#10 – Rabbi Dr. Michael Avraham: Quantum Physics, Consciousness and the Soul, and Is Love Just an Electrical Current in the Brain?

[Speaker A] All right, so I’m very happy to host today Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham. Michael is a public thinker, philosopher, physicist, and rabbi who serves as a senior lecturer at the Advanced Institute for Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He runs a popular website where he answers thousands of questions on Jewish law, science, philosophy, and Jewish thought. He was a partner in founding initiatives such as the Midah Tovah association and the Third Path movement. In addition, he has written dozens of articles and important books, among them the Quartet series and the book God Plays Dice, which analyze the relations between religion, science, and halakhic logic using modern tools. Hi Miki, it’s great to have you here. It’s been a long time. First of all, I really enjoy constantly listening to your conversations and discussions, and I also like that many of them are in a discussion format, so it always sharpens things and is more fun to listen to. All right, today we’ll talk about several topics that on the face of it can sometimes overlap and sometimes not. We’ll talk a bit about quantum theory, consciousness, determinism, causality. In my opinion a lot of people—and you know this better than anyone—treat quantum theory as a flashy buzzword, especially on popular platforms, and people don’t always know what they’re talking about. But I’ve found that even in academia, many excellent physicists are not necessarily also good philosophers. What do you have to say about that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, I’ve both said and written this more than once. I really think that being a good scientist is no guarantee that you’ll be a good philosopher. I think Einstein’s philosophy—I’ve seen wiser things than that—and I’m not even talking about Hawking, Dawkins, and all sorts like that, who I think were all good scientists, but not much as philosophers. And I really don’t think those abilities necessarily come together. Now, the big problem is that there are certain fields where you really do need to combine philosophical thinking and scientific thinking, and those fields are especially prone to collapse, because if the philosopher deals with them, he may lack scientific understanding, and if the scientist deals with them, he may lack philosophical understanding. So those bridge fields are especially prone to mistakes and to saying nonsense and things like that. There are endless examples of this. I brought such examples in God Plays Dice regarding evolution, and I think I brought no less good examples in The Science of Freedom, where I dealt with free will and neuroscience, and there are many more examples of this as well.

[Speaker A] Right. Do you think maybe the problem is—I’m just saying this because I did a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics—I really came out ignorant in philosophy. I know nothing about philosophy from a degree like that, right? And that really is something. I think maybe in the academic training track they should really broaden horizons more—within academia itself. It’s an interesting thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure about that, because those people, for example, I don’t think their scientific work is harmed by it. In other words, they can be very good scientists even without a philosophical education. The problem is that in these particular areas there’s a tendency among scientists to express views also on questions that are philosophical, and they themselves aren’t always aware that they’re straying a bit beyond their area of expertise. Now that’s fine—a person is allowed to speak even in an area in which he isn’t an expert. But sometimes they, and certainly the public listening to them, aren’t always aware that in these fields their statements should be taken with caution. Really, everything should be taken with caution, but in this field certainly so, because they truly are not experts in it. So in that respect it’s more a matter of educating the public than educating the scientist himself. There are some areas in which even the scientific work itself can be harmed by a lack of philosophical understanding, and that really is the case, for example, in fields like neuroscience. Neuroscience is by its nature an interdisciplinary field, and today I think a great many people are indeed aware of that, which is why collaborations arise between philosophers and scientists and so on. But even so, I think quite a few statements in this field—statements that supposedly belong to the scientific sphere—are deficient because of a lack of philosophical understanding. For example, discussions by neuroscientists about free choice—I hardly know any such discussion that isn’t accompanied by quite a few failures. I’m not talking about whether I agree or disagree. You can agree or disagree; not everyone I disagree with is failing or guilty of logical defects. Sometimes it’s just disagreement—he thinks one way and I think another.

[Speaker A] Yes, so I think that at the most basic level we really always have to separate between the empirical data and the facts, as we call them, and the interpretation of the facts. And in many fields—you can see it in the media and even in academia—they often mix the two. So the first point I wanted us to touch on is: let’s talk about quantum theory, okay? Classical physics as we know it was deterministic. What does deterministic mean? Both causal and deterministic. Meaning: everything that happens, happens because it has a cause, okay? Because something caused it, and that cause would cause only that thing and nothing else. If we know the initial conditions and we know the laws, then in principle we can know every future state, if only we had all the computational power and so on. Now, we discovered phenomena in modern physics, in quantum theory, that seem on the face of it to be completely probabilistic in a deep sense, right? So I’d be happy if you could expand on that, and the main connection I’d like you to address is this: we built science, collected empirical data, and built a picture under the assumption that there is causality in the world—that everything happens for some reason. And then we got to a place where it led us to the result that the world is not causal. How do we sort that out? Help us make sense of this.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, that depends on the interpretations of quantum theory, but in the accepted interpretation it’s true that there is a departure from the principle of causality there. There are some debates about that, and there are other interpretations too, but in the accepted interpretation there is a departure from the principle of causality. I think a departure from the principle of causality is not such a terrible thing, because the fact that we thought the principle of causality was true and then discovered that it isn’t always true, or that there are places where it isn’t—that’s not so terrible. Very often we discover that things we thought were true are not true. In quantum theory there is a phenomenon that to my mind is much more problematic, and that is interpretations known as quantum logic. Those interpretations basically want to explain quantum phenomena by assuming that our logic is not correct. In other words, quantum theory has revealed to us that some of our logic is wrong. Non-transitivity, the law of the excluded middle—there are various formulations of this idea. But it doesn’t matter; I’m speaking here at the level of principle, we won’t get into technical details. And here I protest. As opposed to the principle of causality. With causality I’m willing to accept it. But in the logical context it’s complete absurdity, because logic isn’t measured in a laboratory. Logic consists of a priori principles.

[Speaker A] A priori—explain that for the audience. Meaning they don’t come from something, there’s no observation that can confirm or refute them. It’s something embedded in our worldview.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let me put it more strongly—here I think I’d make a small correction. I want to say it’s not only that there’s no observation that can confirm or refute them; their source is not observation. In other words, the source of logical principles is not observation. We know them even before observation.

[Speaker A] Give me some parable or example to explain that—say to someone who doesn’t…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sure. For example, the three principles of thought, the well-known fundamental principles: the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle. What does that mean? It can’t be that a thing and its opposite are both true at the same time. A proposition and its opposite, or its negation, cannot both be true at once. In other words, it can’t be that both X is true and not-X is true at the same time, okay? Or it can’t be that it’s both raining now and not raining now. That’s the law of non-contradiction.

