1. The moment you understand that one value is correct, then automatically it receives extra force for you, which translates into desire. And the more you dwell on it (as the ethicists recommend, to study ethics / morality), the more it also grows stronger. So it is not clear where the choice is.
I would be glad to know which posts these are.
2. This claim goes back to point 1: the moment you understand that it is important and you have repeated it to yourself a lot, then the desire for it also grows stronger. And if not, then not. And then you "go down" the slope.

You do not only "understand" but also "decide" to go with it. There are two stages here: understanding what is right, and deciding to go with what is right. The decision to "dwell on it more" is also the result of a free choice. And of course, even after you have dwelled on it and understood and internalized that it is important, there is still a decision whether to act on it in practice.
See 35, 175, 172-3.

A "value" is not just a neutral, trivial fact. Rather, it is a loaded claim that is supposed to "tell" you what to do or dissuade you from doing something. So a person who understands what the right value is automatically acts according to it. So there is no separate decision to follow the right thing. The understanding that the thing is right is itself the "decision" to go with it.
Thank you.

Absolutely not true. A person does not necessarily do what he thinks is right. That is weakness of will. You're welcome.

That is a sign that he did not internalize the importance of the matter enough.
The moment he fails, he will "ask" himself how he got to this situation. If that value is important to him, then he will "repentance".
What I mean by repentance is that he will internalize it a bit more until the intensity of the desire rises. It will not always be enough relative to the physical desire. But after many, many times it will happen.
But if he discovers that the value is not important to him, then he will simply abandon it.
I think this reflects the world clearly. So there is really no place at all for choice.

I do not see any point in continuing. If you insist, then of course your conclusion will be that there is no choice. Your arguments themselves, to the best of my judgment, are nonsense, and I have already explained why. We are repeating ourselves.
All the best.

Thank you,
I understand the claim you wrote regarding weakness of will. So a person may not want enough to realize the proper value against the impulse he has at the critical moment, and therefore he chooses to roll downhill. But even so, he can act against the slope and climb upward.
But I really did not succeed in understanding the second part: how can a person understand that there is a proper value X and not "want" (in the deterministic sense) to follow it? After all, there is really no genuine reason that this value would not affect him at all. Even if we assume that he continues to follow his impulses. But still, how can it be that the mind understands that something is worthy and does not "want" to do it?
After all, values are prescriptive claims, and there is no doubt that they are translated into desires, because that is their purpose. And internalizing the understanding is the desire. In other words, these are not just pieces of knowledge but also compelling understandings.

Tuvia, it is a little unclear to me whether there is a reading-comprehension problem here or something else.
You yourself say that you understand the phenomenon of weakness of will, which is: although a person understands that it is proper to do X, he does Y. That is the explanation I offered for why a person who thinks he should do X does not do it. And that you understand. So what is unclear?
Immediately afterward you ask how it is possible that a person who understands that X is the right thing to do would not want to do it, and that this value would not affect him at all. Who said he does not want to? Who said it does not affect him? What I am saying is that it does affect him, and that person also wants to do it, but because of his urges (weakness of will) he does not actually do it. What is so complicated here?
It seems to me that you are mixing up two concepts of "want." A person who thinks it is proper to do X also wants to do it. But he also wants to enjoy himself (the urge). The weighing of the two desires is done in his decision, and therefore sometimes he will not do X even though he wants to do it. Alternatively, one could formulate it by saying that he does not want to do X enough. Those are just two different formulations of the same thing.

Maybe I will try to phrase it differently:
Does the Rabbi agree that when a person understands that value X is worthy, an urge to do it develops in him in a deterministic way?
Because values are prescriptive claims, so internalizing them is wanting them. A kind of "compelling" understanding.

Even though a person understands that X, he keeps claiming not-X.

Are you saying he is lying to himself? Sorry, but that sounds illogical and totally impossible. After all, if he thinks that X is the truth, then that is the truth.

I will join your line of thought:
Yes.

It sounds like you do not hold that way; why?
B. Assuming yes, then you agree that the moment a person understands that value x is worthy of being done, the desire to do x is also born in him. The desire is measured by how much he understands the importance of the value; the more he feels connected to the idea the value expresses and "finds himself in it," the stronger the desire becomes. If he has not yet felt that, then not.
If value x stands in battle against the "urge," then it depends on who is stronger (the force of x depends on the distinction above), and therefore it is possible that because of continued arousal of the urge, the urge will overcome the force of x and the person will "choose" the urge.
If there was a significant attempt to save the realization of the value against the urge, then the strength of the value will rise, among other things because of feelings of regret and all sorts of psychological factors. (And this is weakness of will.)

But if not, then the force of x will weaken automatically. The possibility that the value will rise again is only through understanding that indeed the value is important.
Of course there are many other factors too, but this is a general sketch of the idea.

This sketch is phrased in an amazingly complicated way. I do indeed agree that the stronger the understanding of the value, the greater the desire to do it.
And I also agree that there is still no guarantee that this is what will actually be done. Because of urges, for example, or simply choosing evil.
Up to this point, that is exactly what I am claiming. I am still waiting for us to get to the point where you disagree with me.

Many thanks for the compliments.
And if so, then we are done, because according to what I wrote above there is no "place" where choice takes place.
If the urge is greater than x, then it will win, and if not, not. There is no possibility that the urge will be stronger than the desire x and yet the person will do x. Because if he did value x, that is a sign that the desire x was stronger than the urge, and we already wrote that it was not. (The law of non-contradiction.)

Besides that, there is no possibility for a person to choose evil. The only possibility is when he had an evil urge.

If you assume that a person has no choice, you will receive, to your great surprise, the conclusion… that a person has no choice. I've exhausted this.

I did not understand. The only possibility I can make sense of in what you mean is:
That even in a case where he has an urge whose intensity is stronger than the desire that developed in us to do X, it is still possible that in that topography we will act against the urge, because we will mobilize a "volitional" force external to the inner system of considerations. And if we ask where that force came from, we will say that it is the will itself, and it is also a creation ex nihilo without a cause but with a purpose.
But if so, if we have a purpose and goal for the matter, we can also represent it in a causal way—that we do X because it seems to us to be the right thing. But if so, why not say that all this desire is a local development from our thinking, which quickly inferred that value X is important enough to overcome the urge, so that this is a completely deterministic act.

"Why shouldn't we say" is not an objection. For that you did not need this whole discussion. You are simply assuming determinism—because why say there is free will, and that's it. My answer: because I feel that there is. Exactly like the question why say that what I see or think is indeed correct? My answer: because that is how I experience it.

Thank you, so the basis for the whole claim of free choice is the experience of choice. Even though it seems that the Rabbi completely agrees that it may perhaps even be easier and more plausible to interpret the findings in a deterministic way.
But even according to the Rabbi's view, couldn't the feeling of free choice itself easily develop in a deterministic way? If so, it does not sound reasonable to place trust in it.
By contrast, to claim that the eyes are unreliable is unreasonable, because one can feel, hear, and smell that what we saw is correct.
And to claim that the whole sensory system is unreliable is unreasonable because it functions harmoniously.

I really do not agree. But if you agree that the previous discussion is irrelevant and the whole question is only why I assume there is choice, then we need to open a new, orderly discussion about that.

See the continuation here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%91%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%93%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%99%D7%AA/#comment-19707