Salmanowitz, your esteem and its loss are certainly fascinating and meaningful subjects for all of us (though of course not quite like the question whether, in your true taste, you really prefer pickles in vinegar or in brine), but all the better: now you can judge the arguments on their merits without the common ad hominem bias. Esteem helps (only) so as not to dismiss out of hand arguments that on a superficial reading seem flawed, and then in trying to clarify the flaw to yourself you discover that they are actually solid, or at least lead to sharper definitions, distinctions, and insights. In my own experience, the best arguments initially look patently absurd. So when I feel that sense of absurdity rising quickly in me, I know it’s a good opportunity to think and formulate my view in an orderly way, and maybe reconsider and correct it. If it really is absurd, then it’s easy to sharpen and focus the absurdity and then forget the matter. When you declare a loss of esteem, then aside from an emotional announcement to the nation about your ratings of personalities in the world, the meaning is (I assume) that you’re declaring you won’t bother to think about or respond to arguments on the site. And in that there is, of course, nothing remarkable.

Maybe in my life I’ve met three people as smart as Michael Abraham — the logic, the thorough analysis, he exhausts the arguments while leaving his opponent panting.
I simply fell in love with the man and his views.
But from post to post (especially once he started getting broader exposure and many more visits to the blog), I began to feel how he’s mixing us up and taking us all into a witches’ dance with hollow arguments that he himself, if he wanted to catch them on the other side, would do better than all of us.
You can see it a bit in his article “Let Us Make an Uproar,” where basically he conveys a hidden/overt message about how sometimes people can confuse us with empty discussions full of reductions and lots of content that says nothing. (I identify with his message.) But exactly what he did in “Let Us Make an Uproar” you can definitely see in Michael Abraham — how he confuses us.
(This is apart from the pure heresy he feeds us morning and evening. I especially recoiled from the political columns he wrote.)
Had the claims raised in those posts been raised by any of his critics, he would have turned us upside down and spun us around.
He is not striving for truth; he is striving for noise, for being talked about (he enjoys it more than anything when people attack him — attack me, just keep talking about me!). He is a man of provocations.

This is definitely not the same Michael Abraham from seven years ago (when his videos first started appearing on YouTube, where he looked and sounded upright, genuine, and smart. Today he is smarter — not upright and not genuine).

And just to clarify: I haven’t voted for any party for close to 14 years (so people here shouldn’t start humming that I was hurt on behalf of my representatives in the Knesset).

You’re not saying anything. You’re just making empty declarations. Give examples of confusing arguments of that kind that back up your claims, and then what you wrote will have some weight. If you don’t do that, you’re just piling things up.
The fact that the rabbi represents the contrary position doesn’t prove he’s looking for attention. It may be a necessary result, since not everybody thinks as clearly as he does — a person sees only from the thoughts of his own heart.
Formulate something substantive, or spare all of us — and especially yourself — the embarrassment.
Speaking of which, on the same subject, Spinoza writes at the beginning of his Theological-Political Treatise that a person defends his positions with the same tools with which he grounds them. So if your positions are backed by the same tools with which you criticized the rabbi, your situation is very bad.

Salmanowitz, write less about what you met and loved and felt and voted, and write more arguments to the point. This isn’t an autobiography or a family-roots project. Try to point, with reasons, to one argument (or two or three) that is fundamentally crooked (as opposed to your simply happening or not happening to disagree and having objections), and that in itself — as opposed to this or that phrasing — was, in your view, written for the sake of pure provocation in perfect unity; and let us judge for ourselves the credibility of your theory and generalization. It’s amazing to see that after, by your account, going through all the columns on the site, you still missed the central thread running through all of them: a commitment to orderly reasoning and a clear, exhaustive indication of the route to the conclusion.

I’m not the questioner, but I’ll give an example from the recent columns.
For example, regarding Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman, of blessed memory.

I really love Michi’s thinking, learn a tremendous amount from him, and am impressed by his rare brilliance and sharpness. On the contrary, I think there are very few philosophers today (most are researchers), and Michi is a real philosopher. I’m tiny compared to him. And having said all that, there is one thing true in our friend’s complaint. Michi does indeed tend to “mix us up” sometimes. I feel it again and again in our arguments (I don’t need to bring examples; they’re abundant in these exchanges).
Still, our friend here exaggerated a bit in my opinion in his criticism.
The “mixing up” from Michi’s school does not stand on its own. It is accompanied by a tremendous effort on his part (even if it sometimes fails) to display intellectual honesty. It’s just that sometimes he doesn’t succeed.

Specifically regarding you, Doron, I actually feel that if anyone is mixing up the readers, it’s you. If you choose an example of an argument you took part in, I’ll try to demonstrate (if I do indeed think so about it) the problematic aspect.

I fear that much of the feeling described here is felt because of the rabbi’s behavior, which is sometimes on the verge of coarseness,
and because we were educated on the lofty character traits of the sages, it’s hard for us with this.
Maybe it’s just a strict House of Shammai style, but sometimes it gives off bad feelings.
In my opinion, if Rabbi Michael were to be a bit more careful with the honor of those writing, commenting, and asking — except when there’s no choice, of course — we would all benefit.

Homunculus, I think you got a bit confused (“mixed up”?). The claimant made a claim against Michi’s conduct, not against mine, and I, the little one, joined it partially.
If you have an opinion on the matter, kindly express it.
I really don’t understand what use you have for the views of a nonentity like me, even if he really is “mixing things up.”

You can’t leave entirely empty-handed. I wrote a lot here about the model of Torah from Heaven and its deficiencies (see “The Status of the Torah in Possible Worlds”), and in my opinion Michi’s responses were not substantive. Maybe you’ll succeed where he failed and set me straight about my mistakes.
Blessings.

Doron, since you partially joined in and even volunteered — unlike the honored first claimant, may his glory be exalted — to finally provide an example one can sink one’s teeth into, I volunteered to examine the example (based on my casual impression).
Assuming you didn’t come here merely to make declarations about your impressions to an audience following your Instagram stories, but also to provide the factual basis on which they rest, it seems only natural to reconstruct the experiment and check whether your conclusions are valid.
To refute your “mixing up” hypothesis, it isn’t necessary to set you straight on your mistakes (if there are such), but only to examine whether the most reasonable explanation for Michael Abraham not agreeing with your opinion on the matter, or not convincing you (which for some reason you call a “failure”), is confusion and evasion.
Of course it is also possible that I will agree with your opinion, as in many other disputes where I do not agree with Michael Abraham’s opinion. Including cases where I discussed something with him and he finally signed off saying that in his opinion my words were strange or nonsense, etc. Do I see that as “mixing up”? No. That is his opinion (and out of respect for it I think twice before deciding not to accept it). In his view the reasons were sufficient and what I claimed didn’t change anything significant or require a response, and he finds no point in further threshing the issue like beating willow branches; and in my view, presumably, at least in the cases where I wasn’t convinced, my claims were more successful. So what?

Regarding the example you brought — “The Status of the Torah in Possible Worlds” — I found this link: https://tinyurl.com/umqrtbd. You wrote there that this question rests on previous discussions, but I didn’t find them (please give a link). I read the discussion now (and I also read it at the time). If you want to go into details with me — please do. If not — then here’s the story I’m uploading in response to my Instagram: the answers there were excellent in my opinion.

You can’t leave entirely empty-handed, so I’ll write briefly. [Of course I represent only myself, and it is entirely possible that what I describe as Michael Abraham’s view does not coincide with his own self-understanding.] In a completely different world God might give a different Torah, but in the current world (there is room for the claim that — and for present purposes let us assume the claim that) the Torah is necessary. So far this is agreed.
Now there is a separate question whether the Torah “reveals” to us its opinion on the matter, or whether it “claims” that it is necessary in all worlds. Even if our Torah indeed says so (something not established), it is still entirely possible that in another world God could give a different Torah, and that Torah too could of course reveal its opinion that it is the necessary one in all worlds. The fact that in a certain world it is necessary to give a certain Torah does not mean that this Torah is necessary in all worlds, even if this specific Torah claims that it is necessary in all worlds.
If a certain logical argument is necessary in all worlds, then indeed in all worlds it will be necessary in all worlds. In Torah, or in any other source of commands, it is not so. I understand that this too is agreed so far (though perhaps the distinction between logical arguments and Torah is not agreed?).
From here on, it is hard for me to distill a distinct claim from what you wrote there (later on). If you’d bother to do so again here, after stating whether you agree with my summary of what is agreed, then I’ll try to respond.