[Speaker A] At the same time and in the same respect—we need to be precise. That it’s raining now, at such-and-such a time, in the place where my house is, right. Obviously.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ve reduced it entirely to the most concrete proposition possible, of course. Now, the principle of the excluded middle says: either it’s raining or it’s not raining; there is no third possibility. That’s a different principle—it’s not the law of non-contradiction. It’s the law of the excluded middle. The third possibility does not exist. That’s why it’s called the excluded middle. Either it’s raining or it’s not raining. Now, those laws—identity means that every thing is identical to itself—but that’s already something more trivial, and therefore more subtle to explain why we need that assumption at all. But never mind—let’s look at the other two, they’re simpler. Those two are assumptions we come with from home; we don’t learn them from experience. It’s not that experience shows us that there has never been a situation where it both rained and did not rain. True, there has never been such a case, but that’s not where we got the law from. The law was known to us beforehand. In philosophy this is called a priori claims, claims that precede experience. Okay? Now, since these claims precede experience, obviously experience also cannot refute them. It can’t refute them because when I approach experience, I approach it on the basis of these claims. Let’s go back into quantum theory. Quantum theory uses various mathematical tools. Those mathematical tools were developed on the basis of logic, namely the ordinary classical logic we know. Now if the claim is that quantum theory has refuted classical logic and that we have basically understood that our logic is incorrect, then we need to reexamine all the mathematical tools—not the measuring instruments, the scientific tools—I mean the mathematical infrastructure of quantum theory, and it’s not even clear we can use it anymore. We would have to recheck whether some of it is not based on classical logic. In fact, we don’t need to check—it is based on classical logic. And because of that, it cannot be, at least in my opinion, that quantum theory teaches us that our logic is incorrect. The lesson of quantum theory is not a logical lesson. Therefore, this meaning that people give to quantum theory, called quantum logic, in my opinion has no meaning, no basis—it really says nothing. You can take this interpretation called quantum logic in a narrower sense and say: I have some conceptual framework—a framework, in English—that I can describe formally as a logic that departs from classical logic, and that can help me describe quantum phenomena. Fine, you can formulate such a formal language, such an axiomatic system, specific—

[Speaker A] Such a one, yes, specific—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —specific to the treatment I’m using in order to describe quantum theory. That is definitely possible, no problem. All sorts of logics have been formulated that are not classical logics, that depart from classical logic—fuzzy logic, non-binary logic, three-valued logic of Łukasiewicz and other logicians. Such logics have been formulated. You can formulate such a logic in the formal sense. But when I see that logic as a substitute for classical logic, I’m basically saying that it’s not just some formal system I formulated, but that this logic can also function as logic in the philosophical sense of the concept of logic. That cannot be.

[Speaker A] Right, that’s basically like sawing off the branch you’re sitting on. But how is that different from causality? When we build science, when we collect observations and build scientific theory, at the most basic level, isn’t every empirical science based on the principle of causality—which breaks in quantum theory? Isn’t that the same thing as what you just said about logic?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, in my opinion it isn’t, because the principle of causality, unlike logical principles, is indeed an a priori principle, in my opinion, following David Hume—and it’s pretty clear that the principle of causality is an a priori principle; we don’t learn it from observation.

[Speaker A] Yes, expand on that. Could you elaborate a bit for those who don’t know that argument?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. David Hume’s argument basically says that the principle of causality is not learned from observation. Suppose I kick a ball and the ball flies. We’re generally used to saying that the kick was the cause of the ball’s flying.

[Speaker A] The ball flew because I kicked it, in plain terms, in a simple sentence.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I didn’t hear?

[Speaker A] The ball flew because I kicked it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, because I kicked it—the kick was the cause of the ball’s flying, okay? Now what can I observe? Observationally, I can see that first I kicked it and afterward the ball flew. If we go further, perhaps I can even say that I see that whenever I kick it, afterward the ball flies. But one thing I cannot see with my eyes, or observe, is that the ball flew because of the kick. I can see that it flew after the kick. But the fact that it flew because of the kick is my interpretation. That I cannot extract from observation. How do you see the relation of “because”?

[Speaker A] Right, the “because” isn’t—that’s a spiritual thing, it’s an abstract conceptual thing. It’s not something you can see.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I’d say—I don’t know if “spiritual” is exactly the right word here, because it’s part of physics—but it’s not observable; it’s something abstract, okay? In other words, relations between things in general—many, not all, but many relations between things are not observable. For example, how can someone observe that so-and-so is my son? That’s the relation between me and him. There’s no way to see that. You can infer it from the context and make interpretations from which it emerges that he is probably my son. But there is no real way to observe the situation and see that he is my son.

[Speaker A] Someone will tell you, “A DNA test,” but a DNA test…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If they checked DNA, and the fertilization process and ovulation and the whole process by which he came into being, then yes. But that’s why I said not every relation is unobservable. Still, usually, or for very many relations, they are the result of our interpretation of something we observe. They are not the result of direct observation. Usually, when you say of someone that he is someone else’s son, that’s an interpretation, because you never followed their DNA, didn’t check where he came from, who impregnated his mother, whether it happened to be the father or perhaps someone else, or I don’t know what exactly. Stranger things have happened. So you can’t really know. But the interpretation you give to the situation—in Jewish law this is called a presumption. When there is a presumption, we assume that is what is true, and it also has halakhic standing. So something being non-observational doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It can be true even though it is not based on observation—at least I, as a rationalist, think so. Empiricists will deny this, but I as a rationalist am willing to accept things that are not the result of observation. So if we return to causality, causality is not the result of observation; it cannot be observed—neither the principle of causality nor a specific causal relation between two events. Certainly not the principle that everything must have a cause. All these are not things that come from observation. They are a priori principles, principles that precede observation. That’s on one side. On the other side, there is a difference between them and, say, the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction is necessary. The principle of causality is not necessary. In other words, if someone came and said to me, “There are things without a cause,” I would say, “That doesn’t sound plausible to me,” but I wouldn’t say, “Listen, you’re saying a contradiction.” No, it’s not a contradiction. There is no logical contradiction in saying that something happened without a cause. It contradicts an a priori principle but not a logical principle. In Kantian language, I’d say it is an a priori principle, but not an analytic principle, okay? Therefore I distinguish between the principle of causality and the principles of logic. The principle of causality can certainly, through observation, lead to the conclusion that it is not correct. It could be. And now of course you’re right that we would need to go back and see whether on the way to quantum theory, all the measuring devices we used and everything—whether they were based on the principle of causality. In my opinion they were not, but if you find somewhere that they were, then fine, you’d be right there too. I’m only saying that with the laws of logic you don’t even need to check. It’s obvious that mathematics is based on them; they are necessary; you cannot depart from them. With causality, it requires examination.

