Artificial Intelligence – Lesson 9 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

All right,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re dealing with artificial intelligence. We’ll try to understand artificial intelligence in a not-artificial way. Last time I spoke about analytic thinking and synthetic thinking through Kant’s problem of the synthetic a priori. In the end, the claim was that you can’t make do with analytic thinking alone. We won’t succeed in grounding our trust in the laws of science if we try to base it either on observation alone or on logic alone. Right? Is it either analytic or empirical or a posteriori? No — it’s synthetic and a priori. And that’s a category that basically says that these claims, the laws of science, are claims that add information for us about the world — that’s the synthetic part. But at the same time it’s also a priori. It’s a priori in the sense that there are observations, but the observations aren’t enough. They are not what gives us the general law. The general law contains much more information than there is in the observations we actually observed. And therefore I said there’s no choice but to reach the conclusion that the distinction between thinking and cognition — that is, between, let’s call it, logic and observation, or between logic and science — is not a sharp distinction. In other words, there is some faculty, some function of our thinking, that one could call cognitive thinking. That is, we know something about the world, as if observing the world, but not by means of our senses. This is not observation in the standard scientific, empirical sense. Rather, it is some kind of observation with the mind’s eye, intellectual reason, eidetic vision — I brought these pairs of concepts from various thinkers and philosophers. And the claim basically was that we have some ability to know the world intuitively. Meaning, when we talk about intuition, we’re usually used to thinking that intuition is a faculty of thought. That is, intuition enables us to think about things in one way or another, say, not by means of logical arguments. But it is basically centered inward, inside our mind. And I’m claiming that intuition is a kind of interaction between the mind and the world. It’s not something that happens only inside the mind; it really belongs to the realm of cognition, or at least also to the realm of cognition, and not only to the realm of thought. Intuition is some ability we have to observe the world, to understand something about it, not through the senses. In other words, the mind knows how to observe reality in some way. That sounds very mystical, let’s put it that way. But as I argued then, I think there isn’t a person who doesn’t really accept this. People don’t formulate it to themselves in these terms, but there isn’t a person who doesn’t accept it in the end. In other words, it’s something simple. That’s how everyone understands what our intuition is. It’s just that people don’t conceptualize things for themselves in that way, and so they remain with some dichotomy between thinking and cognition, which gets us into all of Kant’s entanglements and the synthetic a priori, and we saw all the troubles that this yields.

At the end of last time, I brought an example that illustrates the significance of this matter when I talked about abduction. I said that there are three types of arguments in logic — people distinguish between three types of arguments: analogy, induction, and deduction. Deduction is inference that goes from the general to the particular, from a particular included within that general, and it is necessary. Right? Every human being is mortal, Socrates is a human being, conclusion: Socrates is mortal. Induction is a move from particulars to a general rule. In other words, this horse has four legs, that horse has four legs, so all horses have four legs. That is induction, and it is not necessary. And analogy is also not necessary. From particular to particular. And I said that logic usually deals with deduction, while analogy and induction are tools that are mainly used in science, because they add information, unlike deduction, which does not add information. And then I said there is a fourth inference, since Peirce, right — he is the one who proposed the concept and distinguished it — and he argued that there is a fourth type of inference called abduction. What is abduction? It is a move from particular examples to a theory, not to a general law. That is, I see a number of examples, various kinds of behavior, and from that I leap not to a general law of which all these are particular cases, but to a theory from which those particular cases can be derived. And that is not the same thing.

I demonstrated it through black-body radiation. Black-body radiation basically means, suppose I heat a black body — a black body is a body that is indifferent to wavelengths, right — so when I heat a black body, it turns out that radiation comes out of it at various wavelengths. And there were different data about how much radiation comes out at each wavelength. And at a certain stage Boltzmann found the general formula describing the distribution of the radiation by wavelength. Then Einstein came and basically said that this distribution is actually explained by the fact that there are quanta of light, right, photon units, discrete units of light, packets or little bags, I don’t know what to call them. And from there quantum theory really began, the photoelectric effect and things like that, and quantum theory began. Now the move from the data — say I measured the radiation at a certain wavelength and got such-and-such a value. I measured at another wavelength and got another value. I measured a few wavelengths, so I have the data. Now Boltzmann comes and makes a generalization. A generalization is to draw a function such that the wavelengths I measured are points on that general graph. But that graph describes what happens at all wavelengths, not only the wavelengths I measured. That is induction. In other words, this general description is altogether a law, and the particular cases I observed are particular cases of that general law. That’s why it is induction.

The move Einstein made to quantum theory — that is abduction. Why? Because he moved from the examples not to a general law of which those examples are particular cases, but to a theory. A theory is not a general description of which these are particular cases. A theory is something entirely different, with new concepts that the theory contains and conceptualizes and invents, and from the theory one can also derive the cases on which I built the theory. But it is not that these are particular cases of the theory. A general description — say I say that all horses have four legs after having seen a few horses with four legs — that is a generalization, that is induction. But if I find a theory that explains why horses have four legs, that is a theory, that is abduction. Okay? And after I have the theory, I can derive from it the fact that this horse has four legs and that horse has four legs. But that is not the same as the general statement that all horses have four legs. Deriving from that general statement really is a generalization of the particular examples. Theory is abduction, not induction. It is abduction.

Now, moving from examples to theory is a very creative act. It is basically the central creative act in the scientific process. Because these facts can be — first of all, they have no direct connection to the theory. You have to be creative in order even to think what theory could explain these facts. Sorry, it’s Planck, right. Beyond that, there are many ways to generalize those facts. And choosing one particular form from among them is a creative act. That is, you could conclude that this is the correct theory, or that this is the correct theory — they all explain all the facts — so there is no systematic, methodical way to determine which is the correct theory from among all the possible theories. Choosing one particular theory from among all the theories is a creative act. In other words, there’s something here that, in the earlier terms, I’d say: my intuition is what tells me this. My intuition tells me that this is the correct theory, or my intuition tells me that behind Planck’s distribution stands a picture of quanta, that the electromagnetic wave is not continuous, but that light is made up of discrete units, quantities, quanta of light. Therefore, you can see that these transitions, the trust we place in theory, are really founded on the trust we place in our intuition.

