Head to Head Episode 13 – Do We Really Have Free Will? Michael vs. Aviv, “Round Two” – Rosh Be Rosh
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
- Defining a machine and understanding AI
- Opening the podcast and presenting the question of free will
- The framework of the discussion, accessibility to the audience, and returning to the participants
- Conditions for changing one’s mind and the demand for evidence
- A call to follow the podcast and the purpose of the debates
- The structure of the opening statements and the beginning of Rabbi Michael Abraham’s opening statement
- Defining free will and distinguishing between deliberation and randomness
- Causality, determinism, and the dilemma argument
- The will as a cause and the claim of begging the question
Summary
Overview
The text presents the opening of a filmed debate on the question of whether free will exists, against the background of the philosophical tension between determinism and moral responsibility, reward and punishment, and divine judgment. Eyal Yosef introduces the participants and the rules of the discussion, and Rabbi Michael Abraham and Aviv Franco explain what might persuade them to change their minds. In his opening statement, Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that the basic intuition is that free will does exist, and therefore the burden of proof lies with whoever claims that it does not. He formulates a definition of free will as the ability to choose otherwise in a non-arbitrary way, through deliberation. He points to causality and the dilemma argument—“either there is a cause or there isn’t”—as the central challenge, and argues that this argument fails because it begs the question by identifying “without a cause” with “random.”
Defining a machine and understanding AI
The speaker opens by objecting to calling a person “a machine,” and defines a machine as something artificially produced for a purpose. He argues that the relationship between input and output in a computer can be the same as in a human being, and that AI shows this. He adds that, to the best of his assessment, AI does not understand what it is doing.
Opening the podcast and presenting the question of free will
Eyal Yosef presents “Head to Head” as the first filmed debate podcast in the country and defines the topic of the episode as free will and whether such a thing exists. He describes determinism as the view according to which every event, action, decision, and human thought is determined exclusively by previous events in a chain. He says that in such a situation people are not truly responsible for their actions, and that this raises problems concerning reward and punishment, blaming criminals, and divine judgment, which appears immoral when the world is deterministic.
The framework of the discussion, accessibility to the audience, and returning to the participants
Eyal says that the discussion will be kept in clear language for viewers who are not philosophers, and that difficult concepts will be explained so the audience will not be left “in the dark.” He says that the audience asked for “take two” following their previous debate on whether it is rational to believe in God, and so they are back. He introduces Rabbi Michael Abraham as a PhD in physics who teaches at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan, and notes that his book “The Science of Freedom” deals with neuroscience and free will. He presents Aviv Franco as a host on “The Atheist Line,” whose goal is to promote critical thinking, skepticism, and rationality, and which runs a weekly live call-in program every Sunday at nine.
Conditions for changing one’s mind and the demand for evidence
Eyal asks the guests what would persuade them otherwise. Rabbi Michael Abraham says that only a clear-cut scientific finding could persuade him, because he knows the philosophical arguments and science can always surprise us, and he hopes he will be honest enough to admit it if such an indication appears, though for now, in his understanding, there is none. Aviv Franco asks for “sufficient evidence” supporting the claim, and defines free will as the ability to choose otherwise, so if one could show that it really was possible to choose differently, that would show that the claim is true.
A call to follow the podcast and the purpose of the debates
Eyal reminds listeners that the debate is available on Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok, and asks them to follow, like, and comment. He says that the purpose of these debates is to open the mind and hear opinions different from our own, and that sometimes he comes in as a moderator with a position and leaves with doubts or with the understanding that things are “more gray.” He calls on viewers to test their beliefs in order to become “smarter.”
The structure of the opening statements and the beginning of Rabbi Michael Abraham’s opening statement
Eyal sets the time for the opening statements: Michael asked for about fifteen minutes and Aviv for about ten minutes with a little extra, and he explains that the topic is heavy, so a longer opening will provide a broader evidentiary basis for the discussion. Rabbi Michael Abraham opens by saying that he neither wants to nor thinks he needs to prove that free will exists, and says that his starting point is a basic intuition that he has free will, and that most people share that intuition. He defines his goal as showing that those who have tried to bear the burden of proof and show that there is no free will have not succeeded to this day, and therefore for him it is enough that there is no proof that free will does not exist.
Defining free will and distinguishing between deliberation and randomness
Rabbi Michael Abraham defines free will as the ability to decide otherwise, such that a given set of circumstances does not uniquely dictate the next step and several possibilities can exist. He adds that this is a necessary but not sufficient condition, because the decision is not arbitrary but is made through considerations, desire, intention, and ability, and the process is not “a lottery.” He argues that there is a mistaken identification between free will and randomness.
Causality, determinism, and the dilemma argument
Rabbi Michael Abraham presents the main challenge to his position as the claim of causality, according to which everything has a cause, and given the circumstances and the laws of nature, the next step is dictated. He describes Laplace’s idea of a computer that could calculate all the data of the universe and predict what comes next, as a claim that defines a deterministic situation even if in practice such computational ability does not exist. He brings a common dilemma argument: every event either has a cause or it does not; if it has a cause, it occurs deterministically, and if it has no cause, it is random; therefore, supposedly, there is no room for free will.
The will as a cause and the claim of begging the question
Rabbi Michael Abraham responds to the claim that the will can be the cause by saying that then one must ask what causes the will, and at some point the chain of causes has to be “cut,” otherwise this is not free will. He argues that the dilemma argument fails because it begs the question by assuming that every event without a cause is random, and he defines this as a logical fallacy. He argues that even if there is no cause, there are still two sub-possibilities: a random event or a volitional event, which is the result of deliberation and directed toward a purpose. Therefore there are three possibilities, not two, and the option “there is no cause” splits into randomness or choice.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do you agree that a person is a machine, according to your claim?
[Speaker B] No, no, because we, because a machine—I’ll explain to you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? The way I present it—but you don’t agree with the claim? What difference does it make how I present it?
[Speaker B] Because I’ll explain, I’ll explain why. Because a machine, by definition, when I talk about a machine, is something produced artificially for a purpose.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The relationship between input and output in a computer can be the same as in a human being. AI shows that. But still, to the best of my assessment, AI does not understand what it’s doing.
[Speaker C] Hello and welcome to Head to Head, the first filmed debate podcast in the country. I’m Eyal Yosef, and in every episode I host two experts standing at opposite ends of one question. And today: free will. Is there such a thing? For hundreds of years philosophers have wrestled with the question of whether we are creatures that can truly decide, or whether maybe our decisions are deterministic. Determinism is a philosophical view according to which every event in the world—actions, decisions, human thoughts—is determined exclusively by previous events, basically as the result of a chain reaction. The problem in that situation is that we are not really responsible for our actions. That raises a lot of problems regarding reward and punishment. Can we really blame a person who committed a crime when he truly could not have acted otherwise? Beyond that, the whole issue of religious reward and punishment, the whole issue of God judging our actions, seems immoral when the world is deterministic. So let’s get to the root of the issue. Let’s talk to people who know a thing or two about philosophy. I know that many of the viewers are not philosophers and haven’t read philosophy books. We’ll make sure to keep the discussion in clear language, and if there are concepts that are a bit hard to understand, I’ll ask for them to be explained. Don’t worry—you won’t be left in the dark. So here’s the thing: you asked us to bring them back for take two in hundreds of comments, emails, and messages. You really loved their previous debate on “Is it rational to believe in God,” so I listened, and here they are. So on the side claiming that the world is not deterministic and that we really do have free will: Rabbi Michael Abraham, PhD in physics, teaches at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan. One of his books, “The Science of Freedom,” deals with neuroscience and free will. Hello. Hello, hello.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thanks for having me.
[Speaker C] And on the other side, the side claiming that one thing leads to another and that we don’t really have genuine choice, Aviv Franco, host on The Atheist Line, a group whose mission is to promote critical thinking, skepticism, and rationality, and which runs a weekly live call-in program every Sunday at nine. Hello, Aviv.
[Speaker B] Good evening, hello, hello.
[Speaker C] So let’s begin, head to head. Before we start, I want to ask you a question that from now on, in my debates, I’m going to ask all the guests: what would convince you otherwise? What is the thing that, if you became convinced of its existence or non-existence, would make you change your mind about the question presented today? We’ll start with you, Michael.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Tough question. I assume that what could convince me would only be a clear-cut scientific finding. Meaning, philosophical arguments—unless I get a very big surprise—I know them backward and forward. Science can always surprise us, and if there’s an unequivocal indication, I hope I’ll be honest enough to retract and admit it. At the moment, as far as I understand, there isn’t one.
[Speaker C] Very interesting. Aviv?
[Speaker B] Evidence—sufficient evidence supporting the claim that we really…
[Speaker C] Do you have examples of such evidence?
[Speaker B] I think that’s the discussion here today, isn’t it?
[Speaker C] For example, if someone proved to me that X, then I…
[Speaker B] In the end, free will is defined in the simplest way as the ability to choose otherwise. If you show me that there really is a way to demonstrate that one could have chosen otherwise—okay—then that more or less shows that what you’re saying really exists.
[Speaker C] Okay, thank you very much. Before we get underway, I’ll remind everyone: we’re on Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok. Follow us to stay updated every time a debate goes up. And if you feel like showing some support, hit like and comment below so I can read what you thought about the debate. As you can see, I read everything and respond—and I also respond in action. The purpose of these debates is to open the mind and hear views different from our own. More than once I’ve come into a debate as moderator with an opinion one way or the other and come out with lots of doubts, or many times people made me think it’s not black or white—it’s more gray. So it’s definitely worth opening your mind and always putting your beliefs to the test. It’ll only make you smarter. Smarter. So okay, friends, we’re starting. We’re beginning with opening statements. You asked for it—Michael, you asked for about fifteen minutes, and Aviv, you asked for about ten minutes, maybe with an extra two minutes—because the topic is a bit heavy and there’s a need here to lay out a fairly broad evidentiary basis, so we said fine, let’s do a somewhat longer opening so there’ll really be a strong basis for discussion. So I’m starting the clock, and we’ll begin, as usual, with the one arguing in the affirmative. We’ll start with you, Michael. Okay, Michael Abraham, your time for the opening statement starts now.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, good evening, nice to meet again. My first point relates to your introduction, Eyal. I don’t want to, I can’t, I don’t want to, and I don’t think I need to prove that we have free will. That’s my starting point. My starting point is that I have a basic intuition that I have free will. It seems to me that most people have that intuition, and therefore my goal is really to show that whoever tries to take on the burden of proof and show that there is no free will has not succeeded—at least not so far. Meaning, I’m not going to prove that there is free will. I’m going to try to show that there is no proof that there isn’t. For me that’s enough, because my starting point, my initial intuition, is that there is. Therefore the burden of proof is on whoever says there isn’t. What is choice? So briefly, I’d say it really is the possibility of deciding otherwise. Or in other words, the assumption that if there is a given set of circumstances, it does not dictate my next step. My next step can be A or B or maybe also C—the circumstances do not dictate the next step in a one-to-one way. That’s essentially the core of free will, but that’s not all. It’s a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. There’s an additional element saying that the decision of which path to take is not arbitrary. Meaning, it’s a decision that I actually make on the basis of considerations. I want to reach a certain situation, a certain result, I want to realize a certain value.
[Speaker C] Desire, intention, and ability.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, I want to realize a certain value, and therefore it’s not enough to show that there are several options for proceeding. The advance is not a lottery. In other words, the advance is the result of deliberation. That’s very important. Very often people identify free will with randomness, and I think that’s a mistaken identification. From this definition, you can understand what seems to me at least—and we’ll see later with Aviv—but what seems to me to be the most significant challenge facing the view I’m presenting is the whole issue of causality. In other words, causality basically says that once the circumstances are given, the laws of nature—physics, or if you’re reductionists, and if not then I don’t care, all the laws of nature, biology, chemistry, and so on—dictate the next step. And therefore the existing circumstances, if I had a big enough computer, like Laplace once said, I’d be able to tell you what comes next.
[Speaker C] Okay, like a computer that can indeed process all the data of the universe.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All the data. Theoretically—even if no such computer exists—but assuming such a computer could do it, that means the situation is deterministic, even if at the moment we don’t have that computational ability. Therefore the central challenge to the position that there is free will is the accepted scientific assumption that everything has a cause. A cause means a sufficient condition. That’s at least the minimum—there is a philosophical dispute about what a cause is—but the minimum is that the cause is a sufficient condition for the effect. And therefore, given the circumstances, they dictate the continuation in a one-to-one way. That’s the accepted scientific view. And therefore that is really the question someone who advocates free will has to deal with. I’ll present it a bit differently because I think it sharpens it. There’s a very common argument against free will that takes the form of what in logic is called a dilemma argument. And the dilemma argument basically says this: every event either has a cause or doesn’t. Right? There’s no third possibility. The law of the excluded middle. Either there’s a cause or there isn’t. If there’s a cause, then that event occurred deterministically—that is, it could not have happened otherwise, because as we said, a cause is a sufficient condition. If there’s no cause, then the event is pointless. It’s random. Either way, there can’t be free will, because there’s no third possibility. Either there’s a cause or there isn’t. A very common argument; it comes up in many, many discussions.
