Answer

First, let me preface by saying that there is no certainty about anything (except for this principle itself).
Second, emotion has no meaning whatsoever in this context. Emotions say nothing. I love someone and you do not. Do we have an argument? Definitely not. Claims are evaluated by the intellect, not by emotion. Sometimes when people say “emotion” they mean intuition, but intuition is intellect.
If you call reliable knowledge “certainty,” that is semantics. Call it whatever you like.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
By the emotional sense I meant something like how one can get angry at someone else’s opinion or love it, and in that sense certainty is an emotion that can be developed through self-persuasion.
The previous remark is not just semantics, because otherwise why shouldn’t there be a fundamentalist tint to a synthetic outlook (or however you spell that…).
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Anger is a result of disagreement, not identical with it. So I do not understand what emotion has to do with the discussion here. I am dealing with certainty and agreement or disagreement, not with the emotions produced by them.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
The very use of the word “agreement” rather than a word from the root “knowledge” assumes something other than dry knowledge; this also touches on the concept of one who thinks or reconsiders, which according to the view you are presenting is almost impossible—either I know or I know thus.
I am not insisting on the word “emotion”; I am only insisting that this is not knowledge in the intellectual sense, but an external relation (who is outside?) to knowledge that already exists in one way or another with certainty.
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
I did not understand a word. Please define the concepts better and explain what the claim or question is.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
Hello.
What I mean is this.
After all, before or after all the logic and feelings of the heart, there is someone who experiences them.
That someone (hereinafter: “I”) can contain imperfect knowledge as well as severe logical errors, superstitions, baseless emotions, go to sleep with them, and even die with them.
You say that “I” cannot believe logical impossibilities because they are not logically possible, but logic too is only a tool in the hands of the “I,” and belief is an act of the “I,” not part of the structure of logic/intellect.

Here is my view:
There is an “I” that comes before everything; it is not bound by anything, it can “know” falsehoods, it can believe against its own opinions, it can act against its own beliefs, and it still remains an “I” devoid of obligation to anything.
So there is an “I,” and in its hands are tools that it may desire: intellect (logic), emotion (belief, certainty, and more), and body (active and passive actions).
The “I” does not have to know what it does not want to know, does not have to feel what it does not want to feel, and certainly does not have to do what it does not want to do.
Somewhere, the “I” is missing from your whole system.
Thanks in advance
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Hello.
I lost you.
1. It is completely obvious that there is an I that possesses the properties, performs the actions, and is endowed with abilities. Yours truly has written about this more than once (about the mistake of identifying a person with the collection of his functions, and an object with the collection of its properties). Why did you decide that in my view this central element is absent? I did not merit to understand.
2. Moreover, a person can think that he believes in a contradiction. I certainly would not deny that many people believe things that in my opinion are contradictions (such as foreknowledge and free choice). Who said otherwise? Where did you see in my words anything else?
And still, two comments:
A. For these two agreed-upon claims, the distinction between the person and his intellect with which you began—and with which I agreed (premise 1)—is unnecessary. His intellect contains nonsense or a contradiction, and he thinks he believes it. That is a mistake of the intellect, not of the person beyond the intellect. The intellect can err, because the intellect is an organ like any other organ. Perfect theoretical intellect is an ideal, not an object, and it cannot err. A human intellect can err, and quite often does. It can even believe contradictions (or feel confidence in contradictions).
B. But precisely because of this, the existence of that possibility says nothing at all. It only says that there can be some delusion inside each of us. So what does that say? Am I short of crazy people?! A person can also be insane and dance a hora in the moonlight in the middle of the night. So what? What are you trying to claim? That because of this the moon rises during the day, or that this field is a dance hall?
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
Thank you very much for the response.
A few comments using your response.
“I lost you.”
That’s okay, I’m a lost cause.

