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Q&A: The Rabbi’s Approach — Cognitive Thinking

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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

The Rabbi’s Approach — Cognitive Thinking

Question

With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi, may you live long,
1. I heard from a certain rabbi who knows you very well that although you are completely correct in identifying the failures of analytic thinking, you do not have a reasonable explanation for how the entire synthetic component of human logic works, aside from pointing to it and claiming that it is an ideational perception. He further claimed that at one time you referred to yourself as a rational (and analytic) person ironically… as someone who has no explanation for how the synthetic part works.
So I wanted to ask: is it in fact true that you have no explanation for how the synthetic part works? If that is not the case, I would be glad to know where you write about how it works, because to be honest, I too have never encountered a place where you present this from the ground up, aside from scattered mentions here and there of “ideational perception,” an auditory sense, and the like.
2. I had a question about causality according to your approach:
As is well known, if we cast doubt on the process of causality, then we cannot place trust in what we see. After all, even the assumption that the light waves reflected onto the retina caused the psycho-physical connection involved in the image we see itself assumes a causal connection. So it also does not help to see the idea of causality as something external to us, because the very perception of that idea is itself only in accordance with the assumption of causality within our own mind.
P.S.
If I understood correctly the claims he raised, he adheres to Kant’s approach in the style of transcendental idealism. And to any difficulty regarding the need for a coordinating factor between thought and the world, he raises the claim that this is a logical contradiction (something we are unable to think) or a tautology…
 

Answer

  1. I did not understand the question. What does it mean, how does it work? Do you expect me to point to the part of the brain that activates it and explain how it works? It is simply there, that’s all. How does the neural mechanism work? Or our mathematical or philosophical thinking? I do not understand the question.

I did not understand the comment about irony and about my being rational.
2. Who is “he”? What are you talking about? I did not understand a word here.

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