[Speaker C] But it ignores free will here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t ignore it—it shows that there isn’t any. Because if you tell me there are only two possibilities, no more, and from each of those possibilities it follows that there’s no free will—
[Speaker C] But the cause could also be my will.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—again, if your will is a cause, then I’ll ask what the cause of the will is. In the end I have to cut the chain of causes somewhere, otherwise this isn’t free will. Okay? So therefore the initial event, which I call choice, is the arising of the will, if you like. And basically, either it has a cause or it doesn’t. If it has a cause, then it is determined deterministically. If it has no cause, then it’s random, it’s pointless, it’s arbitrary. And therefore what comes out is that there’s no room at all for a mechanism of free will, because there’s no third possibility—that’s the law of the excluded middle. Okay? That’s the argument. This argument fails because it begs the question. It begs the question because it assumes that every event without a cause is random.
[Speaker C] By the way, begging the question—that’s a logical fallacy.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. A logical fallacy that says the conclusion you want to reach—you actually assume it implicitly.
[Speaker C] And of course that’s not—so how exactly is it assuming itself here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m claiming that it begs the question. Why? Because this argument basically assumes that if you say there’s no cause, then the thing is random. Right? That’s what this argument assumed, and I deny that. I think that’s the very point in dispute. Why? Because in my view, even if there’s no cause, there are still two possibilities. One possibility: the event is random. A second possibility: the event is volitional. So it has no cause, but it’s not random. It’s the result of deliberation, directed toward a purpose. And therefore there aren’t two possibilities, there are three possibilities. Or in other words, the possibility that there is no cause itself splits into two sub-possibilities. One possibility is a random event; another possibility is an event of choice. Someone who assumes otherwise can of course raise the argument I just gave, but he’s begging the question. He assumes that every time there’s no cause, it’s basically a random event. That is the argument itself. If you assume that, you’ve begged the question. Therefore I claim this argument is not correct. But for me, I’m not bringing this up only in order to refute the argument—it also helps me sharpen what the meaning of free will is. The meaning of free will is a third mechanism—really not a mechanism, but I’m calling it a third mechanism—that is neither causal nor random. It’s a third thing. That’s a very important point. And if I put it in a nutshell: a causal event is an event produced by a cause; a pointless event is an event with no cause and no purpose; and a volitional event, or an event of free will, is an event with no cause but with a purpose—it is the result of deliberation. Okay, regarding this tension between having and not having a cause, I’ll now look at it from a slightly different angle because that touches on different kinds of questions. Very often, against the position that there is free will, people bring all kinds of influences of different sorts, or scientific and other evidence for influences of different sorts—genetic, brain-based, and so on. You can see that certain genes are responsible for stinginess, faith / belief, atheism, whatever it may be. And this is often taken as undermining the claim that we have free will. Because in the end we are driven by our genes or by our brain, which is also basically physical or physico-chemical processes. And in this context there is often a sense that someone who believes in free will—you can call him a libertarian—someone who believes in free will is supposedly committed to denying the existence of such influences. Now this is a very important point because it lies at the center of a great many arguments on this issue, so I have to address it too. And my claim is as follows: clearly all these influences exist. I’m not denying scientific facts or other facts, and you don’t need to deny them in order to believe in free will either. What I want to claim, basically, is that when I want to describe a person’s free will, you have to look at it through the following example, or through a model of the following kind: think, for example, of a small ball moving along some topographical terrain. That terrain has mountains and valleys and ravines and saddles and hills and so on. The terrain, or the shape of the surface, basically dictates the movement of that ball, or of a stream of water if it flows there, toward minimum potential energy. In the end, the surface dictates the form of movement of the particle or the stream of water. By contrast, a person who is on such a terrain—even though he feels, and a person is a physical object, so he certainly feels, a force pulling him downward or a force opposing his ascent upward—physical forces act on human bodies too. But a human being, unlike a little ball or unlike a stream of water, can decide to go against the forces acting on him. He can decide: “I’m not going down even though down is pulling me, I am going up even though up pushes me away or doesn’t let me go up, makes it hard for me to go up.” And therefore my claim is this: if we look at this topographical terrain as a representation of all the influences—genetic, neurological, environmental, educational, whatever you want, nature and nurture and everything you want—all of that, for me, is modeled by the topography. Meaning, it exerts on me a whole system of pressures this way and that, to react this way, react differently in every situation, which direction to go. When something is hard for me to do, I represent that by a mountain. Yes—it’s hard for me to move in that direction. If it’s easy or natural for me to go in a certain direction, I represent that as a valley. For example, someone who has a tendency to react violently—so his topographical terrain, let’s say someone provoked him—then in the direction of a violent response, he will have a valley. It’ll be easy for him to go that way. In the direction of the harder response, or sublimation—yes, restraint—it’ll be hard for him. He has a mountain in that direction. But he can still decide to climb the mountain and go against his natural tendencies. Now, my claim is that all the scientific influences I described earlier are basically described by the topographical model. And therefore they do not determine what I will do—they determine the forces acting on me and trying to make me do or not do something. But in the final analysis, I have the ability to veto, in Libet’s terms—yes, Libet’s experiments. I have some ability to say: okay, these forces are acting on me, but in the end I decide not to go with them, to go against them.
[Speaker C] A point of clarification, yes. What is this entity you’re calling the human being? Because if you count the forces acting on us as including our own brain and the chemistry inside our brain, then how do you separate the forces from ourselves?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m getting to that. But the forces acting on us are also internal forces—parts of our personality, our genetics, our brain. For me those too are external forces. Okay? Both the internal and the external. And I claim that there is some kind of homunculus, yes, some sort of creature, some sort of entity that exists within the topographical terrain; it is not the topographical terrain itself. And that entity is pushed or pulled by the topographical terrain, but it can decide not to go with that pull or push. And that is really the meaning of choice. So if you ask me, for example, if we ran an experiment and found that human beings who underwent a certain kind of education are on average more violent than human beings who underwent another kind of education—let’s say there’s such a psychological finding—okay, I’d accept it completely. Meaning, it doesn’t prove in any way that we don’t have free will. It only says that our choice is not free of constraints.
[Speaker C] That the mountain would be higher.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. The mountain would be higher or lower. It would be harder for us to respond violently or to respond non-violently, but we still have the possibility of doing so. In other words, the sciences investigate the topographical terrain within which the person acts. The sciences do not investigate the person. That’s the claim I want to make. Now by contrast—and here I come to dualism—a materialist, by definition, will naturally understand this as saying that the sciences describe the person. The topographical terrain is the person himself. It describes my tendencies in one direction or another. And then a deterministic view is called for, because that basically means that my terrain dictates what I will do. And therefore many times, although logically it doesn’t have to follow, still many times a libertarian view, a view of free will, goes with dualism, goes with some notion that says there is something in us beyond matter, because matter works according to the laws of nature, and there is something more in us that can actually…
[Speaker C] You’re being careful not to say the word “soul.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can say soul, yes, it doesn’t matter. You can call it whatever you like. That’s the next important point I wanted to make. Another point: I agree—and on this issue it seems to me that Aviv and I will also agree, we’ll hear in a bit—I don’t think free will can be inserted into the scientific world. Meaning, you can’t plant free will inside the scientific world, including quantum theory, chaos, and all the attempts that have been made in those contexts. In my view, it’s impossible to do that. And in that sense, whenever scientific objections are raised against me, I accept them completely. My answer will not be within the framework of science. I’m not going to say, well, quantum theory says that determinism isn’t absolute and therefore there is free will. Quantum theory won’t help me on this issue. In that sense, the game is in the determinist’s favor. And therefore I want to say: I’m not looking for scientific explanations for free will, precisely because science is described by the topography, whereas free will is exercised by that entity which acts within the topography. Therefore I’m not looking for explanations of it in scientific terms. Maybe one final point as I wrap up—I need to finish in just a moment—so I’ll say this. A primary reason, and we can talk about this afterward, for why I prefer this picture of free will is this: we’ve seen three mechanisms—causal, random, meaning without cause and without purpose, and purposive, or free will. Now usually the dilemma I described earlier presents either causality or randomness, and I argued that there is a third thing. Now I’m saying more than that: among these three mechanisms, the only one we know directly is the third. None of us has ever seen anything that is truly random. Not even rolling dice—we describe dice-rolling as if it were random, but there is nothing random there at all; it is completely deterministic. Therefore if someone told you something happened just like that, for no reason, your eyes would open wide. What do you mean? I don’t know things that happen just like that. In other words, randomness is not familiar to us from our experience. Causality—this is already David Hume, we talked about it in the previous debate too—causality also is not a product of our experience. If so, it seems to me there is an a priori advantage to the third mechanism; it’s the only one familiar to me directly. The other two are certainly not preferable to it, and therefore the burden of proof is on whoever thinks…
[Speaker C] So, like, intuitive, as you said at the beginning—you started with something intuitive. Right. Okay, thank you very much for those remarks, that was very interesting. Aviv, your ten minutes start now. The presentation he’s showing Miki and me will also appear on the screen for our viewers on YouTube, but we’ll also convey everything verbally for those listening on Spotify.
[Speaker B] Okay, so good evening, and again thank you very much to Miki for agreeing to come again, thanks to Eyal. So like every debate, I always start by saying what I’m talking about and making distinctions. So very often in this discussion, we can distinguish between will and choice. It’s very confusing because it also comes from English: in English, free will is “free will,” but “will” means desire. So we often get confused here. So desire is an aspiration for the way we want the world to be, some future-oriented aspiration. And free will would be such an aspiration that does not arise from previous circumstances. Choice is the ability to distinguish between alternatives and to anticipate the result of taking one of them, and therefore to take that alternative. Free choice would be such a choice that does not arise from previous circumstances. That is, for free choice in the libertarian sense, the ability to choose otherwise. I think the clearest way to explain it is basically to imagine some kind of time machine. Let’s say right now I have here a glass of Coke and a glass of Fanta, and I decided to drink the Coke. If I were capable of turning the wheel backward and taking time back, then it could be that suddenly I’d drink the Fanta and not the Coke. Meaning, even though the world returned to its previous state, I chose differently.
[Speaker C] Everything returns to exactly the same—
[Speaker B] State, but—
[Speaker C] But you chose differently.
[Speaker B] I chose differently. That is, that would be free choice—a choice that does not arise from previous circumstances. Okay, that’s how I define it. What is not free choice—what am I not talking about? Choosing among many options. Meaning, there could be Fanta and Coke here, and there could also be a refrigerator here with another three hundred choices. The fact that I added another three hundred choices doesn’t mean the choice is free. It’s still the case that I’ll have to choose among those options, and it will still arise from previous circumstances. Adding options doesn’t make it free. The fact that I can’t predict the results of the choice—I think Miki will probably agree with me on this too—the fact that I can’t foresee the result of the choice doesn’t mean it’s not deterministic. Systems that are called chaotic, or systems of that kind, cannot always be predicted, especially if the initial conditions are not known, or if there are very, very small differences between them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not deterministic. Also, if I deliberated—that is, if a process took place where I checked, the brain worked, examined alternatives, compared this and that and that, and reached an action and reached a decision—then that is a choice. It took all the previous circumstances, took all the information it had, applied deliberation, chose, and a choice occurred. That’s my brain. And maybe here, I think we’ll soon see, maybe this is the essence of our disagreement. I’m also not talking about a choice that goes against our intuition. Our intuition is part of who we are. Intuition is ultimately defined as my subconscious—all the processing activity that takes place in the non-conscious part of my brain—but that’s still me. It’s still part of me. So if my intuition tells me something, if I think there’s a demon behind the door and in the end I go and check and there isn’t one, then the fact that I chose to open the door doesn’t mean I made a choice that wasn’t free. It just means one part of the brain said one thing, another part said something else, and at any given moment the conscious part beat the non-conscious part, let’s call it that. But that doesn’t mean the choice isn’t free—it still arises from all the circumstances that preceded that point. What I know about demons, what I know about doors, all the experience I accumulated up to that point.
[Speaker C] You said that doesn’t mean the choice is not free.
