is no causality, and then something just happens for no reason. And there’s no third possibility, after all, because either everything happens causally, according to laws, or things happen perhaps—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s not talk about everything, let’s talk about one event. Because negating “everything” in logic is confusing. Negating everything means there are some that aren’t. Let’s talk about one event. Okay?

[Speaker A] So there is one event, or there can be one event, or there can be events that happen without a cause. Then they are indeterministic. And there’s no third possibility, after all, so either it’s determinism or it’s indeterminism. In neither case is there human choice. Right? That’s the claim? Yes. Okay, so okay—what’s your question in that context?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do you agree, or is that a conception—what do you mean agree? I don’t agree. The question is whether you—whether that describes your conception, the picture according to your view. Does that sound right to you?

[Speaker A] It sounds right to me, but not essential. Meaning, first of all, if you ask me, I don’t believe in indeterminism.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s why I’m saying—I’m talking right now on the conceptual level. Before the question of what happens in the world. First of all, on the conceptual level, the question is whether one can define something besides those two mechanisms, conceptually. Afterward, when we discuss which of these concepts is realized in the world, there I understand that you claim that even randomness is not realized in the world, only determinism. But I’m asking before that, before the question of what happens in the world, I’m asking on the conceptual level: are these, on the conceptual level, the only two possibilities in your view?

[Speaker A] It sounds logical to me, but I understand that you have a third one. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s why I’m saying it, because I’m trying—I don’t know—to help you, or help myself, decode what you said earlier. And I want to argue—I’m now reconstructing what you said earlier within the framework I just presented. And what you’re basically saying is this: since conceptually we have only two possibilities, either causality—let’s say a certain event happened, we’ll talk about a single event—either it had a cause or it did not have a cause. If it had a cause, that’s determinism; if it had no cause, that’s randomness. On the conceptual level there is no third possibility, so the concept of choice doesn’t exist here at all. Second claim: now we move from the conceptual level to realization. Not everything that is conceptually possible is realized in the world, right? Fairies are something that has a defined concept. They apparently—at least according to my view—are not realized in the world. There are no fairies in the world. But that’s not a conceptual claim; that’s a claim about realization in the world. Now you are basically saying that when we move from the conceptual to the world, to the ontic, to what actually happens in the world itself, then you say that in the world only one is realized. There are only two conceptually; out of the two only one is realized in the world, namely only the deterministic one. Now first, I want to argue that the second claim is unnecessary, because even if randomness were realized in the world, that still would not be free choice. And therefore I want to tell you that… our whole disagreement is on the conceptual plane and not on the plane of what happens in the world. And that brings me back to my second question. Because once you understand that on the conceptual level there is no such option, then why should I care whether there is randomness in the world or not? Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, but it has nothing to do with choice, because choice certainly cannot exist, since conceptually it does not exist. So our disagreement is not about whether chaos is random or whether chaos is deterministic—that’s irrelevant to the discussion. Our discussion is about whether conceptually there is such a track at all called choice, besides the other two tracks. Because if I show that there is, then now we’ll have to discuss whether it is realized in the world or not. And that has nothing to do with whether the other two are realized in the world or not. Agreed?

[Speaker A] Yes, yes, okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So now I want to return to the conceptual plane and make the following claim. The argument known as a dilemma argument in philosophy or logic sets up two possibilities: either this or that, and either way—yes, for example, there’s no point in giving exams. Why? Because diligent students study even without an exam, and lazy students don’t study even with an exam. So either way there’s no point in giving exams. That’s called a dilemma argument. Now here too, basically, you’re telling me: look, either the world is deterministic or the world is random; either way, there is no choice. That’s a dilemma argument. Now a dilemma argument is always built on the assumption that there are two possibilities and no third. And if I proved my conclusion under each of the two existing possibilities, then I proved it, because there is no third possibility. That’s the logic of dilemma arguments. Now to attack a dilemma argument, you need to attack the dilemma itself before the argument. In other words, you need to show that there is a third possibility and not just two. I have a whole arsenal of tools for dissolving dichotomies or dissolving dilemmas, but here I’ll use only one of them. Because many times when I hear people arguing, I see that I don’t agree with either side. So I had to develop some tools for dissolving dichotomies. In any case, my claim is the following: when I talk about indeterminism—either there is a cause or there is no cause—those are the two possibilities. There is no third possibility. The law of the excluded middle. But I claim that “there is no cause” is a heading that conceals two mechanisms underneath it, not one. True, there are only two: either there is a cause or there isn’t; I’m not arguing with the logic. But when you say there is no cause, it is not true that you have necessarily said randomness. And here I want to introduce the concept of purpose. There is an action out of a cause, and there is an action for the sake of a purpose. Teleological reasoning, as it’s called, versus causal reasoning. And I’m saying this: a random action is an action that has no cause and no purpose. Just an action that happens for no reason, out of the blue. I’m saying conceptually, before the question of whether it is realized in the world, a deterministic action is an action that happens out of a cause. Free will, or an act of choice, is an action that happens not out of a cause, but for the sake of a purpose. Therefore, when you ask yourself whether in the world there are only actions with a cause or without a cause, you’re right. Either with a cause or without a cause. But regarding actions without a cause, there’s another hidden assumption here: that actions without a cause are necessarily indeterministic, necessarily random. That’s not true. The question is whether there is a purpose. If there is a purpose, that is choice; if there is no purpose, that is indeterminism. In both cases there is no cause. Meaning, both fall under that side of the dilemma—absence of cause—but absence of cause conceals two mechanisms underneath it, not one. And therefore I claim that conceptually there is also a third route—let’s not call it a mechanism, because it isn’t causal, so it’s hard to call something non-causal a mechanism—but there is also a third route besides indeterminism in the sense of randomness and causality. So if on the conceptual level this exists, now we can ask ourselves whether it is realized, whether it happens in the world. But first of all, let’s talk about the conceptual level.