1. It is completely obvious that there is an I that possesses the properties, performs the actions, and is endowed with abilities. Yours truly has written about this more than once (about the mistake of identifying a person with the collection of his functions, and an object with the collection of its properties). Why did you decide that in my view this central element is absent? I did not merit to understand.
Discussing the matter of separate identities does not belong to the topic here, because here we are not talking about some being that exists for itself even though it is the sum of properties, etc., but about a single influencing factor in the whole system. And even in your second book in the quartet, which deals with these matters, you did not give enough space to the distinction between the “I” and intellect/emotion; it existed in the atmosphere (free will, etc.) but the degree of its importance was not clarified, and perhaps the understanding is that every logical/philosophical book is basically a kind of preaching to choose the way of the intellect.

2. Moreover, a person can think that he believes in a contradiction. I certainly would not deny that many people believe things that in my opinion are contradictions (such as foreknowledge and free choice). Who said otherwise? Where did you see in my words anything else?
Not only can he think that he believes it (a dismissive phrasing…), there is no contradiction in this with respect to the “I,” because he can look at the two different items of knowledge and contain them, and in this there is no departure from the power of the “I,” because it is not located within the field where there are logical laws and physical impossibilities, etc. It has no laws; it has only desires (desires = something I still have no idea what it is).
And still, two comments:
A. For these two agreed-upon claims, the distinction between the person and his intellect with which you began—and with which I agreed (premise 1)—is unnecessary. His intellect contains nonsense or a contradiction, and he thinks he believes it. That is a mistake of the intellect, not of the person beyond the intellect. The intellect can err, because the intellect is an organ like any other organ. Perfect theoretical intellect is an ideal, not an object, and it cannot err. A human intellect can err, and quite often does. It can even believe contradictions (or feel confidence in contradictions).
This is exactly my problem. The intellect can perhaps correct itself, because after all if you lead it from premises to conclusions and show it how one proceeds along the paths of the intellect, it will stop believing (to the extent that it sees intellect as everything) what the intellect cannot tolerate. But we are speaking about the “I,” which is not interested at all in the intellect’s logical laws; from its point of view this is like the rules of football while it wants to play basketball with no rules. It is not “mistaken,” because error is an internal reckoning of the intellect, and it sees things differently.

B. But precisely because of this, the existence of that possibility says nothing at all. It only says that there can be some delusion inside each of us. So what does that say? Am I short of crazy people?! A person can also be insane and dance a hora in the moonlight in the middle of the night. So what? What are you trying to claim? That because of this the moon rises during the day, or that this field is a dance hall?
Here too you assume the intellect is everything. “Crazy” is a dismissive label for someone who chose not to use the intellectual tool (an organ like any other…) as the datum on which he relies in his decisions. The “I” is not a cosmologist! Determining the time of moonrise is not its concern; it does not determine facts.

I am not laying out an orderly doctrine here; I am struggling, and together with the lack of conceptual clarity I hope you will manage to understand something.

Who am I and what is my name.

Thanks in advance
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Unfortunately I was not able to understand. I repeat: obviously there is an I, but that I uses several functions, among them the intellect. Its beliefs are located in the intellect (the I believes by means of the intellect, just as it walks by means of the legs). I also said that the intellect can err, and it is still an error even if it is located in the intellect (see the first notebook on the site regarding the ontological proof, where I discuss this following Anselm).
I (?) am unable to understand the claim that the “I” is not subject to logic. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, is “subject” to it, since subjection to logic is not really subjection (unlike subjection to the laws of physics, where it is subjection, and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, is not subject to them). The use of the term “laws” of logic is confusing because of the similarity to the laws of physics or the laws of nature. Logic is a collection of conceptual constraints, not external constraints on a thing, as in physics. Mass could in principle remain suspended in the air in a world other than ours (one in which there is no gravitational force). But I am always I, and the law of non-contradiction is always unavoidable in every possible world. The reason is that this is not a “law” that someone legislated, but the very definition of the things themselves. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a round triangle, because there is not and cannot be a round triangle. That is a logical contradiction, not a physical impossibility. The Holy One, blessed be He, can split the sea, but He cannot make a dry sea. He also cannot make a ball that penetrates every wall and a wall that stops every ball at the same time. The reason is that this inability is logical, not physical.
And from here it follows that the “I” too—even if there is meaning to thinking by the I not through the intellect (and in my opinion there is not)]—cannot think contradictions and is subject to logic. And if by chance it has a consciousness of a round triangle, then it is living in a delusion (that is, crazy in some sense).
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
Thank you very much for your response.
I will try to discuss one point, which is the main problem.

