Artificial Intelligence – Lesson 2 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’re continuing the artificial intelligence series. Let me just remind you what we did last time. I said that at the first stage I want to try to sharpen a bit, or clarify better, what a human being is, what thinking is — basically to deal with non-artificial intelligence, with intelligence or all the aspects of non-artificial intelligence — so that afterward we can ask comparative and other questions about artificial intelligence. We’ll get to know the computer and models of artificial intelligence, and then we’ll ask all kinds of such questions. So I began by clarifying what a human being is. We talked about the questions of dualism versus materialism. Materialism is the view that we are built only out of matter, that there is nothing in us beyond matter. That is materialism. Dualism claims that there is another component in us besides matter; you can call it a soul, a spirit, or whatever you like. I talked about the fact that even when we speak about matter, there was a dispute around what is called vitalism — that is, the question whether living matter is the same as non-living matter, or whether there is something extra in it. But I said that this does not concern us because it is an internal biological debate. In other words, it is a debate within biology. What interests us is whether biology is the whole story. Not whether biology is complicated physics — that is the question of vitalism — but whether biology is the whole story or whether there is something in us beyond biology.

And here I said that we need to sharpen the question better, and I mentioned the conversation I had with Professor Yosef Neumann, of blessed memory. The claim there was that when we speak about the question of whether there is something extra in us, you can hear materialists saying things like: love is an electrical current in the brain, or fear, or worry, or whatever mental event you want — it is basically an electrical current in the brain. And about that Neumann, as a materialist, claimed that this is nonsense, because obviously love is not an electrical current in the brain. Love is some feeling that we experience, or pain, or worry, or all sorts of things like that. One can say that this is a product of neuronal processes, yes, of electrical currents in the brain, but one cannot say that it is itself the electrical currents. You cannot say that the electrical currents generate the thing — not that the thing is the electrical currents. That is just conceptual confusion.

But still, even if we get rid of that conceptual confusion, there is still room for the question whether mental phenomena — whose existence cannot be denied; again, anyone who denies their existence is simply confused, obviously they exist — whether recognizing their existence requires us to understand that there is something in us besides matter, that is, that we have to get to dualism, or whether mental phenomena can be interpreted as something that emerges from the material whole — emerges, which is why in polished Hebrew it is called emergence. In other words, the emergentist approach basically says that mental functions emerge out of the material whole. That is, mental phenomena do not require us to assume that there is something in us beyond matter.

I brought John Searle’s example of liquidity, which said that sometimes when a collection of particulars creates a collective, properties are produced that characterize only the collective and not the particulars that create it. Like liquidity, which is not a characteristic of any single water molecule; no state of matter characterizes a single molecule. But a whole cluster of water molecules can be liquid, gas, or solid. In other words, a state of matter is a phenomenon, a characteristic of the whole, of the collection of water molecules, but it is not a characteristic of any of the individual water molecules. And therefore, says Searle, the same can be said with regard to our mental phenomena: perhaps they are emergent phenomena. That is, they characterize the material whole, even though a unit of matter — an atom, a molecule, or even a cell — may not possess mental properties. But that does not mean that if we have mental properties, it means there is something in us beyond matter, because it may be that the material whole is enough to generate these properties, these phenomena. These phenomena are properties of the material whole.

I gave the example of a car. A car is an object that exists, but the speed of the car is not an object. The speed of the car is a property or state of the car. Then I asked: is speaking about the speed of the car speaking about the world, or speaking about something that doesn’t exist except in us — some sort of thing that is only inside us? So I argued no: it is speaking about the world, even though the speed of the car is not an object. But the speed of the car belongs to the objective world; it is a property of an object, a property of the car. So true, it is not an entity because it is a property, but never mind — in the world itself there are entities and there are properties of entities. Therefore, the fact that it is not an entity does not mean that it does not exist.

Now the emergentists, the sophisticated materialists, basically say that mental phenomena certainly exist; they are properties of material wholes. In other words, there is no need to assume the existence of some additional entity. The only entities that exist are our cells. The whole collection of cells is characterized by, or is in a state of, mental states, and therefore there is no need to assume the existence of a soul or psyche or something like that in order to speak about mental phenomena.

I said that the example is not such a good one — Searle’s example of liquidity — because with liquidity there is a scientific way to get from the property of the single molecule to the property of the cluster, to the state of matter. Physicists know how to draw a phase diagram of a cluster of molecules and tell you at what pressure and what temperature they will be solid, liquid, or gas. Why? Because we can derive that from the field that a single molecule exerts around itself. The shape of the field basically defines all the states in the phase diagram. So we see that if we know the properties of a single molecule, then by calculation — and by saying that there are many molecules, each with the properties we know, the properties of the single molecule — calculation can give us the collective properties: liquidity, solidity, or a gaseous state. So that is weak emergence.

What we are talking about with mental phenomena is what today is called strong emergence. Strong emergence is basically a situation in which you cannot derive the collective properties, the properties of the whole, from the properties of the particulars. That is, not only is the property of the whole not a characteristic of the particulars — that is also true in weak emergence; liquidity too is not a characteristic of a single molecule. But in liquidity I do have a way to derive the property of the collective from properties of the particulars, other properties relevant to the particulars. In strong emergence I do not even have a way to derive the property of the collective from the properties of the particulars. I do not know the link, the route from micro-properties to macro-properties, and among those who advocate emergence this is called processes of strong emergence.

I showed in the previous lecture — I won’t go back to it here — that strong emergence is a non-scientific claim. That is, by definition it is a non-scientific claim; strong emergence is a non-scientific phenomenon, because the moment it becomes a scientific claim and we find a scientific explanation that derives the property of the collective from the properties of the particulars, we have turned it into weak emergence. Therefore I said that I do not really understand the motivation for speaking about strong emergence as a substitute for dualism. In effect they are saying: look, you don’t have a soul, but a material whole creates certain phenomena that have no explanation in terms of the phenomena that characterize the particulars making up that whole. So in the end you are still talking about some additional… some additional something, only you insist on not seeing it as some kind of entity of a new kind, another substance, but rather as a new phenomenon. Okay, but in the end I still don’t see what you gain. Especially since neither this nor that is scientific. And many times the materialist claim is presented as a conclusion of scientific thinking. That is, anyone committed to scientific thinking has to be a materialist. Okay? But if you are talking about strong emergence, then you are no longer within the domain of science. So what did you gain? If you want to preserve or defend the exclusivity of scientific thinking and not accept the possibility that there are domains science does not know how to deal with, then strong emergence will not help you either. Because it too is really talking about things that science does not know how to deal with.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, sorry, but that brings them closer — it fits Ockham’s razor better, no? Not to bring in…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that came up last time too, and I said that I don’t think so. Because Ockham’s razor originally spoke about a minimum of entities. That is, a theory that contains fewer entities is a more economical theory, and therefore we should assume it is more correct, or at least so long as the contrary has not been proven, we should choose it. But that’s just an accident. In other words, I can speak about economical theories not in the sense of how many entities they contain, but there are other kinds of economy. And another kind of economy is also an Ockham-like criterion. Even if Ockham himself spoke about the number of entities, the logic of Ockham still applies if I show you that theory A is more economical than theory B not in the number of beings.

For example, if you have a set of points on a graph, you can fit them with a straight line. You can also fit them with a complicated curve through all the points. You will prefer the straight line because of Ockham’s razor, or some principle like Ockham’s razor. Okay? Now I ask — this is not about entities. It is about how many parameters you need in order to describe the line. In a straight line you need two parameters, right? y=ax+b. A straight line is defined by two parameters. In a more complicated line you need more parameters. A quadratic polynomial needs three parameters, yes? ax squared plus bx plus c. So that is three parameters. A cubic polynomial needs four parameters, and so on. Therefore in this case we choose the simplest theory in terms of how many parameters it has. But parameters are a mathematical property, not a number of beings. It is simply an expression of how complicated the description is. Therefore Ockham’s razor, in its essence, does not really talk about the number of beings, but about the question of complexity.

