Brothers in Dispute #8: Dr. Michael (Miki) Abraham, 18.2.25 – Arnon Shahar
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- General overview.
- Opening the episode and the message of respectful disagreement.
- Buridan’s donkey, determinism, and symmetry.
- Teleology as an alternative to randomness and causality.
- Aristotle, teleological physics, quantum theory, and evolution.
- Freedom, liberty, and the question of what “determines” a choice.
Summary
General overview.
The eighth episode of the podcast “Brothers in Disagreement” presents a conversation between the interviewer and Dr. Michael (Miki) Abraham about determinism and free will. The interviewer describes difficulty and disappointment that no resolution was reached, alongside a sense of greater depth and a willingness to keep working patiently and attentively. Miki presents the importance of respectful argument as the central message, and frames the discussion around three disputed points: Buridan’s donkey and symmetry, teleology as a conceptual alternative to the causality/randomness dichotomy, and clarifying the concepts of freedom and liberty within the framework of free will. The conversation ends with agreement to postpone some clarifications until after some homework, and with the interviewer recognizing a feeling of aporia as a state from which one has to keep thinking.
Opening the episode and the message of respectful disagreement.
The interviewer presents the meeting with Dr. Michael (Miki) Abraham as an attempt to clarify determinism and free will, and says he came expecting a resolution but was disappointed that none was reached. He says the conversation deepened the points of disagreement around three issues, and he remains optimistic that a resolution can be reached, but that it will require more work, more patience, and more listening. The interviewer praises Miki as a smart conversation partner who is willing to argue, and defines the willingness to argue in a respectful and pleasant way as the most important message of the podcast.
Buridan’s donkey, determinism, and symmetry.
Miki frames the discussion within Newtonian mechanics and describes Newton’s second law as stating that force equals mass times acceleration, so that the forces and initial conditions determine the motion of a body. Miki argues that in a completely symmetrical situation between right and left, and under a deterministic-materialist assumption in which a person is only a physical creature, motion to the right or the left cannot occur because there is no physical distinction that could break the symmetry. Therefore, in such a Buridan-like situation, the person would remain in the middle and die of hunger. The interviewer suggests that biological systems are physical but asymmetrical by nature, and Miki rejects this within a reductionist framework, arguing that biology does not change physics but rides on top of it. Therefore, turning right in a symmetrical situation would mean violating the laws of physics.
Miki defines Buridan’s donkey as a legitimate thought experiment that need not be realizable in the world, and explains that a thought experiment serves as a diagnostic argument that reveals intuitions, not as an empirical argument that settles the matter. Miki says that if one’s intuition is that a person in a symmetrical situation would not die of hunger, then that person reveals about himself that he is not a determinist; whereas if one’s intuition is that the person would die like the donkey, then one can remain a determinist. The interviewer says he is willing to accept that in a hypothetical perfectly symmetrical state the person would die, but returns to linking life and asymmetry, inspired by Eastern philosophies. Miki accuses him of escaping reductionism and demands that he point to the physical force that would move particles to the right in a symmetrical situation, arguing that hunger and motivation do not break symmetry at the microphysical level.
Teleology as an alternative to randomness and causality.
Miki presents a common argument against libertarianism: every event either has a cause or has no cause, and if it has a cause that is determinism, while if it has no cause that is randomness, so there is no room for free choice because of the law of the excluded middle. Miki argues that the argument covertly assumes that no cause means randomness, whereas in his view, in the absence of a cause there are two possibilities: action for a purpose, or action without a purpose. Thus teleology constitutes a third option that is neither determinism nor randomness. Miki distinguishes between a conceptual question about whether free will can be coherently defined and a factual question about whether it is realized in the world, and argues that the main problem troubling many people is conceptual, and that solving it makes it possible to give weight to the immediate intuition of free choice.
The interviewer argues that purpose is a kind of cause, and that in practice purposes have conscious and unconscious causes. Miki replies that purpose is “a cause that I create,” and that action begins with a purposive decision that has no cause, while the will translates the purpose into causality in the physical world. Miki insists on returning to the question whether, on the conceptual level, there are three ideas: cause without purpose, purpose without cause, and neither cause nor purpose, and explains that the argument over how to describe human action is already on the factual plane.
Aristotle, teleological physics, quantum theory, and evolution.
The interviewer brings Aristotle as an example of teleological physics in which the stone “wants” to fall, and argues that the move to causal thinking contributed to scientific progress. He also brings up evolution as a distinction between Lamarckism as teleological and Darwin as a causal account through natural selection. Miki argues that teleological physics does not contradict determinism, and presents Aristotle as a determinist who describes laws in teleological language, not as someone who grants free choice to a stone. Miki argues that the narrative about physics freeing itself from teleology is a myth, and points to teleological formulations in physics such as Fermat’s principle and descriptions of mechanics in purposive language. He then argues that in quantum theory the causal description does not appear in the same way, and concepts like “force” are not fundamental there, while “potential” and language of striving for a minimum describe the behavior.
Miki explains that the aversion to teleology comes from the feeling that if there is a purpose, then someone must have set it, which smuggles God in through the back door. But with regard to human beings, one can argue that the one who sets the purposes is the person himself, and here a possibility opens up for departing from determinism. The interviewer says he still does not fully understand the conceptual clarification and plans to listen to the conversation again and read about the topic, and the two agree to suspend the dispute about teleology until next time.
Freedom, liberty, and the question of what “determines” a choice.
Miki defines free will as freedom from dictates, not as the absence of influences, and distinguishes between influences of nature and nurture and the deterministic fixing of a necessary outcome. Miki argues that even with complete information about nature and nurture one still cannot know with certainty what a person will do, whereas the determinist claims that one can determine it. Miki proposes a distinction between “freedom” as the absence of constraints and “liberty” as the ability to maneuver and choose within a system of constraints and costs, illustrating this through models of democratic choice: “Syria” as supposedly free choice with only one ballot, “Switzerland” as a place where the choice does not matter because there are no costs, and a country with problems in which the choice takes place under costs not dependent on the voter.
The interviewer asks what, besides influences, determines a person’s choice, and Miki argues that the very question assumes determinism, and that nothing determines the choice because the person chooses freely, while the influences are only the background within which the decision is made. The interviewer tries to apply this to the moral dilemma of “the Frenchman” who chooses between joining the resistance and caring for his mother, and Miki agrees that there are influences but insists that the decision itself is the person’s decision and not a dictate. The interviewer ends with a feeling of aporia, and Miki presents this as a good place to be for the sake of thought, and the conversation closes with agreement to end and try to meet again.