[Speaker B] That the choice is free—it still, it still will always be the product of circumstances. And I’m also not talking about someone choosing future pleasure over short-term pleasure. Meaning, if someone chooses not to eat chocolate cake and to go to the gym, then he’s aware that if he goes to the gym, in the future he’ll be healthier. So again, a completely rational deliberative process took place here, entirely arising from all the previous circumstances of that person that brought him to that point. There is nothing free about that. We haven’t identified any action here that doesn’t arise from previous circumstances. So okay—why think we have free will? Miki said intuition, feeling, it feels that way to us. Okay, it also feels to me like the sun goes around the earth, but that isn’t necessarily true. It feels to me like the earth is flat—that also isn’t necessarily true. Feeling is something that has to be taken into account, but it isn’t necessarily truth. Why not? So as was said here before, really, yes. Regarding causality: in the previous discussion we touched on it. I chose not to get into David Hume—I actually don’t think we agree on what Hume said—but everything we know about reality shows us that everything is made of particles, particles make up atoms, molecules, and so on. The entire universe operates according to the laws of physics—except for the human brain, which supposedly doesn’t operate by those laws; it has something extra. It feels very much like special pleading, like we’re saying only we are different. Beyond that, I’m saying that the very definition of the term is a problematic definition. The ability to choose otherwise—but you didn’t, you chose! We always live in the world of the choices we actually made. We don’t live in the world of the choices we didn’t make. Meaning, the fact that you feel you could have chosen otherwise doesn’t mean… Okay, but in practice you didn’t do it, and the world in which you didn’t do it is the world we live in today. So what does that help… So for me, since it isn’t scientific, and science is what deals with the world, with reality—it doesn’t necessarily deal with things that could happen—I think there’s a disconnect here… Our brain isn’t one brain. Our brain is made up of different parts that don’t always work in parallel and in the same way and at the same speed. We have the frontal lobe, which is much slower in its thinking, and the posterior lobe, which is much faster. So many times an action can happen quickly, and then by the time the frontal lobe processes it, you think there was a choice, but in practice the back part already decided long before you thought. Again, neuroscience shows this too. Our subconscious can be much more significant in our choices than the conscious part—and that’s still us. And it feels to me, again, that when people talk, they say not everything is free will; there is free will and there are actions that aren’t free will. And it feels to me that every time we get to the point where there is free will, then no, that’s not it—but still there is. Meaning, just like the example with the topography—okay, so there’s this “I,” the ball, which isn’t part of the topography—but it feels to me that this ball, the more we learn, becomes more and more marginal, because it keeps shrinking.
[Speaker C] You’re talking here about a God-of-the-gaps kind of thing?
[Speaker B] And it comes out feeling like God of the gaps—it comes out as the feeling that free will is responsible for less and less and less of what we do.
[Speaker C] God of the gaps is a counter-argument that comes up when people who believe in God claim that we don’t know what some particular thing in the universe is, science hasn’t discovered it, or whatever, therefore it’s God. And the counter-argument says that this is called God of the gaps—basically, only what we don’t know is God, and every time we know more, we discover that God isn’t behind the next curtain. And that’s what he’s talking about. Yes.
[Speaker B] So why are we even talking about free will? Why did we come here today? Who cares? Okay, let’s say I were to say there is free will—fine, what does that mean? So in my view I have my reasons. One, because that feeling exists—I can’t argue with the fact that we feel we are masters of our fate. Two, because many times the other side presents it as though… if you don’t believe in free will then you’re a robot, you’re lazy, you’re not supposed to believe in morality—there’s a lot of poisoning the well, as if if you don’t believe in free will then you have to be such-and-such and such-and-such. And I think that’s not true. I think the most central reason here—and this is the last two reasons—one is moral responsibility, which is the interesting part of okay, what do we do with moral responsibility? And four, I think there’s some kind of… who talked about this? I think there’s some kind of circular argument with dualism. I believe in free will in order to justify dualism, and I believe in dualism in order to justify free will, and then a kind of self-justifying loop is created here. So okay, let’s quickly talk about four…
[Speaker C] Is that coming more from the religious side?
[Speaker B] I think that a lot of the time you see that people who believe in free choice have a very significant correlation with belief in dualism, with some kind of religious belief. Okay, so let’s talk for a second about the reasons. So it’s uncomfortable for us to think that we’re not in control. Tough luck. Just because something makes us uncomfortable doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And I think that if we better understand what it actually means, in practice, to say that we are determinists but still able to choose, just not freely, that doesn’t detract from who we are. That’s my view. The question is why we feel there is—why it feels to us that there is—because in the end, like I said, our brain doesn’t work at the same speed. Our brain is made up of different parts that operate differently and influence one another, and it’s not a computer. We always use the computer analogy, but it’s not really a computer; it doesn’t function like a computer. And a lot of the time, just as an example, you need to choose, so the brain performs the action. Now, that takes time, and different parts of the brain perform the action, and they draw on memories… you need that process. If you didn’t do that process, you wouldn’t need to choose, you’d just act. You need to think. The act of thinking, that delay between “okay, I need to choose” and the point when I’ve chosen—that act of thinking creates for us a kind of illusion: “there, I chose.” But no. It’s simply the time the brain needed in order to calculate all the circumstances. The history, what I ate that day, how I felt, this and this and this, and to produce the answer that is the choice. That’s the reason we feel that we have it—because it takes us time to choose what to do. Sometimes it happens very fast and we don’t notice it, and sometimes it can take a very long time, and then you really feel that you agonized over it. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, which is moral responsibility. Moral responsibility is almost always the issue people get to. If I don’t have free choice, then I’m not responsible for my actions. And I claim that’s bullshit. Why? Because we live in a society, and in society there is an existing mechanism, one that has existed for thousands of years, that we invented, called reward and punishment. Reward and punishment are mechanisms that exist in every human society throughout history. Someone who acts against society—we know how to punish him. In the end, whether there is free choice or not doesn’t matter. People will do actions that don’t fit the way society wants people to behave, and we will punish them.
[Speaker C] Now, okay, five more minutes?
[Speaker B] Let’s look at the reasons for punishing someone. If you look historically, why do we punish people? Why is it useful? So we do it as compensation—we basically want to restore the previous state. I don’t know, you crashed into my car, give me back the money it costs me to repair the car. To deter you—you drove above the speed limit, we don’t want you doing that, so I give you a fine so you’ll stop doing it. Rehabilitation—you drove on a certain road above ninety kilometers an hour, the police came, stopped you, gave you a fine, you understand, okay, you thought you could drive on that road with no problem, but it turns out you can’t, it turns out there are police there, so probably next time you drive there…
[Speaker C] You’re saying the very existence of the reward-and-punishment system enters as part of the considerations that ultimately cause people to act more correctly?
[Speaker B] That’s how we do it, that’s the reason. Think about it—what I’m describing is why we punish people. And incapacitation—the fourth reason is incapacitation. If you commit a crime, we don’t allow you to repeat the crime, whether that’s by prison or, for example, if you caused an accident and you drive wildly, then I take away your license, I disable your ability. A fifth reason is one that isn’t accepted in modern law: retribution for wrongdoing, let’s call it, or revenge. You harmed society, society harms you back. That’s something that usually doesn’t happen today in law, but historically it did exist. Now if you look at reasons one through four, they are completely deterministic. What is determinism? The idea that an action performed today will affect an action you perform in the future. That is determinism. That means that already today our systems of reward and punishment take determinism into account, not free choice. So that’s not right—so basically what I’m saying here is that this whole story of free choice and moral responsibility is a red herring; it’s irrelevant. Whether it exists or not, already today we behave as if it doesn’t. The behavior is that there are actions through which we can influence the individual today in order to prevent him in the future from doing or not doing some action. For me that’s the opposite of free choice—it’s not about the past, it’s about the future. I’m not interested in who moved the wheel backward, but whether it will move forward. And I’ll just finish by saying that I agree with Miki that in the end I think this whole discussion of free choice is an excuse that points to another discussion, which is materialism versus dualism. You basically bring in free will in order to justify dualism, and dualism justifies free choice. And I put on the screen what I think mainly drives our disagreement. Miki described it: he is the “I,” he is the ghost in the machine. There’s a machine, which is the human body, and there’s the ghost, and the ghost controls the machine. The machine can affect it, but it is not necessarily me; I am different from the machine. I’m the one who says: I am the machine. I am my brain, which is the product of all the experience, the input, the output, the processing, and all the experiences and feelings and memories I’ve ever accumulated—that’s me. And whether I’m conscious of it or not doesn’t matter, it’s still me. And whether the choice is conscious or unconscious or free or not free doesn’t matter—still, I am the one who chose.
[Speaker C] Thank you both very much, that was very interesting. Wow, you really have to keep your ears open here to follow along. So let’s start with you, Michael. You have fifteen minutes to lead—it’s a discussion, but you’re leading the discussion, meaning you can take it wherever you want. Let’s begin.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, basically, the picture Aviv described here is called compatibilism. Compatibilism is an attempt to describe the absence of a contradiction—that’s why it’s “compatible,” right? There’s no contradiction between free choice and determinism. And the claim is that one can relate to a deterministic body as freely choosing. Why? Because in the end it does what it itself decided. Meaning, the fact that there isn’t something outside it causing it to do it—there are things that influence it, but there isn’t something that causes it to do it. Rather, it decides what it does, and even if it could not have decided otherwise, that doesn’t matter. The very fact that it decides in that way is called free choice. Now—is that called free choice or not? That’s semantics, so there’s no point in getting into that. But in the end, whether you call it compatibilism or not, in the end we’re talking about determinism here. So I’m ignoring the question of whether to call it free choice or not; it doesn’t really matter. I do want to address the points you raised at the end, maybe start from there. Because I’ll actually agree with you on the first point, and I even wrote this in my book and later in some article as well: there is no practical implication to the dispute over whether or not there is determinism. Meaning, whether we have free choice or not, there is no practical implication. Not regarding punishment, not anything, nothing at all—everything can be explained the way Aviv explained it here, quite clearly. You can explain punishment, you can explain everything. The only thing left—and Aviv passed over it a bit quickly, and in my opinion it requires more clarification—is how we actually view a human being. That’s the important point, even without any practical implication for the moment. I’m not even talking about moral responsibility, which is another question. First I want to talk about what a human being is. Meaning, is a human being basically just a sophisticated computer, mouse, or rock?
[Speaker B] That’s exactly—it’s as if I put in the presentation the points to avoid in the discussion, and the first is poisoning the well. Notice that the moment you present it this way, you say “computer,” “a person is a computer,” “a machine,” “this”—that’s automatically what in debate language is called poisoning the well. You present the other position as though it just thinks we’re all machines. A machine is perceived as a negative thing, it’s perceived as… you present it as though it’s “just.” Notice the word “just”—“just” a machine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I claim that according to your description, a person is a machine. Whether you call it “just” or “not just” is another question. Whether it’s disgraceful or not disgraceful, decide for yourself. I’m only making one claim.
[Speaker B] I’m saying that the way you present it makes it sound like something negative.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you’re saying it’s positive? No problem at all. But do you agree that according to your view a person is a machine, or not?
[Speaker B] No, because we—because a machine, I’ll explain why,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How I present it—you don’t agree with the claim. So what difference does it make how I present it?
[Speaker B] Because I’ll explain why. Because a machine, by definition when I talk about a machine, is something artificially produced for a purpose.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? What difference does it make whether it’s produced in a…
[Speaker B] Great, I don’t think—we are not produced, not by anyone, and we don’t have a purpose that someone gave us. We are capable of thinking for ourselves and reaching decisions for ourselves. The fact that they are always the product of circumstances—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there were a process—if there were a process that produced a computer by chance, not somebody who… just happened to, right? A typhoon storm of…
[Speaker B] Forgive me for interrupting you, I’m just letting you continue, I just want, once again, instead of arguing let’s agree. I completely agree with you that we have no example of randomness. Randomness is off the table.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m not talking about randomness. I’m presenting the question about randomness in order to test your claim. You’re basically claiming that the difference between a human being and a machine is that a machine is produced and a human being isn’t.
[Speaker B] For a purpose, for an end.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. And I claim that this difference is completely irrelevant. What difference does it make? In the end the question is what the product is; I don’t care how it was created.
[Speaker B] So I’ll explain what I mean. If tomorrow we human beings manage to create AI that we created, and it is capable of experiencing and thinking and feeling—this… we created it, but we created a machine that is capable, in line with the points I raised, of dealing with the issues of reward and punishment the way we deal with them. I don’t think it has lesser value than ours.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so here I have two claims. First, if so, then that machine too is produced for some purpose, only it developed consciousness or reflection or whatever, or a higher computational ability, but it is still produced. So the focus is not the question of whether it is produced or not.
[Speaker B] The point here is not to present it in a way—not to present us in a way… the idea here is the thought as though, again, the word “just”—a machine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Forget the “just,” forget the “just,” it’s not interesting. I’m asking about the substance of the claim. Do you agree that a human being is a machine or not? That’s the question. Forget whether it’s negative. It may be very positive to be a machine. I’m asking the factual question: for you, is a human being like a machine with one difference—that this is manufactured and that isn’t?
