Q&A: Question about the Rabbi’s article "Our Patriarch Abraham and His Hat"
Question about the Rabbi’s article "Our Patriarch Abraham and His Hat"
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi,
Rabbi, in the article mentioned, you write as follows: "Someone who assumes that the inscription was created by chance cannot infer anything from it… The fact is that all human beings assume that the visual system does indeed correctly reflect the world itself. In terms of the above example, they get ready to get off the train. But if so, that itself indicates that they believe it… If we do in fact place trust (justified or unjustified) in these systems, then we are believers (in some sense)." I wanted to ask: why doesn’t the very correspondence I experience between my cognition and reality—in the analogy, throughout all my trips after the inscription announced that I had arrived in Scotland, I did indeed arrive there—strengthen my confidence that such a correspondence really exists? Likewise regarding learning from experience: it simply seems more reasonable that if until now I arrived in Scotland after the sign, then it is advisable for me to prepare to get off after encountering the sign again. Thank you.
Answer
A. Because learning from experience itself has no logical foundation either (as the philosopher David Hume explained). And also because learning from experience itself (that is, when you see that the eye did in fact reflect reality correctly) is itself determined on the basis of the senses (either sight or the other senses). But a doubt about the senses as a whole has no additional source on which to rely. See the lengthy discussion in the fourth booklet here on the site.
Discussion on Answer
I explained this. You have no access whatsoever to reality itself, only to the data of the senses. Why assume that anything here is being confirmed? Some picture is being presented to you, and you have no way of knowing how reliable it is. Moreover, if its source is a random process, then the overwhelming probability is that it is not reliable. So how can I assume that it is? These things are explained in more detail in the fourth booklet, in the first part.
Sorry if I’m repeating the question. But if we’re not trying to prove things, only to assess probabilities—and as the Rabbi said, there is a possibility that my cognition is adapted to the world—then by my examining reality and my hypotheses being realized “in reality” (it sounds a bit absurd to say that this happens only in cognition without any basis in reality), doesn’t that “prove” that there really is such a correspondence? Thanks again.