Now if intuition were only an act of thought, then one could not relate to a theory as something that speaks about the world. That theory would be a creation of my thought, and if my thought were structured differently, I would create a different theory. So there could be no claim here that the theory is a claim about the world. It is not a claim about the world; it is just the way I arrange the facts, that’s all. If I accept that the theory is a claim about the world, that means I cannot see intuition as something merely cognitive in the sense of internal thought alone. The data come to me from observation; from these few data I do some thinking and arrive at a theory. No. If that were all it was, then the theory would not be a claim about the world, because there are countless theories that can come from this set of observations. And the fact that I chose one of them — so what? There’s no significance to that. It just means that’s how I’m built. There’s no reason to think that this also describes reality more accurately.

But what I mentioned was that philosophers of science greatly enjoy toying with this question of whether theories are statements about us or about the world. Ask scientists — none of them has any doubt. In other words, it is obvious that theories are descriptions of the world. And therefore in the subtext you can understand that scientists assume that their intuition is a cognitive tool and not merely a thinking tool. It is a way by which I grasp what is happening in the world. The claims that come out of my intuition are claims that describe the world, and not just some mental structure created inside me that just happens to be convenient for me to think within. Those are philosophical games. Scientists do not hold such a view, almost all of them, at any rate the ones I know.

So the conclusion I want to reach is that intuition is some kind of cognition. And our way of accumulating information about the world cannot be logical, because logic is empty. Analytic thinking is empty; it adds no information for me. And willy-nilly, if I believe in accumulating information about the world, then I am actually trusting my intuition.

Now here I want to illustrate this perhaps a bit more by means of a move I’ve already spoken about in the past, but I think it sheds interesting light on this point, so I’ll return to it here briefly. I want to argue that one can describe the maturation of a person, or the development of our civilization in the West at least, as a process of three stages. Very broad-brush, very rough lines, but I’ll distinguish three stages. The first stage — let’s talk about an individual person right now — the first stage is childhood. When you’re a child, you ask your father: will the sun rise tomorrow? Father says: yes, of course, tomorrow like every day it’ll rise again. Okay, if father says so, father probably knows, so everything’s fine. Or the teacher or father or the rabbi or whoever it may be, it doesn’t matter, some authoritative figure. You accept it because he said it. This is the naive period, one might say, or the dogmatic one, in which we accept things just because someone said them. We have no critical stance toward things someone said.

At some stage what is called adolescent rebellion begins. And I’m talking about it right now only on the cognitive-intellectual plane, not the emotional and psychological one; that doesn’t interest me. I’ll talk only about the cognitive and intellectual aspect. Adolescent rebellion begins when the adolescent starts to relate critically to the statements of the authorized authorities — parents, teachers, rabbis, whoever, all the authority figures. Okay? You basically begin to ask yourself, or the authority figure — you say, you say the sun will rise tomorrow? Who told you that? Prove it. So what if it rose till now? Fine, till now — who says tomorrow morning it will rise? Hume’s problem of induction. Who told you? So the adolescent stands opposite the authority figure, the adult, and is unwilling to accept. Just as when he was a child he accepted it dogmatically — if the adult said it, it’s probably true — now he’s matured already, now he’s become an adolescent, not a child anymore. And then he is no longer willing to accept things unless you prove them to him. Who says? Prove it. In other words, what do you mean? On what basis are you saying this?

[Speaker B] So why didn’t that happen before? What? Why didn’t that happen from the start?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you have to mature, to ripen. A person matures gradually. Why? That’s how we’re built — what do you mean why? These are the facts of life.

[Speaker B] What worked fine for him before now works less well. Meaning, if he was fine with it, then presumably he wouldn’t ask any questions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t matter. You’re getting me into the question whether there were circumstances that caused it — certainly there may have been, but that’s not important. I’m describing the process right now. Let’s not get into the causes for a moment. So again, of course the process itself is also some kind of typological description; it’s not that everyone passes through it exactly this way. But I think this is a correct typology of the maturation of a reasonable person.

[Speaker B] No, because it has implications for the essence of his question: is it just some empty intellectual “who says?” kind of skepticism, or is something bothering him in reality?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no, I’m talking about questions even on the first plane you mentioned. You tell him things that are self-evident, like that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, and he can still ask: who told you? Maybe not?

[Speaker B] And maybe not — so what difference does it make, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, it interests me. He’s asking whether to set an alarm clock, all right? What difference does it make? In other words, all kinds of questions you ask yourself. Is there a God, is there no God, all kinds of questions, it doesn’t matter what. Sometimes it’s because something doesn’t work out, certainly, and sometimes not. Sometimes just because you demand proof. You’re not willing to accept things without proof. So what if someone said it? He said it. So adolescence ends when that adolescent reaches the sad conclusion that there is no claim that can be proved. Because every proof is based on assumptions. And the assumptions themselves — if you’re not willing to accept any claim unless it’s proved — then you won’t be able to accept first assumptions. And if you don’t accept the first assumptions, then you also can’t accept the conclusion proved on their basis. And so it turns out that there is really no claim that can be proved. So if you stand in a position where you are willing to accept only claims for which there is proof, then you cannot accept any claim. In other words, the end of adolescence brings a kind of crisis. And that crisis stems from the fact that the adolescent comes to understand that there is no claim that can be proved unconditionally — that is, in a way that does not depend on another claim that is itself unproved. That’s what I mean by unconditional. Okay? So that is really the reason for the fracture.

Now from that fracture one can emerge in three directions. How do I know only three and not more? In fact there are four, but never mind, three are the main ones, because that fracture is created by two assumptions, by two claims that the adolescent has reached a conclusion about. The first assumption, or first claim, is that an unproved thing is unacceptable. In other words, I’m not willing to accept what hasn’t been proved. Right, that’s what stands behind this challenge — who told you? Prove it. What are you really saying behind those claims? You’re saying: from my point of view, only what is proved is acceptable. If you haven’t proved it, why should I accept it?

[Speaker C] Rabbi, those claims that you’re saying now — they themselves also aren’t proved, so how does he accept them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re attacking him now — in a minute. So the first claim that stands here is that only what is proved is acceptable. The second claim, or the second insight — let’s call it an insight — the second insight is that nothing is proved. It is impossible to prove anything in an independent way, right, unconditionally, in a non-hypothetical way. Proof is always a hypothetical matter. In other words, if you assume these hypotheses, these axioms, then you can prove something, but it all depends on your actually assuming those assumptions. If you do not assume them, then nothing can be proved to you. Therefore every proof, by the very fact of being a proof, every logical argument, is hypothetical. It is built on, or depends on, prior claims, on initial claims that I assume, and for those I have no proof. Now if I accept nothing that has no proof, then in fact I can accept nothing, because there is nothing that has a non-hypothetical, unconditional proof. So these two insights — that only what is proved is acceptable, and that there is nothing that can be proved in a non-hypothetical way — these are what create the entanglement, right? Because that basically says: well then, if there is nothing that can be proved, but only what is proved is acceptable, then it means that nothing is acceptable. I can’t accept any claim or insight or whatever it may be. That is what creates the crisis at the end of the Enlightenment period. And then adulthood arrives.