[Speaker B] Okay, again, I wouldn’t agree—I simply don’t agree with the definition because it doesn’t match the definitions. Machines, again, are an artificial product made for a purpose. Machines are not like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But machines are also made of iron; that’s not the…
[Speaker B] Fine, so why are we not a problem?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How would you define it then, if not a machine? I feel we’re falling into semantics here. I don’t care whether I’m flesh or iron. What difference does it make?
[Speaker C] I feel we’re falling into semantics. Come on—how would you define a human being, and let’s see whether you approve that as…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, he defined it, he said.
[Speaker C] No, no, he’s right, this is his lead too, this is his lead.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, he defined it. I’m only saying that that definition points to a difference that doesn’t seem important to me. What difference does it make whether the machine is made of iron or of flesh and blood? If in the end it behaves mechanically, then what difference does it make what it’s made of—plastic, iron, or flesh and blood? I don’t see a principled difference between these and those. Now whether you say “just” or don’t say “just” is a question of how you see machines—whether you like machines or don’t like machines—but in the end a human being is a machine. Or a human being is a bird, just a bird with higher abilities. By the way, water, for example, is an interesting example. Water has enormous computational power. What do I mean? Water flowing over a topographic contour, as I described earlier, is basically the solution to an equation called Navier-Stokes in physics. An equation that no physicist or mathematician knows how to solve except in the simplest cases on earth. Water does it with its eyes closed, no problem. Is water more intelligent than we are? I assume we’d agree not. Why not? Because water has that built into it, and it solves it because it’s built into it. We solve it by weighing possibilities and making decisions. In the end we arrive at the same behavior. We arrive at the same behavior—if anything, the water will flow more easily because it solves it exactly. We’ll solve it in a…
[Speaker B] I think that’s not a correct description of reality. That’s not a description… water isn’t doing anything. The forces of nature act on the water. Okay. But the water doesn’t… there’s no action there of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The forces of nature also act on us. Our brain is the product of the forces of nature.
[Speaker B] True, but I can… that’s what… remember, I started with this: my ability to choose among many things, as opposed to choosing nothing, doesn’t mean it’s a free choice. The fact that the water can’t—water doesn’t even have the option of choice. Water can’t choose otherwise; it has no other option.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, it has no option to choose otherwise.
[Speaker B] I have the option to choose. Notice—I’m emphasizing my point… not otherwise. Your choice is a choice, but it isn’t free. Notice, I… I choose, choice exists, choice, choice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you can’t do something else.
[Speaker B] But the choice is mine. Excellent, so water also has a choice. No, again, that’s not correct. It has no other option, and neither do you, so what’s the difference? That’s not right, again. The options exist. I un… the options exist for water too, to climb the mountain; it just doesn’t do that. But it doesn’t—water doesn’t climb. And neither do you do it, because the calculation dictated what you would do. It’s the same thing. But that’s really not the same thing, I can’t get… again, this feels to me a bit… you say that you’re… this is a red herring and also a straw man.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Forget the slogans—answer the point.
[Speaker B] Water doesn’t perform a calculation. It isn’t doing anything. Water doesn’t do anything; the forces of nature act on it. You have a brain. Your brain is capable of calculation. We have what’s called an emergent property, and you know what emergent means, of the ability to calculate things that water doesn’t have.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but that ability to calculate things is, from your perspective, entirely mechanical.
[Speaker B] The fact that it’s entirely mechanical doesn’t mean that it isn’t… that it isn’t a property water doesn’t have. Water can be wet, and I can also be wet.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Water is wet and you’re made of flesh and blood; that’s also a difference. The question is which difference creates an essential difference between you.
[Speaker B] So again I say, why “essential”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You function mechanically and water functions mechanically.
[Speaker B] So that doesn’t mean it isn’t essential… the fact that I have abilities that water… no… I can’t understand why that’s not an essential difference. On the contrary, my abilities are on another level, I can’t even get to… after all, in emergent properties, what we know about them is that apart from the fact that they always emerge from the base, many times, once you’re at a stage, you’re so far from the other stages that you can’t even relate them. For example, for example, if I try to explain how the chemistry of the human digestive system works by the movement of electrons or by quantum theory, I won’t succeed, because those levels are so different from one another that there doesn’t even seem to be a connection where you can say, “okay, I’ll build it slowly.” No, because along the way you have to add many, many more properties. We as human beings have an additional property, additional properties. The fact that we are still subject to the laws of nature—fine, I agree with you—but that doesn’t mean we’re like water.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly what it means—that we’re like water. Subject to the laws of nature, that’s all.
[Speaker B] No, because you have properties… but you have additional properties.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A more complex system, and therefore the laws of nature govern it in a more complex way, but it is still subject to the laws of nature. Exactly the same thing.
[Speaker B] Again, no. Those are two different statements and they do not mean the same thing. Subject to the laws of nature—we agree. Right. Great. Okay. That does not mean, it does not mean, that everything we… that everything I do is like water. It’s not the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it’s not the same; water is wet and you’re not. But is the difference essential?
[Speaker B] Again, the word “essential,” the word “essential” is a bit of a problem here, because what you define as essential I may define as not. From my perspective, if you ask me whether it’s an essential difference, I say absolutely. And how do I also know it’s an essential difference? Notice, I’ll take you back here. Here I can identify it. Why? Water kills human beings, right? So. Why don’t I punish water?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Excellent question. I’m asking you why not.
[Speaker B] Because it… because there’s no way to punish water and achieve those results.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you’re mistaken. You do punish water, and you do it by building a barrier. And building the barrier prevents the water from flowing next time to the same place, which is exactly like the punishment you described for human beings. The punishment you described for human beings is building barriers in the head so that next time he won’t do…
[Speaker B] In the head? Like laws. Punishment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but… punishment is a consideration you take…
[Speaker B] Wait a second, no, I think something got missed here. Okay? You understand that I don’t need to put Eyal in prison so that if I put you in prison, Eyal will learn and refrain? That’s clear to us? Clear. Great. Is there water that can learn from the fact that I put up a barrier and therefore not enter somewhere else?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course there is, what do you mean? You also…
[Speaker B] That’s childish. Come on, really.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can say “that’s childish” till tomorrow, but you simply don’t understand a basic analogy. A basic analogy says: you do a mechanical action that creates a mechanical result. Punishing a human being and erecting a barrier for water is exactly the same thing. Wait, wait, it’s exactly the same thing. Except what? The creation of the barrier in Eyal’s head can be done either by putting me in prison or by putting him himself in prison, just as the erection of the barrier for the water can be done from far away or from close up. That’s not right but…
[Speaker B] But Eyal will change their behavior…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It absolutely will change their behavior. The barrier won’t let them flow.
[Speaker B] No, no, let me finish. Okay. If I put you in prison, Eyal can refrain from committing the crime. Clear. But he’s not in prison. He has no barrier.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He has a barrier! My being put in prison creates a barrier in him; his psychology creates a barrier in him.
[Speaker B] Wait a second, so wait—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second, the barrier is completely mechanical.
[Speaker B] So the psychological barrier is mechanical? Of course, it’s like putting a block… I’m not saying that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re saying everything is mechanical.
[Speaker B] No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly what you’re saying.
[Speaker B] That’s not what I’m saying at all, it’s not even close.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So let’s hear what here is not mechanical.
[Speaker B] What do you mean, what isn’t mechanical? Because the systems operating in your brain do not physically exist in reality. What’s happening here—come on—does not physically exist in reality. I can’t understand how we’re comparing between something that exists… wait a second, does the barrier exist physically in reality?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, certainly not. What is that?
[Speaker B] The barrier… one second, the barrier for the water is physical in reality. The barrier for the water is physical in reality? Obviously. The barrier is physical in reality?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The barrier is in reality but not physical. What do you mean? It’s also physical. According to your view it’s also physical. Why? Since every…
[Speaker B] No, according to my view, no.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You talked about emergence earlier. Emergence means that when a person has a psychological barrier, that basically means that some physical structure has been created in his brain—wait—that creates this psychological barrier. Meaning that even according to your view it exists physically in reality, not only in thought.
[Speaker B] That’s not, that’s not, that’s really not correct. Why not? For the same reason there’s a difference with a picture. If I have a picture here that I show you, here’s this picture, and I show you a picture on a computer, it’s not the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it’s not the same thing.
[Speaker B] Right, so… so how are you comparing those two things? I’m telling you explicitly that it’s not…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are two different ways to create the barrier in his head. Either put you… great, great. Either put me in prison or put him in prison. But in the end, in the end…
[Speaker B] I’m not talking about putting him in. That’s true, but with water I can’t do that. I can’t do that with dogs, I can’t do that with cows. Why don’t I punish dogs?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why don’t I punish cows? First of all, you can do that with dogs. Every dog training is punishment, and punishing other dogs can also teach it not to do it. Exactly the same thing. Not necessarily.
[Speaker B] Exactly the same thing. It’s simply—I’m sorry—but it’s simply wrong. Anyone who trains dogs knows. Right? Anyone who trains dogs knows. First of all, a dog—dog training is with other human beings around it, but never mind. Dog training operates on the dog. A lot of times when you punish a dog and show another dog and punish it, it doesn’t know why you punished it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if there is an animal that does know?
[Speaker B] Then maybe… then maybe we’ll get to a situation…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like a human being. So I’m telling you there are animals that can be influenced by certain behavior toward other animals that they see. There are such cases. Great, not on these levels! Great!
[Speaker B] Including also a dog at home, by the way. Fine, not on these levels. And in the end it’s the same mechanism. Exactly. And I’ll tell you more than that: on the day we get to animals or computers or robots that are capable of behaving like that…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But we’ve already gotten there! We are simply erecting a barrier that causes a person not to behave in the same way he behaved until now. That’s exactly like stopping water. There is no difference. The difference is only in the ways the barrier is created. But creating a barrier in water is not the same thing as deterrence or like a biting dog.
[Speaker B] Sorry, sorry, that’s simply not correct. I… there’s no way, there’s no way.
[Speaker C] I’ve gone past your fifteen minutes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay,
[Speaker B] I just want to answer one point and then we’ll move on. I… there is no way to compare. And again, your ability to present an analogy doesn’t mean the analogy is correct. There is no way to compare between my placing a barrier, okay, on the Tel Aviv coast and preventing the water from getting there—there is no way to teach the water on the Netanya coast not to arrive. They won’t learn from the barrier you put up. A human being can.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s simply—the barrier for water, I repeat once again—
[Speaker B] Of course not! But… but with human beings yes. So the barrier…
[Speaker C] Wait, so maybe a human being’s barriers are just a bit more complex? But they’re still,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They’re still, they’re still mechanical. They are built mechanically, even from a distance, so what?
[Speaker B] Why does that matter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you could build the barrier for the water from a distance, would that change anything?
[Speaker B] It’s not a matter of distance, it’s not a matter… the water, the water in Netanya never… encountered a barrier. It never reached the barrier. It doesn’t exist. They saw—it doesn’t see the water, understand for a second. The barrier isn’t capable of reaching, so we also won’t arrive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re making a technical distinction here that I’m explaining again is not important for our purposes.
[Speaker B] You think it’s not important; I think it’s critical. After all, metaphors ultimately work until the moment they don’t work.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, sorry, I want to correct that. It’s not a metaphor. An analogy, sorry. No, not even that. According to your view, a human being is water. That’s not an analogy.
[Speaker B] Again, I’ll take you back once more to the straw man. Don’t… if I’m telling you that I don’t think a human being is water, it would be proper not to tell me that it’s…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why shouldn’t I tell you? The model you describe, from my point of view, is a model of water. That’s all. No problem. You can say that from your point of view a human being is water.
[Speaker C] That’s a straw man. Fine. Let’s try to move forward from this point for a moment, because I feel we’re a little stuck. Okay. You’re saying that we are… what he’s basically saying is that it’s like water, just much, much more complex?
[Speaker B] No, we have what are called emergent properties; there are additional properties. Nature is made of particles, particles build atoms, atoms build molecules, and so on. But the more complex the unit, the more properties are added to it that do not exist at the lower levels. Okay? Okay. So water is simple, and its properties are simple, and it has limited properties. We are incomparably more complex than water, and therefore we have more complex properties. The fact that my property… now, he says, Miki says, the fact that you’re more complex than water and have stronger properties—according to me that isn’t essential. In my opinion, that’s everything.
[Speaker C] No, he says that overall both of them are mechanical matters.
[Speaker B] Fine, that it’s mechanical… okay, that it’s mechanical doesn’t mean it’s the same thing.