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] Hi, welcome to the eighth episode of the podcast Brothers in Disagreement. Today I’m meeting with Dr. Michael Miki Abraham, and we’re talking about determinism and free will. Today’s conversation was hard for me. I came with some mistaken expectation that we’d manage to reach some kind of decision today about this issue, and I was disappointed. We didn’t reach a decision. I do feel that we went deeper into the points of disagreement between us. We talked about three points in this disagreement, and I’m still optimistic. I still believe we’ll be able to reach a resolution on this issue, but it requires more work, more patience, more listening, and Miki is an excellent conversation partner—smart, understanding, and willing to argue, which is the most important thing. Willing to argue and to do it respectfully and pleasantly, and that’s what matters most. It just matters most. If there’s one important message to this podcast, it’s that: to be willing to argue about things respectfully. So that’s it, I hope you enjoy it. Bye. Good morning, Miki, how are you?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank God, absolutely fine.
[Speaker A] Great. So in the last meeting, I think we got to some good places. We got to points of disagreement that felt to me pretty clear, relatively clear. And I think that if we solve them, then we’ll reach agreement. That’s what I think—maybe not. We’ll see. So the three points—I thought to raise and talk about three points. One is Buridan’s donkey, because I’m not sure I fully understood you there, in the context of symmetry and so on. Another topic I’d like us to talk about is teleology. That’s also an important point. And a third topic is the concept of free will—the concept of free will. So would it be okay if I ask you questions? Go ahead. Okay. So the most complicated point, in my opinion, is Buridan’s donkey. If you could explain again your position that from the determinist point of view, the donkey—or a person—would die if there were perfect symmetry.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Looking at it—I’m talking right now about Newtonian mechanics, let’s leave quantum subtleties aside. In Newtonian mechanics, the motion of material bodies is determined by equations of motion. The equation of motion is basically based on Newton’s second law, which says that force equals mass times acceleration. So if some force acts on a body, it will develop an acceleration proportional to that force. Let’s say there’s a body lying on a table, let’s assume there’s no friction on the table, and I apply a force of magnitude ten to it. If the mass of the body is two, then the acceleration it develops will be five. Ten divided by two, five. Five meters per second squared—that’s the unit of acceleration, meaning its velocity increases by five meters per second every second. Fine, that’s basically as long as the force is acting. The moment the force stops acting, the body moves at constant velocity. That is, it no longer changes its velocity—neither direction nor magnitude. That’s Newton’s second law. Now, what changes from case to case is the force acting, or the forces acting, and the mass of the body. I’ll ignore the mass because it doesn’t essentially change the picture. Whether it’s two or eight or ten doesn’t change the picture. What changes the picture is the force. Now, what is the force acting on the body? A force acting on a body can come from many, many sources. Say, for example, a body lying on a table, as I said before: there’s the friction the table exerts on it; maybe I’m pushing the body; maybe I’m applying some magnetic field, and if the body responds to magnetism, then that too will exert some kind of force on it, and so on. All kinds of forces. But in the end, those forces determine the body’s motion, the body’s acceleration, and therefore its motion. Another thing that determines the motion is the initial conditions. That means where the body is at the beginning and what its velocity is at the beginning. Okay, those are the two conditions. Given that whole set, the body’s velocity is fixed. That is, I can know the body’s velocity in advance. That’s the assumption of Newtonian mechanics. It’s a basic physical law. Now let’s think what that means. What this actually means is that if a body is in a certain place—say, for example, a body lying on a table, we talked about the table, the body is lying on the table. Now a force acts on it forward. If a force acts on it forward, it won’t move right or left, it will move forward. Okay? But what happens if a force acts on it forward but the table itself is tilted? That is, the table itself is slanted. Then clearly there is another force acting on it downward besides the forward one, so that can change its motion. But what happens if the surface itself is completely symmetrical, exerting nothing? Then only the force will determine the direction of motion, right? In other words, if the surface itself has no preference for any direction, then the applied force will determine the character and direction of the motion. Now let’s think about a particle located on a topographical layout—we talked about this last time. The forces acting on the particle are basically a function of the layout, right? If I’m standing on top of a mountain, then some force is acting on me trying to push me down or pull me down, and so on. The layout determines the forces acting on that body. Now if I’m talking about a living creature, for example, the picture is a little more complicated. Think of a person standing somewhere and deciding to move in some direction. He decides to move in some direction; the one applying the force is himself. That is, he himself decides to move. It’s not that something external applied a force to him and therefore he moved. But of course his decision is influenced by his desires, his decisions, the environment in which he operates. Now if a person is in a Buridan situation—meaning there are two completely identical tables to his right and left, and he is standing motionless in the middle, and the whole environment is completely symmetrical except for those two tables, right and left—then the symmetry basically exists in this problem, symmetry between right and left. Now under the assumption that the environment is what drives the person, because that is the deterministic and materialistic assumption, then the action that occurs in the person must preserve symmetry between right and left. That means it cannot be that the person suddenly starts moving at a 45-degree angle to the left. Why not? Because there is nothing in that direction different from these two directions. In other words, these two directions can ultimately exert the same influence on him, and so his options are the following: either he goes forward, or he goes backward, or he stays in the middle. That is, he cannot go right and he cannot go left, because if he goes right, you’ll ask him, “Wait, wait—what made you turn right and not left? The symmetry of the problem makes no distinction between right and left. Right and left are equal.” And the person himself—I’m currently assuming he too is built in a completely symmetrical way. Let’s talk about a pointlike person, okay? So he is built symmetrically. There is no possibility according to the laws of physics that the person will go right or left, it doesn’t matter—there is no possibility. The symmetry of the problem dictates the motion. And therefore I argue that if the person is only a physical creature—that is, if it’s only physics, I don’t care that biology and everything else emerge from it, that’s all just emergent—so if in the end what we have here is only physics, there cannot be movement either toward the table on the right or toward the table on the left. He will die of hunger. That’s the claim.