You say that the beliefs of the “I” are located in the intellect.
I say that belief is the meaning that the “I” gives to what it received (or decided not to receive) from the intellect.
What I mean is that the intellect, like the body, has no meaning apart from the meaning that the “I” wants to give it.
I very much like the example you wrote regarding a computer, that one can describe all of it in the physical/electrical sense, but that description has no connection to the meaning it has for a person when he plays some game on it. So too the “I” is what gives meaning (intellectual meaning, in your view) to intellectual inferences. From the point of view of the “I,” every proven intellectual inference (as much as possible) is like raising an unproven claim with respect to the logic of the intellect. And just as the intellect understands the claim but has no obligation to absorb it as an intellectual truth, so the “I” sees the intellect after its inference about logical impossibility or logical necessity, and it has no obligation to absorb that as an “I-truth” (a new word).

Just as “I” can decide to love someone even when all the senses (including the emotional ones) tell me there is no reason to love him, “I” can validate (in the strong sense of the word) things that the intellect rules out.

I think the big difference between us is the judgment of a decision that is against the intellect. You call such a person crazy, and I see him exactly like the one who decided in accordance with the intellect, because he does indeed see the moon at night and not during the day, and the intellect leads him in its ways to the understanding that the moon does not rise during the day (incidentally, the intellectual truth is that the moon also rises during the day…), and in any case he wants otherwise, and he is the real decider, and there is no evaluative standard, or reference point, outside him. And he is sane or crazy exactly like anyone who decides what to want; these and those are the words of a living “I.”

***(I use the word “wanting” with respect to the “I” because I have trouble finding another word.)****

P.S. I see that you do not understand me, and apparently that is my fault, but I need you to try to understand because it does not seem to me that I have the ability to explain more than this. At least try to use my claims in order to refute them, and then perhaps I will understand.
You keep illustrating the rule of intellect over the “I,” and even over God (a super-“I”??), and you point to physical reality (a ball and a wall, a triangle and roundness, wet and dry) and explain that it is preceded by logical impossibility. But why do you arrive at physics through logic? Physics in this case is not the result of logical architecture, but of God’s will.

If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when “I” am for myself, what is “I”.
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
I am sorry, but we are stuck. If you want, you are welcome to speak with me orally, and perhaps I will be able to understand you better (or you me).
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
Woe to the generation that has gotten stuck (Ta’anit 24; see there).
Okay, so I am not managing to explain, and I did not dare hope to see your face.
Maybe you could try to arrange your view hierarchically; perhaps that way I can use your concepts.
Of course, if you are fed up with the subject, consider it closed.
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
I tried to the best of my meager ability. If it is important enough, and if in your opinion I may be able to help as stated, I would be happy to meet and talk.
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
And in any case, here is a small gift for you: a poem written after reading your book.

What shall I say at such a time, what age was this appointed for,
How can I let go of these heroes, and of the charming youth,
Shall I strike, and with a spear, shall I shatter their shield,
Perhaps I will wisely keep still and hush, and return the sword to its sheath.

I dreamed a dream and it came true, or shall I dream now,
The man is a fool and once again prophesied—shall I walk in his footsteps?
My head is oval and square—how shall I hit the line,
Shall I go to the tormented one who comes, or to the upright and well-dressed?

Indeed I knew my opinion, and where my face would turn,
I will even command them to my house, thus will I instruct my son,
I will lower my face and my gaze, I will wink secretly with my eyes,
Perhaps they will understand my purpose, or perhaps they will brighten my face.

With thanks
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
Thank you very much. “I will command them” probably ought to be phrased differently. In my poverty I did not understand everything, but it seems impressive.