So I am saying that strong emergence indeed does not introduce another entity, because it does not recognize spiritual entities but only material ones, but it does introduce additional principles. That is, besides the principles of physics that we know, of phenomena of microscopic beings, it introduces additional phenomena that cannot be mapped onto those phenomena. In other words, phenomena of a new kind. So what did we gain? In terms of Ockham’s razor this is still a more complex theory and a less good theory, meaning one we would not want. So the only question is whether the complexity is in the number of beings or in the number of principles — why should I care? A scientific theory, for example, contains theoretical entities. Yes, we speak about the wave function in quantum theory, or about a field in other field theories — these are functions, concepts, theoretical entities. They are not beings that exist in the world, but beings I define within the framework of the theory. Now, a theory that contains more theoretical entities is also considered less good in terms of Ockham’s razor. And there we call them entities, but they are not really entities. Because we are not claiming that they exist in the world; rather, it is a system, it is how many concepts my theory has. They are not really entities — we call them that, but they are concepts. So again you see that simplicity, when you compare two theories and say one is more or less simple than the other, that simplicity is not necessarily a number of beings. There can be other criteria.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, Rabbi, this whole discussion about properties and beings, and theoretical entities, comes from the assumption that we know — just a remark, I’m not asking — it comes from the assumption that we know what it means for something to exist, and now we are distinguishing between categories, which is very far from simple. Very far from simple — what existence is at all, and what exactly distinguishes a theoretical being from a real one. An excellent question.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re right. Definitely a topic that requires treatment in its own right: what an entity is at all. Okay, in any event, that’s regarding what we did last time. I’ll just remind you of the conclusion. Can I ask a question? A conclusion, yes.

[Speaker E] Just before the Rabbi moves on. Do you think there could be a scientific answer to this question — whether dualism is true or not? Or physicalism? Meaning, dualism itself: if you assume there is an object that is non-physical, that constitutes consciousness at some level, I have no way to measure it, no way to make scientific claims about it and bring it into the laboratory.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll get to that later. Fine. Okay? So I’m just summarizing what we did last time. Basically the claim is that the question of dualism is not important. That is, regardless of the fact that I hold a dualist position, I think the emergentist position is problematic; it doesn’t help us much. It goes against intuition and also doesn’t help. So why adopt it? But that is my personal position. It’s not what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say is that it is not important for the discussion. It is not important for the discussion so long as we are talking about sophisticated materialism. Like that of Yosef Neumann. Sophisticated with a “k,” not with a “q.” In other words, materialism that is not stupid, not childish. Because basically sophisticated materialism also agrees that there are mental events within us, or that we have mental functions. It only argues that to get that, you do not need to arrive at the existence of another kind of entity. Rather, these are phenomena or states of the material whole.

Okay, so I didn’t agree with him — so what. In the end, what concerns us is really the question — let’s jump far ahead — whether a computerized model, an artificial intelligence, has mental events. Not whether it has spirituality, but whether it has mental events. Therefore, even if I say it has no spirituality because it is all metal, software, and hardware, that doesn’t matter. You can still ask whether mental events occur within it. And therefore from here on I am going to detach the whole discussion, throughout the series, completely from the question of dualism. In other words, I gave this whole introduction so that the question of dualism would not come up later. Okay? Because what matters here is how we relate to our mental phenomena, and not the question whether our mental phenomena occur within a soul or whether they are properties of the material whole. That is an interesting question in philosophy, or in metaphysics if you like. It is not important for our discussions. Regarding artificial intelligence, I will ask myself whether it has mental phenomena. I will not ask myself whether it has a soul. Someone can come and say it has a soul, but that is not the discussion I am going to pursue. I am going to deal with the question whether it has mental phenomena. That is the more significant discussion. Okay, so that is the summary plus…

[Speaker E] No, but still, if you assume that a precondition for the existence of consciousness is some kind of spirit, then it is relevant to a machine too. Suppose so. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I think it is true that there is spirit within us and that mental phenomena take place within the spirit. But my claim is that the emergentist position is coherent. In other words, I cannot say there is something there that is impossible. And since that is so, I don’t want to enter that debate at all. There is a debate; I do not agree with the emergentist position. But I don’t want to get into that debate because it is not important for our discussion. Therefore, at least as a working assumption for our discussion, I will assume that emergence is a legitimate position, a possible position, and I will not distinguish between dualism and emergence. So long as we are sophisticated, yes, so long as we are sophisticated materialists — that is, we understand that there are mental processes within the human being. And love is not an electrical current. Okay? Now whether this is dualistic or not is not important. Okay.

Now I want to move on, and maybe begin with some introduction that will give motivation for the discussion to come. In one of the previous years, in these Thursday lessons, we studied לנבוכי הדור of Rabbi Kook. An early work of Rabbi Kook, written עוד in Boisk. Now, לנבוכי הדור of course, by its title, evokes the association of מורה נבוכים by Maimonides, not by accident of course. Rabbi Kook is basically trying to produce a new Guide of the Perplexed for his generation, the generation — for our generation, as he said. As his students say. The question is whether — that is, he tried to write a Guide of the Perplexed for his generation. I said that Nachman Krochmal did this even before him with Moreh Nevukhei Ha-Zeman. Basically it is the same idea; there too he tried to create a Guide of the Perplexed for his generation.

In any event, in one of the first lessons I spoke about the fact that Maimonides, at the beginning of the Guide of the Perplexed, basically deals with conceptual definitions connected to intellect, to thinking. For example, he speaks about seeing with the eyes of the intellect as opposed to seeing with one’s eyes — looking and beholding, at the beginning of the Guide. And Maimonides’ claim, or Maimonides’ discussion, revolves around the question of thinking, thought. Rabbi Kook’s discussion at the beginning of his לנבוכי הדור revolves around will, free choice, our free will. And I said that I think this is not accidental; it is almost a paradigm for defining those two books or the relation between them. Because for Maimonides, the essence that defines the nature of the human being is thinking, intellect. Intellect is the image of God according to Maimonides. And I think that in Maimonides’ period, the period of scholasticism, this really was a typical approach; Maimonides was a reflection of his intellectual environment in this respect.

By contrast, in Rabbi Kook’s time, the image of God in man was will, not intellect; our freedom, our ability to choose freely as distinct from all other natural creatures — at least that is how people tend to think, that other natural creatures do not have this thing called free will. Therefore when you write a Guide of the Perplexed for your generation and ask yourself what the image of God is, what distinguishes the human species from the rest of the creatures in the world, you give different answers in the twentieth century and in the twelfth century. In the twelfth century, what distinguishes man is intellect, thinking. In the twentieth century, what distinguishes man is free will, choice, the autonomous human being who chooses and decides. That is a distinctly modernist conception. And at somewhat later stages, of course, the culture of the end of modernity begins to awaken and postmodernity begins to come in; there begins some kind of retreat and a kind of lack of trust in the freedom we have, in the will, in human uniqueness in general. Since evolution, in fact, people have begun to see the human being as someone located on one axis with animals, some stage in the development along that axis of animal development.

That is, if in Rabbi Kook’s period there was already some kind of despair over intellect, or an understanding that intellect is not really as central and unique as people thought in the twelfth century or in earlier centuries generally, now after Rabbi Kook I think people have already begun to doubt even the uniqueness and centrality of will. That is, they say that man too is a deterministic creature, and what we call will is some kind of illusion. Therefore one can see this process as a process that each time places another aspect at the center as the image of God in man, as that which distinguishes man, until in the end — first it was intellect, afterward people despaired of intellect and it became will, afterward they despaired of will too, and now nothing distinguishes man anymore. What distinguishes man is only a quantitative difference — that is, we have more intellect than other creatures, apparently at least potentially.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, this is not just — again, just a remark — isn’t this a place for some further reflection on our arrogance as Jews, that “turn it over and turn it over, for everything is in it,” and we know the truth and Sinai and all that, and in the end it turns out that our greatest thinkers, Maimonides and Rabbi Kook and of course others, also absorbed the intellectual, literary, and philosophical atmosphere of their surroundings and adopted it wholeheartedly?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I completely agree. I completely agree, even from additional aspects that come up here, but I agree. In any event, the claim is that in the end we arrive at the conclusion that man lies on the developmental axis of creatures in general. It may be that he is higher up, that he has higher intelligence, more developed intellect or a more developed brain, but it is not something essentially different from other things. Therefore whoever writes the Guide of the Perplexed for this generation will basically have to speak in a third language. And it seems to me that artificial intelligence expresses this point very strongly, because artificial intelligence basically places under a very large question mark the characteristics that we saw as unique human characteristics. Even — I’ll say more than that — even the quantitative characteristic.