And in adulthood, as I said before, one can emerge in three ways. Now I asked: why exactly three? Since what creates the entanglement are these two insights, it is clear that, in principle, there are four possible ways out. I can adopt both insights, and then I’m stuck in the entanglement, continuing with the entanglement. I can adopt insight A and not B, I can adopt B and not A, and I can adopt neither of them. Right? Those are the four possibilities, no more. Okay? Now let’s try to pour this into somewhat meatier concepts, more clearly defined.

So if I remain with both insights — that only what is proved is acceptable and nothing is proved — then of course I mature in a skeptical direction, right? I really cannot adopt any claim, because there is no proved claim, and only what is proved is acceptable, so I cannot adopt any claim, cannot accept any claim. That is skeptical maturity — if you like, postmodern, never mind, narrative, relativistic, whatever you want. Fine? It is some kind of skepticism; I can’t accept any claim. Notice, I’m not saying I can’t accept that I have no certainty about any claim — that’s obvious. I’m saying the claim itself is not acceptable. No. It is no more correct than its opposite. After all, you didn’t prove it, so from my point of view the claim that the sun will rise tomorrow and the claim that the sun will not rise tomorrow have equal weight. You didn’t prove it. The fact that I tend to think in a certain way — so what? That’s how I’m built. The world owes me nothing; it was here before me, as Mark Twain said. Right? Therefore I’m speaking here about the first way, which is to remain with the two insights of the end of the Enlightenment, and that means I emerge as a skeptical adult.

The second possibility is to give up the assumption that nothing is proved. In other words, to remain with the view that only what is proved is acceptable, but not to agree with the insight that there are no certain things, no proved things. How can that be? After all, as we saw, a logical claim that gives me certainty is always hypothetical. It is always based on assumptions. So how? How can I reach certainty in another way? How can there be certain claims? Because after all, only certain claims are acceptable, right? So the second kind of adult is an adult who says: right, only certain claims are acceptable, but it is not true that there are no certain claims or no proved claims. There are. What are they? This is fundamentalist maturity. Fundamentalist maturity basically says: I have some exalted sources of knowledge. The Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to me; Sheikh al-Baghdadi; the Rebbe; the teacher in the little boys’ school — whatever — to each his own idol; the Pope, or whoever it may be. And they know. They have some special spiritual charisma. They know things with certainty, and I believe them, and therefore everything is fine. I have absolute certainty regarding what they say.

Right? I think we all know this in the religious world, including the Jewish one. Basically people claim, at least — I don’t really believe them, but at least they claim — that they have absolute certainty in the existence of God, in the truth of the Torah. Any question about the Torah is simply heresy, because obviously it is not true. And they are not willing really to put their positions to the test of critical thinking. That is why I call it fundamentalism. And the fundamentalist view is really the second kind of maturity. There is skeptical maturity, which remains with both of the adolescent’s insights; the fundamentalist adult remains with the insight that only what is certain is acceptable, but he does not agree that there are no certain things. There are. What the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed to us in the Torah is certain. What al-Baghdadi says is certain. What the rabbi in synagogue tells me is certain. What is written in the Shulchan Arukh, in Maimonides, in the Talmud, it doesn’t matter, in the Torah — that is certain. To each his own totems. Okay? So fundamentalist maturity is the second way out.

Again, notice: I call this fundamentalist in the philosophical sense. Philosophically. That is, it does not have to be that the person is also violent and murders people or I don’t know what, abuses anyone who disagrees with him, and things like that. That is another discussion. I call it fundamentalist only in this sense, because for me the philosophical definition of fundamentalism is holding a position that is not open to the test of critical thought. That is what I call philosophical fundamentalism. Okay? Very often philosophical fundamentalism leads to fanatical or extreme behavior, and people in the world are used to calling that fundamentalism. A fundamentalist is someone who murders whoever doesn’t think like him — ISIS and I don’t know what, all kinds of those — or there are also softer fundamentalists who only block your roads and say “we’ll die and not enlist” or all kinds of nonsense of that sort. So there are different levels of fundamentalism, but what I think they all share on the philosophical plane is that all these people hold positions that they are not willing to put to the critical test of critical thinking. The extreme, violent, or inconsiderate behavior is a consequence of that. For me, what matters is the philosophical root. So as far as I’m concerned, Mother Teresa too could be a fundamentalist. I even think she was. In other words, even though her behavior is not extreme and she didn’t murder anybody — on the contrary, she only helped people with total devotion. She was a genuinely righteous person. But it may be that her religious and moral outlooks were fundamentalist outlooks, meaning she did not put them to the test of critical thinking; she was absolutely certain of their truth. And as a result she indeed performed her very extreme actions, but in a positive direction. Okay? But still, on the philosophical level I would see her as a fundamentalist just like ISIS. Of course I’d prefer to live near her and not near them. In fact it’s not a matter of preference; if I’m near them, I’m not living near them, I die near them. But never mind — on the philosophical level she is as fundamentalist as they are. Again, I didn’t know her; I’m just guessing. As long as you hold positions that are not open to the test of critical thought — in other words, no argument raised against them carries any weight, you’re not willing even to consider it, it’s simply not on the table, not up for discussion — that is fundamentalist maturity.

What remains for us is to adopt the view that nothing is certain — third option. I adopt the insight that nothing is certain, but I do not agree that only what is certain is acceptable. No. Even what is not certain is acceptable to me. That is really what it means to mature. Because the child thinks that only what has a proof, what is certain, he is willing to accept. Other things are not acceptable. And I say: grow up. In other words, when you’re an adult, you understand that even if you don’t have certainty — fine, it makes sense, common sense says it — I have no proof, but still it is very reasonable. No, I’m not certain, I’m not so arrogant as to be absolutely convinced that what I think is certainly correct. In other words, I don’t have that decisiveness or confidence that you often find among fundamentalists. But that does not mean I’m in a skeptical world. Right? I’m neither of the first two options, neither skepticism nor fundamentalism. I believe in the existence of truths — in that sense I am like the fundamentalists — but I believe in them not in a fundamentalist way, but in a sober way. In other words, I believe in them because I place trust in my common sense or my intuition, if you like. Therefore, for me, that assumption that intuition is a subjective matter and that as long as you have no proof I am unwilling to accept the conclusion — that assumption itself is unacceptable to me. This third type of mature person I call a synthetic adult. A concept borrowed from Kant, though this use of the concept is mine.

