Q&A: Rule and Abstraction
Rule and Abstraction
Question
In the context of today’s lecture:
Abstraction/conceptualization of a law strips away from the law the elements that are not supposed to affect the outcome, and therefore are not what produce it. So I then know that the concept determined the law, and whenever the concept appears, so does the law.
For example: Reuven found lost fruit—these belong to him.
I ask what it is about a person who loses property that causes his property to become ownerless. And I assume that his despair over the object is what causes that. And the form of the despair—loss—is an element that does not produce the result, namely that the object is ownerless. Therefore, one who rescues an object from the sweeping current of the sea may also keep it, since the person has despaired of it. I carried out a conceptualization/abstraction and discovered that these two cases are really one and the same case.
This conceptualization is important regardless of whatever practical benefit it has, because this is the correct understanding (in the opinion of the one doing the conceptualizing). And therefore the Kehillot Yaakov in tractate Gittin tries to give a definition even though, if there were another case, it too would fall under the definition. (Though admittedly there is no necessity to do this with one single definition; one could do it with a separate definition for each case.)
Answer
Hello Yehuda.
This question is not clear to the site’s readers, because it revolves around yesterday’s lecture and refers to it. We were discussing whether the abstractions and conceptualizations we make in learning are the “correct” explanation, or whether they are only a tool for producing in us a correct grasp (by way of negative attributes).
You argue that the conceptualization according to which despair is what removes the lost object from its owner and transfers it to the finder is correct and not merely a means. But despair is a very general word. On its face, it describes some mental state. But what about despair without awareness, for example? There the mental state does not yet exist, yet since if he knew he would be in that state, that is enough to remove the lost object from his possession. So you see that the conceptualization of despair was only a first step on the way to the full theory (if there even is such a theory).
Beyond that, what you described here is the very process of conceptualization and abstraction. But I do not see the argument in favor of the thesis that this captures the correct thing (as opposed to the view that it is only a negative tool).
And finally, as I told you in the lecture, if there is a different definition for every case, that is very suspicious as an ad hoc definition. A concept or definition gets its force if it succeeds in explaining several cases. A definition that contains as many components as there are cases is a very suspicious definition indeed (though of course it could theoretically be correct). Put differently: on the face of it, such a definition seems like something intended for us and coming from within us, rather than from the world itself.
Discussion on Answer
And about that I asked: how do you know that this “understanding” is in the world itself and not merely a feeling that exists within you? Just as you were mistaken at first (according to the view that despair without awareness counts as despair), perhaps you are mistaken now too.
The fit with as many cases as possible strengthens the claim that this is a correct understanding (= in the world) and not just my subjective feeling. Without that, it is hard to know. This is a lesson from scientific thinking: many generalizations that seemed reasonable turned out to be incorrect. That is why generality is required as a condition for accepting a theory.
A. I didn’t understand what follows from saying that conceptualizing it as despair is only a first step. That may be so, and whoever held that despair without awareness is ineffective stopped at that stage. And whoever held that it is effective understood that even despair is an element that does not produce the result, but rather something beyond that does.
B. At the end of my remarks, my claim was actually in favor of an ad hoc definition. The ability to explain several cases by one definition stems from the fact that this is really one case, and just as it makes no difference whether the person who lost the item is called Reuven or Shimon, so too it makes no difference whether the object fell from his pocket without his knowledge or was swept into the sea with his knowledge. And even if, in the case of the sea, a person would not despair, the definition concerning the object’s falling would not change, and the benefit would be the true understanding. (A practical implication for understanding is not just a joke…)