That is, until now we were sure: okay, we despaired of intellect, we despaired of will, but everybody understood that a frog cannot solve math problems. In other words, quantitatively we have more intellect or more brain than others. And artificial intelligence is here, and suddenly the question starts to arise — wait a second, there are beings here that are not human beings, but they actually have the same abilities and even more. Which means that even on the quantitative axis it is not clear that one can speak about the uniqueness of man. And okay, frogs are less intelligent than we are, but there may be other beings who are more intelligent than we are — certainly the beings that will come after us in evolution, but even ones that we ourselves produce with our own hands, like artificial-intelligence beings. And this really challenges the whole axis I described a moment ago, this historical-philosophical axis, which puts under a question mark the uniqueness of man, or really his definition: what is a human being at all? It is just worth noticing that the computer, as I just said, and artificial intelligence in particular, though really the computer in general, somewhat challenge the definitions we have of human uniqueness, of what a human being is. And that is why it is so interesting to engage in questions about the computer in this context, or to compare ourselves to computers in this context.

But to the same extent, these questions — whether a computer has awareness, whether it has will — really challenge the concept of the human being not only in the sense of thinking ability, but really — and this is a question, there is currently no answer to it, there are disputes — this question also puts under a question mark, or challenges, human uniqueness not only in the sense of thought or the quality of thought or the level of thought, but also all the other human mental functions. Who says? Maybe artificial intelligence has those too. And therefore this is really a process: artificial intelligence completes the very process I described and really brings it to its end. If we adopt the position that artificial intelligence has everything human beings have, then it brings it to its end. In other words, the discussion is over — that’s it, human uniqueness is finished, there is no aspect left. Okay?

Now, there was some comment on my website when I wrote — the last column dealt with awareness and the question, I tried to discuss whether animals or artificial intelligence have awareness, at least to define the question, not necessarily to arrive at conclusions but to define the question — and then someone asked there in one of the comments, I think, whether artificial intelligence asks itself whether it has awareness. Not whether it does or doesn’t have awareness — rather the very asking of the question. The very ability to ask the question, “Do I have awareness?” or “Does artificial intelligence have awareness?” — is that not a uniquely human trait? So I told him that I think it is, although I have no proof for it, and I think it is. But I told him to notice that this is not really connected to the question as he formulated it. I mean, the way he formulated it was an unnecessarily specific question. Because you are discussing whether artificial intelligence can ask itself whether it has awareness. I ask whether it can ask itself anything at all.

Artificial intelligence, in my view, does not ask itself anything. We will talk about this, but let’s say in the accepted view — the view that artificial intelligence lacks reflection, lacks mental processes — it asks itself nothing. Thoughts do not run through it on their own initiative. At least that is the accepted view, and I tend to think that way. It is not that it does not ask itself whether it has awareness — it also does not ask itself what two plus two is. Because asking yourself is an act that we at least generally attribute to human beings. Therefore this is not connected to awareness at all. The concept of awareness is connected, of course, to the discussion of the relation between human beings and machines, but in this case when you ask whether artificial intelligence asks itself whether it has awareness, you don’t even need to get to awareness. Does it ask itself whether two plus two equals four? I say no. When I ask it what two plus two is, it will think — we will still discuss what it means for it to think — but it will think and reach the conclusion that it is four. It will perform the calculation, but I asked the question.

Okay? Now true, this is not unequivocal. First of all, it is not measurable — this is my position, but I don’t know how to prove it. But it is also not unequivocal because, for example, today’s thinking models — yes, GPT, all those models, they have things like that — basically do ask themselves what questions to ask. Right? When I give it some question in free language, it translates the task for itself and formulates various questions along the way in order to arrive at the solution. So true, I asked the initial question, it did not initiate this whole process, this whole thought process, on its own. But after I asked it that question, it mapped the question for itself, analyzed it, defined what questions it needed to seek answers to and how to build from them the answer to my question.

So notice that in the middle, all of a sudden, it does ask itself questions on its own initiative. So it does ask itself something. Now, it’s not exactly like that, because it doesn’t really ask itself; rather, it breaks down my question into sub-questions. It does not ask itself what two plus two is. Suppose I ask it what twenty-two plus one is. Then among other things it also needs to ask itself what two plus one is, right? That’s one of the sub-questions it will need to answer in order to answer twenty-two plus one. Did it ask itself what two plus one is? If you think about it, you’ll understand — no, it did not ask itself that. I asked it the basic question, what is twenty-two plus one? When it broke down my question, that is a thought process, but not an initiated process. It breaks down that question and sees in it various sub-questions: what is twenty plus two, what is two plus one, and what is the sum of them all — suppose it broke it down that way. Okay? So it breaks down my question, but it does not ask itself questions. And when it breaks down my question, that is not called initiating the asking of questions. I am the only initiator here. It only breaks down my question. It looks as though it is asking itself, but again — maybe it really is asking itself; I said, I have no proof. But I say that according to my view, and that is the accepted view, it does not ask itself questions, and so even the thinking models should not make us retreat from that position. No. If I think it does not initiate, then a thinking model does not initiate either. It only breaks down my question. But the only initiative here was mine. I asked a question here, and the model initiated nothing; it only broke down my question.

So in that sense I think that at least if one accepts the position I described here — and this is getting ahead of ourselves, because I’m not there yet at all, but I want to define the framework of the discussion — then if one accepts that position, there is still a difference between the human being and the machine, and that is the question of initiative. That is, the human being begins some chain of thought, asks himself questions beyond the question of awareness — questions generally. And the models answer questions asked of them; they do not ask themselves questions. They do not initiate things. Okay?

[Speaker D] But to separate the asking of a question — especially a person asking himself — from consciousness, I don’t understand that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. We’ll talk about awareness and consciousness; I’m in the middle of a pair of columns on that matter too. So we’ll get there. So this basically means — I’m trying to place the computer and artificial intelligence on this historical axis of defining what a human being is and what the image of God in man is, what distinguishes man. Yes? The more extreme people basically want to claim — maybe I mentioned this — that we are now supposed to discuss the rights of artificial-intelligence models, of LLMs. Yes? Are we allowed to disconnect GPT from the electricity? The computer that runs the ChatGPT model — are we allowed to disconnect it from the power? That would basically be killing a creature with rights, a creature that has a presence in the legal field, in the field of rights. You understand that this is the required conclusion if you adopt the view that this model has indeed challenged the image of man and is itself an entity like a human being. That is, there is no uniqueness left to man. Then immediately organizations for LLM rights arise and all sorts of things of that kind, and concern over killing LLMs and abusing them, all kinds of things. And there are discussions about it. Things are being written about it. It sounds a bit bizarre to me and to many others, but the fact that this discussion is coming up means that some of us, basically, have completed the axis I described before. That’s it — the discussion is over. The human advantage has disappeared. Once it moved from here to here to here to here; now it no longer exists, it has vanished.

[Speaker D] But again, from a Jewish point of view, if we go with the approach the Rabbi is proposing, all those chapters in the Hebrew Bible where wood and stone are mocked so strongly, and Elijah and the gods — does that mean nothing?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because now it could be that if you worship artificial intelligence, that would be idolatry, and then indeed there would be room to discuss it; maybe there would be a prohibition involved. But the laughter — wait — the laughter with which you laugh at idol worshipers, here you would not laugh. Because, okay, one has to distinguish here between the different components of the matter. Because the laughter people laugh there is a philosophical statement. The prohibition on idolatry is a halakhic statement. It may be that the halakhic statement would apply here too; most likely it would apply here too. But the laughter as a philosophical stance may indeed no longer be justified.

So this tells us why the next stage in our preliminary discussion — and we are still within the framework of the preliminary discussion — has to enter the question of what thinking is. We really need to ask ourselves what thinking is, and perhaps afterward what willing is, and we will talk about what awareness is, but what mental phenomena are בכלל. And after we understand that, we will know better, at least, how to ask whether this exists in other creatures. Answers to that? I have no answers. I have a position, but I do not have answers backed by crushing arguments. But at least I hope the questions will be formulated better. That is basically the point.

Now I want to enter the question of what thinking is, and this too — everything is still within the methodological introduction — the discussion of what thinking is, I too am going to conduct on two levels. First, the question of defining what the act of thinking is at all — not its contents and not what kinds of thinking there are, but what it means to think. That is one discussion. After that there will be a second discussion of what processes of thinking we know: logical thinking, analytical thinking, observation, all sorts of things of that kind. Both of these are important for our questions, because if we ask ourselves whether artificial intelligence has thinking, we can ask whether the actions it performs deserve to be called acts of thinking. And besides that, we will also ask ourselves whether it really performs all the actions or all the kinds of actions that we perform when we think. That is another question. The first question deals with the nature of the actions that it does perform. The second asks whether there are actions that it does not perform. Therefore the two discussions, the two kinds of discussion I am going to conduct here, will project onto what comes later.