1. Fine, I understand that you’ve never encountered a case where Michi tries to BS his interlocutor? I believe you that this is your impression. Truly, in most cases Michi maintains rare intellectual honesty (not sarcastically). I have encountered it.

2. I still don’t understand what benefit you derive from investing so many resources in the “musings” of a middling thinker like me. Isn’t your time a shame to waste?
3. The example I gave of the place where Michi, in my impression, tried to smear things over with me, was regarding the Torah. I pulled it from memory, and now that I look into it more deeply, I see it isn’t decisive. In the next response I’ll bring you a better example.
4. Even so, even in this less successful example there’s too high a nonsense coefficient for my taste (certainly when it comes from someone I value so much).
I’ll present it in a separate comment, that all may see and fear.

Doron, look — you declared your “impression,” were asked to provide an example (hopefully the strongest example you could find), and indeed gave one. On examination it turned out (in my opinion, and you too admitted this somewhat) that this example in no way supports the “impression.” Which means (for me) that the declaration of impression is completely worthless. And that is exactly why I asked for an example: making declarations is easy (and worthless); standing behind declarations and reasoning them out is hard (and very valuable), and in many cases it turns out that the declaration is merely a subjective and unconvincing judgment presented without the reasons, in order to persuade beyond what it deserves.

If I may be a bit blunter, in my opinion the “mixing-up coefficient” in the example you gave stands at an even zero. The coefficient of floundering and stubbornness, on the other hand, is not floundering in shallow waters at all. The thought under discussion does not interest me in itself (and in my opinion everything written there was either wrong or trivial); it serves only as a basis for examining the “impression” (which is interesting), and also led to a warning against scattering unsupported declarations to every wind.

I indeed have not encountered BS. In my opinion what was written genuinely represents the writer. With me too, as a questioner/commenter, there have been cases where after one response I was told that the discussion had been exhausted, while in my opinion it had not been exhausted (and therefore I wasn’t convinced). Sometimes I think that this is his final opinion on the matter, and sometimes I tell myself that in my view if he thought about it more, he would be convinced that I was right — but of course there’s nothing unique about that, and presumably that is exactly what everyone else thinks about anyone else they discuss with. Sometimes a few other colorful superlatives of criticism were added too, and the special (and characteristic) point is that even the superlatives carry information and help one understand the respondent’s view (or help me focus my directions of reconsideration). Obviously one cannot expect a person to give private lessons here voluntarily to every seeker until the seeker himself certifies that the discussion has been exhausted.

I’m a bit embarrassed to stand on a person’s own site and conduct a discussion about him himself, and under a pseudonym no less; but necessity is not to be condemned, and perhaps soon the site editor will sink this whole exceptional thread speedily into the abyss, fulfilling that which was said: “I covered the deep over him and restrained its rivers,” and “he measured a thousand of a stream that I could not cross.” A man comes and allocates his knowledge and analytical ability at certain times for the public good, free of charge, and in my opinion people do not treat the donated resource with proper frugality. I do indeed expect that one who conducts a discussion here, especially if it grows long, should think twice and formulate twice before consuming the donated service (though perhaps others will think that I myself do not always meet this requirement). Such willingness and patience to answer every question (even “I don’t know” is an answer) — some of them questions that are the same lady arriving in the same dress again and again; some of them the tossing of a crumpled glove-tail into the arena with the expectation that the respondent himself sketch the entire map and considerations like a dog chasing a flying plate; some of them mere babble; some of them a lofty tower of airborne assumptions sealed with declarations; and some of them, of course, worthy of their name — is a unique thing. Others simply do not put their own patience or willingness to the test and do not answer publicly (or at all) except selected questions.

In any case, this is the last time I present my services here as Gvia ben Pesisa. From here on, if the owner of the ox wishes, he can stand up for his own ox himself.

You draw conclusions so fast that it seems to me you neither read nor absorbed what I said in my last response, and already you have firm conclusions about what I said. I wrote explicitly that even in my weak example there is some substance, and it will be presented below (together with a more decisive example). A little patience…

An argument about the law of the excluded middle (though I asked a more general question, the discussion funneled into that issue). It’s recommended to go to the end of the discussion and to the references I found, apparently specifically for my claims in Michi’s own writings.

https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%91-%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%94

An argument about his understanding of Leibowitz

שרירותיות הרצון במשנתו של ליבוביץ – פוזיטיביזם ופלורליזם

An argument about the conceptual status of space in general relativity:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%97%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%93%D7%A2

Homunculus,

I am not claiming that the Torah “reveals” its opinion to us explicitly in the text and says that it is necessary in all worlds. No. I claim that our intellect, contemplating the theological model that Judaism offers us, is what reveals this to us. Especially the intellect as used by one who holds the position Michi calls synthetic.

Ask yourself what the most basic foundational fact is that the Torah reveals to us. My answer is: the very fact that it was given at Sinai, of course by God. Now ask yourself how the Torah “educates” us to recognize this foundational fact. In other words: what is the Torah’s preferred “epistemic channel” for knowing God and His involvement in history? My answer: the channel that stands before us in actuality, namely the text. In any case, according to the Torah, our intuitions are not what should determine this matter (though I’m not saying the Torah cancels them completely).

From here it is a short road to rooting and cultivating the analytic norm: whenever a theological dilemma arises before us about whom to choose — our intuition on the one hand, or the text and the tradition based upon it on the other — Judaism obligates us, first of all, to the text.

And how does this connect to the necessary status of the Torah in all possible worlds? Very simply: the analytic model strives to put everything on logic (in fact on tautologies). In order to succeed at this, it must deny the existence of the intuitive human capacity to grasp contents separate from it (objects, meanings, etc.). In the absence of contents separate from the information that carries them — such as, for example, the content of the concept “God” — it becomes mere empty form, and therefore necessary. The Torah, insofar as it is a text bearing “information,” instructs us to interpret that information as empty of content.

To this I remind you that I added one example, quite famous and historically fairly successful, of a slightly more synthetic theological model than the one Judaism offers. Accordingly you should understand that even if the core of my argument is philosophical, some support can be given to it from actual reality.

My suspicion is that Michi understands perfectly well everything I wrote here. In addition, he certainly understands that if he wants to be consistent in his synthetic approach (which seems right and rational to me), he should have tried to analyze this theological model in a similar way, that is, to examine whether it meets the criterion of syntheticity. On the contrary, in my opinion a central part of his whole enterprise is exactly this — to analyze the failures of Jewish tradition and restore a bit of common sense to it. Not for nothing do his critics “from the right” claim against him that there is only a hair’s breadth between his path and the path of heresy in Judaism. I think that on this point they are absolutely right (except that unlike them, I think the “heresy” they attribute to him is a positive thing and that he really ought to move in its direction).

In conclusion, “little man” (as you know, that is the meaning of the nickname you chose), I want to apologize deeply to you for daring, alongside the abundance of praise I bestowed on Michi, also to claim (with examples and reasons) that here and there he is not only mistaken but also whitewashes. I know there isn’t much to expect from an apostate Jew like me, but apparently this time even I overfilled the cup.
Forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.

Examples are excellent, and I respect you for standing by and grounding your claim. I understand that you did not manage (rightly) to find any “substance” in the previous example you brought regarding Torah in possible worlds, and therefore my conclusion about that discussion remains in place. Although I declared that I would not continue on this matter, I am ready and prepared to redeem my word for the benefit of the issue. With the trivial clarification that I am here only as Gvia ben Pesisa and nothing more. If I was right, hooray; and if not, the error depends on no one but me.