[Speaker A] I understand the difference, and still I’m asking why you think the machines and everything that led us to build quantum theory are not based on causality. After all, I don’t know, technology is based on causality, isn’t it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Technology is based on certain connections in which we saw causality working. And indeed we make a generalization, as in every scientific field. Suppose I say: I take this phone, I let go of it, and it falls to the table. How do I know it will fall to the table? Based on previous experience. This is the problem of induction, also David Hume. In other words, based on previous experience I saw that things with mass fall to the ground, so I assume this too will fall to the ground. So scientific generalization is, in my opinion, part of science, even though it is a somewhat speculative part. That is, maybe the generalization is not correct. In that sense I’m saying: if I use the principle of causality in those places where we saw it working, that’s fine. I made a generalization; it’s not certain to be true, but it’s fine. But if now I get to some region where I see that it doesn’t work, then all right—in that region the principle of causality doesn’t work. I’ll say even more: usually the principle of causality in the scientific sense—it comes out a bit oddly—but causality in the scientific sense is actually causality in the sense given to it by Hume. That is, it is actually causality that says there is a linkage or correlation between events, but I don’t commit myself to saying that the effect is because of the cause. For example, science won’t say that the ball flew because of the kick. A careful scientist won’t say that. A careful scientist will say that the ball flew after the kick. That is, always after a kick, the ball flies. We have experience of that; we know it. To say “because” is your interpretation. And once you make the generalization without the interpretation, and you don’t use “because,” but only the logical or statistical correlation between them, you can still build all of science on that. And therefore I say I don’t think you’ll find anything in the infrastructure of quantum theory that requires a relation of causality. You’ll find generalizations that require correlations, but not something that requires causality. And in that sense I think it differs from quantum logic.

[Speaker A] I see. So you’re saying science has until now been built under the assumption that there really is correlation or causality, and it’s okay if that breaks in a certain region of physics. It worked for us until now, and I do trust all the macroscopic physics to be as we know it. Of course even there there’s no certainty, but I trust it because it works. So then it’s fine if in some region that breaks down. Got it. Yes. Excellent. Interesting. Okay, now let’s talk a bit about a problem there—the measurement problem. If you could expand on it and tell us what you think about it. On the face of it, from what I hear—and again, this is what I hear from physicists—you know, a second-year undergraduate physics student and even in graduate school, they’ll tell you: yes, a person observes matter, consciousness, a person—and you’ll get into that and explain it—and you can affect physics. And of course from there people have developed entire mystical doctrines about how a person creates reality just by looking. Help us make sense of that. Why is it a problem, and what exactly is going on there?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s called psychokinesis. Look, I’m not an expert on this. I’ll describe it as best I understand it, and I’ve been fairly detached from the field for quite a few years. But it seems to me I can still more or less describe the situation in broad terms. It turns out from various experiments and results of quantum theory that all sorts of pathologies occur there that we don’t know from other areas of physics. For example, in the double-slit experiment—that’s the classic experiment that demonstrates this—you place a barrier with two slits, behind it some photographic film, and you fire a single electron, for the sake of discussion. I’ll shorten the route; there are stages along the way, but let’s go straight to the single electron. The classical picture of the single electron is of some little tiny ball, so that little ball can pass through slit A, or through slit B, or not pass at all. Okay? Now if you look at the photographic film, then if it passed through slit A, you’ll see a hit of the electron on the film behind slit A. If it passed through slit B, you’ll see a hit behind slit B. Now it turns out—again, a very flat and schematic description, but just for our discussion—that when you fire this electron toward the barrier, it turns out it passes through both slits. And not only does it pass through both slits, there is even some interference, and it basically looks like a wave and not like a particle. And waves somehow behave differently from particles. Think of a light wave that you send through two slits—what will happen is not two places where the light wave hits, but some distribution of light on the photographic film around the slit. A kind of beam. Some sort of shape, exactly. So too the electron turns out to look like some kind of beam. That is, it looks like a wave and not like a particle. But not only does it look like a wave rather than a particle; it can also pass through both slits together, and even interfere with itself. In other words, just as a light wave passing through two slits will create all sorts of interference patterns, okay, so too a single electron—not many electrons, if it were many, fine, but I’m talking about a single electron—creates some kind of wave interference pattern on the film. That’s the first point. Again, everything here is very schematic and not fully accurate, but it’s enough for our needs. Now stage two: I put a detector near one of the slits. The detector’s job is basically to tell me whether the electron passed through that slit or not. Let’s say I put a detector near slit A. It turns out that now, when I send an electron, there is no interference pattern. There are one of two results. Either it passes through slit A, in which case the detector stays silent and I see the electron hitting the film behind slit A. Another possibility: the detector lights up, tells me “an electron passed here,” and then the electron hits behind slit B. All right? But either way, it is always a point-like hit. The electron behaves like a particle, not like a wave. There are no interferences, it does not pass through both slits, but only through one of them. And this is a pathology that the interpretation of quantum theory finds difficult to cope with. Various interpretations have been proposed, but the accepted interpretation is that measurement turns the electron from a wave into a particle. Or, in somewhat more accurate translation: what is a wave? A wave is a collection of particle possibilities. That is, the particle can move this way, or that way, or that way; it chooses some trajectory. A wave basically means some sum, what is called a superposition, of all those particle trajectories. Okay? That is what is called a wave. Now the detector causes the electron to choose one of the particle paths. In other words, instead of being a wave spread over a collection of all kinds of particle paths, the detector causes the electron to choose one of them. We cannot say which one, but one of them. Okay? In other words, they say the wave function collapses. The wave function collapses and suddenly it turns from a wave into a particle. Now not only that; quantum theory also tells us that if we do this experiment many times, we can know in advance how many times it will go through slit A and how many times through slit B, because the wave distribution before it collapses into a particle tells us the probability of choosing each path. That’s what is called the wave function. The wave function basically describes for me the probability—the square of it, but never mind—it describes the probability that each of these paths will be realized. What does that mean? That if we do the experiment many times, send a hundred particles, we know that thirty will go through slit A and forty through slit B and another thirty won’t go through either slit at all. That could happen. So this distribution too can be predicted on the basis of the wave function.