So I begin first of all with a characterization of what an act of thinking is at all. First of all, I ask myself whether the brain thinks or the intellect thinks. Now many times people are used to thinking that brain and intellect are synonyms. “Not every brain can tolerate this” — the brain does not grasp anything. The intellect grasps it. The brain is an organ. The brain is biology. Again, this is my personal position. The brain is biology; it does not grasp anything, it does not think anything, nothing. At most one can say that we think by means of the brain. But thinking itself is carried out by the intellect; the intellect is what thinks. It just uses the brain as the instrument by means of which it thinks, just as a person walks by means of his legs, so a person thinks by means of the brain.

Now again, this is my personal position. I have not explained why I think it is true; I am just putting the position on the table for the moment. Right now I simply want to sharpen well the position I want to examine. Because this position is not necessarily a dualistic one. Remember the path I made last time, or in the summary at the beginning of this lecture? I am not speaking right now about the dualistic question, whether there is in us an additional factor called intellect which is really part of our soul. As far as I am concerned, be materialists. But within our material whole, as materialists, various properties or mental states emerge. Among them thinking, willing, awareness, pain, fear, all sorts of things of that kind. Okay? And I ask myself whether thinking is the mental phenomenon of thinking, or whether thinking is the computational action performed in the brain — which is basically a physical or biological action, or if you like a computational one, if you look at it in terms of software rather than hardware.

Okay, but software — think of a computer, yes? A computer has software and hardware. The software is not a soul, not another entity besides the hardware, right? The only thing that exists in the computer is the hardware. The software does not exist in the computer as an entity; the software is a state of the hardware. That is, when you load software into a computer, you are actually changing the physical state; you are moving electrons or changing a magnetic state in one place or another. So the matter is now in a different state. Try to remember the speed of a car — the speed of a car is not an entity; it is a property of the object called a car. Now among the emergentists, the claim is that a mental state is a property of the material whole. A mental state of thinking too, in their view, is such a thing — it is a property of the material whole, okay? For me as a dualist, the intellect is in the soul; it is not a property of the material whole. But still, I too agree that the intellect acts by means of the brain, just as a person walks by means of his legs, or hits by means of his hands, or scratches by means of his fingers, or breathes by means of his heart and lungs. In the same way he thinks by means of the brain. But “thinks by means of the brain” can be said both in a dualistic worldview and in a materialistic worldview — that is what I want to argue. And therefore I continue to insist that I do not intend to deal with the question of dualism; that is not our discussion. As far as I am concerned, a complete materialist who speaks about mental phenomena as things that are properties or states of the material whole can still ask himself what thinking is. Is thinking what happens in the brain, or is thinking what happens when we use the brain as an intellect — except that for him the intellect is not an entity but a state of the neuronal whole, okay?

[Speaker F] But you gave examples in which a person walks by means of the intellect, by means of the brain, the person activates the…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The hands by means of — breathes by means of the brain. No, I spoke about hands and legs.

[Speaker F] No, but the hands and legs act by means of the brain.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I didn’t say that. You are adding that now. So what did you say? I said that a person walks by means of his legs; I did not say that the legs walk. I said that the person walks, he just uses the legs in order to walk. In the same way I am claiming that what thinks is not the brain but the person; the person thinks by means of the brain. I did not enter at all into the question of what the brain does in the act of walking or any other act.

[Speaker F] Fine, but the act of walking and the act of breathing, all those are physical acts. By contrast, thought is a spiritual, theoretical act, so you can’t make that comparison.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are already taking a position. That is exactly the question. The claim that thought is a spiritual act — that is the question. Because in principle people claim no, the circuits in the brain think.

[Speaker F] Fine, but with legs you can give a measure. You say, look, the legs walked two meters. Breathing — you measure breathing. What about thinking? What are the measures in thinking?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The same thing. The blood flowed from here to there, or the electricity flowed in this circuit and that at such and such a number of milliamps. You can measure these things; they are physical processes. Right now, in response to the previous column, someone brought up some article by Anthropic, I think — I don’t remember, or maybe some other company, I don’t remember which — that published an article saying they can tell which part of Harry Potter a person is reading by measuring what is happening in his brain. They measure what is happening in his brain and tell him that he is now on page seventy-three, because you can see in the brain which page of Harry Potter he is reading. Now you understand that it is very tempting to look at that article and say, okay, then reading — which is some kind of thinking activity, something like that — is basically brain currents. Look, the device measures the brain currents and tells you: you are now reading Harry Potter, page seventy-three.

And I of course claim that that is not so. I claim that we think by means of the brain, but not that the brain thinks. And in this sense it seems to me that this too is not a real dispute. I return to Yosef Neumann. And I think that on this question one has to give a clear answer regardless of whether one is a materialist or a dualist. Obviously the brain does not think. Now I’m saying what you said, Ezra. Obviously the brain does not think. Obviously we think by means of the brain, whether you are an emergent materialist or a dualist. That is what I want to say. Because to say that the electrical currents in the brain are thought is like saying that the electrical currents in the brain are love or fear or worry. Okay? Therefore it seems to me that if you are a materialist — even if you are a materialist, but a sophisticated one — you have to answer that we think by means of the brain. The currents in the brain are not thinking. Okay?

[Speaker F] And that isn’t enough for you, where you’ve now gotten? Isn’t that enough to reject their position?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whose position? What more do you want to discover about them once you’ve gone in that direction, where you say that we think by means of the brain but the brain itself does not produce thought?

No — maybe it does produce thought. According to the materialists, it produces thought.

[Speaker F] It produces it,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] but it is not itself the thought.

[Speaker F] Yes, but you yourself say that you do not accept that. I want to understand — are you trying to prove that the materialists’ arguments have some basis?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to say that the arguments of unsophisticated materialists have no basis. It is just conceptual confusion. Okay. But the more sophisticated materialists can stay where they are. They will define thinking the way I define thinking, and they will say that thinking is not the electrical currents in the brain, and still they will say, yes, but the electrical currents in the brain generate thought. In other words, I will now perhaps add another layer to this description. I say that from their point of view, the brain is the cause and the thought is the effect. And I claim that the thought is the cause and the brain processes are the effect. That is, I want to think something, and for that purpose I activate the brain and think by means of it. Okay. They will say no. There are electrical currents in the brain, and this is expressed in mental processes that we call thinking. But those processes are generated by the currents in the brain.

[Speaker F] So exactly — that was my question from the outset. I can understand that position you are trying to explain, when we are talking about activating physical bodies like legs, hands, breathing. I cannot understand how those currents in the brain, even if you change the definition and say the currents in the brain are not thought but activate thought — I cannot see the connection between the currents in the brain and thought, whereas I can see the connection

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] between the currents

[Speaker F] in the brain and the activation of legs and breathing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and you are taking us back to the question of strong emergence. The claim — that is exactly the claim of strong emergence. The claim that says true, you have no way to calculate from the brain state the mental property, which in their eyes is a collective property of the whole brain, okay? But still, it comes out of there. The brain is what creates it, even if I have no scientific way to describe exactly how that happens. And I said I’m with you. I think strong emergence is absurd. It certainly is not scientific. That is not a question of position; it is a question of fact. But I also claim that it is not true; there is no reason to assume it is true. I say, since I do not want to enter that debate, I am willing to accept the alternative of strong emergence and continue our whole discussion whether I am a dualist or a strong emergentist. Okay? That is the claim. I keep saying: I agree, I do not think strong emergence is plausible. I am only claiming that our discussion does not require that. Even if you do think it is plausible, you still have to agree that thought is not electrical currents. Where will the difference show up? That is what I added at the end. The difference will be in the question of causal direction. The materialist will say that everything really begins as a physical process in the brain. The currents in the brain flow because there is a voltage difference that generates an electrical current, but somehow in the process of strong emergence thoughts, mental phenomena, occur. The mental phenomena are not the electrical currents, but they are properties of the neuronal whole; they are produced by the electrical currents. And I, as a dualist, claim that the intellect uses the brain, not that the brain creates the intellect. The intellect is not a state of the brain. On the contrary, the brain is an organ that the intellect uses, okay? And it thinks by means of it. Just as I walk by means of my legs, so I think by means of the brain. So the initiative is the intellect’s, and the brain is the result; the currents in the brain are the result, not the cause. That is the difference between dualism and emergent materialism. Fine? But all of us should agree — have to agree, I think — that thinking is not the electrical currents in the brain. That is simply not correct. That identification is certainly incorrect.