[Speaker A] Okay, I think I understand. My thought about that is: what do you think of the assumption, the idea, that biological systems are essentially physical systems in the deterministic sense, but asymmetrical in their essence? Meaning, biological structure is a structure in which asymmetry really is an essential part of it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that can’t be. That can’t be under the reductionist assumption. Meaning, if a person is a collection of particles, look at his particles on the physical level—leave biology aside, because that’s just a level of description at a higher scale. In the end it’s a collection of particles. Now you need to explain to me how those particles moved. Now you’re basically telling me all these particles suddenly move right. How can that be? הרי it’s a collection of particles on which no force acts to the right. They are in a symmetric state between right and left. So now if you look at this through the lens of physics and not biology, biology won’t change the physics—it rides on top of it, as we talked about last time—but it doesn’t change the physics. In the final analysis, the laws of physics have to be preserved. And if the collection of particles called a person suddenly turns right, then he has violated a physical law. Yeah, I’m not sure about that. I have a few claims—
[Speaker A] —about that. First, I think that in reality—correct me if I’m wrong—in reality there is no symmetry in the physical sense the way you describe it. Obviously not, it’s a thought experiment. Okay, it’s a thought experiment. So in reality there isn’t this symmetry; it’s just some idealized thing, and reality is asymmetrical, it’s messy—messy in quotation marks. And in some sense maybe that is part of its very essence, asymmetry.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that misses the point. In physics, and generally not only in physics, there are many experiments that are thought experiments. A thought experiment doesn’t have to correspond to what happens in the world. I’m not sure I can realize it in the world. But still, I’m calling on you to ask yourself: given that such a hypothetical, idealized situation were created, what do you think would happen? Do you think a person in such a situation would really die of hunger? Now in the world itself this will never happen. You can’t achieve full symmetry in the world, that’s obvious. But still, the question is interesting on the hypothetical level. That is, think about what you think would happen if I nevertheless succeeded in creating such a state, and the person were a pointlike creature, or at least symmetrical between right and left. Would he die of hunger or not? That’s the question. It’s a hypothetical question.
[Speaker A] Okay, so in my opinion he would not die—that’s what my intuition says—and it seems to me, maybe it’s connected, that the person as a biological system is himself some kind of environment, and I’d say it’s an environment that in its essence cannot be symmetrical. A person can’t be—no living creature can be—symmetrical. Maybe if a person were a symmetrical robot, maybe that robot would die.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Why is symmetry connected to the question of whether I’m alive or a robot? What difference does that make?
[Speaker A] Again?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is symmetry connected to the question of whether I’m alive or whether I’m a robot? What difference does that make?
[Speaker A] Because I think that a living creature all the more so—like what we said about an ideal thought experiment—even an ideal person, I think, or any organism, can’t be or won’t be symmetrical because, for example, his heart leans a little to the left.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you’re bringing me back to the real world. I’m asking about a hypothetical situation: a person whose heart is in the middle, a round heart located exactly in the center, okay? There’s no biological obstacle to such a thing existing, okay? So I’m saying, at the hypothetical level, suppose I managed to create a creature with full right-left symmetry, and it’s a living creature. There’s no difference between that and a robot. In the end, in this respect there’s no difference. In the end, its particles obey the laws of physics, and if it moves right, then it violated the laws of physics. Now a person, as a physical creature, cannot violate the laws of physics. Biology won’t violate the laws of physics. Biology is simply the laws of physics operating on a very, very complex system, that’s all. But it’s still the laws of physics. The human body cannot act against the laws of physics.
[Speaker A] I completely accept that. I don’t think the human body acts contrary to the laws of physics. I think—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so then it cannot go either right or left.
[Speaker A] So if hypothetically there really could be a completely symmetrical person—which sounds to me of course totally impossible—then yes, maybe he would die. I don’t understand the problem for determinism in this context, or how this makes determinism difficult.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll explain the significance of thought experiments, something people may be less familiar with. Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example, emerged from a thought experiment. It wasn’t an experiment he performed; it was an experiment he thought through. But it was clear to him what the results should be, and from that he drew conclusions. The idea of a thought experiment is basically a philosophical argument. It’s not an experiment in the empirical sense. And it says this: I have a suggestion for you for how to test your own views. I’m not going to convince you; rather, I’m helping you diagnostically. That is, check yourself—what do you think? How? I suggest you try to imagine a hypothetical situation of such-and-such a kind and think what your intuition says would happen in such a case. Now if you think that a person in such a situation would die of hunger exactly like Buridan’s donkey, then fine—you really can remain with your determinism. This is not an argument meant to persuade a determinist. It’s an argument meant to help you check whether you are really a determinist. Because if your intuition says, no, no, that can’t be, a person is not a donkey—meaning, as the old comedy troupe says, that’s a bear, not a donkey—there’s a reason Buridan defined this situation using a donkey. Why did he define it using a donkey? After all, you understand that even a donkey won’t die of hunger, because the situation is never actually symmetrical. The donkey will turn right or left because the situation will make it do so. But he spoke about a donkey on purpose, because it was clear to him that with a person, in such a situation, this wouldn’t happen—even if the situation were completely symmetrical. A donkey would die in a hypothetical perfectly symmetrical situation; a person in such a situation would not die. That’s the intuition on which he built the case. And now I ask: if you agree with that intuition, then you are not a determinist. Period. It could be that you tell me, correct—a person, exactly like a donkey, would die of hunger in such a case. Then you can remain in your deterministic position. The thought experiment merely comes to help you understand yourself. And many times a person can discover that he has a strong intuition that a person in such a case would not die of hunger, and if so he has to rethink the question of whether he is a determinist. Because if he thinks a person would not die of hunger, then he has discovered about himself that he isn’t really a determinist. He thought he was, but he discovered that he isn’t. That’s the idea of a thought experiment. A thought experiment isn’t a persuasive argument. It’s an argument that reveals to you what you yourself think, even when you’re not always aware of it. Okay? Now if you think a person in such a case would die of hunger like a donkey, then fair enough—you can indeed remain a determinist. It seems to me that human intuition generally says that human beings are not donkey-like and would not die of hunger in such a case. And it’s not because of asymmetry—that’s exactly the point. Because the donkey too is in an asymmetrical situation and won’t die of hunger. The whole point is: yes, but let’s think about a hypothetical situation that really is symmetrical. And in such a situation, the claim is that a donkey would die but a person would not. And if you accept that, then you are not a determinist. That’s the claim.