[Speaker A] That is basically what quantum theory does—it predicts that distribution.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. The wave function basically plays two roles. One role: the wave function is the state the particle is in if there were no measurement. But it also tells us what will happen if there is measurement. If there is measurement, the wave function tells us the probability that the result of the measurement will be this, or this, or this. Now the measurement problem is this problem: how can it be that the fact that I measure the particle changes its state? Usually we are accustomed to thinking of measurement as a passive matter. The system behaves, and I look at it, measure it, and see what the current is, what the speed is, what the position is—I measure various parameters, energy, whatever. But here it turns out that measurement changes the behavior of the measured system. Measurement is not an external passive action with respect to the system, but an active action that changes the behavior of the system itself. Now it turns out there’s also something even stranger, which is that it doesn’t even depend on how the detector is built, because one might have said that it’s simply that the detector itself is also a physical system. Those are the usual explanations. The detector, once it measures the electron, creates some interaction with it—otherwise how does it measure it? It creates some interaction with it. If you create an interaction with it, then you affect it. That’s not such a huge surprise.

[Speaker A] I’d even say that’s the trivial part. I’d assume that if I measure a system, I’m touching it in some way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Otherwise how do you sense it? You need to exchange fluids with it to understand what it’s doing. But once you’re already dealing with it, you can change its behavior. So often in classical physics we say this interaction is so weak that we neglect it, but in principle it exists. In quantum theory that interaction is very significant. That’s the big significance. And not only that, but it really doesn’t matter at all how the detector is built. And I would have expected the structure of the detector to affect the result, because after all the detector is what made the change. So based on that, a detector built one way would do one thing, and a detector built another way would do something else. But no. It doesn’t matter how the detector is built. As long as it measures the particle’s passage through the slit, that is what determines the result. It doesn’t matter how the detector is constructed.

[Speaker A] When you say it doesn’t matter how it’s constructed, do you mean what technology it works by?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What sort of interaction—right. You can measure it in many ways. But it turns out that however we measure it, the mere fact that we measure is what matters. And that is already a bit tricky, because if that is so, then it’s not enough to say that the detector affects it. If it were affecting it, I would expect each kind of effect to give a different answer. But no—it turns out that the main significance of the effect is the mere fact that I am measuring. Not necessarily the specific mechanism of the measurement, but the fact that I am measuring is the important thing. Now the next stage: several philosophers and quantum theorists proposed—von Neumann was one of the first, there were several, Wigner, I don’t remember exactly the names—but there were several interpreters who wanted to claim that in measurement, human consciousness has a special property, that it has an effect on particles. The moment someone looks at it, even if it’s through an instrument, still, if I look at it, that collapses the wave function. As long as no one looks at it, it goes on quietly and peacefully and doesn’t care about anything in the world. The moment someone looks at it, it starts behaving differently. And that basically means there is some mystical effect of human consciousness here that is different from any effect of any other physical system.

[Speaker A] Now that claim is tricky because at the end of the day a person looks at the results. You can put a cat to look through the microscope, but let’s say it still hasn’t collapsed, and you can’t check whether it collapsed before you looked, before a consciousness looked.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It turns out that’s not true. You can check. How? I once saw an experiment. But more such experiments have surely been done. There was an experiment in which they put a detector near one of the slits and connected it to a computer’s memory. So it measured where the particle passed and wrote it into the computer’s memory.

[Speaker A] Wrote it onto the hardware, so to speak.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Onto the hardware, yes. Then they destroyed the computer. Without anyone looking, they destroyed the computer. Now we look at the photographic film in the double-slit experiment. It turns out that the image we got is still particle-like. Meaning that the measuring device does it, not human observation—contrary to the myth that is so popular and widespread. And again, I can’t fully guarantee this because I really am not immersed in the details and have been detached from the field for quite a while. But this is an experiment that was done, and there were others like it, and it seems to me that today very few people still believe in psychokinesis—in the idea that human consciousness, or human awareness, has some special effect distinct from the effect of other physical systems. That is at least as far as I know. But that is certainly worth checking.

[Speaker A] I have to say, my experience was that I didn’t feel it was a myth. I felt it was the popular mainstream view among physicists.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that’s in the popular world, not among—

[Speaker A] Also among physicists, I have to say. When I was exposed to this, that’s what I heard.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. I know other things, and from my conversations with people too, I think most people today don’t believe in this interpretation, that human awareness or consciousness has some special different effect. You have to understand that if that really were so, it would raise a very big question mark over materialist views. Because according to those views, there is nothing special in a human being compared to other physical systems. And I’m not aware of a mass wave of repentance among materialists following quantum theory. Of course that’s only indirect evidence—it doesn’t prove anything; maybe they’re foolish—but I’m saying I don’t think you’re right. Still, it’s definitely worth checking. I didn’t say I’m fully up to date as of today.

[Speaker A] Okay, so then how do they still solve the measurement problem? Let’s say we reached the conclusion—assuming these experiments are indeed correct and showed that—then what really is it that collapses the superposition, if it still doesn’t depend on the detector?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have absolutely no idea how to solve the measurement problem. There are various proposals that I do know, and I think they’re all not plausible. I don’t know all of them, but the ones I know are highly implausible—from many worlds and all sorts of absurd hypotheses of that kind, and continuing with, again, some departure from logic—quantum logic, what I mentioned earlier. In my opinion, all the results of quantum theory do not depart from classical logic. There is no need to depart from classical logic. As I said earlier, you can build axiomatic systems that look like non-standard logic and that may be useful in quantum theory, but you don’t need to. And you can remain entirely with classical logic and understand quantum theory completely; there is no need whatsoever to depart from logic. This is another myth—one that quite a few people do believe—and I think it is simply nonsense. Nonsense at the philosophical level, not the scientific one, because at the philosophical level it cannot be that we are measuring logic, as I said earlier. Let me just briefly explain where the problem lies. When you say that the particle passed through both slits, that seems to be a contradiction: if it passed here, then it didn’t pass there; if it passed there, then it didn’t pass here.