Okay, so we really have — the fourth option, as I said, there are four options — the fourth option is to reject both options, meaning: yes, it is true that there are certain things, and I’m also willing to accept uncertain things. That is a possible position, but it is not interesting on our map, so it doesn’t interest me. In other words, as far as I’m concerned, what matters is: then you are both fundamentalist and synthetic. Okay, but that’s still a combination of the two figures I already described. It’s not a figure of an essentially different type. Okay? Therefore I’m ignoring that for now, and the combinatorics basically tell us that we have only three possibilities for emerging from the entanglement of the Enlightenment, right? Three ways of maturing.

Now I mentioned that this very schematic description — before I move on, one more remark. When the adolescent asks his father, his teacher, his rabbi, whoever: who told you? Who told you the sun will rise tomorrow? Prove it. Then the adult will often answer him: because it makes sense; until now this is how it was, induction sounds reasonable to me, and therefore probably tomorrow morning it will be the same. Okay, that is the answer that the reasonable adult will give to that adolescent. Now the adolescent of course does not accept that, because he’s not an idiot like his father; he’s an intelligent person, he doesn’t accept things for which we have no proof. Okay, so he doesn’t accept that kind of answer. Again let’s remember Mark Twain, who really produced pearls. Mark Twain once said that when I was fourteen, my father was a complete idiot. Six or seven years passed — you wouldn’t believe how much he improved in those few years. In other words, yes, that’s more or less the description of what I said earlier. The adolescent, from within the adolescent position, really is not willing to accept his father’s answers. His father is dogmatic, he’s an idiot, right, he accepts things just because they seem right to him or because people say they are right. I’m a rational person, I’m not going to be like him. I am willing to accept only things that are proved to me. I imagine you can hear here many adolescents you know — I think so. This is a very typical adolescent argument, okay?

So there is some kind of entanglement here in which the adolescent will not be able to accept the adult’s answer. But after he matures, it may be that he too will choose the synthetic path. That is, he will ripen, he will mature, and he will understand that not everything has to be certain in order to be accepted. And then he will become a synthetic adult. But as is well known, everyone has to shave on his own beard; nobody shaves on someone else’s beard, and that’s a shame. We are idiots, but that’s the situation. That is, that’s how we are. We do not learn from others’ experience, only from our own. As the sages said, “A person does not fully grasp words of Torah unless he has stumbled over them.” In other words, you have to fail yourself; otherwise you won’t draw the lesson. You don’t acquire someone else’s lesson. Okay, that’s fine, that’s how we are built, and that’s what there is; we have to live with it.

So this situation is basically almost necessary for a person’s intellectual maturation. Because when you are an adolescent, you truly cannot accept the adult’s answers. In other words, what do you mean? How — when the adolescent looks at the adult, and the adult tells him: look, until now that’s how it has been, so probably tomorrow it will be too, everyone understands that this is correct, it’s obvious that the sun will rise tomorrow, ask anyone — yes, those are more or less the answers you can expect from that adult. What does the adolescent think of these answers? I’ll tell you what he thinks: he thinks his father is a baby. In other words, he says to himself — or aloud if he’s cheeky, but if not, then in his heart — yes, I know this, I was also in that stage a few years ago when I was a child. When I was a child I also accepted things just because someone said them or because they simply seemed right to me, yes, I too was dogmatic. And now I’m already an intellectual; now I’m no longer willing to accept things unless they are proved to me. Okay? So when my father gives me that answer, how do I interpret him? Fine, he gave up; he went back to being a dogmatic child who just accepts things because people say them or because that’s what it seems like to him — an irrational person. Okay? That is the adolescent’s view of the adult.

If after he matures he chooses the synthetic path, then he will have shaved on his own beard and he will suddenly understand that this is not a return to childhood; it is a third stage. Now here one has to understand: there is a very subtle and important point. Up till now I only described things. But in truth, the synthetic position — and you understand that I lean toward it — the synthetic position requires justification. In other words, the fact that I called it synthetic does not justify it. Because really, why do you think that tomorrow morning the sun will rise? The fact that you tend to think that way, that common sense says so, that’s how you’re built, these are patterns instilled in you — but that is not really a decision, it’s not the result of judgment, you have no proof here. We spoke about judgment in previous lectures, right? You have no proof. So why adopt it? You call yourself a synthetic adult, but I as an adolescent looking at you know that you are just a child. Just a dogmatic child who decided to call it by another name and thinks that this solves some problem, just changing the name. And changing the name solves no problem, right? It’s despair and a change of name. After you despair, you change the name and think that solves the problem. No, it doesn’t solve the problem. In other words, what is the justification? If there is proof, I understand. But if you have no proof, why in the world would you decide to accept it? What does it mean that you accept something for which you have no proof? It seems reasonable to you — to each person something else seems reasonable. Why should I accept something because it seems reasonable to me? “It seems reasonable to me” is a statement about me, not about the world. Right, that same Wittgenstein we spoke about — the world was here before, it owes us nothing.

So what justification can I offer myself — not the adolescent, he won’t accept it — but what justification do I give myself on this matter? How do I see myself as a synthetic adult when in fact the adolescent says to me: no, you’re just a dogmatic child, you accept things simply because that’s how they seem to you or because people say so or whatever, without having proof; you just went back to being dogmatic, that’s all. And from the Enlightenment you have in fact retreated — this is a regression back to the womb, right? You went backward to the stage of childhood; you didn’t advance to the stage of adulthood, synthetic adulthood. No, that’s not maturation, that’s simply regression. Okay, that is what the adolescent claims.

What do I answer myself? Not him — what do I answer myself? Really, how is this different from the child? I’ll tell you how it differs from the child, and this is a very important point also for what follows. It differs from the child in the sense that I am aware of the adolescent’s questions. I am different from the dogmatic child, sorry, in that I have already gone through the revolt of the Enlightenment. I understand that there are arguments and counterarguments and assumptions, and that I have no proof, and what proof means — all that I learned. Right? I too went through the period of the Enlightenment. Except that I reach the conclusion that I have some ability to grasp or understand insights about the world. True, it is not certain, it is not like a proof, and I also do not believe in fundamentalist spiritual charismas. Common sense, common sense, intuition, synthetic thinking — for me all these are synonyms. A seventh sense, the mind’s eye, eidetic vision — these are all synonyms. And basically I decide that I trust my perceptions of the world.