[Speaker F] So I just want to understand — where are you taking the discussion now?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At the moment I want to understand what an act of thinking is. That’s all. Later we’ll see what we do with it, what implications it has, but right now I want to define what an act of thinking is. Yes.

[Speaker G] Rabbi, can you hear me? Yes, yes. Why not divide thinking? The Rabbi is asking whether thinking is the mental part or the part that happens in the brain. Why not say there are two parts here? In thinking there are two stages: there is a stage that occurs as a process, there are processes, and there is experience. I don’t know — when I think what two plus two is, the answer pops into my head. It may be that some process took place in my brain, and on the other hand I also experienced some experience that it equals four.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a semantic question here. A semantic question about what to call thinking. Call whatever you want thinking, but when we…

[Speaker G] So the question is whether in mentality too there is the part — whether

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] thinking is also the mental part. That is the question, sort of — both and. Again, if you are asking a semantic question about what to call thinking, call whatever you want thinking. I am dealing with a non-semantic question; I am dealing with a substantive one. And I am saying: when we speak about thinking, what do we usually mean? You can use a different word if you want, but it does not matter — we use this word. And when I ask what we mean when we use that word, I claim that we do not mean the currents in the brain. We mean either the results or the causes — that is already a matter of dispute — but we mean mental processes. Exactly as when we ask what pain is, we are not speaking about currents in the nervous system or neurons firing here and there, but about the mental sensation that hurts. That is what we call pain. Right. So here the Rabbi means the experience of thinking. You can change the semantics and say, okay, but I call pain the whole package. Fine, then you are choosing a different language, it does not matter. But it is important to me that we agree that in reality there is at least an additional dimension beyond the matter of the electrical currents. What you call it can be debated. Fine, so that is regarding the characterization of what thinking is.

Now I want to illustrate this through other things. I asked before — this is Bertrand Russell’s question — he asks what the color yellow is in his book The Problems of Philosophy. He asks: what is the color yellow? Very often you will get the answer that the color yellow is an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength, I don’t know how many nanometers, okay? Or angstroms. Because we know that colors are associated with electromagnetic waves of different wavelengths; each wavelength is depicted to us or perceived by us as a different color. So Bertrand Russell — and again, he too was a materialist as far as I know — Bertrand Russell claims that this answer is wrong and not correct. The color yellow is not a physical phenomenon. An electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength is a physical phenomenon. The color yellow is a conscious phenomenon; it is not a physical phenomenon. The color yellow is that sensation produced in our consciousness when an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength strikes the retina. If the wavelength is this length, then what will be produced for us in the retina — or what will be produced for us in consciousness as a result of that strike on the retina — is the color yellow. And if it is another wavelength, then it will be red, purple, green, and so on. But to identify colors with the physical phenomenon, says Bertrand Russell, is a mistake. The physical phenomenon is the cause of there being created in me an experience of color, but the color is part of the experience I have; it is not part of the world. In the world itself, says Bertrand Russell, there are no colors. The world itself is indifferent to colors. There are none. Colors are concepts that exist only in us, not in the world. Therefore when I look at this table and it has a brown color, the brownness of the table is something that exists only in my consciousness. It does not exist in the world itself. In the world itself there is a crystalline structure that… yes, it is similar to D.B.’s question. In the world itself there are physical phenomena. Okay? I translate them in my consciousness into colors, sounds, shapes, things of that kind, but these are translations. But when I speak about what a color is, I am speaking about a phenomenon of consciousness, not a physical phenomenon. That is what Bertrand Russell says.

Now let’s take Bertrand Russell one step further and connect him to what I said earlier. He compared the mental phenomenon to the electromagnetic wave, the physical phenomenon. Now I ask: but in the middle there is a mediator, right? How does the electromagnetic wave arrive and become a sensory consciousness of color? Through the brain, right? That is, the wave hits the retina, the retina sends electrical currents to the visual center in the brain, the visual center in the brain processes those currents, and then somehow there is created in me a consciousness whose color is yellow. Okay? Now just as one cannot identify the mental phenomenon with the physical phenomenon, with the electromagnetic wave, one also cannot identify it with the mediating physical processes in the brain. There too it is not correct to identify it with the color yellow. The color yellow is not a collection of neurons firing in the yellow-color area. The firing neurons generate a consciousness with yellow color, but they are not the consciousness of yellow itself. They generate it. It is not correct to identify them with it. Okay? Exactly what he said about the electromagnetic wave, I want to say about the brain state that mediates the electromagnetic wave and generates from it the consciousness. Fine? So all I am doing is trying to sharpen the distinction I made earlier. The color yellow is basically something that exists solely in my consciousness. In the world itself there is no yellow color, and in the brain too there is no yellow color. Only in the intellect is there yellow color. By intellect I mean the mental part. Again, I am careful not to say the spiritual part, although I think it is spiritual, but I do not want to enter the argument whether there is something spiritual or not, because the discussion does not depend on that. I claim that it exists on our mental plane and not on our physiological plane. Okay? So yellow is not an electromagnetic wave; yellow is also not the brain state that the electromagnetic wave creates, but the yellow color is the conscious result created by the brain state. The electromagnetic wave creates a brain state; the brain state creates a state of consciousness. The yellow color exists only in the third stage. It does not exist in the first stage or in the second.

And from here basically arises the problem known as the philosophers’ palace — I don’t know why that’s how I remember it being called, although if you search you don’t find that everywhere, but that’s how I saw it called — the question whether when I talk about the color yellow and you talk about the color yellow, are we talking about the same thing? Tell me: when I say I see yellow here and you say you see yellow here, are we really seeing the same thing? The answer is that there is no way to know. There is no way to know because our synchronization is only verbal — what we say. But what is inside our consciousness, there is no way to know. In other words, it may be that you see this table in the color I call green, but from birth you are used to the fact that the color one calls that is brown. So when I ask you what color you see in this table, you will say brown, obviously. But the truth is that internally you see the table in the color I call green; you are just used to calling it brown. So therefore I look, I see a brown color here, and I say I see the table in brown. You look at the table, you also say I see the table in brown. So ostensibly we are seeing the same thing; we agree, everything is fine. No. We agree only on the verbal plane. We are not necessarily seeing the same thing on the conscious plane. And that is exactly a result of what I said earlier, that when I speak about brown, I am speaking neither about a brain state nor about an electromagnetic wave. I am speaking about what appears in my consciousness. And what appears in my consciousness is not accessible to measurement. That is, your consciousness and my consciousness — we have no way to know whether they are showing us the same film, the same picture. There is no way to know this. When we describe the picture to one another, we will describe the same description, use the same words. So ostensibly we are describing the same thing. But no, because the meaning of the words we use may be completely different for each of us, and the referent of the words — what they point to. When I say green, what do I mean? What does that concept green point to? It is not at all certain that it points to the same thing for you when you say green. We have no way to measure this or know it in any way.

[Speaker G] Rabbi, is that true of all kinds of human experiences too — love and hatred and hearing and everything else?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely. Correct. Yellow is only an example; maybe it is easier to demonstrate the point through it. But now let’s expand it.

[Speaker D] But Rabbi, this is a statement that undermines all rationality, because if even with color we do not experience the same thing…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It does not undermine rationality at all. The question is where rationality is, what you attribute rationality to. But let’s leave that, Shmuel. For the moment I just want to complete the picture because we will still get to these things.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, sorry, just to understand: the way you define things, this consciousness you are talking about — consciousness is inward, that is not — it is completely different from thinking.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean by different? It is not different from thinking in the sense that both this and that are mental processes. It happens only inside me on the mental plane; it does not happen in the brain and not in the world.

[Speaker C] But you explained that in thinking it is the intellect that initiates the thought.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, here there is certainly a difference — unambiguously there is a difference in the sense of initiative. We will get to that, absolutely. Here you are completely right. According to my view at least, where the intellect is the initiator, there is a big difference between that and the color yellow. Because with yellow the initiative comes from the world. That is, if there is such a thing in the world it strikes my retina and creates in me the color yellow. I do not decide to see yellow; I simply see it, that is the translation I make of the thing. From the point of view of emergent materialists, there is really no difference here either. That is, thought too is really the result of brain processes; it is not initiative that produces the brain processes, and from their point of view it is exactly the same. But here there really will be a difference. That is, regarding yellow I will agree with them; regarding thinking I will not agree with them.