In sum — regarding logic I think you complained for nothing; regarding Leibowitz I think you made good arguments (and got excellent answers, but I’ll try to repeat them); on space and time I have not delved deeply.

Logic
I read the entire long discussion. What shall I say and how shall I speak? Tremors seized me like a woman in labor, like fish of the sea caught in a net, and I call upon myself the verse: “They journeyed from Mount Shepher and encamped in Haradah.” If that discussion seems to you an example of BS directed at you, then I wonder and stand astonished over chaos: let my soul die the death of the upright, and let my end be like his.
Never in my life have I seen a more courteous and called-for answer than: “You have not defined what dichotomousness is. You have not shown how the three laws of thought stand upon it (that is, how they can be derived from one principle which you called dichotomousness), and as long as you haven’t done that, there is no point in the discussion.” If without a clear response to this you accuse someone of BS, then remove the splinter from between your teeth and the whole forest of Lebanon’s cedars from before your eyes. I think I could explain everything written there in the answers, but ArtScroll itself is also ArtScroll for ArtScroll, and enough said.

A good beginning would be to explain the meaning of the sentence you wrote: “In logic the first law (tautology) embeds the existence of the second law (contradiction). The law of the excluded middle is nothing but a combination of the first and second laws.” Up to here, your language.
“Contradiction contradicts tautology” means that if a certain proposition is a contradiction, then it is not a tautology. The proposition “proposition A is both a contradiction and a tautology” is itself a contradiction. The proposition “if proposition A is a contradiction then it is not a tautology” is a tautology (though perhaps here one must assume the inference rule modus ponens. Rules of inference are in the background; see Gödel, Escher, Bach under the name Lewis Carroll, etc.). That does not mean in any way that every proposition in the world is either a contradiction or a tautology. For example, a proposition like “A is B” (“the ball is green”) is neither a contradiction nor a tautology.
The law of the excluded middle basically claims that double negation is identical to affirmation (“A” is identical to “not not A”), and there is no problem of consistency in omitting this law. Consistency means that within the system of inference one cannot arrive at two contradictory propositions (one cannot arrive at the proposition “A” and also arrive at the proposition “not A”).

Regarding your attempt to find a problem of consistency in many-valued logic, it is hard for me to expand because I don’t know that logic well enough (it wasn’t on the syllabus in the logic course — what can you do). In any event, it was brought there only as a counterexample proving that your claim (which was not defined) is incorrect. It seems you claimed there is a certain principle — what you called dichotomousness, and claimed is equivalent to the three laws — such that accepting it entails all three logical laws you mentioned, and not accepting it entails the negation of all three. To refute this, it is enough to point to a consistent theory in which one of the three laws does not hold, even without understanding your claim or explaining why it is incorrect. Whether that consistent theory is true or not is already a completely different matter that is not logic.

Leibowitz
I read the comments now (I was already familiar with the article itself). In this case I actually think I might be able to explain Michi’s words to you better than he himself did there. You basically argued there that if values are objectively true, then they are facts in the world, and there is no distinction between facts and those values. And if they are not objectively true, then the “will” to choose them is nothing but arbitrariness. [Inspect and forget whether this is a fair summary of your claims there. Or correct me.] These are fine arguments.
The answer is that values are existing spiritual facts, and there is a difference between them and physical facts. Spiritual facts are identified and judged by different tools than physical ones. The naturalistic fallacy still stands with regard to physical facts, as does the inability to prove (as opposed to persuade) spiritual facts. The will to choose them (and obey them) is not arbitrary, just as any other free choice is not arbitrary, even though it is not reasoned. There is still room to discuss this topic from several angles (among them the relation between decision and cognition, all the more so if you read Two Wagons and Man as Grass), but I think what I wrote here is enough. Do you agree?

You sent your previous response about the Torah while I was typing my previous response (about logic and Leibowitz), so I didn’t see it. Forgive me, but here I am joining the whitewashing-and-BS team and withdrawing from this discussion. I didn’t understand how one sentence connects to another there. Perhaps your thoughts are so deep that the hand of my weary intellect is too short to reach them.

Apology and forgiveness — from whom and for what? It doesn’t seem to me that Michael Abraham himself wastes his time reading the tedious length here (for which I am to blame), and toward me, what is there to apologize for? (I definitely think you should apologize to him if he did happen to read what you wrote.) If you justify your claims convincingly, then you are also entitled to claim that I myself am a bald toad and an idiot, and certainly I will not stand in your way if you say such things about others. I have no emotional stake in this discussion, and I am here mainly because, as I noted above, I resent the defective use that people in my view make of a resource donated with such generosity.

I have to say that I too went through a similar process!
At first everything looked shiny, but later you really do feel that provocations are being sought here ((it’s hard to produce, week after week, a truly successful and worthwhile column when most topics were exhausted long ago, and so people get dragged into poor performances).

Homunculus, judging by the degree of your indignation over the defective use of resources, it seems you have a highly developed social consciousness. Truly a model citizen.
I fear I am a much less good person and citizen than you, and apparently therefore I don’t have the same sensitivities.
Since I am also petty by nature, I may consider responding later to your objections to my claims themselves.
Blessings.

Responding to objections is not pettiness.

Doron, the one who is mixing things up is you, not Rabbi Michi (though maybe Rabbi Michi too). It’s true that Jewish law is built in a very analytic structure, but its object — that is, reality — is very synthetic. Therefore, alongside the analytic scholars there are always the synthetic decisors, who compare one matter to another and determine which law applies. And it is well known that halakhic decisors usually have common sense that does not stem specifically from the analytic view but specifically from the synthetic view of reality. Part of the problem of Haredi Judaism today stems from disconnection from reality as a result of a conscious decision to shut itself up in yeshivot, but that does not mean that Judaism is categorically disconnected from reality or lacking synthetic capacity.

In addition, I want to apologize for one time that I needled you improperly. Forgive me.

This whole thread feels like the darknet of Rabbi Michi’s site. So after all the pilpul — protest. Salmanowitz, you are a guest on a site intended to provide answers to halakhic questions and matters of faith, and what troubles you is Rabbi Michi’s “heresy.” Suppose so. What disgusts me more is the denial of God that allows behavior like this under the guise of a dispute for the sake of Heaven. You are allowed to apologize — even for the mere possibility that you are mistaken in your considerations about him. Otherwise — and I write this in complete seriousness — you too really resemble everything you criticized in him. This is immorality, and it arouses revulsion, to enter territory that is not yours and spew criticism and personal public humiliation, all in the name of Torah. If this is not heresy, I do not know what heresy is.

P.S. The writer of these lines greatly appreciates Rabbi Michi and at the same time does not agree with many of his assumptions and conclusions. I do not promise that I won’t go at him head-on when necessary — but with the important difference between “love at the end” and “it is Torah that makes him heated” — in the bad sense of the phrase.

May it be His will.

gil
In a city, follow its manners — or in Rome, behave like a Roman. I too greatly appreciate Rabbi Michi’s abilities, but in exalted character traits, well…

Dear Y.D. (are you the regular Y.D. here?)
It seems to me that you didn’t address at all the issue I’m dealing with. I attribute “analyticity” to the Pentateuch itself, that is, to the model the Pentateuch offers (the possibility of Torah from Heaven).
You’re talking about scholars and halakhic decisors, but that is not relevant to my claims.

By the way, as I hinted earlier, I get the impression that a deep and broad part of Judaism is infected with analytic patterns of thought, and specifically Michi is the one making heroic efforts
to weed them out. That doesn’t mean he isn’t infected here and there with the same “disease.”

So I promised a little pettiness (out of the endless abundance I possess), so here it is.

The law of the excluded middle:
First of all, it’s not clear to me why you referred (Homunculus) to the discussion about dichotomousness. I wrote explicitly that I am “complaining” only about the part dealing with the excluded middle.

