A. What is certainty?
B. From where comes the certainty in the claim that we are destined to live in uncertainty?

A. Being sure about something that it is true.
B. There is no certainty about that.

So Rabbi, what leads you to claim that? Obviously in cases where we lack vital information we won’t be completely sure of the conclusion, but it seems to me that there are plenty of cases where it’s no problem to be sure of a conclusion. For example: over the years, a child can usually easily know whether his parents love him, because he has countless opportunities to check that. Another example: a normal person can know that if he puts his hand into a bonfire he’ll get burned, or that if there is an object hanging from the ceiling by only a single string and we cut the string, then the object will certainly fall. I don’t understand how one could claim otherwise. I think that if we asked any random person on the street, he would be sure of his answer to the examples I gave.

Certainty is 100% confidence. There is no situation in which there is a full level of certainty. If the parents take care of him, that could stem from many other reasons and not from love. It is impossible to know anything with certainty. The very act of learning from experience is not something certain (the problems raised by David Hume).

And are we sure that the problems Hume raised really are problems?

To the Rabbi

In order to claim that there is no certainty, aren’t you using an argument that is a negative doubt? Remove from here a negative doubt, and behold, before us is certainty?

David, I think so (not sure, because there is no certainty).

Boaz, no, it’s a positive doubt. Besides, to rule out certainty, maybe a negative doubt is enough, since the very fact that there is a possibility (= that is the whole essence of negative doubt: presenting another possibility) means precisely that there is no certainty.

I almost certainly understood you, but from your standpoint that’s surely enough.

🙂

What Rabbi Kellner presents in pluralism, pantheism, universality (according to my understanding of the book) is not absolute certain truth (100% with no possibility of progress), but rather a method (a bit complex, so it’s better simply to look in the book) by means of which one can decide between different views and determine that method A is more correct than method B. It was important to me to write this not because it contributes to the discussion itself (whether there is certainty or not), but because Rabbi Kellner is always precise in his words and stands behind them (and only behind the things he said), and the first question was an inaccurate reference to the book. I’ll say again that since the method is a bit complex, the best thing is simply to read the book itself.
*Note—even though in the book (which of course is part of an entire Torah outlook) it does not say about things regarding which there is 100% certain truth, there are such things scattered elsewhere in the Rabbi’s books.
*A small appendix—certainty*: Why is the working assumption of most of the discussions here that one cannot reach 100% certainty? Because human thought has matured. A person who sees a tree with green leaves and a brown trunk may think that this is what the tree looks like—but that is not so, because if a dog comes (which does not see the color red) or a bee (which can perceive colors that the human eye cannot), then they will see the tree in different colors.
This is true regarding everything a person relates to (that is, everything in relation to which a person acts).
Let us now introduce two new concepts—1. Essence: the thing in itself (in the example, this would be the tree as it really appears).
2. Attribute: the description of the thing—how I see it (in the example, the person, the dog, and the bee will each have a different attribute/description of the tree).
Everything in reality has an essence (which is not exactly something of the thing, but the thing itself) and an attribute (that is, manifestation—relation to things external to it).
A person can (and perhaps must?) cast doubt on everything, since he does not encounter the essence of the thing, only the attribute.
Let us expand a bit on the matter of attribute:
A. There is pizza.
B. There is a person.
The person eats pizza.
C. There is tastiness.
Is tastiness found in the pizza itself? After all, another person may come for whom the pizza is disgusting. Is tastiness found in the person? After all, if there is no pizza (or other food), the person will not find anything tasty.
That is, tastiness is a property created from the encounter between the pizza (object A) and the person (object B). Tastiness is an attribute.
Now one can understand that everything a person experiences is an attribute and never essence.
All this is true with respect to everything to which a person relates using his tools for perceiving reality.
And now let us formulate a law (or perhaps this law is really two laws?).
Everything to which a person relates is through the tools the person has for relating to it (senses, emotion, intellect, etc.), and therefore what a person has is only a relation to things, but a person never has the things themselves. (Since the thing is perceived through a certain tool, if the tool changes, the input changes—meaning that if we relate to a child through sight we will say he is beautiful, and if we relate to him through emotion we will say he is beloved.)
Therefore there is doubt. It is like a room with 6 windows, one red, one purple, one green, etc., and whoever is inside the room sees 6 rays of sunlight in different colors—it is clear that what he sees is not the reality outside the room; he sees only the reality as absorbed through the windows.
However, there is something more. The person who looks at the tree (from the first example) sees the tree as brown, and is not sure whether the tree really is brown or not. What is he sure of? He is sure that he sees the tree as brown. 100% that at this moment, when he looks at the tree, he sees it as brown. (It may be that if his eye were replaced he would see differently, and if the wiring in his brain were changed he would see differently, but it cannot be that right now he does not see the tree as brown.) He has absolute 100% certainty regarding the fact that the way he sees the tree (that the attribute of the essence in relation to him) is brown.
In the same way, a person is 100% certain that he exists. Just as (and this is not a proof or logical necessity) I experience the tree as brown, so too there is an “I” that experiences it. It is not the chameleon that sees it as brown, but I see it as brown, and that is 100% certain without doubt.
After all this, a person may come and say: I am not certain that I exist! But the very fact that I raised the doubt whether I exist proves that I think, which proves that there is an I (Descartes’ proof).
How can this be? Rather, a common mistake is the mistake of the skeptic. The arbitrary decision that if something has not been proven, then one cannot be certain of it, is the basic assumption (the axiom) of that kind of thought process. But now we have shown that there is no need for that mistaken basic assumption (in certain cases it is mistaken, but as we said at the beginning, regarding everything external to a person—which is almost everything—it is correct).
Conclusion: I am writing these things because all these questions existed for me and I wrestled with them. I did not arrive at these answers on my own, but received help from the rabbis of the mekhina where I study (and therefore I recommend to all readers here who can—to go to preparatory academies and yeshivot and ask). Of course, what I wrote is a sort of summary of a summary of the ideas, which of course is not sufficient and is not a real answer. The goal here is to open a door toward a new direction of thought that affirms (both in the sense of affirmation/verification and in the sense of happiness and joy) life for a person. It is impossible really to grasp the general idea from this post, and therefore I would also ask not to try. What the goal of writing here is, though (and therefore I also ask this), is that you not despair; go learn and investigate and think and ask questions—the most important thing is to ask and not keep it bottled up. I highly recommend Ateret Yerushalayim Yeshiva or mekhina for these questions, but every mekhina/yeshiva is good.
Good luck.