[Speaker A] Okay, so I think I’m okay with the idea that if a person—on the assumption that he is completely symmetrical and reality is completely symmetrical and everything is symmetrical—then he would die. Yes, I’m okay with that, because I assume that both reality and the person are not symmetrical in their essence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, that actually makes me suspect that it’s not really what you think. Because you say, because reality is not symmetrical—but that’s exactly the point. Leave it aside. Talk about symmetrical reality; don’t tell me “because.” That’s exactly the point. I feel, at least, that you do have some difficulty with the conclusion. And it seems to me that usually—I don’t know, that’s my impression, only you can answer this—a person in such a case would not die of hunger. It seems to me that that is the simple intuition even if the situation were completely symmetrical, and therefore it’s not right to hang everything on, or escape to, practical reality, which is always asymmetrical. That’s true, but still.
[Speaker A] But I think—oops, sorry, that’s my cat, Ketem. So what do you think? First of all, I very much believe in thought experiments, and I think you can uncover some real truth through thought experiments, and also through this thought experiment. And I think—tell me what you think—the state of hunger, of needing food, of maybe entropy, of the possibility of dying, is that not an asymmetrical state?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely not. Quite the opposite. That’s the whole idea. The whole idea is that you look at this through the eyes of a physicist. Leave hunger and all that aside; that’s all emergent, all things that arise as a result of what particles do. I’m looking at the particles themselves. The particles themselves ultimately create a state of hunger and sensations and whatever you want, but practically speaking, what will move the particles to the right? Physically, what will move them? Not hunger and entropy—physically, microscopically, in terms of forces on the particles, what will move them right? There is nothing that will move them right in a symmetrical state.
[Speaker A] According to the determinist, hunger is a physical state.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—but it cannot break the symmetry. Hunger doesn’t move you right. Hunger brings you to the decision that you have no choice, you need to cast lots and choose either right or left so as not to die of hunger. Do you see? Hunger is a motivation, but in the end what moves you is not hunger. What moves you is the decision. Now a decision, if you translate it into deterministic materialist language, is nothing more than the motion of particles physically. At the biological level we call it a decision, or at the psychological level, but I specifically want to look at it at the physical level. And at the physical level, nothing can be translated into a decision that breaks the symmetry. I can’t see anything here that would move all those particles right or left, because physically the situation is symmetrical. So escaping into the mental direction—decisions and psychology—that’s an escape. I’m looking at a collection of particles called you: what moves them right? Physically, what—where is the force that moves them right? There isn’t one. You see? I’m trying to draw your attention to the fact that you yourself are looking for a way to escape this, because you do have the intuition that the person would not die in such a case, and therefore you keep moving in the direction of, yes, but maybe the decision, or hunger, or these mental parameters will break the symmetry here. No, they won’t break it—that’s exactly the point. And if your intuition really is, as I sense at least, that the person would not die of hunger in such a case, then you need to rethink the question of determinism.
[Speaker A] Again, I don’t understand physics, but I have some intuition that there’s a close connection between what we call life—and maybe this comes more from Eastern philosophy, Taoism, Buddhism—that there’s a close connection between what we call life and asymmetry. That in symmetry there is something inert, dead, and asymmetry is essential to what we call life.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re escaping. You presented a reductionist position. The reductionist position says we are a collection of physical particles. Leave Eastern philosophy out of it—it changes nothing. Even if Eastern philosophy is right, translate that for me into how reduction works. In the end, show me how these particles move right. There is supposed to be a force moving them, right? Fine, Eastern philosophy will explain what happens in our minds, mentally—okay—but now I’m saying: go back down to physics and explain what happens in physics. And in physics, nothing happens.
[Speaker A] Let’s look for a moment at the physics of the matter. So I’m a physical reductionist, yes, I believe that in the end everything is physics. But I don’t understand anything about physics, so you help me. There are also in physics, I assume, all kinds of processes where the system always wants to balance out, right? There’s something like that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is, but again that’s at the macro level, and it won’t help at all. At the macro level there are laws of diffusion, say in chemistry, where concentrations equalize between different regions. Say if there’s a different concentration of salt in water—there’s more here than there—eventually it evens out. But I’m not talking about that. In the end that too is all just complex physics. Let’s look at the physics in the most plain and simple way possible. Look it straight in the eye. Show me what force in physics moves my collection of particles to the right. After you show me there is such a force, I can give it explanations in terms of Eastern theories, or diffusion, or whatever you want. But in the end, if you’re a reductionist, it has to be translated into a force acting on my collection of particles and taking them to the right. And that force cannot exist in a deterministic materialist world, because the situation is symmetrical.
[Speaker A] So I don’t completely understand that. What I’m asking you is: do you agree that biology is nothing but complex physics?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m willing to agree to that for the sake of the discussion. I’m not sure that it is—that’s the question of vitalism—but fine, for the sake of the discussion I’m willing to agree. It won’t change my argument.
[Speaker A] Let’s say yes. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that biology is nothing but complex physics. Or let’s say it isn’t—that biology is not complex physics. Okay, let’s go for a moment against my own idea, or against reductionism. You think it isn’t, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think—I don’t know. What I do know, what I think, is that there is in us something beyond biology, not beyond physics. My claim is not a claim in biology; it’s a claim in psychology. That is, biology may be complex physics. That’s the question of vitalism, and I don’t have a clear position on it. For now the consensus among biologists is that physics is enough to explain biology. And I’m willing to accept that for the sake of the discussion. I’m not sure; I think there’s some haste there, because we don’t really know that yet, but fine—for the discussion I’ll accept it. I claim that there is in us something beyond the material, not beyond the inanimate, but beyond the material. And for me, “material” includes vital matter too—it’s still matter.
[Speaker A] A question about biology. Earlier we talked about the ball that rolls down the mountain or goes up the mountain—that a person can go up the mountain against the laws of physics, right? This thing, against the laws of physics, happens not only with a person but with every organism, right? The organism goes up the mountain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but it’s not against the laws of physics. It exerts force and goes up the mountain. Ah, good. Therefore, therefore, I have no problem with that. That certainly happens. I’m asking what happens with Buridan’s donkey. That does contradict the laws of physics.