[Speaker C] That it’s mechanical doesn’t mean it’s the same
[Speaker B] thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I summarize, then I’m basically saying this: in my view, what can make a difference between a human being and other creatures is if I find something in the human being that is not mechanical—in other words, free choice. You claim that the difference can be only a quantitative difference of complexity. Meaning, if it is more complex, then that too is an essential difference. Now the question of what is essential and what is not—of course that can be debated, everyone according to his definition of what is essential. It seems to me that on that summary we can agree. Overall… okay. Another point regarding emergence…
[Speaker B] No, but wait a second, now it’s my lead. Sorry. No, because I simply don’t mind returning to emergence, it’s just that then you’ll have an open discussion… yes yes, it’ll be open. I just want to ask this question, because it’s a question I asked whenever people asked me about the issue of the discussion, and it helps me understand the other side. Mainly for me. Okay. Sitting before you are this pair of twins; let’s say they’re real human beings. They are completely identical in every respect, wearing the same clothes, looking the same. I tell you that one of them has free choice and the other does not. I’m asking you: is there any experiment, observation, action, something that you can… I’m not limiting you, do whatever you want—by which you could tell which of the twins has free choice and which does not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle yes, although I think that today at least I don’t know a way to do it. That brings us to the Libet experiments. Meaning, the Libet experiments are an attempt to test this philosophical question in a laboratory. That is, the question whether a person has choice or does not have choice. Were these experiments done? Yes, they were done, and up to today there have been follow-up experiments of all kinds and many attempts. At the moment I can show on several levels that none of those experiments can really test that question. But on the principled level, if they manage to show—I don’t know how one would do it—but if they manage to show a certain electron moving without a prior force acting upon it, then it has free choice. How they would figure out where exactly that electron is, or how they would discover the moment when it happens—that’s an excellent question. I don’t know.
[Speaker B] The problem that bothers me is this: how do you distinguish between “I don’t know what moved this electron” and “something moved it but I don’t know what it is”? A force we haven’t found yet. Because again, here this is again God of the gaps. What do I mean? After all, free choice, at the end of the day, again—you say it’s a feeling, but there’s no way to present it in reality, and apparently there’s also no scientific way to show that it indeed exists, which for me basically closes the discussion. I… you say we have it and you can’t show that it exists. Okay, so on the day you show that it exists, we’ll talk.
[Speaker C] But you’re saying the burden of proof is on you in the claim that you’re claiming that…
[Speaker B] No, yes, but I claim… the point is like this, as I said at the start, intuition is not sufficient. Intuition can mislead us. We know intuitions mislead us all the time. Intuition is basically just our subconscious doing the calculation not in the conscious part of us. So it could be that we have that intuition. But beyond that, I also agree with the feeling. The issue is that this feeling is always “I could have chosen otherwise.” You’re right, we feel that, but we usually do it after we chose. We already chose something. So I could have drunk something else, but you already chose. So again, I return to the opening: the world in which you chose otherwise is not the world we live in. So what do we do with that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a logical fallacy in that argument. Because of course the world in which I chose something specific is this world. That other world is a hypothetical world. The question of choice—the thesis that there is choice—does not mean that two worlds exist. It says—wait—it says that two worlds could have existed, and therefore the claim that I chose one of them is not any proof that there could not have been another world. It claims there is no other world—that is what you say—and I agree. But our dispute is not over whether there is another world, but whether there could have been another world. Now the feeling I have that I could have chosen this way or that way—by the way, at least for me, it is not a feeling that arises after the fact. It is a feeling that exists at the moment of decision, that I could decide this way and I could decide otherwise, and I decided this way. Now maybe for you it’s after the fact, I don’t know. For me it’s at that very moment. And because of that, here I come to the point—really what Eyal mentioned earlier, and that’s why I opened with it—I have no way to prove to you that we have free choice. There is no scientific implication, there is no way to test it scientifically. But the whole question is on whom the burden of proof lies. And I think—and this was another article I once wrote—there is a whole series of feelings that we have that determinists, materialist determinists, let’s put it all in one basket, classify as illusion. Since you claim that many of the feelings I have are an illusion, it could be that you’re right, because intuition very often misleads us, I agree. But still, the burden of proof is on you, and you need to show me that this intuition misleads me, because I go with my intuition. If there is good evidence, I need to be honest enough to say, okay, here it misled me. But here, notice, you said for example that the feeling we have that we have free choice is an illusion. I’ll give another illusion that you mentioned: the illusion, for example, that I’m angry at the person I punish. I’m not only placing a barrier on him so that he won’t do it again; I also have some condemnation toward him. Now I judge him, I claim he is not okay. So that doesn’t come to expression in the theory of punishment—you’re absolutely right, I completely agree that the theory of punishment can be explained entirely even in a deterministic world. But the condemnation I feel toward someone who did wrong—you would regard that as an illusion or something that somehow grows in me because that’s how…
[Speaker B] No, I would use it as an evolutionary advantage.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, not important. But from your point of view it doesn’t represent what we really mean when we speak of judgment. Rather, you say okay, evolution simply created something in us because there are survival advantages. So notice, I can bring you many more examples of this. We agree. Many more examples of things that are very simple intuitions that accompany, it seems to me, almost every person at least—maybe everyone, I don’t know—that you would classify as illusion. And that is exactly why I claim that although you are right that intuition can mislead, I still think that someone who wants to claim that so many of my feelings are an illusion needs to bring me evidence for that; I do not need to bring evidence that it is not so.
[Speaker B] Because I think the part that’s missing, again—and I return to the point I started with, about what we really disagree about—I think that once we understand, and I’m not specifically talking about the Libet experiments, I intentionally put… I didn’t refer to them, notice, in the opening. And I’m aware of them, and you’d even be surprised that I would agree with you that I think they don’t say much about free choice. I think that a determinist and someone who believes in free choice can find in those experiments whatever they want, and I think they are far from deciding one way or the other, in my personal opinion. The point is, once again, I return to what I started with: I say, okay, so why should I believe in it? Why do I need to believe that I have free choice if I don’t need it for moral punishment? If my feeling—you call it again an illusion. I again say the word “illusion” is a problematic word. Not that I… and I’m just emphasizing that I’m not accusing you of anything here. I don’t think you’re using some improper tactic, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that when someone says “illusion,” that word automatically carries a connotation in the mind that someone is trying to fool me. If I have an illusion, illusion is not good. That’s not what I meant. No, no, I… I know that’s not what you meant. I emphasized that I’m not saying that’s what you meant.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good, so let me address what you did mean.
[Speaker B] You said that it’s something
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] fictitious. That’s what you’re claiming. And I…
[Speaker B] The problem is that people will watch this discussion and hear us…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so here, I’ve clarified: when I say illusion, I don’t mean something bad; I mean that it’s a fiction. That it’s a fiction and not real. Say, for example, I could say: I have no reason to assume that there is a lamp here. I see a lamp, but you know, sight sometimes misleads us; there are mirages too. Now that’s true—sight sometimes misleads us. But someone who wants to claim there is an illusion here will have to bring me evidence, because in the end I have the feeling that there is a lamp here.
[Speaker B] Fine, let’s look for a moment at the feeling. How does it help you that there is a lamp here? There’s a lamp here—how does that help you?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t help me in any way.
[Speaker B] No, you don’t see me because there’s here—say if there weren’t light here you wouldn’t be able to see me, right? Who said? It could be that I see without…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] live in the illusion that there is a lamp here. Okay, I see you—that’s a fact. And you also…
[Speaker B] No, he’s saying that by means of the light you see. Let’s get out for a second, let’s get out for a second from solipsism, let’s get out for a second from total skepticism.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s agree that an objective concept exists. No, I agree with that, we both agree with that. I’m bringing it as an example. A solipsist can come and say, look, you think you see, hear, touch everything. It’s all an illusion, nothing is.
[Speaker B] Okay, but that’s against a rabbit hole I intentionally don’t want to go into.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, but I do want to pull you into it.
[Speaker B] No, I’m not, because, because, because I don’t have a solution to solipsism.
[Speaker C] And not…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No,
[Speaker B] I’m not looking for the
[Speaker C] solution. Come on, explain to people what solipsism is. Solipsism is the thought, or at least the claim, that we’re basically a brain in a jar—that’s the code name—imagining the entire universe.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no external universe, it’s all your sensations.
[Speaker C] Hard solipsism, solipsism—
[Speaker B] Hard. My sensations don’t exist—there is no external reality, only the sensations.
[Speaker C] “I think, therefore I am” basically says I can prove only my own existence to myself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, I didn’t mean to ask you for an answer to solipsism. I assume we’d both agree that it isn’t true. What I want to bring is an extreme example, but still an example of the form of reasoning. The example goes like this: if I experience my sensory data and I arrive at the conclusion that there are things in the world—I see a lamp…
[Speaker B] No, but that’s exactly where I stop you. I’m deliberately stopping at that point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Just one second, let me finish and then fine. Okay? I see my sensory data and I assume they reflect things in the world. Now a solipsist can come along—not you, a solipsist—and say to me: tell me, can you prove such a thing? You can’t prove it; after all, the senses sometimes deceive us, right? So I say, true, I can’t, but as long as you don’t bring me evidence that this is a deception, I assume that what I’m sensing is probably true. As far as I’m concerned, the feeling regarding free choice, punishment, and all that previous collection of illusions is very similar—not with the same intensity, I have to admit—but it’s still very similar, and the burden of proof is on the one who wants to say that this whole collection of feelings is an illusion.
[Speaker B] Again, I’m not saying that all these feelings are illusions, because you put a lot of things together here that I don’t think. That feeling of justice we’re talking about really is a real feeling that arises from biological necessity, from evolutionary necessity. We want to hurt someone who harmed society, because there’s an evolutionary advantage for individuals born with that trait. They’ll probably tend to live in more orderly societies, and more orderly societies tend to survive better than disorderly ones.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s obvious, but you’re explaining to me how the feeling came into being. Right. I’m not talking about the question of how the feeling came into being; I’m talking about the question of what the feeling reflects. Those are two different things—the context of discovery and the context of justification in philosophy of science.
[Speaker B] I’m claiming that you’re creating a distinction here that doesn’t necessarily exist.
[Speaker C] What distinction? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker B] Correct me… do you want me to present it or do you want to present it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I want to claim is this: I can agree that evolution created in us this feeling that if someone behaves immorally, we feel condemnation toward him. Okay. We judge him negatively, and maybe we also punish him afterward because of that, and so on. Yes. I’m only asking whether behind that condemnation there also sits some judgment. Meaning: do I also assume that it really is improper to behave that way, and if you did it, then you’re not okay? Now Aviv, at least in my view, says that this foundation I’m talking about is an illusion. In the end it’s an evolutionary product, that’s all.
[Speaker B] No, no, that foundation is not—it’s not an illusion. It’s a product of everything that created me, because again I…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, you’re talking about the feeling, about the judgment. I’m talking about the philosophy behind it.
[Speaker B] No, notice, here I’m bringing you back to the essential difference between us. You, I think, see yourself as a closed box. You’re Miki, you’re sir, you’re—you know—everything that passes through your mind. You exist separately from all the histories that brought you into existence. You’re some external part. I’m the one saying my consciousness wasn’t dropped in from outside, but is a product that developed over the years. I was born without one, but with a brain capable of creating one. And over time everything I learned, the experience, the memories, the emotions, everything that turns… that’s what makes me me. I wouldn’t be me without those things. Completely agree. So the judgmentality you’re talking about came as part of the process of creating Aviv.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so I’m saying again, it—
[Speaker B] It’s not an illusion, it exists there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously the feeling certainly exists. I’m asking what the feeling reflects. It’s like saying, you know, I see a lamp here. The appearance of the lamp is certainly not an illusion; even the solipsist doesn’t say it’s an illusion. When the solipsist says this is an illusion, he means: you have an image of a lamp in your consciousness, but it doesn’t reflect something happening in the world. Now I’m asking something similar regarding the feeling of judgment. You’re saying the feeling of judgment is an evolutionary product that was created…
[Speaker B] I want to build a steel-man for you, please, because I think that’s what we’re talking about.
[Speaker C] Wait, we’ve got 25 minutes of open discussion starting. I’m telling you this: I want you to finish this point, and then I want to guide the discussion, so finish the point.
[Speaker B] Is it like, say—let’s talk about a person who feels happiness. I can provide you with an evolutionary explanation for how happiness comes about, but I can’t explain to you how a person feels that he is happy. Is that what you mean? No? Then I’m not…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re talking about the mental versus the physical that creates it.
[Speaker B] I’m claiming there is no difference; it’s the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, it’s emergent. It’s simply the same thing, except that one creates the other.
[Speaker B] You’re making me—you know those shapes where from one side it’s a square and from the other side it’s a circle? Okay. So it’s like you’re talking about the circle… so I’ll talk about it, but in the end it’s the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but I think the more correct wording—seems to me the more correct wording—is that it emerges in an emergent way out of the physiology, let’s put it that way. But I’m talking about something else. I’m talking about a philosophical implication, not the mental meaning of the matter. I’m asking: when I judge someone—and every person feels this, you can’t deny it—when I judge someone, it’s clear to me that this person was not okay. It’s clear to me he was not okay. Now more than that, it’s not just a motivation to act—let’s punish him and then create a barrier in him so he won’t do it again—that’s the evolutionary justification. And evolution can explain how that feeling was created in me.