Now notice this well — it connects to everything we said before. Because what does it mean to trust one’s perceptions of the world? Either way, what is it? Logic? No, it is not logic, because logic derives a conclusion from assumptions — but where did you get the assumptions from? So it isn’t logic. Fine, then what is there besides logic? Only observation. But no, it isn’t observation either, because as we saw, for example the laws of nature, or the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow, are not the result of observation. The observations tell me that up until today it rose every morning, but who says that will continue tomorrow as well? Observations do not yield that conclusion for me. How do I know it? So if it is neither observation nor logic, then is it just some subjective hallucination? In other words, I have to assume here — and this is the important point where intuition enters the picture — I have to assume that I have some faculty that in a certain sense is observational, as I said before, it is cognitive and not merely mental, it is an interaction I create with the world, it is not just some thinking that happens inside me; and I trust it. Not absolutely — it may be mistaken, intuition can err, it is not a logical proof — but the trust is enough for me to be willing to use the insights that I marshal in this way, that I arrive at in this way.

Okay, so this is basically the foundation without which there can be no synthetic maturity. If I have no trust in my intuition, there is no synthetic maturity. You are either a fundamentalist or a skeptic, and that is what people don’t understand. Anyone who accepts things even though he did not observe them directly is a synthetic adult, even if he denies it until tomorrow and kicks and screams and says that this is mysticism he is not willing to accept. Anyone who accepts any claim on earth, in any field whatsoever, that is not the result of observation and not the result of logical derivation from observations — and I don’t think there is a person in the world who does not accept claims of that sort — is a synthetic adult; in other words, he places trust in his intuition. Not absolute trust, but trust.

Okay, therefore this is a very important point, because intuition, as we will see later in this series, is the focus of the discussion regarding the difference between us and computers and artificial intelligence, and also the difference between computers and artificial intelligence. In other words, it really sits on this point — on abduction and intuition and synthetic thinking and all these things I’ve described here — but that is still for another time.

Let me just complete the picture here with an analogy to the development of Western civilization as a whole. I think it too is divided into those same three stages. The first stage was the dogmatic stage, right? The pagan stage, the early stage when people worshiped idols, wood and stone — not really. They did not really have empirical or logical support or whatever, but that is what the tribal elders said. The sorcerers know everything, after all. If no rain is falling, then you need to dance around the fire seventeen times and mumble some mantra, and this is tested and it’ll help, guaranteed. So if the sorcerers say so, I accept it, because they probably know. That is dogmatic thinking. Then comes the revolt of the enlightened youth. I would place that revolt in Greece. In all these generalizations I’m painting with very broad brushstrokes, of course, but in principle I would place it in Greece. Greece is really the birth of logic, the birth of systematic thinking, the birth of the hope for rational thinking and for adopting claims on a solid basis — observational, logical, whatever. Therefore Greece symbolizes in general history the revolt of youth.

And therefore in Greece there really takes place a transition within Greek culture itself from mythology, from living in a world of gods and demons and spirits and all sorts of such beings that nobody saw and for whose existence there is no indication, but for everyone they are present and obvious and they are actors on the stage of the world — and little by little, within that mythological world, this mythical-mythological world, logical thought begins to form, philosophy, mathematics. And it lives together with mythology, with that supposedly primitive mythological way of thinking. And little by little they free themselves from that mythology and become true philosophers in the more modern sense. Okay? Because systematic thinking really dismantled mythology. Mythology belongs to the domain of childhood, and the revolt of youth shattered mythology.

Except that — perhaps before the “except that” — I think that the encounter between Greece and Israel, which is so traumatic in our sources, was on this basis. In other words, Jewish faith, the Jewish religion in that period, was very dogmatic. It was its early period, and it was very dogmatic. It was obvious to everyone that it was true; nobody thought of producing philosophical arguments to prove anything or answer various critical arguments. It was some truth that everyone had to accept, period. That is such a dogmatic outlook, parallel to the period of dogmatic childhood in the maturation of an individual person. Then suddenly they encounter the Greeks, and the Greeks suddenly ask: wait a second, who told you? Prove it. Did anyone see God? What do you mean? Revelation at Sinai? What do you mean? I have such-and-such arguments and another set of arguments and such-and-such culture and another culture. Critical thinking begins even about the foundations of faith. And this really frightens the sages of Israel. Why? Mainly because they don’t have answers, of course. To this day it’s like that. In other words, the questions of cheeky but smart heretical children who come with questions to rabbis and their parents irritate the rabbis and the parents very much, especially those who have no answers. Their way of dealing with it is to get angry. And the same thing happened there. Therefore the reaction to this encounter with Greece, with critical thought, was to get angry. In other words, killing, rebellion, war, and so on. Of course this is a very partial description; there was also a national struggle, there were all kinds of things, the Temple service and so on. But I’m saying that on the cognitive-intellectual plane, it seems to me that that’s what was happening. And in that struggle I am entirely on the Greek side — let there be no misunderstandings. Completely. I think the Jewish approach to Greek culture repeated itself in the Haredi approach to enlightenment and modernity and Zionism, and to this day we are eating the rotten fruit of that dark attitude. And I think that is what was true there.

Here and there you find sayings, pearls, a few pearls, like the Talmud in Megillah that says: the beauty of Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem, on page 9 there. The beauty of Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem. According to Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, it is forbidden to translate the Torah into any language except Greek. Why? Because the beauty of Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem. There is something in Greek culture, in Greek thought, that has beauty in it, that has value; the sages of Israel understand that they are encountering something of value here. This is not just wickedness for its own sake or desire for its own sake. There is a thesis here, and that thesis is wise, and there may even be something to draw from it and learn from it. So here and there there are such statements within a sea of zealotry and summary rejection of Greekness — which is understandable in the national context and all that, yes — but I’m saying that in the intellectual sense this is, in my view, a very problematic approach. Yet within that you find all sorts of buds of appreciation for Greek culture. Various debates of Rabbi Yehoshua with the sages of Greece, the sages of Athens, and others. You can see that they make the effort to argue with them, meaning there is an intellectual discussion here, and the sages begin to understand that they are encountering something that has value, that offers an alternative. It is a position, an outlook. It is not merely the evil inclination coming just to lead me astray, full stop.