[Speaker A] So Buridan’s donkey—again, I think where we’ve gotten to, and you don’t agree with me on this, I think—but I’m still not sure I fully understand why you don’t agree with me—is that I think the issue of symmetry, the question of symmetry, is part of the nature of reality—or asymmetry is part of the nature of reality—and you don’t agree with me on that point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is that? No, I don’t agree that it’s essential. I’m saying I don’t know how to create a symmetrical situation, but there’s no problem at all in thinking hypothetically about a symmetrical situation. It’s a completely legitimate thought experiment. There is no law in biology or physics that forbids the existence of a symmetrical living creature. No, I don’t think there’s such a law.
[Speaker A] Again—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A law that forbids, or doesn’t allow, the existence of a living creature that is completely symmetrical between right and left. No, there’s no law saying our heart has to lean a bit to the left. Or whatever. No—in principle there could be a person, or some creature, that is alive and completely symmetrical between right and left. There is no biological obstacle that I know of to the formation of such a thing. The probability is of course very small, because what are the odds that perfect symmetry would emerge on both sides? Fine, and therefore I’m talking about a thought experiment. But it does not in any way contradict the laws of biology or the laws of physics. And therefore I’m saying: we can think about such a thought experiment and then ask what it implies. Okay.
[Speaker A] Okay, so here I feel that for now we’ve exhausted this point, because we’re in some disagreement, but we need to do a bit of homework on this. If it’s okay with you, let’s move to the next point. Okay. And we’ll come back to this Buridan’s donkey point and ask—I don’t know—we’ll do homework on whether there really is or is not a connection between symmetry and life or something like that. Okay. So the second point I’d be happy to talk about is teleology. In the previous meeting you said that teleology is the third possibility between causality and non-causality.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right—between causality and randomness. Sorry, non-causality includes both randomness and teleology. That is: causality, randomness, and teleology. Non-causality is the last two.
[Speaker A] So if you could go over your point again in that context: how does teleology solve the problem of determinism, or of free will?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I started from the fact that there is a common argument against the conception of free will, against libertarianism. And the argument goes like this: every event that occurred either had a cause or did not have a cause. If it had a cause, then it was necessary—that’s determinism, because the cause dictates the result; a cause is a sufficient condition for the result. And if it did not have a cause, then that is indeterminism, so it’s something random. Either way, since in logic we have the law of the excluded middle—either there is a cause or there isn’t, there is no third possibility—therefore either way there is no free choice, because it’s either determinism or arbitrariness. Free choice is not a coherent concept. My claim was that what this argument is really claiming is that the problem with free choice is a problem on the conceptual, definitional level. It’s not a question of whether in our world there is free choice or not; rather the question is whether there is even a meaningful definition for this mechanism we call free will. A mechanism, yes? I said, for example, fairies are well-defined on the conceptual level. In our world they don’t exist. But the discussion about free choice is on the conceptual level. And the argument says: forget the question of whether free choice exists in the world. I claim that the concept of free choice is empty of content. There is no such thing, because either you are a determinist or you are an indeterminist. There is no third option. That’s the argument. And what I said is that this argument assumes something implicitly, and that is the root of the problem. It basically begs the question. Because it assumes that if there is no cause, then obviously you are in a world of randomness. But no. If there is no cause, there are still two possibilities before you: either there is a purpose, and then it’s not a world of randomness—it’s action for a purpose and not action from a cause—or there is no purpose either. No cause and no purpose, and then that is randomness. In other words, once you denied causality, or the possibility that there is a cause for the event you are talking about, there are still two possibilities open to you: either it has no purpose or it has a purpose. Therefore this argument fails to conceptually rule out free choice. Now the question whether this concept—which has logical standing and is well defined, that is, it has a good definition, it has content—is realized in reality, that is what we may call a factual question. But the conceptual question, in my opinion, is mistaken. And I added something else. I said that many times my feeling is that people arrive at determinism not on the factual plane. What troubles them is the conceptual plane, because they are trapped in this dichotomy between determinism and indeterminism, and therefore they are unwilling to accept the existence of free choice. And if I solve the conceptual problem, if I show them that on the conceptual level it exists, then there is no obstacle to also accepting that it is realized in the world—because after all, I think we all experience within ourselves such experiences of free choice, of free will; we just deny it because conceptually we are unwilling to recognize that this concept has content. But if I’ve solved the conceptual problem, then there’s no reason not to accept that immediate intuition that I choose freely. That’s basically the claim.
[Speaker A] Okay, excellent. So I’d be happy to discuss this a bit, to ask you some questions about teleology. Okay, to challenge this view. So you define teleology as something that is not a cause—not a cause, not a cause—and not randomness. And I think, correct me if I’m wrong, that purpose is a kind of cause.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is the question of questions. Let’s call it a cause, but it’s a different kind of cause. And I argue that a purpose is a cause that I create. In the final analysis, look, when I decide, for example, to call you so we can meet tomorrow morning, okay? So the meeting tomorrow morning is my plan, it’s my goal. In order to achieve it, I want to meet with you tomorrow morning. Now my will—and this, I think, is the uniqueness of will in the libertarian picture—manages to translate that purpose into a cause, and now that cause makes me stretch out my hand, call you, coordinate a meeting with you tomorrow morning. But it starts with a purposive decision that I want to meet with you tomorrow morning. And if you ask me why I want to meet—just because. Because that’s what I decided I want. Okay? There’s no cause for it. So it’s not just some intermediate stage, where there’s really a cause and the intermediate stage is that a purpose also gets created. No—the purpose generated this whole process. That’s my claim. It begins with a purpose. And that purpose gets translated into a cause because our physics works causally. Meaning, when I move my hand in order to call you, that’s already a physical event. My hand is a physical body. So when it moves, there’s a cause that moves it. That cause is a force. That force is produced by our nerves, by a brain decision, all those things. But everything begins with some decision about a purpose that I want to achieve. My will translates that into a cause, and now the cause starts the whole process rolling in order to realize the desired purpose. That’s already the physical part of the process.