[Speaker B] No, not how the feeling was created—how the mechanism, the potential for that feeling, was created; meaning, where in my brain the place capable of developing that feeling was created. Fine, but that’s the same thing. No, it’s not the same thing, because then my social construction during my growth is what created that feeling—it educated me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. So what created it was also your development; that whole mechanism together with evolution created that feeling.
[Speaker B] And that’s the thing—I’m not missing anything. I don’t feel like anything is lacking here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nothing is lacking. I’m just asking a question now. I, or it seems to me most human beings, when they judge someone else, that judgment is based on something philosophical, not psychological. And that philosophical something basically says: look, there is a moral obligation not to murder, to preserve another person’s life. You violated that moral obligation, and therefore you deserve punishment. Now the evolutionary justification is of course that the punishment will deter you and cause others…
[Speaker B] No, no, but I think this, by the way, is begging the question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not begging the question. I want to make the claim. I’m not claiming whether it’s true. What I’m only saying is that if it isn’t true, as you claim, then it’s an illusion. And then you’re basically claiming regarding yet another one of my feelings that it’s an illusion.
[Speaker B] But I don’t think it’s not—it doesn’t have to be, again—what were we talking about exactly? We talked about this earlier, about not creating a false dichotomy, a false dichotomy. If I don’t think it’s free choice or something dualistic, that doesn’t mean it’s an illusion. Those aren’t the two sides of the coin.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m talking about judgment—when you make a judgment about someone.
[Speaker B] When I make a judgment about someone, I take all the knowledge, experience, emotions, history, everything that made Aviv into Aviv, I apply it to this question, and an answer comes out. But that answer isn’t an illusion. Why would it be an illusion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, are not supposed to exist in your world.
[Speaker B] They’re not—what do you mean they’re not? They are good and evil—and again, maybe we disagree—they are good and evil relative to a goal. They’re always good and evil relative to a goal. For you maybe they are absolute good and evil.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Meaning, my claim is that you translate the concepts of good and evil, which we assign to the ethical sphere, and you basically translate them into—let’s call it—the survival sphere. You’re basically saying: how do we make sure society continues to exist? So I need to punish him…
[Speaker C] No, no, no, the goal can be any—
[Speaker B] thing, not necessarily survival.
[Speaker C] The goal can be anything, not necessarily survival.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No,
[Speaker B] It’s important to distinguish between the basis that created the thing and what it is today. Evolution is capable… evolution doesn’t plan anything, it… after all, you can explain the entire technique of human morality by two things. You need social animals that depend on one another, and you need the phenomenon of scarcity—we have to share territory and resources. If you have those two things, you can generate every human moral behavior.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. You don’t need to convince me; I know evolution succeeds in generating this.
[Speaker B] Great, but the fact that evolution created in us mechanisms to be moral, or that we have a moral instinct, doesn’t mean that now we have to act in accordance with it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m asking. Why do I condemn someone who did something bad? Because he was not okay? What does “not okay” mean? Because embedded in me is some obligation to act in order to prevent future survival problems? That’s basically what you’re saying.
[Speaker B] No, no, again, I feel like I’m not managing to get this point across.
[Speaker C] Finish it, and then I’ll want to connect things up.
[Speaker B] This is my issue: the part of my brain that contains the potential to contain moral judgment developed evolutionarily—the part. But the judgment itself is not an evolutionary product. It’s the product of Aviv, who is the product of all the experience, emotions, history, everything that made me me. I poured my judgment into that hole. The existence of that hole is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] evolutionary, but the one who filled it is me. No, but who is “you”? You too are an evolutionary product. The fact that I… but the fact that I’m an evolutionary product doesn’t… again, we’re going back. The fact that evolution caused me to exist doesn’t mean I’m only an evolutionary product. I’m a biological system governed by the laws of nature, as we said.
[Speaker B] With more traits, with the ability—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] of judgment, with—
[Speaker B] the ability of judgment—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] greater, but all of that is a result of biology; it’s an emergence out of biology.
[Speaker B] Right? Right, just as biology emerges from chemistry, and chemistry emerges from physics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So now, now basically the claim is that really you are a biological system. Within a purely biological system there is no good and evil. There is no good and evil. There are conditionings of the sort you described earlier that justify punishment—or don’t justify, sorry, there is no justification, justifications don’t exist in that world at all, but rather there are yes-compel, compelments.
[Speaker B] I think again this is a point of difference between us, and again we probably won’t get there in this discussion because it’s—it’s that—you think there is absolute good and evil, and I don’t think such a thing exists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, just one sentence to sharpen it: I do think so, but my claim against you is that if you don’t think so, then basically you’re saying that my thoughts and those of many other people—I don’t know if yours too, but of many other people as well—are an illusion.
[Speaker B] They’re not an illusion. Can you understand that there’s a difference between a mistake and an illusion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter—mistake or illusion, both are fine by me. Pick whichever one you want; let’s not try to make a nuance out of it.
[Speaker B] It matters, because, because a mistake—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because I’m saying that whether you say it’s a mistake or whether you say it’s an illusion, for me to accept that, the burden of proof is on you.
[Speaker B] Great, and that seems to me to be the next discussion—
[Speaker C] that there’ll be, whether good and evil… wait, wait, we still have eighteen minutes for the open discussion, don’t close it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think—
[Speaker B] we’ll get to it today.
[Speaker C] I’ll tell you why I wanted to stop and talk, because to me it feels like the crux of the disagreement here is the issue of the soul. Because in the end we’re talking about duality versus determinism. And I’m interested to know what you think, because I had a discussion here about the existence of a soul, and all kinds of claims came up from the non-believing side regarding the soul that gave a kind of proof—or more accurately, evidence—that if you take a person and mess around with his brain, you can absolutely change his whole personality, his decision-making, who he is, what he is, how he is—he forgets or doesn’t know, loves his wife, doesn’t love her—basically change the whole personality of the person. If there’s a ghost in the machine, if there’s this spirit in the middle, how do we explain the external ability to affect it by one hundred and eighty degrees?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think the influence of the body on the mental, or on the psyche, on the soul—however you want to call it—doesn’t need to rely on modern neuroscience at all. When I have a wound, it hurts. Right? But that doesn’t change—
[Speaker C] your personality.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter, but I’m saying the fact that the physical affects the mental doesn’t mean there is no mental. It only means there is interaction between them, and the physical affects the mental exactly as the mental affects the physical.
[Speaker C] But the mental is still physical. I’m asking about the spirit—where’s the part…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The spirit, the spirit—we’re talking about the spirit.
[Speaker C] The mental isn’t physical. Okay, so where is that part? How can you separate, in the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I’ll give an example. There’s what’s called Searle’s Chinese room. The Chinese room example. John Searle is an American philosopher, and he says: a person is sitting in a room, an Israeli, who doesn’t know Chinese. He has two windows, an input window and an output window. And he has a box full of Chinese letters. He doesn’t know a word of Chinese. They feed him questions in Chinese, and he has to answer in Chinese. He has no clue—he doesn’t know Chinese at all. Every time he gives the wrong answer, he gets an electric shock. Okay? Now he has infinite time, he lives forever, everything is fine. Eventually, eventually, he’ll know Chinese. He’ll answer in Chinese.
[Speaker B] No, the question is whether he’ll know Chinese.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Meaning, he’ll give appropriate answers in Chinese, okay? Today, when we have AI, we can imagine this with no problem at all. We implement it every day. So it’s really become our reality. Okay? Now the question is whether that man knows Chinese. Now my claim—I don’t know, Aviv can say what he thinks—my claim is of course that he does not know Chinese. He does not know Chinese. He only knows how to match questions to answers; he doesn’t know what the questions mean and doesn’t know what the answers mean, but he knows how to avoid shocks. Okay?
[Speaker C] Basically conditioning without end until you reach the solution.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Now this, I’m saying, is a computer: it gets input—output, input sorry—and produces output. Exactly as the man in the Chinese room does not understand Chinese. Therefore phenomenologically AI imitates us very well. But what AI lacks is the interpreter. Interpreter. Meaning, that one who performs interpretation on the physical processes and basically says: ah, this sentence in Chinese means “what time is it,” and I answer him “eight-thirty.” Meaning, you ask the machine what time it is and it answers eight-thirty, but it lacks the dimension that gives interpretation to that question and says: now I’m answering the question, what does eight-thirty mean. Now anyone who wants to argue for emergence is basically saying that out of the computer’s mechanical system—or whatever, the biological computer, it doesn’t matter which—there is also created an interpreter. And I claim that’s speculation. Speculation that seems very unconvincing to me. And in my view, once there is also an interpreter in addition to this process of input and output, that interpreter is what I call psyche or soul or something additional. And that, in my opinion, no AI—at least as I see it—no AI, however sophisticated it may be, and today there are very sophisticated AIs, they surely could already have developed consciousness at the level of a child, because they already know how to think like a child, even more sometimes. And I don’t think any of them really understands anything of what it’s doing—understands in the sense of the Chinese room. Not just answering correctly as a human being would answer. And for me, that is a very strong motivation to assume there’s something else.
[Speaker C] Interesting. I’ve never heard that argument. What do you say?
[Speaker B] First of all, I agree with almost everything you said. I think the answer is also simpler. He answered you—again, I’ll try to steel-man him—he told you: the ball is in the topography. If you damage someone’s brain, you changed the topography, so the ball—if before it was on this kind of surface, now it’s sitting like this, so it doesn’t really have anywhere to move because the topography changed, and that didn’t harm the ball.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what are you talking about? You’re now describing how the man in the room…
[Speaker B] No, no, I’m talking about what he started with, about the ball… no, what he said about what happens when the brain is damaged and suddenly behavior changes, and damage here in the brain can make you do this…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I understand, but I’m asking: the man in the room…
[Speaker B] As for the man in the room, I also completely agree with you that he doesn’t know Chinese. But I think that’s a semantic issue—meaning, what do we call knowing Chinese? Does he know the Chinese alphabet symbols? Just as an example: if someone knows the Chinese alphabet stock…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I agree that he doesn’t know—it doesn’t matter what we call it.
[Speaker B] Because if I ask you whether he knows the Chinese alphabet inventory, probably yes—he might know that. Does he know how to conduct a conversation in Chinese? Probably not.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he does know how to conduct a conversation in Chinese. Not sure. Every question—he answers.
[Speaker B] No, he’s not conducting a conversation; he’s only answering questions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, exactly. So we agree that something is missing in him? I agree. It doesn’t matter what you call it, I agree—
[Speaker B] that something is missing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That something is something beyond the physical.
[Speaker B] I don’t think it’s something beyond the physical. I think what explains it in our case—which is the topic we didn’t get to in this conversation—is again the perspective in which you see yourself as one single “I,” when in practice everything we know from neuroscience is that our brain doesn’t work like a computer and you don’t really have one brain in there but several different brains connected together and working in parallel.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So it’s several computers, so what? Great—a parallel computer.
[Speaker B] What difference does it make? So the point is, so I think…
[Speaker C] No, I understand what he’s saying. There are several systems here talking to each other, and there’s memory…
[Speaker B] No, no, one second, I’ll make the point. Because you have to distinguish between the conscious part that I’m aware of and my subconscious. That’s a distinction I haven’t heard addressed at all, because in my opinion what we know today about the subconscious explains a lot of what you would expect to call free choice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about the conscious part.
[Speaker B] Fine. The thing is, we also know today about the conscious part that it very often justifies the subconscious retroactively, and we have countless examples of that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not talking at all about the question of justification; I know those examples too. I’m talking about the question of what the meaning of that consciousness is. Does a computer have that kind of consciousness?
[Speaker B] I—today, no. And notice: today, no.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? AI already has the abilities that there are in—
[Speaker B] No, what are you talking about? It’s not even close. They don’t—nothing, absolutely not. Why not? What is it missing? Wait, one second. For the same reason that if you ask me to multiply, say, 5,792 times such-and-such, it’ll take me a few minutes to calculate it on a piece of paper, and you’ll give it to a computer and in a second it’ll answer. But ask it other questions and it doesn’t know. Computers don’t work like us. I said this at the start—we’re not a computer. It’s a nice analogy, but we’re not a computer; we don’t work in the same way.
[Speaker C] At least not the computers we have today.
[Speaker B] The computers we have today. Does the AI we have today resemble human thought, the way human beings think? Absolutely not, I agree with you completely. Could it ever?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In certain areas it’s at a better level.
[Speaker B] Again, there are certain areas where you don’t need AI.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But as for a child—at the level of a child’s thinking, AI has already surpassed us in most areas. That’s giving the answers of a child; that doesn’t mean thinking.