But in any event, that is the revolt of youth. Now, when does the revolt of youth, in the civilizational sense, on the general map rather than in the individual person, end? Where is the crisis created that I described at the end of the adolescence of the individual maturing child? In my view it is created in the twentieth century. In other words, the beginning of adolescence is Greece, and the end of the age of adolescence, the point of maturity, is in the twentieth century, around the middle of the twentieth century. What happens there? Until the middle of the twentieth century, or the first third of the twentieth century, the dominant view was one called positivism. In philosophy, and it has implications in law too, and in other fields. And this view basically says that we are prepared to discuss and accept — there are of course different levels of extremism, logical positivism and the more extreme wings of logical positivism, that is the most extreme — and they basically were the vanguard that said: only things that are fully defined and proved or directly observed scientifically — only those are acceptable. Everything else is pseudo-statements, as Carnap calls them, or Tarski, I don’t remember which of the two, I think it was Carnap. They are pseudo-statements, they mean nothing, just empty verbiage. Okay? I think this is perhaps the purest expression of the Enlightenment outlook.

Now what happens in the middle of the twentieth century — and many philosophers or historians of culture attribute this to World War II and the Holocaust and so on, which may well be true — but if I focus on the intellectual, cognitive plane, then in the middle of the twentieth century a crisis occurs. And that crisis — again, the cognitive crisis, not the fact that millions of people were killed, that too is a crisis but that’s not what I’m talking about — the cognitive crisis occurs because the world gradually begins to understand that the great hope aroused in the age of positivism was disappointed. It did not prove itself. Science solved none of the essential problems we had in life. It solved many technological problems, but no essential problem — no philosophical problem, no ethical problem, no social problem. It solved none of those. And there was a very great hope in that period. There was political science and legal science and this science and that science, and there was a sense that systematic, scientific, logical, philosophical thought would bring healing to all our ills. Anyone who knows that period knows that this was its motto. And in the middle of the twentieth century the whole thing exploded into pieces. People understood that with these tools you get nowhere; they prove nothing. Or in other words, by analogy to the individual adolescent, they reached the conclusion that nothing can be resolved with scientific tools, or that there is no claim that can be proved in a non-hypothetical way, something you can be sure of. And then the crisis was created — exactly the same crisis that every individual adolescent goes through.

And from this crisis one can emerge in three ways. Three ways. One way is the skeptical path, which says: fine, if we cannot arrive at anything by means of certain tools, tools of logic, science, observation, and the like — and only such things are acceptable because I am a positivist — then the conclusion is postmodernism. That is how postmodernism was born. Okay? Postmodernism was conceptualized and consolidated more or less in the middle of the twentieth century. It has earlier buds of course, but there I think it was formulated and institutionalized, and it is the result of that crisis. The result of that crisis. And one of the fascinating things is that what was called the Left until the middle of the twentieth century, or even two-thirds of the twentieth century, was a very, very modernist outlook that believed in one absolute truth and nothing besides it. Communism, right, is the extreme expression of that. But all the great ideologies of that period — fascism, communism, anarchism, it doesn’t matter, all the “isms.” What is called the Left in the last generation is just the opposite. It is an outlook that says there is no truth and everyone has his own truth, and no one is preferable to another, and all kinds of things of that kind. It is a metamorphosis that this concept called the Left has undergone, but it is really a metamorphosis that has brought us from one thing to its opposite.

And I think one of the reasons that caused this confusion, this conceptual confusion, is the concept of equality. Communism acted in the name of equality. Postmodernism too — what is called progressivism today, which is a further stage, or a further backward stage — is also an outlook that advocates equality. Therefore it continues to be called the Left. But notice: it is equality with the opposite meaning. Communist equality is positive equality, like in the American Declaration of Independence: we hold that all human beings are created equal. That is a positive view, a creed, a truth that cannot be disputed. The equality we’re talking about today is negative equality. It is an equality that says: since no one is more right than anyone else and there is no way to decide what is and what is not, then everyone is equal. Everyone is equal, meaning worth equally nothing. So they are equal too. The concept of equality characterizes the Left of that period, and it also characterizes the Left of today, which is why it continues to be called the Left — but this is a concept of equality that has undergone a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree metamorphosis. From positive equality to negative equality.

In the previous series, when I talked about probabilistic thinking, if you remember, I made a distinction there between positive doubt and negative doubt. It’s exactly the same thing. Positive doubt is a situation where I have, say, a coin, and I need to bet what the chance is that it will land heads. Okay? Now if I know that the coin is fair, I have information about it, I measured it, checked it, or I know how it was made, it doesn’t matter, I have full information about it, I know it is fair. So I bet that there is a fifty percent chance it will land heads. That bet stems from knowledge. I know that this coin is balanced in both directions, that it is fair, and therefore the conclusion that there is a fifty percent chance it will land heads is a result of knowledge. It is a positive conclusion. Even though you don’t know which side it will land on, the probability you assign to each side is a positive probability; you know it is fifty-fifty. By contrast — that is what I called positive doubt. By contrast, what happens if I give you a coin and you have no information about it? You don’t know how it was made, you didn’t measure it, didn’t check it, didn’t weigh it, saw nothing. Now I toss it and you need to bet whether it will land heads or tails. So what chance will you assign to heads? I assume still fifty percent. Why? Because there is no reason to prefer heads over tails. In other words, I have no information. Once I have no information, the two possibilities are equivalent; that’s what there is. So for me they are both fifty percent. But you understand that this fifty percent is completely different from the previous fifty percent. The previous fifty percent stemmed from positive knowledge that there really is an equal chance for each side. Here it stems from an absolute lack of knowledge. I have no idea. It could be that this coin is built in such a way that it always lands only on heads. I simply have no idea, I don’t know. Just as well it could always land on tails. Or it could be fair and land half-and-half, I have no idea, I don’t know. So I cannot say about the coin that there really is a fifty percent chance that it will land heads or tails. All I can say is a statement about me, about my knowledge. My knowledge is a total absence of knowledge. And because of that, if I need to bet, I’ll bet fifty percent on heads, fifty percent on tails. But this doubt is a result of lack of knowledge. It is negative doubt, not positive doubt, and we saw there many implications of this difference between positive and negative doubt; I won’t return to that here.