[Speaker G] Okay? Why can’t we say it goes in both directions? What? Why can’t we say it goes in both directions? I see a certain sight and a thought pops into my head. In the middle of the night I want intrusive thoughts to leave me,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] they do not leave me, they come to me. No problem. I’m saying that in thought there can be initiative on my part; not every thought is the result of my initiative. Because from the point of view of emergent materialists there is no thought that is my initiative; everything is the result of things. I claim there are results, there are also intrusive thoughts, obviously, there are thoughts I cannot get rid of that are forced on me, that are not the result of my initiative.

[Speaker D] In any event, a lot of the reality I see I also initiate. If I don’t want to see, I don’t see certain things. If I want to see demons, then the Sages saw demons; Maimonides stopped wanting to see demons, so he stopped seeing demons.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they didn’t see demons. They didn’t see demons. They gave an interpretation to what they saw and said it was demons. Unless I’m mistaken and there really are demons. But if I’m right that there are no demons, then they did not see demons. They gave an interpretation to various things they saw and said, ah, apparently there are demons here. No — that is exactly the point. In seeing there is no choice. It is not a question of choice. There are biases. There are biases in seeing, fine, but that is not initiative.

[Speaker D] As a postmodernist, that is really not so unequivocal. We see what we want to see. If we want to see, we’ll see a settled land and a…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are speaking to me now about biases. I am not speaking about biases; I am speaking about initiative. If you see things out of what you initiate seeing, then you are simply fooling yourself. You can close your eyes and decide to open them, and then you’ll see — that’s obvious. I am talking about open eyes. You are looking there, and all that is missing is only the decision whether to see or not to see. That is just bias; it is not freedom in seeing. Obviously there are visual biases, right, obviously.

[Speaker D] You can call it bias, and you can say that we have no possibility of seeing something we do not want or are not built to see, something our culture has constructed for us.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is too far-reaching a statement. I don’t agree with it. But let’s leave it; I hope to get to all that. I want to do it step by step.

So the claim is basically this. Now I want to expand this one step further and say: when I look at this table and say it is brown, and you look at this table and say it is brown, it may be that you are not seeing a table in the color I call green — that was the option I suggested earlier. It could be… I mean, from your point of view it may be what I would call hearing rather than seeing. But you are just used to saying that when you hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, how do you put it in Hebrew? “I see this table as brown.” That is how one says it in Hebrew. Okay? So each time you look at this table, what happens inside you is what I call hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But you are used to calling that “I see the table as brown.” Therefore again there will be synchronization in speech, but we have no guarantee that there is synchronization in consciousness, in what the speech expresses, in the meaning of the speech. Okay?

And if you want to go further — yes, the Jewish people saw the sounds. What does it mean that they saw the sounds? Seeing the sounds can be done; today we do it every day. There is nothing surprising here. I mean, if you connect the information that comes from the eye to the hearing center in the brain, then a person will hear electromagnetic waves; he will hear sights. You understand that, right? Simple, obvious. And he would be no less correct than I am when I see electromagnetic waves. It is not that I am right and he is defective, that he has some impairment. It is no impairment at all. There is nothing more correct about seeing it than about hearing it. We received two translations. With me the translation is into a video system and with him it is into audio. That’s all. It makes no difference. The question is how you claim it. We are both talking about an electromagnetic wave in the world. The language in which we represent that physical phenomenon is different — not the spoken language, but the conscious language — different for each of us. In spoken language, again, it gets resynchronized. We use the same words, and therefore we agree, and that is how science progresses. We agree, arrive at results, and discover laws of nature. But it may be that that same natural law means completely different things in your consciousness and mine. And we go on being perfectly synchronized in speech, and there is no way to rule out the bizarre picture I am describing right now. No way.

And then if there were a creature for whom — that is how it was born, that is how it is built, it is not a defect — whose eyes send their information to the auditory center, then it would hear sights, it would see sounds, or vice versa. Now there may be creatures that translate all this into something that is not one of our five senses at all — into something else entirely unfamiliar to us. We do not know that kind of experience. So they would, I don’t know, “touch-hear” sounds; I don’t know what that means. It would appear to them in some form that is entirely unfamiliar to me. Okay? It does not matter. They are not defective and they are not better or worse than I am. Their conscious language is simply different. That is all. They translate the physical or brain phenomena into something entirely different at the level of consciousness. Okay?

[Speaker D] What you’re bringing up reminds me of Spinoza, that reality has infinitely many faces. The whole point means that theoretically…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Someone mentioned Kant here earlier, with the thing-in-itself and the thing as it appears to us. Yes, different philosophers addressed the distinction between the thing in itself and how I perceive it, or the faces of the thing that are turned toward me. That is the distinction we are talking about here, only I claim that today we understand these things much better thanks to science. It is not that science can reveal to me what I know, but science can help me understand that what I know and what happens in the world are completely different things. This is a language that represents what happens in the world through the mediation of my brain, but still consciousness is only a language that represents the brain and physical realities. It is not the brain and physical realities themselves. And again this takes me back to the question what yellow is, and also what thinking is. Thinking is on the third layer, not in the brain — certainly not in physics, but not in the brain either — rather in the consciousness created out of the brain processes, or creating them, yes, that was the earlier dispute I talked about. Fine? But it is on the mental layer. Therefore these distinctions are very, very important when we come to define this act called thinking.

There is Mary’s room, yes, someone mentioned it earlier. Mary’s room is basically a famous philosophical thought experiment whose purpose is to demonstrate this distinction. They say Mary was a brilliant physicist in optics, an expert in optics. She knows everything. She knows all of optics, all of… but a black-and-white room. That is where she lives, works, and researches optics, but she sees everything in black and white. Okay? By the way, you can look at it this way: the room could be totally colorful, but in her brain the division into colors — yes, the sensors that divide the spectrum into colors — is absent. She has only black and white in her consciousness. So you could say that Mary’s room is basically the world. Mary is just the type of creature I described earlier, another kind of creature whose conscious language contains only black and white and no other shades. Okay?

So if she is an expert in optics, and now she knows everything, and she says what happens when red light hits such-and-such a medium, how it refracts and how it does not refract — she calls it red light because she knows that a wavelength of such-and-such is called red light. But of course in her consciousness she has never seen such a sight as red light, right? It does not exist for her. Now she leaves that room and suddenly encounters the whole world of shades, of colors. And the question they ask there is: did she learn something new? Is there now something in her head that she did not have while she was inside the black-and-white room? And the answer is obviously yes. Of course. Where is it located? The brain works the same way, the physical world is the same physical world. What changed is the conscious layer, the conscious language that represents the brain states and through them the world itself, the colors in the world itself. That changed.

But understand: the picture she sees is no longer a black-and-white picture; it is a completely colorful picture. She will do the same calculations in physics; no result will change. She is a champion in physics. That is, every result I see, she could have told me while she was still in the black-and-white room. I could ask her: tell me, when red light strikes the transition between air and the salty water of the Atlantic Ocean, how will that refraction appear? She could calculate and tell me what the refraction will look like, no problem. It’s just that when I say red light, from her point of view it is simply an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength. And the answer will be a perfectly correct answer. When I ask what happens to red light when it encounters a change of medium, I see in my mind’s eye a conscious image, something — light of a red color. That she does not see. But every physical answer she gives me will be completely correct, more correct than mine. And yet when she leaves that black-and-white room, suddenly something else happens in her world of consciousness. In the physical world nothing happened, and in the brain there is room to discuss it — maybe something does happen there, maybe not, that is an interesting question. But in the physical world certainly nothing happened. The only thing that changed is the conscious language through which she represents the physical phenomena. Okay?

And therefore I bring all this in order to explain that when I speak about thinking, I am speaking about processes that occur there, inside our consciousness — not in the brain and certainly not in the world. Therefore when we ask — again I jump to the end — when we ask whether a computer thinks, or whether an artificial-intelligence model thinks, we have to distinguish between two meanings of that question. Does it carry out computational processes? Yes. Does it think? I tend to think not. But in any case, what I want to say now is only that this is a different question. Answer it however you like, I don’t care, but understand that it is a different question. The question is whether it has some world of conscious representation of the electrical currents flowing through it, the way we have a conscious representation of the brain currents flowing through our brains.