[Speaker A] Okay, and what do you think about the possibility—and I think this is the important point—that in your consciousness the purpose appeared, the desire to meet me tomorrow morning for example, it appeared in your consciousness as a purpose, as a desire, maybe supposedly without a cause, but that in fact this desire does have a cause or causes, some of which you’re aware of and some of which you’re not aware of, and in fact there were causes for that purpose.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the deterministic claim, obviously. That’s what the determinist argues against the picture I’m presenting. But I’ll say two things. First of all, if there is such a possibility as the one I’m presenting, then I’ve solved the conceptual problem. Now we have a discussion about whether it actually happens. Because you’re saying that in practice maybe you’re living under an illusion; in fact there’s a cause here that produced this thing, and you just think there isn’t. That’s already a question about what actually happens. But first of all, the question is whether we agree that on the conceptual level there really is a third option. If so, then we can move on to the question of realization—does it happen in the world? So from your question I understand that we’ve gotten past that stage. Meaning, on the conceptual level, okay.
[Speaker A] I don’t think so. Okay. Because I think—and I’d be happy to hear—you, if I understood you correctly, are saying that there can be some purpose, some desire of a person to attain something or do something, without a cause, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes.
[Speaker A] And I’m saying, in my humble opinion, from my understanding of how people operate in the world, there is no such thing as a purpose—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I’m taking you back to the question. You say your understanding of how people operate in the world—that’s what the dispute is about. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the conceptual question. Is this mechanism, on the conceptual level, a third mechanism, one that is neither randomness nor determinism? The question of what actually happens with us is not a conceptual question; it’s a factual question. That’s why I draw a sharp distinction between those two discussions. And I’m asking whether on the conceptual level we agree. After that we’ll see what happens with human beings, how human beings operate. Do you agree that on the conceptual level there is a third option?
[Speaker A] I’m not sure I understand you in this context. What do you mean? Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One option is that there is a purpose without a cause, one option is that there is a cause without a purpose, and one option is that there is neither a cause nor a purpose. On the conceptual level. It could be that in our world there aren’t three options, that only one of them is realized. But on the conceptual level we have three Platonic ideas, okay? And all three exist. There aren’t only two, as the argument I brought at the beginning claims—the dilemma argument. No, there are three. Now we have to see which of the three, if any, is realized in the world, how human beings operate. That’s another debate. So I asked whether we’ve gotten through the conceptual level, whether on the conceptual level we’ve reached agreement. I’m not—
[Speaker A] It’s hard for me. But maybe I’m not fully understanding you. But let’s say I attack it from another direction, okay? Okay. I’ll attack the idea of purposiveness as such. Conceptually or empirically?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because right now we’re arguing on the conceptual plane. And you can’t bring me facts here. You need to explain to me why, in your opinion, this concept doesn’t exist as a distinct concept. Not why it doesn’t happen in the world.
[Speaker A] Let me say what I want to say and then you tell me—correct me. Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So—
[Speaker A] I’ll talk about Aristotle and his physics, which was a physics of purposes. Teleological, yes. How?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Teleological, yes.
[Speaker A] He believed that when a stone falls to the earth, it’s because it wants to fall to the earth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To return to its source, yes, to the dust.
[Speaker A] Yes. And that was the accepted view for many years afterward, until—I don’t know—the Renaissance or something like that, Copernicus, I don’t know, you’ll know better than I do. And the moment people broke free of the purposive conception of physics and arrived at a deterministic or causal conception—I don’t know what to call it—physics advanced a lot, the calculations became much more precise, and everything worked better. Do you agree with me?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I agree, but it doesn’t touch the discussion for several reasons. Meaning, I don’t even fully agree. First of all, Aristotle’s conception was completely deterministic. Teleology is not a contradiction to determinism. Aristotle didn’t think the stone decides to return to its source. It cannot decide not to return to its source. So it’s just language. He describes deterministic rules in purposive language and not in causal language. But it’s not that he says the stone has free choice. So that’s one thing. Second, the liberation of physics from teleological thinking is itself a myth. I wrote about this not long ago on my website. People, including physicists, will tell you that, but they’re mistaken. Modern physics brings us back to teleology. Because in the nineteenth century, I think, there was Lagrange, a French mathematician and physicist, who found the formulation of what is called analytical mechanics. And he describes Newton’s laws in teleological language. Meaning, he shows that you can actually describe everything in teleological language and get exactly the same physics. It’s only a question of which language you choose to use. Now okay, up to that point people thought it was just an anecdote. Fine, so there’s this interesting anecdote that you can also describe mechanics, or physics, in teleological language and not in causal language. But yes, the famous example is Fermat’s principle, where you can describe all of optics through the rule that light chooses, in quotation marks, the shortest path to reach its goal. Once you assume that, all the laws of geometric optics follow from it. You don’t need the laws, and that’s a teleological description. But they did this for all of mechanics. Except that in quantum theory—yes, that’s already in the twentieth century—it turns out that there is an entire theory, which is actually considered the most fundamental theory in physics, that uses only teleological language; it has no causal description. Until then people thought there were two types of description and you could choose whichever language you wanted, either the causal language or the purposive language. But in quantum theory it turns out there is only the purposive description; there is no causal description. In quantum theory, for example, the concept of force does not appear. It just doesn’t—the concept of force. Feynman has some article where he tries to define the concept of force ad hoc in quantum theory. It’s not there. In quantum theory there is potential. You need to understand what potential is. When you look at a body moving along a topographical landscape, the body strives to reach the lowest place. Strives—that’s teleological language. That’s the language of potentials. By contrast, if you look in causal language, the body is pulled downward because there is a gravitational force pulling it down. Two languages. In quantum theory only the first language exists; the second one does not exist. And therefore this myth, as if we moved from teleological language to causal language, has turned out over the last two hundred years—without our noticing—to be a return to teleology. But as I said earlier, that’s an anecdote, because in the end this teleology is a deterministic teleology. That is, none of the physicists claims that particles have choice. The fact that I use teleological language to describe what they do, or what light does, doesn’t mean they have choice. It only means I choose purposive language and not causal language in order to describe deterministic rules. Now, except that I ask myself: if so, why do people insist that causal language is really the correct one and purposive language is only an anecdote? And my answer is: because people feel that if you adopt purposive language, then even if the electron doesn’t have choice, somebody probably chooses for it. Because after all, it chooses, it strives—or light, or the electron, or whatever—and therefore to speak about the aspirations of particles is basically to smuggle in through the back door, let’s call it, God, who actually created certain purposes toward which reality moves, inanimate reality moves. And that doesn’t mean this reality has choice, but it does mean that if you use purposive language, then—at least that’s how people feel, I think—something behind it set the purpose or pushes things toward their purpose. So the Holy One, blessed be He, chooses for them or constitutes the will that turns purpose into cause. With us it happens by itself; we’re not particles, we have will, so with us we turn purpose into cause, like I said earlier about the phone call. So purposive language, on the one hand, does not go beyond the deterministic world—it is just another language for describing deterministic laws—but it does smuggle in through the back door a possibility of going beyond determinism. That’s the important point. Meaning, the possibility exists because causality doesn’t allow such a thing and purposiveness does, because the question is always who generated this purpose—that is, who set this purpose there, how did that happen. Maybe it happened without a cause, with only a purpose. So if something happens only for a purpose and without a cause, then here is the third conceptual mechanism. And now, regardless of the factual question of what is true, I’m showing you that conceptually there is a third option.
