Q&A: A Question in the Context of The Science of Freedom
A Question in the Context of The Science of Freedom
Question
Honorable Rabbi, hello.
I am currently reading The Science of Freedom… and I wanted to ask—well, the truth is that quite a few questions naturally came up while reading… but for the sake of practicality I’ll raise one issue that occurred to me in the context of superposition. It seems to be implied—between the lines—that the spiritual parallel to a state of superposition, or for that matter a state in which observation/measurement and intervention have not yet taken place, is that Heaven has not yet decided what the outcome will be…. That is, an ontological gap in reality is a kind of expression of lack of determination from Heaven… although even that lack of determination is itself only apparent…. Could you sharpen this point? The connection between observation, superposition, choice, and judgment from Heaven…?
Answer
Greetings.
I do not know where you saw there any discussion of what happens in Heaven. In the book I deal only with what happens on the ground. What I wanted to say is that in order to embed the phenomenon of free will within physics, one has to find gaps in physics (non-deterministic points within it), and that exists only in quantum theory. But I showed there that even quantum theory does not make this possible, because free choice is an act done with deliberation, whereas quantum collapse is the result of a lottery according to a given distribution. Human involvement (or God’s) in a quantum system would also be a deviation from the laws of physics.
Discussion on Answer
Heaven appears there only in the parable. I didn’t understand what is unclear. It’s a very simple situation. An ordinary doubt in betrothal is a case where a man betroths a woman and does not remember which one she is. In such a situation there is a particular woman who is married to him, and in Heaven they know who she is, but he does not have that information. He is missing information. Such a doubt is called an epistemic doubt. The information is missing in the person’s awareness.
In the case discussed there, a man betrothed one of two women without specifying which one of them (for example, he gave a perutah to a father and betrothed one of his daughters). In such a situation there is not one particular woman who is betrothed and whose identity is known in Heaven. There is no specific woman who is the betrothed one. Therefore this is an ontic (real) doubt and not an epistemic (cognitive) one. It is an ambiguity in reality itself and not a doubt in the usual sense.
The claim is that in quantum theory there is a similar state. There too a particle passes through two slits, but there is not one slit through which it “really” passed. There is ambiguity in reality itself. The physical meaning is described in the thought experiment known as “Schrodinger’s cat,” which is described there, and you can also look it up online.
No problem—I understood everything you wrote… I just wanted to understand more deeply the sentence you wrote in your reply: “there is no one whom Heaven knows she is”… There is an internal contradiction in that sentence… How can Heaven not know? Maybe that contributes to the issue of freedom, but it limits “infinity”… But honestly, this whole exchange is making me think that maybe I’m being overly nitpicky… If you brought in the matter of Heaven as a mere parable—for the sake of sharpening the point, and not that such a state really exists in Heaven (that they don’t know… it’s just that putting Heaven and not-knowing in the same sentence doesn’t sit well with me logically)
In the case I described, such a state really does exist. Heaven does not know because there is nothing to know. There is no specific woman. As I explained, this is not a lack of knowledge on the part of the person, but an ambiguity in reality itself.
Think about it: does Heaven know who the current Emperor of France is? No, because there is no such emperor.
Got it. Thank you very much! Sabbath peace 🙂
Honorable Rabbi, hello,
On p. 283 of the book—in the fifth intermezzo—you describe an ontological state in which Heaven does not know which woman was actually married… It’s hard to ignore the parallel between what is described there and the “ontological freedom” of quantum mechanics… What interests me is what the physical meaning is, if any, of “Heaven has not decided”… A non-physical meaning would also work…. That sentence is just very profound…