Q&A: Intuition and Logic
Intuition and Logic
Question
Hello Rabbi. I heard your lectures on intuition, and two questions came up for me:
A. Regarding David Hume's difficulty with empirical inquiry, as I understand it, the only thing he undermined was inferences such as generalizations or analogical reasoning, but observation itself, as a specific datum, remained reliable information about the world. If so, Kant's theory does not include mirror observation itself, but rather generalizations and the like. And if I am right, then I did not understand your difficulty with Kant, because although there are things that exist only in my mind, there are visual observations that do indeed see the world, and perhaps Kant would agree about those.
B. Regarding intuition in Jewish law. I very much understand the justification for a halakhic decisor to use intuition, and that it will also lead him (perhaps against his will) to a halakhic ruling. But I did not understand the connection the Rabbi made to the use of emotions, such as the poor woman… There we are not talking about intuition regarding the truth, but about what the decisor wants the truth to be, and I do not understand the justification for that. True, perhaps all this happens against his will, but that is something one must fight against when seeking the truth. "Do not pervert justice"…
Answer
A. I do not know which lectures you are referring to, but in any case I did not understand the question. Who spoke about the reliability of observations? That is not my difficulty with Kant. I am speaking about the reliability of generalizations according to his approach. That is what he came to answer, and in my opinion he did not answer it.
B. I do not know what this is referring to. Clearly emotion is not a halakhic parameter, and usually it should be neutralized.
Discussion on Answer
As stated, I do not know which lecture you are referring to and I do not remember the lecture, but I assume I did not raise that against Kant, because he is not skeptical about sight. At most I argue that it is not clear why he does not cast doubt on sight and extend Hume's difficulty to direct observations as well. This is the proof from epistemology, which is described in the fourth booklet, part 2.
I also join Nadav's point. The Rabbi cited Gilat's book about the Sabbatical year in our time being rabbinic, where the trigger for the Sages was economic distress, and also as an example the miserable widow. Seemingly these are emotional motivations and not intuitions.
So when there is a vote, you'll outnumber me. That is completely not an emotional motive, and there too I explained that it is not a motive in the sense of a reason, but a trigger to search for a halakhic mechanism. That is a refutation.
Haha, I did not mean to form a coalition against the Rabbi. Heaven forbid. I am only asking: what is the justification for such a trigger? Would it not be preferable to avoid triggers? Meaning, is this just coercion, or is there some value in it?
When there is intuition, I understand that there is value in intuition. But with an emotional trigger, is there any value? On the face of it, it is just coercion. Isn't that so?
I will repeat again that this is not about emotion but about a halakhic consideration. When there is pressing need, one rules leniently not because of emotion but because Jewish law says to be lenient in pressing circumstances. When there is pressing need, one looks for leniencies, derivations, and new interpretations, but the pressing need is not the leniency itself; rather, it is the reason to look for a leniency (when circumstances are not pressing, we do not look for leniencies). What is unclear here? What does this have to do with emotion?
What I mean is that the Rabbi challenged Kant by saying that if I see the same phenomenon in reality, which supposedly exists only in my head, then what are we to say—that it is a fata morgana? So my question is: if I see that same phenomenon, that means it is no longer a generalization, because I see it in its entirety, and Kant was not talking about that.
In other words: Kant's theory is immune to a difficulty from reality, because if I saw it, then it is no longer a generalization, and if so it is no longer in my head but in reality.