[Speaker A] I think I still don’t understand it; I’ll need—we’ll talk about it—I’ll need a bit more explanation. But before I ask you to explain, I’d like to raise another point, okay? Yes. And the additional point is just things I thought about before the meeting, and that’s evolution. Darwin is considered the one who invented evolution, but he didn’t. Before him there was Lamarck, where the difference—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Lamarckism isn’t exactly evolution. Lamarckism is purposive evolution. Exactly, exactly.
[Speaker A] Lamarck believed in purposive evolution, meaning he believed that the giraffe’s neck is long because each individual giraffe tried to reach the branches, and then little by little that affected the offspring. And Darwin’s greatness was basically to explain evolution—the evolution the way Lamarck conceived it—but in causal terms, not purposive ones, namely natural selection and that whole story. And the transition from purposive thinking to causal thinking in this context was very good, correct, made things much more precise, enabled many things to be better understood. Right. So let’s go back for a moment to purposiveness, because I still don’t think I fully understand what you mean by it. Because in my mind, as you also suggest, Aristotle’s purposiveness does not contradict determinism, and what is essential to me as a determinist—call it purposiveness, call it whatever you want—what matters to me as a determinist is that there are clear-cut laws according to which things happen. Call it cause, call it purpose, call it whatever you want. There are absolute, clear-cut laws by which reality operates, and human choices occur according to them. So what, in your opinion, does the concept of purpose add?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I said earlier is exactly the point. Aristotle’s description is a purposive but deterministic description. So why does it frighten people so much? Especially since in physics I think by now it should have returned to its former status, and it hasn’t. People have an aversion to teleological thinking, to purposive thinking. And I attribute that—it’s psychology, of course—but I attribute it to the fact that people feel that if there is a purpose, then someone in some sense set it there. Now, stones don’t set purposes because they have no free choice. Stones move toward their purposes, in Aristotelian language, move toward their purposes, but someone set the purpose there. That someone is God. And the aversion to bringing God into the picture is what causes people to insist on causal language. Now I claim that with respect to a human being, if you use purposive language, then the possibility opens up of saying that the one who sets the purpose before me is not God, it’s me. And if I set purposes before myself, then suddenly you discover an action that is no longer deterministic. Even with the stone, even if with the stone the purposive description is still deterministic, purposiveness opens up an option that, if I apply it to human beings, opens up the possibility of a third mechanism in which I set purposes, not out of causes, and I strive toward them. Now again I say: you can deny that this is what actually happens with people—that’s a debate on the factual level—but I argue that on the conceptual level it puts a third option on the table. First of all. So those claims that it’s either determinism or randomness, there’s no third option—they’ve fallen apart. There is a third option. Now we have to discuss whether this third option is realized, whether human beings really do set purposes for themselves or not. But that is already a discussion on the factual level. The question is whether we’ve gotten through the conceptual level. I’m returning to the same question I asked earlier. On the factual level you can tell me, look, true, this is possible in principle, but on the factual level I think that every human being who supposedly sets purposes for himself is actually driven to that by causes. Fine, that’s a different discussion that has to be conducted. But if this possibility exists conceptually, then we can move on and conduct the discussion on the factual level. If we still have an argument on the conceptual level, then that has to be clarified first. That’s why I keep returning to the question of whether we’ve gotten through the conceptual plane and can move to the factual plane, or whether we’re still arguing on the conceptual plane.
[Speaker A] So I don’t know, that’s a point. It’s an important point, and what it seems to me I’ll need to do, and what I plan to do, is watch our conversation again. Right now my mind is blocked; I can’t think this thing through. I’ll listen to it again, I’ll read a bit about it, I’ll try to understand better what you’re saying, and I’d be happy to come back to you about this issue.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From the conceptual clarification, I think we can move on to the factual clarification, because if we still have a disagreement on the conceptual level there’s no point moving on. Meaning, if you think there is no conceptual option for defining free choice, then there’s no point discussing whether it is realized in practice. Obviously every time I bring you an example you’ll say it’s an illusion, because after all it can’t exist on the conceptual level. But if on the conceptual level it’s possible, now we can begin to move on to whether it is realized in practice in the world, and then conduct the factual discussion. That’s why it’s important to me constantly to return and check whether we’re already beyond the conceptual plane or whether we’re still arguing there.