[Speaker B] Exactly, that’s the Chinese room.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So he’s saying that the capacity for thought is not enough to explain the feelings and the relation to them, the reflection.
[Speaker B] But I agree with you. But you didn’t hear from me—again, no straw men—you didn’t hear from me the claim that AI is so close to our way of thinking, look, it’s already there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, and what I hear from you is a speculation that basically AI potentially could be. And now I’m asking: what is that speculation based on? Because meanwhile you see that AI isn’t even beginning to approach the direction of consciousness, even though in thought it’s approaching.
[Speaker B] It’s very simple: because how long have we had computers? Humanity has been here 300,000 years; how long have we really had computers? Maybe 50 years in the home.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look at the level it’s at; it doesn’t matter how much time has passed.
[Speaker B] The level is exponential.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A generation of computers is a year, meaning it’s not the same level…
[Speaker B] So it’s exponential—give it time. I don’t know, maybe yes. And I agree with you that maybe it’ll never get there, but notice now that we’ve reversed. You’re the one saying it’ll never happen. I’m the one saying maybe.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that if I need to formulate a position in light of the data we have so far, then in the data we have so far every calculating machine, however sophisticated, with whatever technology, does not develop all the mental dimensions—what you called soul, free choice, whatever you want.
[Speaker B] Completely agree. I just think it’s irrelevant.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. Now the question is: on the basis of what do you build the speculation that in our case it is a function of the machine? Meaning, it’s not something extra. And I claim—maybe you’re right—but I claim that for now at least, if I generalize on the basis of today’s scientific knowledge, it seems to me that the burden of proof is on you.
[Speaker B] So again I say: I’m not… I’m saying—notice—we’ve now reversed. I’m telling you I don’t know. Maybe they’ll never get there, maybe yes, maybe no. I do know one thing: computers today are still produced by human beings. We’re only now entering the generation of computers produced by computers. By contrast, we are an evolutionary product of a billion—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All those distinctions I know. I’m still asking: how, what…
[Speaker B] But I’m not saying—but I’m not presenting a position of—I’m not presenting a position of “it absolutely must be that AI reaches human thought.” Right. I can even imagine a situation where it surpasses human thought, where it thinks in a completely different way, and better than we do.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the question is what will be in the… what will be in the computer when there’s a ghost in the machine in it. Exactly—that’s the question. Now why am I saying this? I too don’t know what will happen in the future, and apparently neither do you, as you say. So now I ask: let’s come back to us. If you really have significant doubt, and I have very significant doubt, whether computers, however much you develop them, still won’t develop a ghost in the machine—whether there won’t be such an emergence that develops it—then I ask: on what basis do you state so clearly that my feeling that I have a ghost in the machine—because we are not computers…
[Speaker B] But we are not computers.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you’re saying that we are basically a mechanical system that through emergence succeeds in developing what’s called a soul.
[Speaker B] A tractor is also a mechanical system—I’m not a tractor. Again, I emphasized this several times. We are not a computer. A computer is a nice analogy—I use it too from time to time—but our brain does not work the way a computer works.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all I disagree with that. I think we do operate like a computer, but let’s return…
[Speaker B] Just for example, I’ll give you the easiest example in the world, one everyone talks about, and even on this you won’t be able to disagree. When I call up a picture on a computer from memory, it retrieves it from memory and shows it to me, the picture goes back into memory, and nothing has changed. When I ask you to remember something, you don’t just retrieve it from memory, you relive it again—you actually present the memory to yourself again.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly the point. You’re bringing back the functions that exist in you as a human being and not in a computer. No, you’re assuming that’s the brain. But those are mechanical functions. No, no.
[Speaker C] We know there are places in memory where this is stored.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, in that sense it is similar. No, then it’s not. The opposite. What he’s describing, what separates me from a computer, is exactly the point. Because he claims they are a result of my mechanical system, which is not a computer, and therefore it produces these feelings. And I claim that a mechanical system cannot produce such feelings—
[Speaker B] and therefore the burden of proof here is on you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, of course it is. Because all the mechanical systems we know don’t do that.
[Speaker B] But we produce the mechanical systems. But no, but there are mechanical systems here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On what does he base the claim that all the mental phenomena, everything I connect to the soul, are really nothing of the sort—that it’s only a result of the machine? It’s not a ghost.
[Speaker B] Because we’re capable—but we see it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The feeling of the machine is that there is a ghost.
[Speaker B] So now the burden of proof is—and now I’m coming back, and this is kind of the finale of my story—that there really is no evidence I can present to you, because whatever I present to you, you’ll say: that’s just the topography, that’s never the me. You’re… exactly. Fine. But you’re in a position that is unfalsifiable, and since it’s unfalsifiable…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But your position too is unfalsifiable.
[Speaker B] Of course it is. I said—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How would your position be falsified?
[Speaker B] I said. Bring me Aviv drank Coke, turn back time, Aviv drank Fanta—you’re right. I’m telling you: Aviv drank Coke, Aviv drank Fanta.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You know that thought experiment that can never be carried out? I’ll carry it out too. Why can’t it? After all, wait, we know… we know that if you turn all of Aviv back and he always does the same thing, then it would falsify my claim. What didn’t I understand?
[Speaker B] No, that’s not how it works, because it’s the opposite—it doesn’t work because in your view… okay, always. No, I’ll ask you: suppose we had a time machine, I’ll even show you this.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hypothetically, that’s not—
[Speaker B] Fine, no, I’ll show you that even with such a hypothetical, it doesn’t work. Okay. Okay, Aviv drank Coke, we did that action, Aviv now drank Coke again. Is that enough to falsify it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Scientifically, yes.
[Speaker B] Do you think determinism would be proven if I did that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, scientifically, yes.
[Speaker B] Do you think that’s scientifically sufficient proof for determinism? Your answer is yes. I think not.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll explain why. In scientific proof, when we test, say, the law of gravity, we test that this object falls to earth and that falls to earth, and we arrive at the conclusion that all objects with mass fall to earth. We didn’t test all of them, right? But if we have enough trials from… at the logical level, induction isn’t logical. And induction is never logical deduction. But at the scientific level, if you show me time after time that it always returns to the same thing… yes, but how many times?
[Speaker B] How many times? How many times that gravity—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that’s scientific proof.
[Speaker B] No, one second. And what if a thousand times I chose Coke, and precisely the thousand and first time I chose Fanta?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And what happens if… no, so if a thousand times it fell—
[Speaker B] down, and the thousand and first time it didn’t? But that’s the point, that’s exactly what I’m trying to explain to you. It takes only one time for me to choose Fanta and you’ll be right. Correct? A thousand times I choose Coke isn’t enough; a million times isn’t enough.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again. Not enough logically, but enough scientifically.
[Speaker B] Since scientifically you always rely… no, it’s not enough, scientifically too it’s not enough. Why? No, why? Because again, not because of what I’m saying. Determinism is whether… would that confirm determinism? Yes, confirm it. But it wouldn’t falsify free choice, and that’s my point: you’re not in a falsifiable position.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s the asymmetry between proof and falsification in every scientific theory. No scientific theory can be proven, only falsified.
[Speaker B] Fine, but there—you see? I presented it. It takes only one time for me to drink Fanta and I’ve falsified it. You have no falsification. You don’t.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m explaining again. Every scientific theory cannot be falsified but only confirmed. Right? So if that’s the case, then my theory is scientific because it can’t be falsified but only confirmed.
[Speaker B] What do you mean it can’t be falsified? What are you talking about? It can be falsified.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, proven. Not… yes, not capable of proof, only of falsification or confirmation.
[Speaker B] Or confirmation. So I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So my theory can be confirmed like any… but not falsified.
[Speaker B] He said your theory is not—
[Speaker C] falsifiable.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But confirmable, yes.
[Speaker B] Right. So now—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so I—
[Speaker B] So I’m saying that a position that is unfalsifiable should be rejected on that basis alone.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not true. That’s exactly the point. I’m saying: if you conduct enough trials in all of which you drink Coke again, I… you asked me when I would give up my position? I become a determinist. Fine. The theory of determinism has been confirmed. And I think—
[Speaker B] And I think that’s wrong. Because… because again, even if I choose Coke a thousand times, it only takes one time that I choose Fanta… no, but… I’ll make it easier. Wait, wait, it doesn’t matter what he says—let’s see whether he’ll change his mind. Okay, let’s try the… let’s try changing the experiment. Okay? Let’s change the experiment. In one cup here I have ice cream, and here I have dog shit. Fair? Okay. Most likely I’ll choose ice cream. According to your claim, the only way… meaning, if I run this experiment, turn back time, and run it again and again and again, at some point I’ll have to choose the shit, because otherwise it doesn’t work.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not true. I’ll explain why. Because the two options are not equivalent. They’re never equivalent—not never, but when the two options aren’t equivalent, then I have a good explanation for why you always choose the ice cream. That wouldn’t falsify anything. The explanation is sufficient, but it’s not… doesn’t matter. But when you ask me when I have enough confirmation to adopt your thesis, I’m saying: repeat the experiment enough times and I’ll adopt the thesis.
[Speaker B] Fine, but “enough times,” “enough times” is subjective. It could be that Miki says a thousand times is enough for me. It could be that Shlomo comes along and says a million times is enough.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it’s like that in every scientific theory.
[Speaker B] Fine, but you don’t have… but again, you… you ask whether I have a way… I’m saying I have a way to confirm determinism and I have a way to falsify determinism. I’m presenting you with two options. You’re presenting only a way to confirm free choice; you’re not presenting a falsification.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not true. I’m saying again: I can… once you confirm… once you confirm determinism, from my point of view I give up on—fine!
[Speaker B] So there you go. So all that… so basically we’ve come back here to a kind of—again, don’t be offended, I really apologize—evolution versus creationism. You’re trying to attack evolution in order to prove creationism. You’re trying to attack determinism in order to prove free choice instead of presenting evidence for what you actually believe, or a falsification.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m claiming there is no evidence—that’s how I began. There is no evidence. I have a feeling that the burden of proof is on whoever says my feeling is an illusion; the burden of proof is on him. That’s my claim. I don’t have evidence. I do… but if you ask when really… I told you the burden of proof is on you. How would you meet that burden of proof? So I’m telling you how you could meet the burden of proof.
[Speaker B] No, I don’t need… once someone is facing me with something that’s not falsifiable, how am I… I think it’s not… we got, so to speak, you pulled me into the boxing ring with one leg tied behind my back.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not true, because I’m showing you how I would change my mind.
[Speaker B] I’ll give you another five… I’ll give you, like… how should I put it? Just as an example. Let’s use Yuval Harari’s example—I don’t agree with many things he says, but I think in this case there’s some basis of truth. You say materialism versus dualism. Materialism says the whole material world exists. Dualism says there is the material plus something else. You added something. Now you and I agree that the material exists—leave the solipsists aside—the material exists. You added something. Occam’s razor, like…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, not only the—
[Speaker B] I know that even about Occam’s razor we don’t entirely agree, I… the point is that even in order to justify your addition, you’re not presenting evidence for the correctness of the addition. You come and try to poke holes in the other side. You try to say: here are things the material can’t explain, therefore my explanation is required. One second—but again, that’s like creationism, that’s one. Two, more than that, you’re not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Actually, a proof by negation is not… a proof by negation is a positive proof.
[Speaker B] If I
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] prove that X is not true, then I’ve proved that not-X is true.
[Speaker B] That’s not precise. It’s like we said—no, again, assuming we’re talking here about a dichotomy, and dualism is not a dichotomy to determinism.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m talking now about dualism versus materialism.
[Speaker B] Fine, then agree with me that this is not a dichotomy.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it’s a dichotomy: either there is spirit or there isn’t spirit.
[Speaker B] No, if you pay attention, that’s not the same thing. Materialism: there is matter. Dualism: there is matter and spirit. Not materialism doesn’t mean yes, dualism. It doesn’t mean that, because they’re not absolute opposites.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Not materialism isn’t even an option. The question is whether there is spirit or there isn’t spirit. We both agree there is matter. Now the question is whether there is spirit or there isn’t spirit. Fine: no spirit is materialism, spirit is dualism. That’s all.
[Speaker B] Fine, now again—but then you flipped it. So fine, then I ask: is there spirit? And I ask what our proofs are, what our evidence is for spirit. We have no proofs from matter. Why?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m claiming that a model that contains only matter cannot explain certain phenomena.
[Speaker B] Fine, that’s exactly it. Evolution can’t explain it, therefore—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It cannot explain spirit, and therefore this is a proof by negation that not only matter exists in the world. Which is what we wanted to prove. A simple logical argument.
[Speaker B] A god-of-the-gaps argument.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It has nothing to do with god of the gaps.
[Speaker B] It does. Anything materialism can’t explain, therefore spirit.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I don’t understand—proof by negation isn’t acceptable to you?