What I want to claim is the same thing here too. The old Left, the modernist Left, is a Left in which — not doubt but equality. Doubt is like equality. Doubt is equality between two possibilities, right? So it too is a kind of equality. The question is whether the equality is positive or negative equality. The old Left is a Left based on positive equality. All possibilities are equal because I know they are equal, I believe they are equal. That is a positive statement. The contemporary Left believes in equality on a negative basis. Since I know nothing and have no way to decide who is right and who is wrong, and since that is so, because of the total lack of knowledge I assume an equal attitude toward all human beings, all groups, all opinions, all art forms, whatever you want. Okay? But it is on a negative basis. That, I think, is the reason, or one of the reasons, that this metamorphosis happens so naturally and no one really notices that we have undergone a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree reversal. The same circles that were called the Left and believed in communist equality, those same circles themselves — not even the same circles, the same people themselves — suddenly turned into the postmodern Left. It’s not that the postmodern Left staged a revolt against the communist Left, defeated it, and took over the arena. It defeated it from within, not from outside. The communists themselves became postmodernists.

[Speaker D] But the Left here is not only that it doesn’t know — it also says it’s impossible to know. Meaning others also can’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In that respect, yes, total lack of knowledge, absolute lack of knowledge, yes.

[Speaker D] Yes, but in that part it is a little communist too, because they claim there is no one who knows about the coin — this coin cannot be…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Communist in the positive sense — it’s negative. In other words, they end up at equality, I agree. They too end up at equality.

[Speaker D] And they claim this is a coin about which no one can know anything, and that itself is already a positive claim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, I don’t care, but their attitude is an attitude on a negative basis. You asked earlier about — no, no. Someone else asked, it’s the same question. How do you know that only what is proved is acceptable? Is that itself proved? You are basically asking the same question. So I agree with that question, but still I say that this whole move is, in my opinion, a result of an error. But I think what helped this error occur is this façade, as if we are really continuing to hold on to equality. We were egalitarians and we still are egalitarians. Okay? It’s just that you don’t notice that the concept of equality itself has undergone some metamorphosis and become its complete opposite in terms of the basis on which it rests.

Now, returning to our subject. What I want to say is that the only way — no, sorry, not the only way — one way to ground a rational worldview, a worldview willing to recognize various insights about the world and not dismiss them out of hand, is the synthetic way, trust in intuition. And I think — no, sorry, that’s not the only way. That’s one way. The second way is fundamentalist. That is, accepting these truths from some sort of transcendent sources, some kind of all-knowing agents or something like that. That too is a possible way to hold information about the world. Okay, those are the two possibilities.

By the way, I think one of the reasons — actually all three of these forms of maturity ripened in the middle of the twentieth century. I already spoke about postmodernism. Fundamentalism too has flourished since the middle of the twentieth century. It seemed that fundamentalism was really going extinct — but no, it came back and has flourished from about the latter third of the twentieth century until today. And synthetic maturity is ostensibly the social-democratic way of thinking, the moderate mainstream Western outlook. But we see that it is in a struggle for survival and does not really succeed in offering a genuine alternative to the extremes — the skeptics on one side and the fundamentalists on the other.

Now notice: I’m claiming that skeptics and fundamentalists have a common basis. They look opposite, but they have a common basis. Both agree that only what is proved is acceptable. That is what synthetic adults do not accept. They are willing to accept truths that are not certain. This Western skeptical attitude that says: yes, common sense, I’m not sure of my way, but I still have a position, I’m a modernist, I believe in things — okay? This is really the classic West. Except that it has been disappearing somewhat lately, because it has not really succeeded in offering a philosophical alternative to the two extremes on either side of it — but those two sides join in a circle, and in fact they find themselves cooperating. Because according to both of them, only what is proved is acceptable, only what is certain is acceptable. The difference is that the skeptics say: yes, but nothing is certain; and the fundamentalists say: no, there are certain things — what the preacher told me, or the rabbi, or whoever. Okay? But still they sit on the same platform.

Now when you, as a synthetic adult, say: wait a minute, but I live in uncertainty, I’m not sure — then they immediately attack you. Because the one says to you: if you’re not certain, then you should be uncertain about everything — be a skeptic. How can you fight for your positions if you have no certainty? And the fundamentalist says to you: if you have no certainty, then what you say is worth nothing, because only certainty matters, and therefore he too fights against you. And as long as you do not do the correct philosophical conceptualization, as long as you do not understand that there is a third way — it is not true that you are either a fundamentalist or a skeptic, there is a third way, the synthetic way — if you do not conceptualize this for yourself, you feel helpless in the face of these attacks. You really become convinced yourself that you have no alternative, that you must be either here or there.

And therefore we find several fascinating phenomena in recent years that we never would have imagined a few years ago. This astonishing symbiotic cooperation between global progressivism and fundamentalism. Right? It just so happens that both of them are somehow a very strong opposition to Israel. To the classic West in general, and to Israel — it seems to me that today Israel is the main thing representing it. And this unholy coalition between progressivism, progressive skepticism, and fundamentalism — support for Hamas and Hezbollah and all kinds of things like that — it is unbelievable. No one would ever have imagined that the so-called advanced universities in the United States and Europe would support Hamas and Hezbollah, or have significant support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Sometimes they admit it more, sometimes less; the students aren’t at all bothered about admitting it, the establishments somewhat less so. This cooperation demands explanation. This cooperation basically says: we are fighting against someone who is definitely not on the map. The synthetic person — he is definitely not on the map. Fundamentalism I understand. They have some exalted sources of inspiration; I don’t know them, don’t acknowledge them, it sounds to me like fantasies — but I understand them on their own terms. They accept it, and perhaps they are even right, I just did not experience the revelation they experienced. Therefore you feel a very strong sentiment toward these people. You understand them. You understand that if he is certain, then fine, he is allowed to do anything. I am a skeptic because I have no certainty about anything, so everything is fine.

By contrast, the synthetic person is the most wicked of all. That is post-colonialism, right? The synthetic person is the colonialist, he is the most wicked. Why is he the most wicked? He fights for certain positions, even tries to impose his position, without having any basis for it at all — after all, he has no proof. Right? He himself says he is not sure. The West advances a culture at whose base lies doubt, uncertainty, lack of decisiveness, lack of confidence. That was the Western ideal in its original form until a few years ago. That was the ideal. Now this outrages the fundamentalists and the skeptics. It outrages them. You go to war in the name of an ideal you are not even sure about? On what basis? What permits you to kill? And you are trying to bring the light of Western culture to Africa or to the Indians or I don’t know where — who are you exactly? Who made you the authority? What is this light of Western culture? You yourself have no proof of anything. So how can you fight in its name at all? How can you be superior to anyone in the name of such a thing? All kinds of criticisms we know very well.