Here I have 3 points of criticism of Michi’s words:

1. I brought something that seemed to me a support for my words from a certified and renowned logician (Suszko). To the best of my understanding, Suszko is making a principled philosophical claim (not just a technical logical argument), and in it he expresses the very same principled position that I expressed. In his opinion, many-valued logic can be reduced to two-valued logic. From this it follows that the idea that many-valued logic is consistent is an idea that is itself inconsistent (it itself relies on dichotomous two-valued thinking). Suszko calls the very idea that there is many-valued logic “madness.”
I’d be glad if you or one of the readers would correct me and say I did not understand his words.

2. I brought a whole collection of supports from Michi’s own words in which he supposedly says exactly everything I argued against him in that discussion.
Again, if someone explains to me that I didn’t understand what I’m quoting, I would be grateful.

3. Finally, a substantive and essential argument of my own (to the best of my meager abilities): I argued that someone who decides to reject the law of the excluded middle seriously and consistently would have to do so with respect to the whole set of all propositions in the world. Consequently, he must also apply this to the proposition that the law of the excluded middle is not necessary.
If I am right so far, it follows that one who espouses this claim (like Lukasiewicz) holds a problematic position. I raised this problem before Michi, and he, trying to save the owner of that position, maintained that “this means that if you prove that this proposition is not correct, you still have not proved that it is false, but perhaps it has a third truth value (for example: undetermined, paradoxical, and the like).”
Against this I replied that the remedy he proposes to the difficulty I raised is worse than the disease. Someone who presumes to espouse (like Lukasiewicz, and Michi for this purpose supports him) an “truth” that is “undetermined or paradoxical” bears the burden of proof to explain what he means. What is that “truth”…?

As stated, the important part for people of my type and level is the petty and narrow-minded occupation with the supposed mistakes of others. Still, at the margins of the discussion I find no small interest in the question of the excluded middle and in the philosophical and metaphysical foundations of logic. I have a feeling there is a deep connection between this issue and the “Michi-style” division between analyticity and syntheticity. I’d be glad if Michi would deal with it in the future.

As for the other objections — later on.

With so many possibilities I raise for myself to understand what each person says and what each person understood from the other’s words, I end up with a broken telephone. Maybe there really is some insight (some insight, or a new one) in what you wrote — I no longer know.

I referred to dichotomousness because you use the excluded middle on the way to proving your claim about dichotomousness. Are you saying that every proposition can receive only one of two values, truth or falsehood (as was simply suggested), and then you claim that the validity of the three laws (tautology, contradiction, and the excluded middle) is a natural offspring of thought (and that is why those laws were chosen)?

1. What Suszko is trying to do I did not understand (and I suspect you didn’t either). Maybe I’ll try to delve into it only if this becomes the last point in the argument.
2. The supports say that indeed every proposition judged by the intellect is either true or false. The proposition that a certain proposition has truth value X is itself either true or false. If one inserts this reflexive proposition into the system of inference, then it can again receive any of the possible truth values in the system (while in the intellect this nested proposition has a binary truth value).
3. Rejecting the law of the excluded middle can be done just like that (you simply pull it out of the system of inference, without justifying it), and it can also rest on the fact that there are more than two possible truth values for each proposition. Are you asking what goes through the mind of someone who says that the double negation of a proposition is not a proof of the proposition? Here there is no pointing to paradoxicality at all, only an innocent question about the innovation of that view itself. I did not understand what you found special in asking that question about the law of the excluded middle itself. I don’t understand many-valued logic, but I do understand that there are formal systems of inference that do not use the law of the excluded middle, and I’m not sure I understood whether and what you are claiming about that. The law of the excluded middle is not a law in the system, just as the law of green balls is not a law in the system. I do not see any circularity here.

I’ve long suspected that Michi is a disguised heretic.
What reasonable person would believe that God does not intervene, does not give reward and punishment either in this world or the world to come, does not prepare the world for redemption, and nevertheless gives a person the obligation to die rather than transgress His commandments?
In the language of psychologists, I’d say that Michi in his subconscious doesn’t believe in God at all, and because of his frustration (or in modern terms: envy and disappointment) that others do believe and cannot free themselves from their childish picture, he invented for himself a new religion in which he can keep commandments while in practice believing only in a medieval philosophical God (and it’s very tempting to explain this against the background that he wants to look smarter and loftier than others while at the same time saying: I can keep commandments just like you).
That’s also why, instead of spending his free time working on his character traits (which need improvement), on love of the Jewish people and of human beings (which does not exist in him at all), he prefers to watch sports and read books by anti-Semitic philosophers like Kant.
Did Michi ever try going to a psychologist?
I’m sure that after he explains to you that it’s perfectly fine even at age 60 to undergo an upheaval and change your lifestyle, you can already produce for us the next book in the trilogy,
which will explain to us the religion of pure reason from your rabbis and teachers in Western culture. You’ll explain to us that the initial existence of a deity is indeed very possible — but the pure rational move, after
it no longer intervenes today as you have already proved to us in the past — indicates that its command ought to be more categorical and universal, less ritualistic, probably engagement in contemplative life and the study of nature.
There you’ll try again to upgrade Judaism to an even more rational version: there is no revelation today, so apparently there also wasn’t any in the past; the existence of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses our teacher, and the prophets will be explained as great philosophers who through intellect reached very great insights, but you do not buy the miracle stories and their prophecy; a person can err, and the revelation was not divine at all but only their hypothesis.

In your view, the commandments will be taken as binding today simply because we committed ourselves to observe them, and presumably the Holy One, blessed be He, wants every nation in the world to worship Him in some way.
But the irrelevant Jewish law?
We’ll change it.
From today we don’t pray because the Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t answer prayers.
We study Torah alongside philosophy books and other studies — the main worship of God!
Observing restrictions on physical contact? Not relevant today.
The prohibition of meat and milk? Not relevant.
We should be lenient in the laws of menstrual separation because of human dignity.
And of course there’s no need for primitive things like giving a bill of divorce to a woman.
And male homosexual relations? A prohibition not relevant today.

Likewise we should recognize the value of autonomy — even idolatrous religions like Islam and Hinduism are important philosophy, so why not respect that and open these options before a youth? Maybe that’s what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants for him?

Our Ishmaelite brothers actually managed to reach belief in divine unity like us. The Qur’an will be considered canonical in the holy libraryyyy.

Idolatrous religions like Christianity and Hinduism, sorry.
Muhammad was no less an important philosopher than Moses.

And I hope you understand that I’m being sarcastic… but don’t be surprised if a response in this style soon comes in all seriousness.

There is satire that puts a magnifying glass on a valid point, and there is satire that simply reveals lack of understanding and superficiality. Claims like “the prohibition of meat and milk — not relevant” or referring to giving a bill of divorce as something primitive are in no way connected to the other claims, and they just float in the air. Every isolated act in the world is primitive if one does not relate to its motivations. In viewing marriage as a metaphysical bond that can be severed only through a certain procedure, there is nothing primitive at all; quite the contrary.

Hey,
the word primitive is indeed a mistake, but I think there is a connection — insofar as the form is just a philosophy book trying to worship the Holy One, blessed be He, correctly, prohibitions written out of philosophical assumptions that don’t fit the modern lifestyle — presumably there’s no point in keeping them.

In any case, yes, not such a successful satire, but I had to.

Torah*

Where is there adaptation to the modern lifestyle? The reason to observe the commandments today is exactly the same reason that the sages of the Talmud had: because God commanded, and He has metaphysical or physical reasons not necessarily known to us. Interpretation that expands or limits the scope of a certain command beyond what appears from a simplistic reading of the text is something that has been done throughout the generations all the time. The “not so successful” satire reflects the fact that for you there is one big dough mixed with oil made up of all those who do not fully accept the common Orthodox position.
Let me put it this way: why do you think one should give a bill of divorce to a woman, and why do you think canceling that is somehow a continuation of Michael Abraham’s views? (I, by the way, think that in his books he specifically gives theoretical grounding to “essentialist” explanations of legal statuses and commandments.)