It’s nice to see a student who enjoys and gets the most out of the Torah of his rabbis and appreciates them. And nevertheless, it is hard to avoid noting a few inaccuracies in what you wrote:
1. If every statement of ours is only about our perception of reality and not about reality itself, then when I hear your statement, from my perspective it says nothing. It only says that you see reality this way or that way, but not that reality itself is this way or that way. Why is that interesting? When you make a claim to me, your intention is not to describe your feelings to me but to make claims about reality. So there is no basis here for certainty, aside from certainty regarding your feelings, which is irrelevant from my perspective. On this topic, I very strongly recommend the beginning of C. S. Lewis’s book (the one from Narnia), The Abolition of Man.
2. When you say that God exists, or that the Jewish people left Egypt, or that the Torah was given, are you really not making a claim about the world but only about your feelings? If so, I wouldn’t count you for a minyan. You are an atheist with religious experiences.
3. When you see an object as red, the color does indeed exist only in your consciousness. But that does not mean that perhaps the object’s color is different. That follows simply from the fact that the object in itself has no color (or at least there is no reason to assume that it does). Color is a cognitive phenomenon. In the world itself there are electromagnetic waves. When a tree falls in the forest and there is no ear, no sound is heard.
4. Is your distinction between the thing in itself and the thing as it appears to our eyes (in our cognition), which is of course the Kantian distinction between phenomenon and noumenon, itself only a feeling of yours, or is it a claim about reality?
5. To sum up all the points: you are mistaken on your most basic point. The fact that our claims are mediated by our cognition is of course true, but one who is not a skeptic understands that after the mediation there is still a claim here about reality itself. Note that you, in light of your description here, are a complete skeptic. So it is a bit strange that you present your post as a claim against skepticism, or as something that answers skepticism. You yourself explain that all your claims are nothing but about your own feelings and say nothing at all about reality. That is the dictionary definition of skepticism.

All the best and much success,