[Speaker A] Right, exactly what you said—the law of non-contradiction supposedly gets violated in quantum theory, because you’re saying the particle is both here and there at the same time, in the same way, and so on.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. And here I say no, that’s not true. Because where you see it as a particle, it really does pass through only one slit—when there is a detector. When it passes through both slits, that’s in its wave state, and then it really is not a particle. In other words, the detector turns it from a wave into a particle. But in its being a wave, there is nothing that contradicts logic when I say that it passes through both slits. The whole claim—and it is a very surprising claim in classical thinking—that says an electron is not a particle but a wave, is surprising, but it does not contradict the principles of logic, and that is a very important point. But people want to dance at two weddings at once. They want to say it is also a particle in the classical sense, some little point of matter running around, and it also passes through both slits. That is not correct. When it passes through both slits, it is not in a particle state; it is in a wave state. And therefore we have here a phenomenon that is hard to understand, or hard to imagine, hard to interpret—but there is no logical contradiction here. That statement is simply a mistake.

[Speaker A] Yes, I think the big hole in the lack of understanding is: how can something be a wave, or behave like a wave, and then suddenly measurement causes it to be a particle? I think that transition is the big puzzle.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that is the measurement problem. I have no answer to it. But I do have limits on what I am willing to infer from that difficulty. I’m not willing to infer a departure from logic, I’m not willing to infer many worlds and all sorts of nonsense of that type, which in my eyes amounts to empty words. Fine, there is a problem here. Okay, people wiser than I am may perhaps solve it one day. I don’t think it’s solved yet, as far as I know. Maybe one day they’ll find a reasonable or satisfying solution. I’m probably not clever enough for that.

[Speaker A] Yes. Now in that context we talked about consciousness and materialism. Fine. Now we know—correct me if I’m wrong—the human body, as far as we know, is a physical phenomenon. The brain too, the human body too. Tell me: has there ever been an observed violation of the laws of nature or physics in the human body? And if not, then what does that have to do with the experience we undergo?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, as far as I know it has not been observed, but that isn’t saying much, because anywhere such a thing was observed they would declare that there had been an experimental error. Because nobody would be willing to accept that an electron simply starts moving without a force acting on it. They’d say we probably missed something, so they just wouldn’t publish the paper.

[Speaker A] Unless there were many such holes, until we change the paradigm.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And if we found a defined scenario and a robust experiment—one that can be repeated many times—and every time we found a violation of the laws of physics, then indeed there would be a phenomenon here that we’d need to address. I assume in such a case they would simply update the laws of physics accordingly. Because now there is already a fixed phenomenon. So fundamentally, when I speak about human choice—that is, a departure from the laws of physics—it is not found in mental phenomena in general. It is found in choice, and only there. Not in all physical phenomena. Therefore, one must be somewhat careful with this identification between dualism—the view that there is also spirit—and violation of the laws of physics. In other words, the connection between those two things is not quite so tight. Let me put it a bit more systematically. Our body, as you said, and our brain too, are physical systems. No one disputes that. That is clear. Now there are materialists—I don’t know whether to call them foolish or childish—who say, “All right, then apparently love is an electric current in the brain.” That is an idiotic statement. Even though you do hear various idiots like that, some with the title of professor, who write this proudly and very forcefully in various places. But it is an idiotic statement. Once I had an interesting conversation with a nice fellow named Professor Yosef Neumann from Tel Aviv University, whom I had mentioned in my book, and he was a very prominent atheist materialist—

[Speaker A] And active—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —in those fields, a life scientist from Tel Aviv University. And I had mentioned something of his in my book God Plays Dice and criticized it. Then I got a phone call from him some time later—not right when the book came out—and we had a very long conversation. It was very interesting. An interesting man. He passed away sadly not long afterward. And during the conversation he said to me, “Listen, I have a problem with my fellow materialists. I hear all sorts of statements from them like ‘love is an electric current in the brain,’ and I explode.” Now he told me this as a materialist. He said, “I can’t explain to them what nonsense they’re talking.” He said this to me as a materialist. Not because he gave up on materialism—he was a materialist—but he was a sober materialist. And I use him to illustrate that concept. The childish materialist is the one who says love is an electric current in the brain. The sober materialist is the one who says love is caused by an electric current in the brain. Right.

[Speaker A] Explain the difference. Explain the difference for someone who doesn’t really grasp it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The difference is this: perhaps I’ll use the parable of a philosopher named John Searle, who even before the term emergence was coined gave this example. Emergence means something emerging. So he gave this analogy. He says: suppose you talk about the property of liquidity of water. Okay? Now, a water molecule is not liquid. Right? The three states of matter are states that characterize a collection of molecules, not a single molecule. A single molecule is not liquid, not solid, and not gas. These states describe the relation between the molecules, okay? So how can it be that each molecule on its own is not liquid, but the water—the glass of water, this collection of molecules—is liquid, or solid, or gas? In other words, there is here a property of the collective that does not exist at the micro level, does not exist in the individual that makes up that collective. It is a property that appears or emerges. That is, it emerges at the collective level. It does not exist at the microscopic level. Today this is called emergence. What does that mean? Emergence is a view that says there are certain properties that emerge at the level of the whole, but you cannot ascribe them to the parts that make up the whole, okay? That is, the property characterizes only the whole and not the parts. Now the claim of the sober materialist, like Yosef Neumann, is that mental properties—emotions, desires, memory, thought, all these things—are emergent phenomena of the material whole. In other words, these are phenomena that appear or characterize the material whole, even though a single neuron does not love, hate, think, remember, or want. All those things exist only at the level of the collection of neurons, of the neural whole we have in the brain, okay? But that does not mean there is, says Yosef Neumann the sober materialist, some additional component in us, another substance besides matter—namely spirit. No. It could be that there is only matter in us, but a material whole can produce characteristics that do not exist in the individual parts making up that whole. Therefore the dualists are mistaken, so Yosef Neumann claims. I am a dualist, but I’m currently presenting his position. In other words, Yosef Neumann claims that the dualists are wrong when they say that mental phenomena force the existence of a soul or spirit or something non-material. No. It may be that these are collective properties of the material whole. That’s all.