My 3 little comments got answers, but I didn’t find in your response what I’m looking for.

1. Regarding Suszko’s view: on the logical-technical issue I don’t understand and don’t claim to understand. That is not what the discussion is about.
At the same time, to the best of my understanding, he has a relatively simple philosophical statement about logic, and specifically about the law of the excluded middle. He argues that every attempt to deviate from traditional binary logic is made upon a binary “substrate” itself.
Very simple in my opinion.
Someone who denies that (binary) truth condemns “his truth” — that is, his claim that one can depart from binarity — to the status of “undetermined or paradoxical,” in Michi’s words.
It seems to me everyone understands that if someone expresses a position that according to his own method has the logical status of “undetermined or paradoxical,” the burden of proof is on him to clarify what he means.
2. Regarding the supports I brought from Michi: there’s a simple yes-or-no question here. And that is what you need to decide. In these passages, does Michi contradict the position he expressed in the argument with me or not? If yes, then that is what I have been claiming all along. If not, then why not (reasoning)?
3. Point 3 was actually explained above when I tried to explain Suszko.

Inside the system, one can use several truth rules. When judging the system’s claim by the intellect (what Michi called a metalanguage), there are always only two truth values. There is no contradiction, and you didn’t explain what was unsatisfactory for you in the clear explanation I wrote in section 2. Every proposition can be viewed formally from within the system and intellectually from outside it. Is all you wanted to say that the conception of only two truth values naturally gives rise to the three laws?

I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, and in any case in my opinion you are complicating yourself and the matter for no reason.

To the best of my judgment, section 2 can have only two answers — yes or no.

Does Michi contradict his words, or not?

And the principled question is also very simple: when someone attributes to a certain proposition a paradoxical or “undetermined” status (as in the case of Lukasiewicz and the like, at least according to Michi), then he is undermining what he says — that is, condemning his own words to ambiguity.
Yes or no?

I think what you call “inside the system” is that logical-technical layer I’m not discussing at all, and in any case even if “inside” one can use several truth values, that use depends on the more basic layer (which you call here “intellect”).

Leibowitz:

Homunculus, in my opinion your answer regarding Leibowitz also deviates from the main point and the central difficulty I posed to Michi in his article. That difficulty is the attitude toward dualism.
The main question is whether Leibowitz was a dualist or only “pretended” to be one. I think he “pretended.”

According to Michi, Leibowitz was a positivist (or at least was greatly influenced by that movement). I think Michi is right about that. As is known, positivism is anti-metaphysical or even anti-metaphysics, and denies the meaningfulness of discussing “spirit.” Therefore it is not dualistic.
Isn’t that so?

I’m not entering right now into practical philosophy (that is, the relation to values and morality) in Leibowitz. There his anti-dualism seems even more blatant to me.

And here too there’s an interesting discussion.
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%a9%d7%90%d7%9c%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%a2%d7%9c-%d7%94%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%96%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%95-%D7%AA%D7%90%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%AA

I’ll try, with your permission, to explain once more. Suppose every proposition p1 can receive one of 5 possible truth values: x1, x2, x3, x4, x5. That’s how we decided in our system.
If we have the proposition p1 in the formal system of inference, then it can have 5 possible values. Suppose in the system of inference the proposition p has the value x3.
That is, we state the proposition p2: “The proposition p1 has the value x3.”
The proposition p2 is not a proposition within the system of inference (otherwise one gets an infinite regress of propositions), but is stated already outside the system of inference, in human intellect. And this proposition p2 has only the truth value true or false.

But one can insert p2 into the system of inference (it refers to p1) and examine it.
Now the proposition p2 can receive one of five possible truth values:
It may be that the truth value of the proposition p2 “the proposition p1 has the truth value x3” is x1.
It may be that the truth value of the proposition p2 “the proposition p1 has the truth value x3” is x2.
And so on.
It may be that the truth value of the proposition p2 “the proposition p1 has the truth value x3” is x5.

When we say that p2 has the truth value x1, this is already said in the intellect, and that has a binary truth value.
But if one examines the possibility “p2 has the truth value x1” as a formal proposition within the system of inference, then again it can receive one of five possible values. And every attribution of a possible value is carried out in the intellect as above.

My questions:
A. Do you understand what I’m trying to say (as distinct from not agreeing with it)? That is, do you think I have said something here that you understand, or have I written gibberish?
B. Assuming I did not write gibberish and you understand what I’m saying, do you agree that this is also precisely Michael Abraham’s position?
C. Assuming this is Michael Abraham’s position, is there any contradiction at all?

When you say dualist, I understand you to mean that he admits there is an external world of spirit (not consciousness) in which values reside. Did I understand you correctly? Because Michael Abraham there thought that when you said dualist you meant the view that there is both matter and consciousness and they are two separate kinds of entities.

Regarding logic: I don’t understand you. Sorry.

1. What I do think I understand is this: your answer to me regarding section 2 is no. That is, in your opinion there is no contradiction between Michi’s views in the argument with me and what I brought as supports.

Did I understand you correctly?

2. Is my explanation of what Suszko said understandable to you? Do you at least understand (not necessarily agree) why I claim there is a very basic and relatively simple idea here?

I have to admit that your response arouses in me certain heretical thoughts about what I said… If you don’t even understand the point I’m raising (which for me seems a basic and simple point), maybe something is failing in my way of seeing the subject and Michi’s response.
Even though I don’t currently see what the failure on my side is (and therefore I still don’t think it exists), I am certainly willing to think twice about what I said on this subject (only).

Leibowitz spoke a great deal in dualistic language: duality between facts and values, between body and soul (what he called the psychophysical problem), between Torah and morality, and more.

In my opinion he tried desperately (and inconsistently) to defend dualism on all these fronts, not only on the front of matter and consciousness, as you noted.

Now please tell me: can a positivist like Leibowitz be a dualist in any sense? I think not.

In any case, the only possible answers in my eyes are yes or no (and if yes, please explain). I did not get a satisfactory answer to this from Michi.

Logic:
1. Indeed the answer is no. There is no contradiction.
Instead of my trying to explain, let me put a challenge before you.
You brought this citation as proof that Michi holds your view and contradicts himself:
“The resort to Lukasiewicz’s theory as an explanation of phenomena of logical absurdity is very common, and it is important to clarify that there is no explanation in this. In Lukasiewicz there is a formal description of a logical system with three truth values, but there is no explanation there of what the logic is behind such ‘thinking.’ There is no doubt that the understanding of Lukasiewicz’s logical system is itself done (in the metalanguage) in terms of conventional (two-valued) logic.”

The two most important words here are “in the metalanguage.”
When you bring this quotation as proof that Michi thinks what you think and contradicts himself, do you understand what these two important words are doing here?
If you do understand, kindly explain it to me. My long explanation was intended precisely to explain this in a very accurate way (before that I wrote a concise formulation, with reference to reflexive and nested propositions), and it is exactly the solution to the apparent contradiction you think you found. Do you think this quotation says that Lukasiewicz’s logic is all vanity and striving after wind?
Or will you say that you don’t understand exactly what is written in the quotation, but in general it seems to you to contradict what Michi said in the discussion with you.

2. With your description of Suszko — “every attempt to deviate from traditional binary logic is made on a binary ‘substrate’ itself” — I completely agree. And not only that, but Michi agrees with it too. That “substrate” is exactly the “metalanguage” Michi spoke about in the quotation I mentioned.
But. That does not mean in any way that a formal system of inference in which the law of the excluded middle is absent is inconsistent. Can one in such a system derive both a proposition “A” and the proposition “not A”? No! That means the system is consistent. Period. The substrate is irrelevant. The substrate is a property of the human intellect, not of the formal system of inference.
[Michi brought this there as proof that there is no equivalence among the three laws. If from each of the laws one can derive the other two — meaning they are all completely equivalent to each other — then every system that holds only two of the laws will be inconsistent. That is, within that system of inference one could reach a proposition and also its negation. That is the whole meaning of logical consistency, and that is what the whole discussion is about, and hence all the confusion, as Michi there desperately tried to explain].