I think everything ultimately is rooted in this philosophical analysis, even though most of the players on the board are of course not aware of it. But it seems to me that at the root the process is very definitely a philosophical one. The struggle, at its root, is a philosophical struggle. It really is a philosophical struggle. Sorry if I sound like those people who speak in very spiritualized terms. I mean, yes, the demons running what is happening here on the surface. There are these spiritual movements and all that — I don’t believe in those spiritual movements in some mystical sense, but I do believe in philosophical motivations, even if unconscious, that underlie social processes.

[Speaker E] How does that fit with attacks on Jews abroad, who are mostly fundamentalists?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who is “they”?

[Speaker E] The communities in London and Belgium and…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, you know, they are Jews all the same, meaning Jews are always associated in some way with Israel.

[Speaker E] Meaning here it’s not — it really seems kind of separate.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, look, the world is a complicated world. I’m not claiming that all events can be explained on the basis of this terribly simplistic analysis. I do think it captures some very central lines in what is happening today. Anti-Semitism gets attached to it, and many other things get attached to it. So it’s not that every event that happens here I can explain to you on the basis of the map I sketched here. But I do think — and it’s a bit childish to think there is such a simple map that explains everything that happens — but I do think that this map gives a very dominant line in what is going on. Okay? I think it explains many things that otherwise are hard to understand. And precisely penetrating to the philosophical root of the processes, the conceptual analysis of them, suddenly sheds light on what is happening here. You are basically fighting for your right, or your legitimacy, to believe in values and advance values or conceptions for which you have no proof. That is really the claim.

Now you understand that what stands behind this — this force called intuition, for me, is a synonym for faith. Intuition and faith are the same thing. When I say I believe in something, I mean to say that my intuition tells me it is true. Not necessarily belief in God — anything. Faith is always an expression that says: I think this is true even though I have no empirical or logical justification, right? That is usually what people call faith. What does that mean, really? That the justification is intuitive. Neither logical nor observational, but intuitive. In other words, this faculty called intuition is basically the ability we have to believe. But “to believe” here gets another meaning. To believe means to know that it is true. That is called believing. People think believing is something else, not knowing, some substitute expression. No. Believing and knowing are synonyms. True, it is not knowing with certainty, but I know nothing with certainty. Yet even without certainty, that is still called knowing. Okay?

So I think intuition — therefore when people ask me why, when people ask why do you believe in God, they don’t know what to answer. Because they have no proof, and direct observation certainly does not yield belief in God. So it isn’t rational, right? Believing in God is not rational. What do the fundamentalists do? They say: no, of course it’s rational, because al-Baghdadi told me, or because God told me He exists. Okay, or all kinds of justifications of that sort. There are some transcendent all-knowing sources with absolute authority and complete certainty who passed this on to me. That is fundamentalism.

[Speaker E] Wait, Michael? What you’re saying now about intuition and faith…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, one second, let me just finish the map. What I’m trying to propose is an alternative kind of faith, synthetic faith, not fundamentalist. Faith based on arguments of common sense, at the root of which sits intuition. And intuition can make mistakes, and therefore I am willing to consider critical arguments against my faith, against any faith of mine. It is not true that it stands above critical thought and that I’m unwilling even to put it up for discussion — absolutely not. That is fundamentalism. On the other hand, I insist that despite the fact that I’m not a fundamentalist, and despite the fact that I have no certainty, I do have faith, and I am willing to fight for that faith and to advance it, and I think it is true, and whoever disagrees with it is wrong — though not with certainty. True, it is always possible that someone may persuade me that I’m wrong. Fine, everything is fine. And many times people are not willing at all to accept that such a thing is also called faith. For them faith has to be fundamentalist, one hundred percent, without doubts. Whoever has doubts does not believe. Right? Whoever believes is not afraid, as people say. Whoever is a fundamentalist is not afraid — that’s what it means. Whoever believes certainly is afraid, exactly like whoever does not believe. Whoever is fundamentalist is not afraid — that’s the point. Because he’s an idiot.

And the point is that people identify faith with fundamentalism. That is not correct. It is correct to identify faith with claims, with adopting claims for which I have no logical or empirical proof. That is correct. But the claim that only by fundamentalist means can one arrive at such claims — that I do not accept. It is not true. One can arrive at those claims also by synthetic means of common sense, intuition, various philosophical arguments, and it is not certain — true — but it is very reasonable. “Very reasonable” is good enough for me. And I think that very many of the intellectual struggles taking place in the world are really taking place on this philosophical basis. Again, I’m not claiming that anyone there is consciously aware of it, but this is what drives those forces from behind, those ideas — unconscious ideas, often not conceptualized — but they are there, very much there.

All right, we’ll stop here. We’re going into the break. Meaning, next Thursday is the Ninth of Av. And after that we come back in the month of Elul. I don’t remember when the first of Elul comes out, the first Thursday of Elul.

[Speaker F] Can I ask a question? Yes. When you mentioned the struggle between the Greeks and Judaism, did the Greeks only criticize, or did they also come with an alternative?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They came with an alternative. Their alternative was pagan. But their criticism was rationalist.

[Speaker F] Thank you.

[Speaker E] Rabbi Miki, regarding intuition and faith, what you just said — is that only with respect to things like belief in God and the like, because beliefs we are sure of… No, every belief. No, I’m asking. In court, when a witness comes, right, and they examine him and so on, he is called a credible witness, right? That’s not connected to intuition. I mean, I…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is connected to intuition. Because the fact that you examine him and cross-examine him — the reliability of those cross-checks is based on intuitive foundations, where you say: someone who meets these criteria is probably a reliable witness. At the base there are always intuitions. Every human being on earth who adopts some insight that is not the result of observations or of logical analysis of observations is basically a believer. Rabbi?

[Speaker C] Yes. What would the skeptic say if I ask him about those initial claims that he adopts? After all, he has neither proof nor observation…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he casts doubt on them too.

[Speaker C] So then they’re not true, so in fact he does have… No, it enters some sort of paradox, doesn’t it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. He says everything is doubtful, including the claim that everything is doubtful — that too is doubtful.

[Speaker C] Yes, but that isn’t consistent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Why not?

[Speaker C] Because if you accept no claim without proof, then that claim too you don’t accept, so in fact you can accept claims with proof, because that claim you don’t accept.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. “I don’t accept the claim” means I am in doubt about it. Doubt about doubt does not return you to opposite certainty.

[Speaker C] Ah, I understand, right. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so we’ll stop here. May we have an easy fast and good news. Easy fast.

[Speaker F] Thank you very much. Sabbath peace.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Goodbye. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rabbi.

[Speaker D] Thank you very much.