With respect to that question — that is really the discussion. No one disputes that computational processes happen inside the computer. Processes similar to those that happen in our brains — not necessarily the same, but the same general idea, the same type of thing. Okay? When I ask whether the computer thinks, I am not asking whether electrical processes happen in it like in the brain. Yes, they do. I am asking whether they are represented to someone or something in the way thoughts are represented to me in my consciousness. That is the question we are discussing. I tend to think not. But my purpose here is not to answer the question, but first of all to sharpen it, to clarify what exactly I am asking. Okay? That is an important point, because I think most of the discussions of these questions collapse over the definition of concepts, over sharpening what we actually mean. Many of the disputes are simply because when you talk about thinking and when I talk about thinking, we are talking about different things. Therefore the conceptual analysis here is one of those areas — really in every area I think this is true, but this area is one in which the importance of conceptual analysis stands out very, very strongly. Before one begins to discuss and express positions and argue and formulate a position and so on, define very carefully what you mean when you ask the question, what the meaning is of the concept you are using. I think that once we do that, the conclusions will be pretty self-evident and fairly agreed upon. Most of the disputes will disappear — most of the disputes among most people.

[Speaker G] Rabbi, maybe one can also ask the question — I don’t know if this sharpens it — whether in thinking there are calculations at all, whether computational processes take place at all. I mean the experience of thinking. It could be that our whole experience of thinking does not really perform any computational process at all, but only experiences the conclusions that occur in the computational processes in the brain. And then that would mean that thinking is something different. Obviously — that is what I’m talking about.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The computational processes in the brain either generate my thinking or are generated by it. Thinking itself is not those processes.

[Speaker G] So that’s what I’m asking — exactly what I’m saying. It could be that as a thinking experience, as Ofir or whoever, I experience only the conclusion and I do not experience that whole stage of computation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We will certainly get to that too later. More than that, the more interesting question will not only be whether I do not experience the computational process, but whether it happens at all. That is, it could be that I can reach a conclusion — something elementary. No, no, I’m saying it could be. But surely something physical happens. No, no, no — I want to claim more than that. It could be that the intellect, what we call creative thinking, is something whereby the intellect reaches some conclusion not by gradual means of recursive calculation at all. In other words, there are no brain processes that in the end lead to the thing that our consciousness decodes as the conclusion. Yes, I have some intuition. Is that intuition the result of a hidden computation that I am not aware of, though I am aware of the result? Or not — could it be that I can reach intuitive conclusions without any computation taking place at all, even in hidden form? Really, when we speak about creative thinking, this is what we mean. Because thinking that is the result of computation is not essentially creative; it is simply derived from previous assumptions. But again, you are getting ahead of things. That is exactly where I’m heading. But for that it is very, very important to put the tools on the table gently and carefully. Otherwise you immediately get tangled in vague statements and do not understand what the disagreement is about, or whether there is a disagreement. And in my opinion this is critical in the area of artificial intelligence — to distinguish between the result of thinking, the experience of thinking, and the processes.

[Speaker G] But I’m saying again, it could be that the processes also

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] do not happen — not only that I am not aware of them. Those are two different questions.

[Speaker G] Yes, I’m not managing to understand well enough what the Rabbi is saying here, but…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As if — how can that be? After all, something happened in the brain. No, I’m just saying — how that can be is a different question. But the hypothesis I’m raising here — again, I’m not saying it is true, but we need to understand that this is the hypothesis under discussion. This hypothesis says the following. Suppose I see the set of physical phenomena before Einstein. The theory of relativity had not yet been known, there were various unsolved puzzles. Okay? Now an idea arises in Einstein’s head — relativity. The scientific paradigm needs to be changed, and that will explain all these phenomena. That is a super-creative mental leap. Other people facing the same facts, with the same knowledge as Einstein, did not reach his result. Now the question is this — and this is a question, I am not taking a position, it is a question. When Einstein experienced this, and of course he experienced it as a mental leap, was it really a mental leap? Or were there simply processes there that were straightforward, processes like a computer performs, only he was not aware of the processes, only of their conclusion? Alternatively, it could be that no — there was some leap here that skipped over the brain processes. In other words, something a computer could not do.

[Speaker G] Something random like that? Some kind of leap that just happens?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not random. It is judgment — exactly like free choice. It is not random, but it is also not deterministic. It is a third thing. I call it judgment. But again, that is getting ahead of ourselves. I only want to say: notice that this is the question. The question is not only — though it is also this — whether I am aware of all the intermediate processes. There is another question, one I find more interesting: whether such intermediate processes occur at all. Or whether it is possible that a human being has some ability that a machine does not have — to leap, to grasp the correct conclusion, and not go through all the intermediate thought processes at all. I do not mean merely not being aware of them, but that it doesn’t happen that way at all; it happens in a leap.

[Speaker G] That thinking is something else, yes, a different kind.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So you understand that the moment I present the picture — what I’m doing here is a bit laborious, because I’m making fine distinctions and so on, slowly — but notice that the questions that will occupy us later are already coming up, and you can see how important the map I’m describing here is. Because if I had not laid out this map, we would not have had a language in which to talk about these questions. And in my opinion most discussions — in the philosophical literature and certainly among laypeople, ordinary people — collapse in the definition of concepts. These people are arguing when there is no disagreement between them at all; they are talking about different things. They do not understand that they are answering different questions. Suppose one person says, as happened between me and Ofir just now, you are not aware of the intermediate processes — that is what is called creativity. And someone else says, no, creativity is when there are no intermediate processes, not that I am unaware of them, but that there are no intermediate processes. Again, I am not saying there is such a thing. I am only saying that it is important to understand that there are two options here, and we need to know which is correct, and these are two different options. Okay, I am only formulating the questions, not yet answering them. By the way, many times after one formulates the questions well enough, it is intuitively clear to all of us what the answer is. But fine, we will get there later. Well, I’ve gone a bit over, but if there are comments or questions?

[Speaker D] Rabbi, Rabbi, I… Rabbi… yes. Rabbi, if we exhaust the example the Rabbi gave about connecting the optic nerve to the auditory center: suppose two people stand in front of a triangle. One sees a triangle — what could be simpler, clearer, more rational than that? And the other says, what are you talking about? He was born with his eye, his optic nerve, connected to the auditory center. He says, there is no… I hear a Mozart piece, what are you talking about?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no.

[Speaker D] No no no no no. They are both talking about the simplest, most unequivocal reality — a triangle with 180 degrees — and both of them disagree completely about reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, heaven forbid. Shmuel, you’re missing the point here. Both of them will say that they see a triangle. Only one who says he sees a triangle means by that that he hears a sonata by…

[Speaker D] No, but one of them has rational claims about the triangle, yes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the other has rational…

[Speaker D] The sum of the angles in a triangle is 180… no, what are you talking about? He’ll say he hears a perfect composition…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he won’t say that. He won’t say that.

[Speaker D] How will he get to 180 degrees from Mozart’s music?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously! Because the concept angle is not your concept, and 180 is not your concept. Nothing is. His language is talking about completely different conscious appearances. But you are completely synchronized in language. That is the whole idea of the philosophers’ palace.

[Speaker D] Again, the example of the two people I gave — one sees a triangle and the other hears a Mozart piece, and the two of them argue about geometry. Can they argue? Can they argue about geometry?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One is talking about musicology and the other is talking about… Obviously! That is what is happening, Shmuel. That is what happens in every argument according to this thesis. Of course they can argue.

[Speaker D] That is exactly what I am claiming.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is a coherent picture that says: what is happening inside you is what I would call hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. And when I say the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees, you say that too. Only you mean that the sounds are arranged in such-and-such a way. And both of us are perceiving the same phenomenon in the physical world.

[Speaker D] But obviously he will have an entirely different geometry.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How does the Rabbi imagine himself not seeing a triangle… No! No! He will have exactly the same geometry, that is the whole point! We synchronize our language. We have synchronization on two extreme planes: the physics we are talking about is the same physics, the language in which we describe the physics is the same language, but the conscious medium that the language expresses is completely different between the two of us. And that is perfectly coherent. Throughout the conscious medium we will go on speaking in exactly the same language, and we will have the same geometry, the same mechanics, the same relativity — everything the same.

[Speaker D] How is that possible? Let the Rabbi try to imagine himself standing before a triangle and hearing music — how does he get from that to talking about angles and degrees?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shmuel, the concept angle is not the concept that I call angle in your case. That is exactly the point. When you see an angle in a triangle, you do not perceive it with your eyes as something with an angle. You perceive it as a modulation of the sounds in the symphony you are hearing.

[Speaker D] That moves me to tears. What does that have to do with triangle proofs?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is what is called “the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees.”