[Speaker A] Okay, so okay. So we’re kind of switching roles a little, and that’s perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. So I’ll ask you a bit, okay? But first I’ll check that I understand you. You’re saying that underneath “no cause” there’s another possibility hidden. There is another possibility, and that is purpose: that an event happens or something is done not because of a deterministic cause, some kind of domino effect, but because of a certain purpose. Yes, right? Is free will based on this idea of purpose? For you, in your view?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. It’s a voluntary action, an action done for the sake of a purpose that I decided on, and not out of a cause.

[Speaker A] Okay. Could you say what a determinist would say about this idea of purpose?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A determinist would say there’s no such thing—just as there’s no such thing as random indeterminism. He would say that everything has a cause. I’m only wondering why he thinks that. I’ll give you an example, maybe as a thought experiment that I proposed in the book I wrote, Free Choice. Buridan’s donkey. Do you know Buridan’s donkey? Buridan was a French scholar in the fifteenth century, and he tried to illustrate the idea of rationality. And he argued that rationality is not always based on reasoning. Sometimes precisely an action without reasoning is the rational action. In other words, think of a donkey standing at an equal distance between two troughs on either side. If rationality meant acting only on the basis of considerations, then there is no consideration for going to the right trough or the left trough, and therefore it would remain in the middle and die of hunger. And the question is whether you can call such a thing rational. Now, I take Buridan’s example and I want to use it not to clarify the concept of rationality, but to clarify the concept of determinism. And I ask myself: what would a determinist say about a person in such a situation—not a donkey—with two tables loaded with good food on both sides, in a completely symmetrical way. The whole world is symmetrical, everything is absolutely symmetrical, and you are standing in the middle. Now the claim is that if your conception of a human being is truly deterministic, and the human being himself is of course a point-like human being—he too is built symmetrically, yes, everything is symmetrical, okay?—then if you conceive of the person as deterministic, according to your view he will die of hunger. Because there is a theorem in mathematics that says the symmetry of the problem determines at least the symmetry of the solution. The symmetry of the solution cannot be lower than the symmetry of the problem. This is a theorem in differential equations and various other things; it’s obvious. The moment the solution does not have the symmetry of the problem, it cannot solve the problem. Once you switch from right to left and the solution changes but the problem does not change between right and left, then it is not solving it. So this is a mathematical condition. Now I say: once the problem, according to the determinist, is a symmetric problem between right and left, then it cannot be that the outcome—the behavior—if it is a deterministic causal result, will fail to have that right-left symmetry. But symmetric behavior in such a situation means dying of hunger. Either you stay in place or you go straight between the two troughs, but you don’t eat. So that means, basically, that in the deterministic picture a person is someone who will die of hunger in the donkey situation. And I claim that a person will not die of hunger in that situation. A person will cast lots and decide whether to go right or left. Now the moment a person casts lots in that sort of way, you have departed from the deterministic description of the situation. And the question is whether you believe that in such a situation a person really would die of hunger, because that’s what follows from your determinism.

[Speaker A] So I think not. I think that doesn’t follow from my determinism. I think the deterministic point of view you’re describing doesn’t—how do you say it—you’re not presenting the deterministic point of view in a way that satisfies me. Okay. And let me ask you, for example: do you think the determinist would disagree with you that there are purposes and that people act on the basis of purposes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, wait, let’s go back to the donkey for a moment, then we’ll go back to purpose. Why, in your view, according to the donkey case, would the person in the donkey’s situation not die?