Leibowitz.
Here too the answer is yes. Positivism (at least in Leibowitz) deals with what can be proved and what can be discussed, not with what exists. One can choose values, but one cannot argue about them. Is there any problem of consistency in this position?

I thought of something that might help. Do you know “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles,” this: https://tinyurl.com/twzalyf? I mentioned it in one of the comments above too.
The idea of a metalanguage is very similar. Binary logic is in the background but not part of the system. If you agree that one must absolutely accept what is written there as “the solution to the problem,” then I believe we’ll manage to reach common ground regarding our discussion here too. (If not, then the gap between us is larger than I thought.)

Rabbi Michi’s well-known claim regarding the physico-theological proof — that if there is a system of laws for the universe that does not inherently bear defects, we ought to uncover it — can be answered in the utmost simplicity: by the very definition of an omnipotent being is included the ability to create a system of laws for the universe that does not bear defects. Whoever claims that an omnipotent being cannot create a system different from this one bears the burden of proof, not us.

To Doron, good morning. The argument about the conceptual status of space in general relativity, in my view, highlights why Kant was right in saying that one cannot speak about metaphysics. You insist there on getting non-abstract definitions for abstract concepts. And what’s more, there are claims there that truly were beyond you, despite being understandable to little me. Too bad. I was already about to create with you a flag for the rebels against Michi.

Wow, sorry Doron, but even regarding your “dichotomousness” in logic there are bugs. I think our Rabbi Michi did faithful work there, and you’re simply deaf and blind. He’s a beast, and you’re the smoke that dissipates after the shelling. I remember that at the time I skimmed it and it seemed to me very, very much that Rabbi Michi was smearing you over. But after looking into it I discovered that you are not “a cistern that loses not a drop,” but just a pit. Interested in applying your principle of dichotomousness to that? … Even what our Rabbi Michi wrote to you about your lack of skill in logic, and you answered him that after all in his opinion there’s no need for technical knowledge — at the time I was sure you had trapped the rabbi. But now I know that from his side you were supposed to make the claim clear without prior knowledge. The problem was that you didn’t succeed. And our Rabbi Michi attributed your failure to the fact that presumably if you were proficient in logic and the concepts were clear to you, then your formulation about logic would also be clear. Take some advice from me: imagine that you are making his argument and he is making yours. Try to judge arguments without awareness of which claim serves our distorting ego. I noticed that you simply skip over much of what is said to you. Sometimes you explicitly write, “I didn’t understand.” In my eyes that is the source of the chaos. That’s why you think the great Rabbi Michi is BS-ing. My little brother, when he hears deep things, says they’re nonsense and calls the person who said them stupid.
Have a great day to all the bored people of this site.

a,
I think you are mixing up the planes of the discussion. I’ll try to present the matter in an orderly way.
General introduction: the discussion of evil has nothing to do with the physico-theological proof, but only with God’s goodness. The phenomenon of evil proves at most that He is evil, not that He did not create the world. The complexity of the world proves the existence of a creator, and the remaining question is whether He is good or not.
The connection people see to the physico-theological proof is because evil is regarded as a defect in the world, and therefore it is not perfect and not complex, and so it does not prove the existence of an omnipotent being who created it. But that is a mistake. Its complexity is sufficient to require a creator. The defects do not cancel the overall complexity and sophistication in the world that cannot arise by itself. On this I brought in the book and the articles the example of the defective watch, which still requires the existence of a watchmaker.
The question that remains in light of the defects and evil is only whether He is evil or good.
As for the argument:
I: I claim that a complex reality proves the existence of God. This is the physico-theological proof.
You: The world is not perfect because there is evil in it.
I: Even if it is not perfect, it is complex enough to prove the existence of a creator.
You: Fine, but evil shows that the creator is not good (and you assume that in my opinion He is good).*
I: Indeed I also assume that God is good (not only philosophically because He implanted morality in us and demands that we obey it, but also because that is how He presents Himself in the Torah). Still, evil does not refute this.
The reason is that perhaps there simply is no world with a system of laws that is perfectly good and that will do all the work the current system does (except for evil).
You: The burden of proof is on you, because you claim God is omnipotent, so why assume there is a system He cannot create?
I: First, the burden of proof is on you, not on me. You come to attack me and show that God is evil. I explain that He is good, but cannot violate logic and make a perfect system of laws without evil (because there is no such system — like a square triangle).
You: Prove that there is no such system.
I: Your response is doubly flawed: 1. The burden of proof is on the one who raises the difficulty, not on me. I’ve heard of “one can answer with difficulty,” not “one can object with difficulty.” 2. I’ll explain why it is also reasonable that there is no such system (though in my opinion I am not obligated to explain). Think of a mathematical function that has one point that doesn’t suit the plans it is supposed to realize. I’m looking for another continuous function that will do all the work (that is, produce the whole of that function) except the problematic point. It doesn’t seem likely to me that there is such a function. In fact, such a continuous function certainly does not exist (because continuity requires a certain value at that point, uniquely determined by the surroundings).

At the margins I’ll remark that perhaps the matter depends on one’s starting point. I come from the starting point of a believer. Therefore, as far as I’m concerned, the burden of proof is on you. You come from the starting point of an atheist, and so you feel the burden of proof is on me. But note that to escape your attack, what I said is enough. How will you formulate your own position? That is a question that concerns you.
But beyond that, note the structure I presented here. The faith is not merely some arbitrary starting point in the discussion. In the background there is a physico-theological proof leading to the existence of God, and now the discussion begins. Assuming that the only problem in that proof is evil (that is the assumption of this discussion), then you too are supposed to accept that as a starting point. And now begin to discuss. Therefore the burden of proof is on you, and this does not depend on a starting point. Note this well.

Never in my life has anyone put so many words into my keyboard as the rabbi just did for me now. I am proud to be the rabbi’s ultra-ego called “you” in the monologue presented.
Clarification: I will relate to the proof as proving an omnipotent creator, and not merely a creator.
A. The defects are not specifically a matter of evil. For example, the defect of evolution and those unnecessary 14 billion years (although the rabbi found a positive point in the fact that the result still stands after a very long time). Something unnecessary is a deficiency, even though it shows a certain strength. Simply speaking, perfection is immediate and does not require time. And so on.
B. “I explain that He is good, but cannot violate logic and make a perfect system of laws without evil (because there is no such system — like a square triangle).” What then is the logical contradiction? Why does the rabbi see goodness alone as a violation of logic? Without this bizarre assumption, it is clear as the sun that the burden of proof is on you.
C. “You come from the starting point of an atheist, and so you feel the burden of proof is on me.” Where did that come from??
D. Why doesn’t the rabbi simply drop these questions by saying it is only a proof of a creator, not of perfection?
E. At the margins of the discussion: we see His goodness and on the other hand we see His evil. Why assume that He is absolutely good? We have findings that indicate both His goodness and the opposite. The moral trait is implanted in us, but at the same time bad traits too. And in the Torah God is presented as good but also as evil. “My anger will burn and I will kill you,” etc. Will you say that this is evil serving a good purpose and therefore counts as good? That itself is my claim. You assume what is in question — that He is only good — and therefore you purify the creeping thing of evil and count it as good, instead of giving legitimacy to the alternative of absolute goodness on the claim that it leads to a logical contradiction. Why did God invent the carrot-and-stick method if He is absolutely good? I would expect absolute goodness to invent only the carrot method.