[Speaker D] Has the Rabbi ever been moved to tears by the proof of one of the geometric theorems?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No! It is not at all certain that it would move you. It depends on how your emotional center is built. It may be entirely part of the intellect. You hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and you grasp the theorem that you call “the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees.” Do you know when you would get excited? When a triangle appears in your consciousness. And when would that happen? When outside, someone plays Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In your consciousness a triangle would appear, and you would be filled with emotion. It could be. We said this is a possible scenario. One has to understand that this is something deep. It is not — to me the point seems completely simple, or completely illuminated, but in order to grasp it you have to enter that frame of mind. The philosophers’ palace is something much deeper than people think.

We can go on speaking and fully synchronize language. Think, for example, about colors. Suppose that when I see the color you call green, I call it yellow. And the yellow you see is what I call green. Now we ask ourselves: yellow and blue are mixed. What do we see? Both of us ostensibly ought to say green, right? Because for you too yellow and blue were mixed, and for me too. Even though what you call blue I call yellow, and what I call blue you call yellow. But never mind — mixing the two should produce the same result, right? So both of us will say a green color occurred here, even though the components that built the situation and the processes were different. But I tell you more than that: it may be that even about the result we will not match. You will say that a green color occurred here, I will say that a green color occurred here, but what appears in your consciousness is actually pink. Only you are used to calling that green. Therefore we are completely synchronized at the level of discourse, terminology, the sentences we say, the scientific theory we present. There is a scientific community talking, exchanging experiences, one falsifies another, one disputes another, one brings evidence, and the whole discourse proceeds. Everything is excellent, everything is fine. In the consciousness of each individual, completely different things may be happening. There is no guarantee otherwise. What? I can’t hear.

[Speaker H] Maybe one can give an analogy not from physics but from sensations of pain. That is, what I feel as toothache is very similar to what you feel when, say, someone hits your finger with a hammer, even though — at least for me, and probably for you too — it is a different type of pain. And I really don’t know. I can only say that I got hit on the finger; you know how you feel when you get hit on the finger. My teeth hurt; I know how you feel. But the order of the pain is different.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can imagine

[Speaker H] a dentist who is an excellent professional but whose teeth have never hurt. So he doesn’t know exactly what his patients feel. But he responds according to their facial expressions, according to changes in skin color.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He would relieve their pain in exactly the same way. Right. That is, there is a language problem here, because I have no way to describe to you what I see inside. We have no way to synchronize what we see inwardly or verify that it is unsynchronized. There is no way. Because the only way to synchronize is basically to exchange words. But in words we really do describe it with the same words. Now the question is: how do I verify that the connection between the words and your conscious appearance is the same as it is for me? There is no way to do that.

[Speaker G] But presumably there are limits, no? Rabbi? Suppose I see that the Rabbi has a long beard…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not presumably at all.

The simple assumption is that we do see the same thing.

[Speaker G] No, but I mean even logically. If I see someone with a long beard, it is not reasonable that someone else sees a short beard.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he will call it a long beard, but he will see a short beard. That is what is called a long beard.

[Speaker G] That’s what I’m trying to say. It seems likely to me that there must be some limit to this. That is, maybe there can be yellow and blue, but if there is more of some thing, someone else cannot possibly see less of it. It’s like…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? Why not?

A conscious translation system — there is no problem. I will see it darker, you will see it lighter.

[Speaker G] Because then the beard will not hide something else behind it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As if, if there is more beard, then it hides

[Speaker G] what appears behind it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it will hide it. You will see it short, but only a short beard hides things; a long beard doesn’t hide things. You have to adjust, understand. The whole picture of the world can be different. Again, I don’t know whether such a thing exists. But that is the full thesis. The full thesis says that in principle there are no limits. I think we do see the same thing. At least that is my assumption, and I think most people assume that. But it is an assumption. We have no way to test it scientifically or confirm it.

[Speaker D] You are opening a tremendous door to narrative pluralism. Yes, correct.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay.

[Speaker G] Rabbi, can I ask about thinking again, one more thing? Yes. It seems to me that it is clear that anyone who speaks about thinking agrees that there is also thinking that includes computational processes in his experience, that there are stages happening there. There may also be creative thinking, but it is clear there is also what you might call ordinary thinking, that includes computational processes. And the question is: even in thinking that includes computational processes, are there really any processes happening on the mental level at all, or do all the processes happen not on the mental level, and only the felt experience of the result, the conclusion, happens on the mental level?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good question. One can ask that question, and I do not know. If I had to guess, I would guess there are cases of both.

[Speaker G] There is a super-significant implication for artificial intelligence, because you could say: okay, I experience the result, Einstein’s brilliant conclusion, I experience only the result, but this whole process — my brain calculated it

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] somehow.

[Speaker G] And then the experience of thinking is something completely different from the fact that there is a process going on.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That takes us back to what we discussed earlier. If I had to tell you my opinion — again, you can’t know this or measure it, I think — but if you ask my opinion, my opinion is that sometimes we are aware of the intermediate processes and sometimes we are not.

[Speaker G] No, fine, but even if we are aware of the intermediate processes, it could be that they are just happening to us. Not that I experience them on the mental level; I experience only their result. Suppose I now think about some solution to an arithmetic problem, okay, mathematics. I realize that I am thinking about the question, want to know what it comes to, and suddenly the answer comes up. It’s not that I’m carrying out some mental process here; the answer just pops up.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But again, this is no different from our earlier discussion. There are three possibilities here. One possibility is that a microscopic computation happens and you are not aware of it, only of the conclusion — a computation happening in the brain. The second possibility is that no computation happens in the brain; you make a leap directly to the conclusion, and it is not the result of a computation in the brain — we have some ability to leap to a conclusion. The third possibility is that you really do perform the detailed computation mentally as well. You do it and say this is one plus one and then another one, and arrive at three. And all of that happens in the mental dimension too, not only in the brain.

[Speaker G] Right, that’s two possibilities. Yes, two possibilities — though in my personal experience I hardly ever see mental processes happening.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Usually it is a leap of insight. So the meaning of that is that sometimes it is like this and sometimes like that. You are saying that among the intermediate processes, some are exposed to us and some are not.

[Speaker G] Okay, thank you very much.

[Speaker D] One more small question regarding the discussion of dualism we talked about at the beginning. Suppose another five hundred years from now — and probably even earlier — we will be able, in a laboratory, to take atoms of hydrogen and carbon and other atoms and create a human being from them. To create the Golem of the Maharal, but in a laboratory, with no original DNA. Everything de novo from laboratory bottles. And here we have created a child, and the child gets up and walks. What distinction would separate the discussion about him from that of an AI computer five hundred years from now?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says there will be a difference? I don’t know. I’ll talk about it more. I claim that you cannot discuss that question until you encounter such a creature. When I meet that creature, I’ll discuss it. But that is exactly what I’m going to talk about next time. Rabbi?

[Speaker G] Yes. One more short question? Yes, yes. You also talked in the previous lecture about cause and purpose — action for the sake of a cause and action from purpose. Right? Does the Rabbi remember? You were talking about Aristotle’s causes, not important, there are several. I wanted to know whether gravity itself, when it pulls — when I describe one thing as pulling another — is that not something purposive? I mean, what do you mean by pulling? Is that not also a purposive description? In practice there is the thing being pulled, which is something affected, and there is the puller, which is as though doing something purposive.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A purposive explanation means this: when the thing being pulled moves, is it being pulled because it was pulled, or is it being pulled because it wants to reach the puller?

[Speaker G] But what I want to say is that when you describe a relation between two things, the puller itself is doing something purposive. No, I describe it in purposive terms, not causal ones.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The puller itself — you can describe it causally too. It pulls because something else caused it to pull. You are simply deciding that the puller is an agent. There is no difference. When I talk about the thing being pulled in this parable, the question is whether it is being pulled because someone pulled it — because the force moved it — or whether it went there because it wanted to, strove to get there. That is called a purposive explanation. When you transfer it to the puller — wait — when you transfer it to the puller, you can ask the same question about it. You gained nothing. The puller too either pulls because something caused it to pull, or because it wants to pull and get there.

[Speaker G] I wanted to say that we gain nothing by saying that something is causal, because in practice when there is a relation between two things, one will be causal and the other purposive. That’s what I wanted to say.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that is not correct. The puller is not purposive, because if there is a cause that made it pull, then it is not purposive.

[Speaker G] Yes, but what does “made it pull” mean? It’s like when I pull, it’s… okay, I’m not explaining it well. I’ll think about it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, good luck. Fine. Good night, Sabbath peace, goodbye.