[Speaker A] Yes. Now wait, I want to say something. First of all, regarding that analogy you gave—when someone says “love is just currents in the brain,” I really like to say to someone who says that: think now about the movie you love most, the movie that moved you, made you cry, made you laugh—it’s just bits. Or it’s just patches of color on a screen. Or take your wife, whom you love most—it’s just atoms. Now of course in practice, by reduction, his wife really is just atoms, it’s matter. But the concept—and of course the movie really is just bits, or just colored patches on a screen—but the experience, there’s something here, you’re interpreting it, or there exists some non-physical dimension of the thing that you experience.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Perhaps I’ll bring another example where it’s much easier to show this. Bertrand Russell, also a well-known atheist and an important philosopher and mathematician in the twentieth century, has a book called The Problems of Philosophy, and in one of the essays there he asks: what is the color yellow? Usually the answer you get is: an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength. Which is complete nonsense. Whoever says such a thing does not understand what he is saying. An electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength, when it hits my retina, causes me in consciousness to experience an appearance that I call the color yellow. The color yellow does not exist in the world in any sense whatsoever. In the world there are no colors. All colors exist in our consciousness, and only there. Only there.

[Speaker A] And there’s that argument that if now someone is color-blind and knows everything about all the wavelengths that you know, this is what we call yellow, this red—does he know anything about the experience of yellow? The answer is no.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s called Mary’s room.

[Speaker A] Yes, exactly. Now regarding this thing you said about emergence, I still don’t understand how a collection of material things creates something non-material. That’s not explained.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, there one can argue. I agree with you too, and that’s why I’m a dualist. But again, one needs to distinguish between a situation where I disagree with someone and saying that there’s a flaw in what he says. I don’t think Yosef Neumann has a flaw. I don’t agree with him because, as you say, it does seem implausible to me. The unsober, childish materialist is talking nonsense. It’s not merely that I disagree with him. Yosef Neumann—I disagree with him, but he is not talking nonsense. It is a possible position. I think it is not implausible. I agree. And I’ll tell you more than that. This example of John Searle is actually not a good example. He wants to demonstrate, through the notion of liquidity, that our mental processes too are really only emergent phenomena of the neural whole, of our cerebral whole. But the example is not good. Why not? Because the property of water can indeed be reduced to the properties of the individual water molecule. That is, if I know the property of the field around the individual water molecule, I can draw for you the whole phase diagram. I can tell you at what pressure and temperature it will be solid, liquid, gas—whatever you like. So in fact the emergence here—I’ll call it weak emergence. What does that mean? It means an emergence such that although there is no property of liquidity in the molecules, I can nevertheless derive this collective property of liquidity from the properties of the single molecule.

[Speaker A] Completely—you can indeed derive it—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It follows entirely from that. Completely. There is a calculation that gets me from here to there. Okay? By contrast, in the cerebral context there is no calculation, no language, no idea, no direction. I’m not talking about success—there is no notion at all of how one gets from neurons to experiences. Many talk about it, but there is nothing. There simply is nothing.

[Speaker A] It’s simply a concept, just something in an entirely different dimension. But I think this thing is also a double-edged sword for dualists like you, because if we both agree that matter and consciousness are two very, very different things from one another, then to the materialists you can say: okay, you still haven’t explained to me how that creates experience. But to dualists too I can say: okay, then how does something so radically different conceptually come into interaction with and affect the physical thing?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s a good question. But let me first finish the point about emergence. I said Searle’s example is not good because it is weak emergence. Therefore, a concept has indeed arisen—I don’t know, relatively in recent years—of strong emergence. The sober materialists understand that the familiar examples of emergence are weak emergence. But they say: fine, we can extend this and say that mental phenomena emerge in a strong sense out of the material whole, but still there is no need to assume the existence of spirit or soul. It is only the material whole and its properties. I only want to say that if you say that, then the whole rationale on which you build your thesis collapses. Why? Because you are basically trying to preserve the scientific stance as complete—as if it describes everything and nothing lies outside it. And the dualists are basically saying no, there are parts of us that are not physics. And that’s what you want to save, right? So how do you save it? You basically propose a thesis that cannot be scientifically refuted and cannot be scientifically proven either—of course nothing can be scientifically proven—but it also cannot be scientifically refuted. In other words, you are proposing a thesis that is blatantly non-scientific as an alternative to another thesis that is blatantly non-scientific. So they live under the illusion that they are defending science. Because you think that if you defend materialism, you are defending science. But no—you are defending materialism, while turning materialism into something non-scientific. Why is that? I’ll explain with a very simple argument. First of all, so far there is no example of strong emergence. There are only known examples of weak emergence. I’ll say even more: that is not accidental. There cannot be an example of strong emergence, and there never will be one in the future either. Why not? Because what would it mean for me to discover strong emergence? I would discover a whole that has properties that cannot be reduced to the properties of the parts. Now suppose, for the sake of discussion, that I reject the hypothesis that maybe I’m not smart enough but one day someone will find a way to reduce it to the properties of the parts. Fine, let’s say no. I’m willing to grant even that. Now I ask: how do you know that this is really just a property of the whole and not that there is something else here? How do you know?

[Speaker A] If you don’t know the mechanical mechanism, you can’t know whether there’s some other element here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The only way you can prove that there is nothing else here is to show me the reduction. If you manage to explain it on the basis of the microscopic individual things—fine. But you can’t, because this is strong emergence. So either way: if you succeed in explaining, then we’re back to a case of weak emergence. If you don’t succeed in explaining, then who told you this is strong emergence? Maybe there’s a soul here. Think of it this way: I see a glass with red water in it. Now the dualist comes and says: yes, that’s water with red syrup in it. Okay? The materialist says: absolutely not, it’s water that has a collective property such that when the molecules join together, they have the color red, okay? So I say: what do you mean? How do you know there isn’t something else here causing the red color? If you can show me that it comes out of the properties of water molecules alone, no problem—like liquidity—then I completely agree. There’s no reason to assume anything extra. But if it is strong emergence, then by definition you won’t be able to show me that. And if you can’t show me that, then our dispute will also be over that: is this strong emergence, or is there something dualistic here? So for that reason, by definition, you are proposing a hypothesis that is not scientific. By definition. So now we have a dispute between two non-scientific theses. Fine. Then the motivation for presenting this thesis—to defend science, and materialism as the expression of a scientific, or perhaps scientistic, outlook—basically falls away. You’re sawing off the branch you wanted to sit on. And therefore I don’t really see much point in this. But if you want, instead of talking about souls, to talk about some strange phenomena that come out of matter in ways physics neither knows nor will ever know how to explain—

[Speaker A] It’s the same lady in a different dress.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So you’re basically talking about dualism in a different language. What difference does it make?