[Speaker A] Because the physical mechanisms acting on him, the laws that… drive him to action, are for example hunger.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but hunger won’t help. Try now to look at what happens to the person as a physical creature. Okay? What happens to him? It doesn’t have to be physical, by the way, but let’s take physical just because it illustrates the problem more clearly. What happens is, the moment you see movement to the right, toward the right table, that means that some force acted on him and led him to the right, correct? You’re a determinist. Now I’m asking: how did a force appear that moved him rightward and not leftward? After all, the situation is completely symmetrical. How can that be? Yes.

[Speaker A] Because a human being—or a donkey, for that matter—is a biological entity, and in biological entities the deterministic mechanism or the physical lawfulness is still physical lawfulness, but in biological systems causality behaves differently than in objects—or in systems—that are not biological, inanimate systems. The inanimate non-biological system: if it gets a push to the left, it goes left; if it gets a push to the right, it goes right. A biological system, by contrast, has some sort of gap between the push and the response, between input and output. There’s a mechanism inside; the more complex the biological system is, the bigger the gap. There’s a longer tick-tick-tick system between input and output. So let’s say you push a donkey to the right; it’ll react with some resistance and maybe continue walking, and a human being will have a more complex reaction, and that’s simply because a biological system behaves differently from a non-biological one. But that doesn’t contradict determinism; it just means there’s more complexity in the system. But stop me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, okay, I completely disagree. First of all, in the reductionist conception accepted at least among materialists and determinists, clearly that is not true. Meaning, the symmetry of a biological system is determined by the physical system. The biological system is nothing more than a very great complexity of physical systems. And if all the physical systems have this symmetry, then biology too will have this symmetry. Meaning, if you discover—yes, I didn’t understand the last sentence. Yes. If you discover behavior of the biological system that breaks the symmetry of the physical system, you’re on your way to Stockholm. Meaning, because you discovered that reductionism has collapsed. And today that is the accepted view among almost all biologists—not all, but almost all biologists. Meaning, I’m only showing you that your assumption, even if it is true, is a very, very far-reaching assumption. Usually the assumption of free will is presented as a far-reaching assumption that contradicts the scientific outlook, and I’m showing you that in fact the deterministic assumption becomes a very far-reaching assumption that does not fit our scientific way of thinking.

[Speaker A] Wait, so if you could go back, because I didn’t understand that whole point—I’ll just say what I did understand: I understood that… no, go back over the point, I didn’t understand the argument.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I want to say is this: a biological system is a collection of particles. And particles are physical entities. Therefore, basically, a biological system is the physics of a very, very, very complex system. We don’t know how to handle it with the tools of physics, because solving equations of motion for 10 to the 100 particles—there’s simply no such thing, you can’t do that. So we have biological laws that deal with the complex system. But the laws of biology can never break the laws of physics. Meaning, the laws of physics dictate what will happen in biology, even though I cannot use the laws of physics to describe what happens in biology. I can describe what will not happen. Meaning, even a biological body will not fly through the air if physics forbids it. Okay? Even though it is very complex. Now I’m asking: how does a biological body choose to go right or left if physics forbids that? And if you discover that this exists—if you discover that this exists, as I said a moment ago—you’re on your way to Stockholm. Meaning, because that’s a scientific achievement of a kind we currently do not know.

[Speaker A] Wait, again, if you could repeat the last point? I didn’t understand it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying that if you discover a biological system that behaves contrary to the laws of physics, that would be a tremendous scientific achievement, because today the accepted view in the life sciences is that biology is very complex physics. And even if you don’t accept that, the burden of proof is on you—you need to show me that it really is so. Yes.

[Speaker A] Wait, but that’s exactly what I’m saying: that biology is a completely physical system, very complex.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—so how can complexity change the basic properties? It can’t. A physical system has to obey the rules of symmetry. How does biology escape that?

[Speaker A] Okay, so if I may suggest: I had a discussion about this with Claude—you know Claude? AI? No. Okay. So this also interested me, this thing: how can it be that a biological system can supposedly do more than an inanimate system? After all, what is biological complexity, for our purposes? It’s an additional system, an additional pattern built on the basis of the pattern of physics. So it follows necessarily that biological systems are more restricted than physical systems. They have more laws, more systems of laws that limit them, that don’t allow them. It’s not that a biological system can do more.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Either they have more, or it’s the same thing, but certainly not less. I think that’s more precise. Okay, and that is exactly my question.

[Speaker A] Exactly. And then I say: what the AI answered me was, so how can it be that a biological system—I can go up a mountain instead of down a mountain? Right? Using the image you once gave. And he says: yes, that really is an interesting point, and actually, often when you limit something, you actually create more possibilities. I don’t know how to explain it well right now; we could ask the AI.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, I can show you examples of that, but it won’t solve the problem. You know, I once wrote this in response to an article by Amos Oz that I read. I spoke in some forum where they asked me—he didn’t come down south to give something on the weekly Torah portion, so they asked me to speak in his place. I took the opportunity to argue with an article he had written. He wasn’t there, but to argue with an article he had written. I said there—never mind the context right now—think about a chessboard. You have one pawn. How many ways can you arrange it?