[Speaker B] If I show you that something isn’t true, then it is true? No. Because here again there’s something we didn’t agree on in the previous discussion either, and I’m going to keep disagreeing with you on it now too. You often use the Sherlock Holmes tactic: once you’ve ruled out all the possible explanations, then the next explanation is the necessary one. Sure, sure. Right. That’s not correct. It’s not necessarily the right one. It’s a logical fallacy, a kind of appeal to omniscience. How do you know you ruled out all possible explanations?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, wait. I’m saying that you also don’t know that I haven’t.
[Speaker B] Then this proof doesn’t work.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, no proof works. I’m talking about the question of what is more plausible between the two options. Once you tell me that matter doesn’t produce—and in all the other systems you agreed with me that it’s at least very doubtful that it would produce some kind of consciousness or psychological mental states—
[Speaker B] I don’t think I agreed with you on that at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, that computers will produce it? So I’m saying, once you agree that all the systems are like that, then I say it’s much more plausible to assume there’s something else in us. Maybe I’ll bring up one more point, one minute—
[Speaker B] —and a half of the discussion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll explain the Libet experiment, which came up here several times, because I think it’s an important point.
[Speaker B] I didn’t bring it up, I only mentioned it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’ll explain why I’m bringing it up. I’m bringing it up because of a point that came to light after I wrote the book. The Libet experiment basically says: a person presses a button. The person is sitting in front of a button, and in front of him there’s a clock running. Okay? He’s connected to an EEG on his head in order to check when there is some signal that precedes the pressing. Okay? So now the person presses, and before that there is a signal. The EEG tells us when the signal occurs, we measure when the pressing happens, and we check the time gap, say, between the signal and the pressing. The signal always comes first. That’s a known fact. Now Libet came up with an idea. He tells the person: listen, look at the clock and tell me when you decided to press. We can see when you pressed. We can measure when the signal happened. Tell me when you decided to press. Now Libet trained the subjects, and it turned out that they gave a time for when they decided to press that came after the onset of the readiness potential signal. Which basically means that the signal predicted their decision. It preceded their decision, and therefore this basically means they acted deterministically. Even though they had some feeling that they were deciding to press now rather than later, the experimenter actually already knew it in advance, and that was basically the claim. Now in the book I wrote several reasons why this is not an indication against free choice. The main reason—and researchers also pointed this out—is that this is an experiment of picking and not choosing. In other words, choosing means you have deliberation, with two sides, and you’re torn, like in a moral dilemma with two sides. When to press is not interesting—you can flip a coin. Press now, press later. Therefore, in a picking experiment, of course the readiness potential will dictate that you press, because you have no reason not to go with the readiness potential. But if the dilemma were a moral dilemma, and the readiness potential told you to do X, but morally it seemed to you, wow—there the question would be whether you would do Y. And that could have brought us closer—even that ultimately wouldn’t have been decisive, I explain there—but it could have brought us closer to an empirical scientific decision as to whether we have free will or not. Now it turns out—what? A year or two after my book came out, I heard a lecture by Liad Mudrik, she’s a brain researcher. Together with Uri Maoz, an Israeli professor in New York, they did a very broad experiment with many scientists from around the world, and they did exactly the Libet experiment on choosing and not on picking. And to my surprise—or not to my surprise, because I had already written this in the book in advance—if they did the Libet experiment on choosing, they would discover that the readiness potential does not precede the moment of decision. Now there is an experiment that shows you clearly that there is a difference between picking and choosing in the brain’s processes. That’s an indication, not a proof, but it’s a scientific indication.
[Speaker C] Explain again picking and choosing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Picking is a trivial decision; there are no sides this way or that way. Choosing is a choice where, if you go with this value, there’s a price—you’re torn.
[Speaker C] Meaning that the frontal brain is working, and you’re saying that’s also where the soul is more active.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Now you’re deliberating, and there the readiness potential can’t predict what you’re going to do. Now why can it predict the picking but not the choosing? I claim it’s because choosing is a choice, and it’s not the result of a mechanical action of the brain. Picking really is an action that is a mechanical result of the brain, but that proves nothing.
[Speaker C] Can I suggest another solution? Maybe because picking is something that happens in our fast brain, in the subconscious, and therefore it operates, and then until we say it through the conscious brain it takes time. Right? I’m saying—but choice is something where we do receive information here, and we stop it and calculate it in the
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] conscious brain, and therefore it turns out that we don’t have an electrical prediction for the decision we’re going to make. Now if prediction is the indication that there is no free will, then here you have an empirical indication—not an instruction, not a proof—an empirical indication.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, I admit I’m not managing to understand why—
[Speaker C] Wait, in a few sentences, we’re a lot
[Speaker B] over time, because in my opinion it’s simply not relevant. Because again, if you had to choose without this process of calculation, you wouldn’t choose—you would just do it. If you perform deliberation, the brain works, it thinks, it takes the history, it chooses considerations, it calculates what will happen in the future: if I choose this, it’ll happen like this; if I choose that, it’ll happen like that. It thinks, it deliberates. That’s how—what is free about that? It always relies on everything that was there up to that point. Where is the free part here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m asking how you explain the experiment?
[Speaker B] I wouldn’t expect an action like that to be predictable, precisely for the reason I raised.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But look—the picking action is predictable.
[Speaker B] Because, because like you said, there was no prior process of calculation done here; what happened here was a subconscious process. The difference is between an unconscious decision and a conscious decision, but from my perspective both of those decisions are you.
[Speaker C] Okay, wait—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if you can’t—you could also have predicted the choosing through the EEG. Fine, once the calculation is finished, tell me what I’m going to do.
[Speaker B] Imagine—imagine to yourself, I’ll finish with one last sentence—imagine someone, a very fast clerk, sitting in back
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and running
[Speaker B] forward to the bank manager and telling him the answer. Now this clerk already chose the answer, he already knows. Now you, with the EEG, look at the note on the way, so you know what the clerk here is going to—what he’s going to receive, so of course you know in advance what’s going to happen. Now, in a more important decision, the clerk in back doesn’t decide, he no longer determines anything; only here, only he decides, he’s sitting there thinking, deliberating, so you no longer have that transfer.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but that’s exactly the indication saying that this decision is not made in a neuronal way. Why not? It’s still neuronal. No, the neurons here are a result of the mental decision. In picking, the mental decision is the result of the neurons.
[Speaker C] Again you
[Speaker B] are creating a separation here that doesn’t exist.
[Speaker C] Okay, okay, okay—three-minute summary. This time we’ll start with you, Aviv, because you were second, now you’ll do the summary. Three minutes: summarize the discussion, what happened here, what you tried to prove, and whether you succeeded. Let’s go.
[Speaker B] So again, thank you very much to Miki, because again I really appreciate that he comes, and I always say I wish everyone were like you, that I could talk with them—I always say that, explicitly. I again think that free will—intuition is not enough. It’s not enough that we have an intuition; it needs a bit more than that, especially when we have all the scientific knowledge that everything in the universe happens causally, everything happens because something else happened, except specifically human beings, who are somehow different—that feels like special pleading to me. I also think this whole discussion, in the end, is meaningless if it’s only about free will, because whether we have free will or whether we don’t have free will, for all intended purposes, for every purpose, we behave as if we don’t. We punish people as if they don’t have free will, we have reward-and-punishment mechanisms as if they don’t, we assign moral responsibility to people according to the logic that if I do something today, your future behavior will be influenced by it. That’s determinism—that’s literally the definition. So this discussion is fun and interesting and nice and all that, but in the end it doesn’t matter whether there is or isn’t, because we behave as if there isn’t. And I really do think the free-will side is missing a lot. The choice side is missing this whole element of the subconscious versus the conscious. Today there are—sorry, I wrote it down but I forgot the name of the guy—who says that human beings are basically like a monkey sitting on an elephant’s trunk and thinking he’s controlling things, but it’s just an illusion. And sometimes they say our consciousness is like a mosquito riding on a hippopotamus: it thinks it’s in control, but in practice the subconscious does so many things we aren’t aware of. We didn’t even get to studies showing that if you go to the bank in the afternoon you’ll get a better loan—which again I assume Miki would agree with me about, that he’d say that’s the topography, the physical changed and affected this. But the point is that I can’t distinguish, I don’t see any difference—meaning, I can’t see, in a world where it’s only topography and there’s the self, and a world where the self is the topography, what’s the difference between those two worlds? They behave exactly the same from my perspective. I don’t see any difference between them from the external world’s perspective. So it’s not that I care whether there’s free will—libertarian free will is unfalsifiable; it’s a term that is problematic from the outset because it defines itself by what it is not. Meaning, free will is not deterministic. It doesn’t present—and there’s also no way to confirm it, no existing way to confirm it, only imaginary ways, like we talked about with a time machine, and even that isn’t enough. I think that also if—falsify it, there’s no way, sorry, I apologize, there’s no way to falsify it, and even that isn’t a way to falsify it, because even imaginary ways don’t exist to falsify it. So I admit and confess that I’m fighting uphill, because I completely understand why people say, who is this idiot saying there’s no free will? I’m master of my fate; of course I have free will. It’s an instinct embedded in us. And also here, in my view, again, there’s a lot of poisoning the well—not Miki, again—but people present it as: you’re just a machine, you’re just this. No. I may be a determinist, I may be a biologist, but that’s still all of who I am, and in my opinion that is more than enough.
[Speaker C] Thank you very much, Aviv. Michael, three minutes, go ahead.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, first of all, I agreed and I repeat that I agree: this debate has no practical implication, no practical implication at all. All the practical implications are contingent—I said from the beginning—
[Speaker C] We’re talking philosophy here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It has no practical implication. It does have an implication regarding moral responsibility as a philosophical concept, but that will not necessarily be expressed on the practical level of punishment, because punishment can be imposed even without assuming moral responsibility. But it is true that there is no moral responsibility for machines. So in that sense I definitely think there is a difference. As I said, in my opinion it does give a completely different picture of a human being. For me the picture is entirely different. My willingness to attribute rights to him, to give him some kind of moral status as opposed to animals, as opposed to inanimate objects, does not exist if the human being is only a machine, however sophisticated it may be. Another important point I just want to say is that what Aviv said earlier—that there’s no difference in terms of punishment between a libertarian view and a deterministic view—is not precise. There doesn’t have to be a difference, but in practice the systems behave differently, because for example we exempt a person whose brain is built differently, whose brain is damaged. We exempt him from criminal responsibility, send him for treatment, I don’t know exactly what. Why? In the end he is the product of a damaged brain, and I am the product of a differently damaged brain. In the final analysis, my brain is what dictates what I do. Now, if you want to fix the problem—if punishment is entirely about fixing the person and preventing future issues—there shouldn’t be any difference. You just need to check how to fix this kind of brain and how to fix that kind of brain. That’s all. The whole distinction we make between an irresistible impulse and one that is resistible, or temporary lack of control at least—that exists only in this world of responsibility. Meaning, such a person is not responsible for his actions, which implies that another person is responsible for his actions—not in the sense that he chose and not something else, but in the sense that he could have done otherwise. And the person who could not have done otherwise—the one with the irresistible impulse—is not responsible for his actions, and therefore he will not be punished. Now, that distinction isn’t necessary. Meaning, if one were to follow Aviv consistently, it would be possible to build a punishment system like that; one could say that I punish everyone, again, with the punishment that will best fix his brain. The fact that we don’t actually do that means that our basic assumption is that human beings are responsible for their actions. And that does depend on their ability to choose. And the testimony of psychiatrists in court speaks about the question of whether this person could or could not have chosen—not about whether his brain is built this way or built that way. And therefore I think that in practice this at least shows what kind of intuition most people have—and on that point we generally agreed—that most people do have such an intuition. I think Aviv should have proposed to those systems that they build a different punishment model suited to that thesis, because they are basically living in some kind of, as I said earlier, illusion. And here I come to the final point, which is that in the end, anyone who says that so many of my feelings and intuitions are an illusion—the burden of proof is on him. It could be. But the burden of proof is on him. And one more sentence: in my opinion determinism also cannot be falsified. It absolutely cannot be falsified. Any experiment that supposedly refutes determinism is completely hypothetical. So that’s not a real difference.
[Speaker C] Okay, thank you very much to both of you. Listen, I really enjoy having you here. I think the viewers do too, and not for nothing—they asked for you again. There really is a different level of conversation here. By the way, Michael, I’d be very interested to hear you talk specifically about Judaism—how all these things ultimately flow into the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and everything written in the sources of the Torah. I know that’s not exactly your forte in the sense that that’s not your main area—you speak more on the philosophical level—but on a personal level I’d be interested in taking you into another discussion about that. We’ll talk about it, and maybe if the audience asks, maybe we’ll do it. Thank you very much, Aviv. Thank you very much, Michael. That’s it for this head-to-head.