[Speaker A] Right. Now what do you think about what I said regarding the double-edged sword? I mean, regarding the dualist approach—you still have a serious problem here. You have physical phenomena on one side, and phenomena that are conceptually different on the other. I can’t even imagine the state you mentioned—physics will someday find it—how exactly? That’s exactly the point. Science measures physical things. So in the end, you know, consciousness isn’t something you can measure or experience as an organ—at least that’s how it seems. I don’t know whether that’s valid or not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Experience—absolutely yes. Measure—no. Right, right. But that’s an important point, because once I… Right, right. In the end, you never get outside your consciousness. Why do I need measurement? After all, this is the thing I experience in the most direct way. Measurement is an indirect experience. Here I have direct experience, so why do I need measurement? Schopenhauer already said that Kant’s distinction between the thing in itself and the thing as I perceive it breaks down when a person looks inward into himself. When you look inward into yourself, you grasp the thing itself, not merely the way it appears to you. So in that sense I don’t see that as…

[Speaker A] If the thing itself is the experience, if the thing itself is the self, that’s already more…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The self, not the experience—the self. I also grasp myself as a distinct entity, the one that grasps and experiences all these things. There is some thing, some someone, some subject, that experiences all things—

[Speaker A] That I do grasp, and that thing… I understand, the subject-self, not the self as an unchanging personality. All right, that too is a matter of models; it’s hard to talk about it in that sense. But you mean the thinking thing, in short…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know the term, but the—

[Speaker A] The sort of subject—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My subjective dimension.

[Speaker A] Yes, exactly—the one that experiences. The experiencer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. “I think, therefore I am,” Descartes—the thinking self. That is basically the subject. Descartes proved the existence of the subject with his cogito. Right.

[Speaker A] Res cogitans—the thinking thing, in Latin, yes, the “I think.” Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the point is that there really is a problem here, and here I have criticism from the opposite side. If I really am a dualist, then first of all there is a part of the human being that does not belong to the physical world. And I have no principled problem with there being parts that do not belong to the physical world. So what? Who said physics is everything? The real problem arises because of the interaction, as you described earlier. Because dualism is usually interactionist dualism. What does that mean? I believe there is a soul and there is a body, but I also believe there is interaction between them. Interaction between them means that the soul activates processes in the body. If I think by means of… I claim that I think by means of the brain just as I walk by means of the legs. But to say such a thing is actually to say that my intellect activates my brain. Intellect is a spiritual entity. My brain is an organ, okay? So the intellect activates the brain. What does that mean? That currents in the brain are created by an influence that is spiritual, not physical. Or in other words, there is an electron that starts moving without a force acting on it. And interactionist dualism cannot get around this problem. The problem exists, and there is no way around it. Therefore I say all the attempts to hang this on quantum theory and this mouth and that name—in my opinion none of them holds water. Certainly not chaos theory and all sorts of things like that. None of it holds water. To put interactionist dualism into physics is something that in my opinion cannot be done. In that sense, you have to pay the price. If you are a dualist, you have to pay. But what about measurements?

[Speaker A] But what about—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —measurements—

[Speaker A] —the empirical findings? That’s how we started our discussion: that so far no violation of the laws of physics has been observed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said: because very, very… where does this arise? It arises, at least in those places where I choose freely. Because what does free choice mean? Free choice basically means that I decide something and the existing circumstances do not dictate the outcome of the decision, the next state. Okay? The next state could be A, could be B, even though the current given state is fully known, say. Fine? Now that basically means there is no deterministic physical description of this phenomenon. And I also want to claim that quantum theory won’t help either, even though as we said earlier, in quantum theory there really are departures from causality.

[Speaker A] Right. What you just described—that under the same given state you can have, in certain percentages, A or B—that sounds exactly like wave-function collapse.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. That’s why many attempts to bring the phenomenon of choice into physics make use of quantum theory. But in my opinion that is a mistake. It’s a mistake on several levels. First of all, quantum theory deals with the micro level, and human behavior—even that of a single neuron—is already at a scale where there is debate as to whether quantum phenomena are really there. That’s already a very large scale. A molecule is already huge in quantum terms. But certainly decisions that involve many neurons and so on—quantum theory gets smeared out at large scales. That’s what is called decoherence. Quantum theory basically—call it the law of large numbers if you like—these phenomena exist when the electron is single. When there are many electrons, it no longer exists. That’s one point, but it’s the weaker point. Again, there are certain quantum phenomena that do exist on the macro level. But even those phenomena, like superfluidity or superconductivity, require very, very special conditions with very special laboratories, and even there with very, very low temperatures. This does not happen in our everyday lives at temperatures—

[Speaker A] —inside the brain and so on and so forth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So to say such a thing is already very, very strange in itself. But I’ll say more: even suppose it were true. Quantum theory still determines the distribution—we talked about that earlier. And free choice means that you cannot predict the distribution in advance. Free choice means that it is not dictated to me what I will do. I may do this, I may do that. I weigh things in my mind and decide whether I want this or that. Quantum theory does not let me decide. Quantum theory gives me a collapse event, a random event, with some distribution saying what the probability is that this or that will come out. That is not what we call choice. Now you can say choice is an illusion, and in fact all there is here is quantum collapses. Fine. But if you believe in choice, quantum collapses won’t help you put that inside physics. Okay? That’s what I want to claim. I’m not at the moment arguing for the thesis of choice—though I think it is correct—but I’m saying this is not proof in favor of the thesis of choice. What it does say is: don’t put it into physics. You can’t put it into physics. If you believe in it, pay the price. The price is that there are limits to physics, or departures from physics. Okay?