[Speaker A] Okay, so I suggest that with regard to purpose as well we suspend the discussion and continue it next time. We have symmetry and life, we have purpose, and with your permission I’d be happy to move to the last point of the concept, of the idea of free choice. Okay—free choice or free will—and I’d ask, if you can, to say what you mean when you speak about freedom. Freedom from what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Freedom from dictates. Meaning, not freedom from influences. I think we talked about that in the first or second meeting. Obviously there are all kinds of influences on a person; there’s nature and there’s nurture and there’s everything. But both nature and nurture are a collection of influences. The determinist says it’s a collection of dictates. Meaning, give me the nature and the nurture and I’ll tell you what the person will do. And I claim: give me the nature and the nurture and I still can’t say with certainty what the person will do. I can make intelligent guesses; there’s a decent chance I’ll succeed, but I can’t determine with certainty what he will do even if I had full information—not because information is missing, that’s obvious. But I’m saying that even if I had full information, I still would not be able to tell you with certainty what a person will do. So the concept of freedom here is very misleading. In this context I give an example when I speak not about freedom but about liberty, and to illustrate it I talk about three models of democratic elections in countries. There are democratic elections in Syria, right? You go into the voting booth and choose in a completely free way the one ballot that’s there, namely Assad, and surprisingly Assad gets elected. Okay, that’s of course determinism in disguise. Supposedly you’re free, nobody tells you what to do, but there’s only one option in front of you. So in fact that’s determinism imposed on you without your perhaps feeling it. Well, you do feel it, but okay, in the example. By contrast there’s Switzerland. What happens in Switzerland? You have two options or several options, you go into the voting booth, you choose whichever one you want, and whoever gets the majority of the votes becomes president of Switzerland. Seemingly freedom at its best—democracy. Except that in Switzerland—this is the metaphorical Switzerland, not the real Switzerland—there are no problems. So what difference does it make to me who gets elected? Meaning, choose this one, choose that one, there are no costs. So it doesn’t matter. That’s what I call freedom. By contrast, there are countries—one of them I think is familiar to us from nearby—that have problems, and even so you still have the option to choose this or choose that, and the costs are costs that don’t depend on you. Meaning, the costs—if you choose this one you’ll pay the price or gain what you’ll gain; if you choose that one, same thing. Meaning, you can maneuver within this system of constraints, and therefore you have liberty to maneuver, but within a system of constraints. Freedom is liberty to maneuver without constraints surrounding you, as in Switzerland, and that’s why I call it freedom and not liberty. Liberty—yes, in the language of the Sages—liberty from “inscribed by the finger of God on the tablets.” “Inscribed on the tablets” means liberty on the tablets; the engraving on the tablets is engraved in stone. Around it there is some framework imposed on you, a system of constraints, but within it you can choose what to engrave. And therefore my claim is that there is a difference between freedom and liberty. Freedom is the absence of constraints, the absence of limitations. Of course that’s a straw man that determinists always enjoy attacking—they present the libertarian as someone who believes in freedom. But a sober libertarian doesn’t believe in freedom; a sober libertarian believes in liberty. Liberty means we have lots of constraints—nature, nurture, everything—but within them we still have the ability to maneuver and choose among various paths. And the prices are prices that we will pay because the environment says what it says. Sometimes it will be hard for us to do something, sometimes we’ll pay a price for what we do, sometimes we’ll gain, it will be easy for us to do. All that is dictated by the environment. But what we decide to do and whether to accept the costs or the benefits—that’s our decision. Therefore liberty is not freedom; liberty is the ability to choose. Freedom is the absence of limitations. By the way, in my view freedom is not even a value. Freedom is a state. If I have no constraints, then I have no constraints. The value is, by definition, liberty. When you have constraints, the question is whether you act autonomously and decide how to conduct yourself within the constraints. That has value—to be an autonomous person. To be a free person has no value. It’s pleasant, it’s nice, it’s an asset, but it’s not a value. It’s simply a condition in which I have no limitations—if such a condition could even exist, yes. But people mix up freedom and liberty, and that mix-up is, I would say, fateful—a serious confusion. And I think in our context that is exactly the point, because determinists very often attack libertarians because they assume the libertarian believes in freedom. How do you explain the influence of genetics? How do you explain the influence of environment? How do you explain the influence of education? How do you explain the influences of your history and your biography? I accept all these influences. I only claim that they are influences and not dictates. Within them I act. That takes us back to that meeting where I talked about the topographical landscape.
[Speaker A] Right, yes, and here I feel we have some kind of circle, and I need to ask you—to open up this issue of liberty—and let’s say there are constraints and there are costs and a person decides on one side and not the other with that set of costs and difficulty and all kinds of things. And the dispute between the determinist and the—how would you define it, what’s the opposite of determinist?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Libertarian, in our context.
[Speaker A] Ah, libertarian. The dispute between the determinist and the libertarian is that the determinist says everything is determined by nature and nurture and all that, and the libertarian, the liberty-oriented view, says that all those things influence the choice but they do not determine the choice. And I’m interested to know, in your opinion, what besides nature, nurture, all those influences—what besides all those influences determines a person’s choice, yes?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nothing. The collection of influences is the environment within which he chooses. The moment you ask what determines a person’s choice, you are assuming determinism. I claim that nothing determines a person’s choice; the person chooses freely. The constraints influence the choice, but you are always looking for the missing element—wait, so what determines it in the end? The answer is: that is exactly the dispute. I claim that nothing determines it. All these influences exist in the background, and within them the person chooses.
[Speaker A] So you’re saying that the very question I’m asking assumes some kind of preconception or deterministic conception.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is always where people get tangled up—wait, but what nevertheless caused you to choose? If you choose… after all, something is supposed to cause it. No! Nothing is supposed to cause it. Whoever asks what nevertheless caused you to choose is actually assuming determinism implicitly. But that’s exactly the dispute. I claim there is no determinism; nothing caused me to choose. I’m striving toward a purpose, I’m not being affected by a cause. I think this value is correct and therefore I choose it, and that’s all, because I decided that this is what is right in my opinion.
[Speaker A] And when you say that you decided that… it’s right. Yes, I—obviously I understand we’re going to end up in a circle here. But when you choose that something is right, why do you think you choose that it’s right? There’s no cause. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Why” in the sense of what was the cause—that is exactly begging the question, as I said earlier.
[Speaker A] Yes. So let’s say, I don’t know, some choice that you made. If, say, we talked about the Frenchman who asks himself whether to join the Resistance or stay with his mother. And in the end he chose to go to the Resistance, for argument’s sake, I don’t know. So I ask you: he had that dilemma and he decided to go to the Resistance. Would you say that his decision happened without a cause? Without causes? And I claim it happened with causes. That his education and all his life experiences, his whole history, eventually led him to prefer, a bit more, going to the Resistance rather than—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To prefer a bit more—I agree with that too.
[Speaker A] Okay. Okay. Good, I’d be very happy to listen to our conversation again and sort of try—I feel a bit like in aporia, that’s what it’s called, in the dialogues of Socrates, of Plato, aporia—a feeling of some kind of philosophical helplessness or—okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Excellent, that’s a good place to be in, a place where one has to think. Excellent, excellent. So shall we end for today?
[Speaker A] Yes, yes. Excellent. Well then, again, thank you very much, thank you so much for doing this with me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With pleasure.
[Speaker A] Great. Well, hopefully maybe next week if it works out for you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s hope so, yes.
[Speaker A] Okay, thank you very much, Miki.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Goodbye, bye-bye.
[Speaker A] Goodbye, have a good
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] week.