[Speaker A] Thirty-two—how many squares are there? Eighty-eight…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Eight by eight. That’s sixty-four. Okay, sixty-four. If you have two pawns?

[Speaker A] How many arrangements can you place them in?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sixty-four times sixty-three, right? So that basically means you have many more possibilities with two pawns. With three pawns you have even more possibilities. Meaning, the more constraints you put in—more pawns on the same board—it turns out the number of possibilities grows. But that still cannot break the basic laws of the single pawn. And therefore I say that this example won’t help here, because I’m asking whether a biological body can act against the laws of physics. The answer is no. On the principled level, it is accepted to think not. Yes.

[Speaker A] So you agree that a biological entity does not break the laws of physics, yes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying, if it’s only biology. Sorry? I’m talking according to your view. According to your view, that there is only biology, or that we have no free will and everything is deterministic, then it cannot be broken. According to my view, no.

[Speaker A] Wait, I didn’t understand—how are you stating my position again?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This discussion is being conducted according to your position. I’m asking you, as a determinist, is it possible that a biological entity would act against the laws of physics? I claim that such a situation is possible.

[Speaker A] So you’re saying it’s possible that a biological entity would act contrary to the laws of physics, and I’m saying no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because no, no—because it isn’t biological, because I claim that there is something else in it besides the… I’m a dualist.

[Speaker A] I didn’t understand. I’m a dualist. Okay, okay, so some additional complexity entered here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, wait, let’s make order. No, that’s why I’m conducting the discussion according to your view. Leave the additional complexity aside; let’s speak according to your view, that everything is biology. Okay? Yes. Now I ask: how can it be, if everything is biology—I don’t agree with that, but according to your view—if everything is biology, how can it be that the person will choose a side, right or left, in order to eat? That contradicts the laws of physics.

[Speaker A] No, something here doesn’t add up for me, I didn’t understand.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to your view, that a person is nothing but complex physics—maybe plus the laws of biology, maybe the laws of biology are only a reflection of the laws of physics, that can be debated, whether you are a reductionist or not—but it is certainly not less than the laws of physics. And since that is so, I ask: how can it be, according to your view, that a person standing in this Buridan-type situation will choose a side? Will go to the right table or the left table in order to eat? That contradicts the laws of physics.

[Speaker A] Why does that contradict the laws of physics?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because the laws of physics say that if the system is symmetrical, the conduct, the dynamics that come out of such a system, will also have that same symmetry.

[Speaker A] I don’t understand.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there is a system whose right side looks like its left side, nothing there will happen in a way that breaks the right-left symmetry.

[Speaker A] That’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is in fact a mathematical law, but it is a mathematical law applied to the equations of physics, and the equations of physics basically say that the moment the system is a system with right-left symmetry, the behaviors there will be behaviors with right-left symmetry.

[Speaker A] But that’s exactly what we were talking about with the… let’s say I’m a physical reductionist, and I believe that biology—or for that matter that biology emerged from chemistry, which emerged from physics. Okay? And then I say that every emergent system is within the framework of the previous system. Meaning, I would say there is no biological entity that acts contrary to the laws of physics. There can’t be such a thing. And I would say the biological system has added restrictions; it is more restricted than a physical system, just exactly what you said with chess: it has more restrictions, more laws, but those restrictions of the biological system cause it to behave differently from a physical system.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it cannot contradict the laws of physics. Again, you’re saying something and its opposite. Meaning, the end result ultimately contradicts the laws of physics. Can a biological body contradict the laws of physics? No. No? Then if so, it will die of hunger. Why?

[Speaker A] Because a body… first of all, you claim, unlike me—correct me if I’m wrong—that biology contradicts, that a biological body contradicts the laws of physics.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sorry, just one second, I need a brief time-out, okay? Can we stop the recording if you want, maybe for a moment, one second.

[Speaker A] Yes. Excellent. I hope I did okay. Well, we can also stop here and continue next week or something like that, but just to close: first of all, I feel that we reached some significant point of disagreement here, which is good. Both of us can do homework—or I need to do homework—on this point, on the relationship between biological systems and physical systems. And it was pleasant and enjoyable, and it’s much more fun when we have time. So thank you for giving me this time. So how was it for you?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely fine. Yes? Excellent. Okay, fine, so maybe we’ll stop here indeed; that will also solve the recording problem, or I don’t know what ended up happening there with the recording. Very good. Okay.

[Speaker A] Miki, thank you very much.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll be in touch. Eli, thank you.