[Speaker A] Yes. Now regarding choice, I actually—what do you say to the view we might call Spinozist, okay? That the world is deterministic under laws, and it’s simply two parallel modes of interpreting reality. I’ll give you an example, by the way, with the movie I mentioned. Better yet: hardware and software, okay? An algorithm is something abstract, right? Euclid’s algorithm, say. I implement it on a computer, on the hardware. In the end we can see physics; in the end I look at the hardware, at a computer, at bits, they work according to the laws of physics. But I interpret it—the idea is, as it were, running in parallel to the matter. In other words, it is realized in matter. And I’ll say moreover: I, as a human being—tell me what you think of the following thought experiment. Take a person—me, Harel, okay? Take an infant with exactly the same DNA, the same baby coming out of my mother’s womb, and run it under exactly the same conditions—say we set up a parallel universe—take me as I was born and run it so that I undergo exactly the same experiences. I don’t think I would behave differently. If I analyze myself psychologically in depth, I feel that even though in day-to-day life I experience, okay, I’m now choosing to lift this cup or lower it, I still feel that if I ran it again with the same starting conditions, I would do exactly the same thing. In other words, I do feel that the world—even the inner world, even if I investigate my thoughts, leaving aside physics for a moment—if you put me in the same dilemma I was in in the past, with the same knowledge I had then, with the same past I had then, and I were the same person I was, I would choose the same thing. I couldn’t think otherwise.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, here I disagree with you. I think not; I think you would not necessarily do the same thing, even in an identical universe with an identical biography and everything the same. That is the meaning of free choice. And when you say you think you’d do the same thing, you are basically assuming, implicitly of course, causal determinism. You are basically saying that all our actions are derived from the circumstances prevailing at the moment of the action. But that is exactly the dispute. The libertarian says that is not true, and thinks it is not derived from that. So I say: if you think that way, maybe you are a determinist. In this respect I disagree with you. I’ll bring a thought experiment that I presented at the end of my book The Science of Freedom. Jean Buridan was a French scholar in the fifteenth century.

[Speaker A] Yes, the donkey, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. Buridan’s donkey is well known; his donkey outlived him by a long time. Of course it never existed, but that’s the parable. He wanted to illustrate by means of it what rational thought is. He places the donkey in a situation where on both sides, in perfectly symmetrical fashion, there are two feeding troughs. Okay? And suppose the donkey is perfectly symmetrical too, standing exactly in the middle—hypothetically, everything exactly the same, no wind, nothing, everything perfectly symmetrical. Now in principle the donkey will die of hunger. Why will it die of hunger, when it has two troughs full of good things? Because it has no way to decide whether to go to the right trough or the left trough. Because if it turns to the right trough, it will immediately ask itself, “Wait, that’s not rational. Why did I choose the right one? The left is perfectly symmetrical, right?” And therefore it will die of hunger. By contrast, if a human being stood there—a rational creature—he would say: true, there is no reason to choose the right trough. I’ll make a lottery and go to whichever trough comes up. Ask me what my rationale is, and I’ll say: my rationale is that I want to live. Right? So is rational thought always thought that has some defined cause or causal explanation you can point to? Or not—sometimes it is teleological. There is no cause here, no cause that made you choose this or that, but you have a purpose: you want to live. And if you remain stuck in the causal mechanism, you will die of hunger. He used this to illustrate the concept of rationality. I use it as a thought experiment to persuade you not to be a determinist. How do I do that? I say this: suppose the person now—the human being of Buridan, not Buridan’s donkey—is in that same situation, and suppose complete symmetry, everything totally symmetrical.

[Speaker A] Ideal symmetry, yes, okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, completely, okay? Now I say this: assuming I am a physicalist determinist, meaning that all my behavior is the product of deterministic laws of physics, there is no way that I choose one of the troughs, even as a human being. Why? Because you’ll tell me, yes, but I make a lottery and I’ll go to whichever trough comes up, in order to live. I ask you, exactly according to what you said earlier—forget all that, I want to track your electrons. Show me. There’s a theorem in mathematics that the symmetry of the solution is at least the symmetry of the problem. Now the symmetry of the problem here is complete symmetry between right and left. Therefore the solution that solves the problem must preserve that symmetry as well. Now the moment you go right, you have broken the symmetry.

[Speaker A] So I’ll tell you what I would answer. Suppose I’m right-wing politically, I really love the right, voted for Bibi and Begin and so on. And I’m that same person in that same situation—I’ll go right, I like the right side.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again, then you’re telling me you’re not in a symmetrical situation.

[Speaker A] Right, I’m not. I think—look, okay, I’ll answer honestly what I think about this. I think that if a person is not only physically in external conditions of fifty-fifty, but also really, truly fifty-fifty inside, he won’t move. I think that if it’s really fifty-fifty—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, by “really fifty-fifty” I mean only his electrons. Forget the mental, because the mental is only a projection of the electrons.

[Speaker A] Right, but we’re saying—but I don’t know any person who doesn’t have—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, of course, it’s hypothetical. But I’m telling you: take a point-like person, okay? A person with full hypothetical symmetry. Such a thing could exist, theoretically. Do you think such a person would die of hunger? I’m certain not. Now of course this is a dispute; I have no way to prove it.

[Speaker A] I think such a person just doesn’t exist.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that doesn’t matter. But if he did exist—

[Speaker A] If he did exist, he would die of hunger. But a human being as a biological machine like that just doesn’t exist.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s what I’m saying—no. I claim that even if he did exist, he would not die of hunger. He would not die of hunger because—

[Speaker A] Because you believe in choice, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Now I say: this experiment is a thought experiment, and a thought experiment will never convince someone who disagrees with me. But it can perhaps reveal to you that maybe you think you disagree with me, but in truth you actually agree with me. If your intuition also tells you that a symmetrical person in such a state would not die of hunger, then suddenly you’ll discover that although you thought you were a determinist, you aren’t really one. That’s the value of a thought experiment. Someone who truly insists and says no, I’m a determinist and such a person really would die of hunger—then such a person is basically a donkey. Okay? Then you are basically saying that the difference between a human being and a donkey is only that the human being is a non-symmetrical donkey. That’s all. Well, I claim there is something more in a human being than mere asymmetry. In other words, the difference between a human being and a donkey lies elsewhere, or mainly elsewhere. And even if there were complete symmetry, there would still be a difference between a human being and a donkey. And the donkey would die, but the human being would not.

[Speaker A] Fascinating. Fascinating. I think with that experiment and that discussion we’ll close the conversation. Rabbi Miki, wow, what a pleasure, truly a pleasure. We really did take up interesting multidisciplinary areas, and I really, really enjoyed it. And anyone interested in this should of course go read more—both Rabbi Miki’s books and, regarding the slit experiment, there is a great deal of material online. I invite everyone to explore. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.