a,
regarding the argument about space.
1. Kant did not say that one cannot speak about metaphysics. You are mistaken. Almost the opposite: Kant aspired to renew metaphysics by subjecting it to his critical method and channeling it from the speculative use of reason to its practical use.
2. Even if Kant had said what you attributed to him (he didn’t), he would have been wrong. We all speak about metaphysics whether we admit it or not. Michi talks about it endlessly (and usually does so successfully), and so do you, especially if you are a believer as I suspect, since when you talk about “God” you are talking about “metaphysics.” Imagine that!
3. Regarding the interesting process that took place in your mind, in which my status was demoted from “a cistern that loses not a drop” to “a pit” — well, I’m sorry to inform you of this unpleasant news: if it truly occurred to you in the first place that someone like me deserved the title “a cistern that loses not a drop,” then apparently something in your judgment is very shaky. It may even be that you yourself are at the level of “pit” (though not necessarily a bottomless pit like me). No matter; perhaps together we will establish a new brotherhood of pits and work jointly to expand its dominion.
Further responses later.
Blessings.

a, I really don’t understand. I answered everything in my words.
1. That’s a different argument. You are raising another claim (in my opinion this one too is incorrect, but this is not the place) against the physico-theological proof. But that is not the discussion here. Therefore I explicitly noted that this discussion rests on the starting point that the proof as such is sound, and the question is about evil. Otherwise it cannot be conducted.
2. That is not at all a bizarre assumption. I explained why it is even reasonable. But even if it were bizarre, it would still suffice to reject the objection. I elaborated on this in my words.
3. ?? I explained this at length.
4. Indeed, that too could have been done. But I wanted to show you that even the claim that He is perfect is not knocked down by this attack.
5. I explained that the assumption of His goodness is not based on His appearance in the world. Here indeed there is both good and evil. Therefore I took pains to indicate the sources for my claim about His goodness. But again, this is not relevant to our discussion. The discussion is conducted on the assumption that the believer thinks the Holy One, blessed be He, is completely good, and the question is whether the world refutes that assumption. My claim is that it does not.
In short, everything was already answered in detail and at length earlier, and I don’t see anything new here. As far as I’m concerned, we’re done.

Homunculus,

First I must warn you that if you continue discussing with me this much, you are doomed to become completely pit-like (from “pit,” as per the title generously bestowed upon me by a). The danger of coronavirus is enough for us; there is no need to add further dangers.

Logic (in fact only the law of the excluded middle, on which my discussion focuses):

Your penultimate response stirred gloomy thoughts in me. It seems that in your opinion (and probably also in Michi’s) I think and argue that a formal system — what the two of you for present purposes call “language,” and what I call “the logical-technical layer” — cannot bear more than two truth values (truth and falsehood).

If I am right, then this truly saddens me, because I wrote countless times (both to Michi and to you) and emphasized again and again and in several ways: the nature of the formal system is not the subject of my discussion! On the contrary, I trust your words that such a system can bear more than two truth values, and in any case an uneducated person lacking “technical” skill like me cannot express a serious opinion on this issue. I wrote this again and again and again….

So why are you (and apparently Michi too) sticking such a position onto me?

But in light of the anguish caused me, it suddenly seemed to me that I understand what’s going on here. And yes, it is once again related to a flawed understanding, in my opinion, of the nature of philosophical dualism and consequently also of the analytic and synthetic conceptions.

So in answer to your question (“Do I understand Michi’s use of the term ‘metalanguage’?”), I think the answer is yes. Yes, it seems to me I understand fairly well. And again I apologize for the audacity, but to the best of my understanding, both of you are mistaken on this point and do not understand the connection between the concept of “metalanguage” and the question of dualism, and its connection to analyticity and syntheticity. To make it easier on the eyes, I’ll provide my explanation of my claim in a separate comment.

Continuation on the law of the excluded middle, or, if you prefer: what is the connection between “metalanguage,” philosophical dualism, and the analytic and synthetic outlooks?

So here goes… I get the impression that Michi and you identify only 2 levels here: the level of language (the formal system / the logical-technical plane) and the level of metalanguage (you call this “the intellect”).

But in my eyes this is a philosophical mistake. There are at least 2 more levels here (altogether we reach 4).
I won’t expand at the moment on the fourth and highest level, and will focus on the level that in my view disappears entirely from your sight — the third.

So what is this mysterious third level I am proposing?

Anyone who assumes, as you do (and as I do too!), that there are in the first place 2 levels, necessarily determines some relation between them. This relation is precisely the philosophical reflection we are carrying out in this very discussion. This reflection deals with the relations between “language” and “metalanguage,” and its role is to describe the lawfulness constituting those relations, that is, the relations between language and metalanguage.
Therefore this reflection itself should also count as a level (third in number).

In an equivalent description I would summarize it like this:
The lowest level is “language,” and it deals with the formal system.
The level above it is “metalanguage” (intellect, in your terms).
The level above both of them is the philosophical reflection describing the relations between the two lower levels.

As an aside, and in self-defense against the charge of infinite regress in the model I’m proposing, I will remark only this: the fourth level serves as an “upper bound,” and I can also explain what and how, but at this stage I prefer to focus the discussion on the first three levels.

In summary,
do you understand why I claim there are at least 3 levels here?
Do you and/or Michi recognize the existence of the third level and its necessity?

Based on your answer I can go further and connect this to dualism and to what, at least in my claim, you are missing.

An encouraging response! It seems to me we are beginning to get closer. It’s hard for me to understand what the third level is without your giving me an example of a proposition that is made within this third level. Do you also think that regarding the rules of inference in the tortoise-and-Achilles dialogue, one needs a third level?
If you agree that in the language there is room for many-valued logic, but in the metalanguage there is not, then what is the contradiction in Michi’s words in your opinion? Of course every sentence can also be inserted into the language, and then it can bear many-valuedness, and that too will be judged binary in the metalanguage. Just as one can also insert the rule of inference into the system and thereby burden every proof and proof (because in the metalanguage one uses the rule of inference without it appearing inside the proof). It is possible you are saying a new idea that was missed, but where is the contradiction?

Leibowitz.

Amazingly, the discussion of Leibowitz turns out to be founded on the very same philosophical foundations as the discussion of the excluded middle… in fact there is no wonder here at all… here too my claim is that in the background of Michi’s argument there is a confused concept of dualism and of the essence of synthetic and analytic philosophy.

Your claim, apparently in Michi’s name, is as follows:

“Positivism (at least in Leibowitz) deals with what can be proved and what can be discussed, not with what exists.”

This is a mistake, in my opinion.

Positivism — and here it seems to me we especially mean logical positivism — is a philosophical position that strives to reduce all discourse to scientific language and a metalanguage regulating the relations within the scientific language. In short, the positivist tries to tell us that there are only 2 planes here and everything else is meaningless (even if it still has some practical value or another). This is the positivist’s way of fighting metaphysics (see early Wittgenstein — I have a lot to say about him in our context, but I don’t want to overload the discussion).

This is, in my opinion, Leibowitz’s position, and Michi describes it correctly.

What the positivist does not understand, and therefore Leibowitz also does not understand, is that there is necessarily a third level here. This is the level describing the relations between language and metalanguage. In other words: the poor positivist would like us to think, in your words, that philosophy can deal only with “what can be proved and what can be discussed, not with what exists.” In practice, even he himself assumes the existence of an additional layer (apparently metaphysical) linking language and metalanguage.

Am I clear?

Assuming yes, which of my words do you dispute?

Doron,
forgive me, but before you take us climbing the metaphysical ladder, make sure it stands on stable legs. If two different commenters claim that you are not precise from a logical standpoint, in addition to Rabbi Michi, it seems there is no avoiding an orderly study of formal logic. It will not help for you on the one hand to declare your ignorance on the subject under discussion and still demand the right to speak on the subject.

I don’t have enough knowledge in formal logic to claim the right to speak on the subject, but that is why I try not to argue about it.

There is on this site an argument between Rabbi Michi and Dr. Gadi Alexandrovitz from the Technion (I think on one of Dawkins’s theses). It is quite striking how careful Rabbi Michi is before he launches an attack, and only when it is clear that he stands on logically stable ground.

