You were very brief about something that stands at the height of the world; if you could address it more fully I’d appreciate it.

Do you mean that your intuition says that even if the other person had all the same data as I do, he would still choose differently? That seems, on its face, illogical, because that would mean one of them is foolish or that his intellect and understanding are different from the other’s, and then their data are not really equal after all, and the question returns to its place.
So please, really explain.

I have nothing to explain. As I wrote, I think that two people in the same situation can choose differently. And that is not a necessary consequence of a difference in their data. You are begging the question when you say it’s illogical, and I assume otherwise. That’s all. As stated, if you have two contradictory intuitions, you need to do your own soul-searching. The task is yours, not mine.

I’m not begging the question when I say it’s illogical, because I explained why:
if the other person had all the same data as I do and still chose differently, that means one of them is foolish or that his intellect and understanding are different from the other’s, and then their data are not equal after all, and the question returns to its place.

Please explain to me how it is possible that one person’s intellect and understanding are the same as the other’s (and all the data too), and still each one chooses differently. If their intellect and understanding are equal (along with the rest of the data), then it is basically the exact same person copied and pasted. So how do common sense or intuition say that the same person, with the same data and exactly the same intellect,
would choose differently? After all, the fact that one wants to choose differently from the other seems on its face to show an inequality in rational evaluation, and then again we are back to saying they don’t have the same data.
Again, please point out where the mistake is, if there is one.

We are discussing a decision between two views: 1. A person has free choice. 2. A person has no choice, and everything is a necessary result of the circumstances and his psychological makeup.
When you assume that two identical people will necessarily choose the same thing, you are assuming number 2. So that is begging the question. View 1 does not accept your assumption. Choice means a free decision under given circumstances, meaning that the circumstances do not dictate the outcome of the choice.
This is about values, not facts, and therefore it is not a question of intellectual level.

What the rabbi means is that this is exactly the idea of choice: if everything comes from the data, then it’s deterministic and not choice. The idea of choice is that the data don’t determine what you choose, and if you don’t have that intuition about the matter then there isn’t really any argument here at all.

To Moses—
Forgive me, but that isn’t intuition in the serious sense of the term; it’s just a guess, because you have no experience of a person exactly like you, copied and pasted, choosing differently from you—that’s what we’re discussing. It’s just a guess. Calling it intuition is just cheating, or using the word loosely.

To Rabbi Michi—
I didn’t understand the end of your remarks [in your words: “This is about values, not facts, and therefore it is not a question of intellectual level”], and I suspect that maybe this is where the explanation lies that will make the penny drop for me.

So please explain.

What is there to explain? A person finds himself in a value-laden dilemma like the one Sartre described: whether to stay and care for his elderly mother in occupied Paris, or leave her in order to join the Free French army and fight the Nazis. That very same person can choose this or that. And there is no issue here of intellectual level.

But that same person who chose that way did so because of a value-based understanding that he had. Again, that value-based understanding is not a coin toss where whatever comes out, comes out.
Rather, that value-based understanding came from prior data he had (a particular moral worldview he grew up with, a worldview he was exposed to, that he studied, and which he processed with the intellect he has, etc. etc. etc.). If he had had different data of that kind, his understanding and value judgment would have changed,
and once again we are back to everything depending on the data.
That is, it makes no sense that the same person, with all the same data just mentioned, copied and pasted—which, as stated, is really the same person, a duplicate, one-to-one in every possible respect—would make a different value judgment with his mind.

You’re repeating exactly the same question to the very same person (me) and expecting a different answer? So there you have it—you yourself are a libertarian.

A—No, that’s how it is for determinists. How did you slip up on that? That’s their claim: that your feeling as though you have choice is an illusion, because in fact you choose according to your will, but you had no choice to will otherwise, given the data you have. And if you had different data, you would choose differently—just like the second and third person, etc., chose differently based on the different data they have.

B—And as for our matter, I didn’t repeat the same question. You argued that it is not a matter of intellectual level—that is, of the intellectual data one has—but of values, and I’m showing you that it’s one and the same. It can’t be detached from that, because as I said above, choosing values is not a coin toss, but comes from an intellectual synthesis of the value-data one has.
And logic says that if an exact one-to-one duplicate of Rabbi Michi were made, in every possible respect, he would choose exactly as you do, if choice stems from an intellectual understanding of values and not from a coin toss.
So in essence, do you hold that if there were a one-to-one duplicate of you, Rabbi Michi 2, with the same data and the same past and the same intellect and the same knowledge etc. etc., and everything absolutely identical, he would produce different results??

Their feeling doesn’t really concern me. I’m talking about my position, not theirs. You’re again repeating the same thing. I’m done.