Take the time and effort to study formal logic, and then reformulate your claim in a respectable way.

And indeed I am the old Y.D. (not sure whether good).

Another encouraging response! I do indeed represent in this discussion Michi’s opinion as it appears to my eyes, and it is also my own opinion (which I learned from his words). I understand that now we have an argument over what Michi’s description of Leibowitz’s position is. Before we continue we need to agree on what the position is (Leibowitz’s, even if implicitly and even if he himself failed to formulate it clearly) over which the discussion is being waged. That is why I qualified that I am speaking about the positivism attributed to Leibowitz and not about general positivism. If Leibowitz’s position is that what is measurable can be argued and discussed, and what is not measurable cannot, but values definitely exist and one can choose them — is there any problem of contradiction within that position? I’ll answer your direct questions after your answer to this (the answer will help me understand whether I understood you or not).

Y.D.,

First of all, don’t start with me… you still owe me an answer about Torah from Heaven… 🙂

Unfortunately I think your response is just words… generalities, and it does not touch my claims at all. Basically you’re saying something like this: I myself don’t understand logic, but that still authorizes me to express philosophical positions about the legitimacy of discussing it… that is, philosophical discussion about it.

A few points (admittedly unordered) for thought:

The best philosophical literature (and yes, also a lot, a lot of philosophical trash…) was written without any knowledge of formal logic. To the best of my recollection, in the whole Critique of Pure Reason you won’t find even 1% of “logic”; Plato wrote pretty decent philosophy even before logic was “invented”…

This approach of mine receives strong reinforcement from Michi and from his way. Michi often writes on subjects he admits he doesn’t understand (art, Zen Buddhism…) and all this in order to identify methodological problems in the discourse about them. In those articles he doesn’t use formal logic at all, but natural language (metalanguage?) understandable to every rational thinker.

Why do good people like Michi publish philosophical articles in the first place for the educated general public, articles dealing with the principled side of a technical professional subject? According to your method, there is no value at all in such publication. By contrast, according to their method (the correct one in my view), they understand very well that the non-professional reader can not only understand their principled message but even accept it and be convinced — that is, adopt their opinion intelligently despite having no “technical” background whatsoever. Indeed, in the discussion from which I brought a link, Michi assumes, at least at first, that it is worth explaining (intelligently and with reasons) even to a boor like me the subject. Why does he think so?

Look at Homunculus’s latest response (or the one before latest). He estimates that “we are beginning to get closer,” meaning even an ignoramus like me can “advance” and understand at least the philosophical principle in the background. Maybe you’ll say he is mistaken, but you yourself appealed to the fact that “others say”…

And the most important point: I believe what I am saying is correct, simple, and sensible, and truly does not require technical skill. In the worst case I’ll come out an “idiot,” a description not all that far from reality…

Leibowitz

Yes, in my opinion there is a contradiction in Leibowitz. A consistent positivist (of any type) cannot even claim that values exist. One cannot even speak of their existence.
On the other hand — and here is the contradiction — all positivists behave and speak as though there are values and they are even actual for human life.

Was my position understood? Can we move on?

I described a certain position, and I don’t see you claiming there is a contradiction regarding it. Afterwards we can return to the discussion about Leibowitz the person and positivism in general (that is, other positions in my opinion). In the specific position I presented, in which values exist and there is free choice to choose them (not an arbitrary decision), but there is no way at all to argue and prove regarding them (perhaps one can preach) — do you see a contradiction?

By the way, you wrote: “To the best of my recollection, in the whole Critique of Pure Reason you won’t find even 1% of ‘logic.’” If it says here that you read and understood the whole Critique of Pure Reason, I take off my hat to you in salute. I did not manage to keep my head through all the twists and exactitudes there, and at a certain point I abandoned it in favor of more up-to-date books that explain Kant’s method (a book/booklet by Bergman, and various Open University books). Even those I can’t be sure I fully understood; I left off when I felt they were starting hairsplitting and subtleties within a system that in any case would not give me an answer to what I was looking for.

To the honorable Doron, forgive me, I ask. I, the small one, thought you would take the words in a different spirit. After all, you keep emphasizing that no knowledge is needed in order to philosophize. You declare there is no flaw in being ignorant in this discussion. I thought we’d be comrades in arms….
Regarding metaphysics, I’ll simply quote a bit of Wikipedia: “Kant argued that we can speak only about the world of appearances in the way we perceive them, and not about things in themselves. Many argued that by this Kant buried metaphysics, however Professor Yirmiyahu Yovel argues…” and so on.
Again, forgiveness.

Rabbi Michi, good evening. Although the rabbi signed off “as far as I’m concerned, we’re done,” I must point out that there is certainly a reading-comprehension problem here on the rabbi’s side in section C. “You come from the starting point of an atheist, and so you feel the burden of proof is on me.” Where did that come from?? — I meant to ask: where did it come from that I come from an atheist point of view? That’s all.
Now I would like, if the master can, to explain more clearly and in a language that doesn’t use mathematical concepts how it can be that no different system of laws is possible. Your honor wrote: “In fact, such a continuous function certainly does not exist (because continuity requires a certain value at that point, uniquely determined by the surroundings).” I take off my hat and say that I did not understand the parenthesis at all. If the rabbi can phrase this in the language of the common people, I’d be glad.
Sorry for the weariness, and again, thank you for the platform and the freedom to philosophize.

I did not say that you personally are an atheist, but that in this argument you represent his position, since you claim the proof is not convincing. Therefore in analyzing the argument I presented your position as the position of the atheist. This is a logical presentation of the position, not a reference to the person. So this is really not a problem in reading comprehension.
It’s hard for me to explain the matter in non-mathematical language. But think with common sense: is it likely that there is a system of laws that will do everything exactly as in our world, but only at the points where something evil is produced it will do something else? In my opinion it is very likely that there is no such system of laws. A change at those points will also alter the outcomes in places where there is no evil, and therefore will not realize the divine plan. Assuming the system of laws is supposed to realize the divine plan — that is, that the world should look as it does today — it does not seem likely that one can remove only those specific points without affecting everything else. The mathematical parable only clarifies this point further. Think whether you can set a law relating acceleration to force (Newton’s second law) that will always give acceleration equal to force divided by mass, except in the case of a force of magnitude 5 units. There it will give a different result. There is no such continuous function, and therefore such a thing will not be a law in the rigid sense. I explained several times that apparently the Holy One, blessed be He, wants rigid laws of nature, and this is not the place to elaborate.

If I may ask: (I honestly thought this remote thread had disappeared from sight — on my end it’s currently saved as a bookmark. Had I known there were watching eyes, perhaps I would have phrased things differently, etc.). It follows that rigid laws of nature + the precise states of affairs in the world (those in which there is no evil and which one wants to preserve) are more important to the Holy One, blessed be He, than suffering. This pricing itself requires understanding and raises questions. A sweeping disregard of a certain value is not so morally different from underpricing it in the hierarchical ranking.

a,
You responded to my discussion with Michi and others about space with several general claims (and in my opinion incorrect ones) about Kant and the futility of metaphysics. It would have been more interesting had you related to the question of space under discussion. In my opinion Michi’s claims there suffer from whitewashing or at least confusion.

Homunculus,
I plowed through Kant for several good years, especially the first Critique. To say I understood everything there? You’re kidding me! But yes, I can say that his discussions there (even those I did understand and wrote papers about) are no less difficult than the topic you and I are discussing.

If I may in this context release a little musing touching on the methodology of discussion: the source of philosophical knowledge is in our intuitions, and these grasp reality (especially spiritual, abstract reality) immediately, holistically, and in patterned form. Reality is therefore grasped in terms of structure, of the whole, not of the details. In this respect the world appears to us in a “simple” way (without complexity). The intellect that comes afterward already operates in a linear, sequential way, and thereby it adds details and “complicates” the picture.
Against this background I argue that good philosophy ought to “remember” its simple origin and try to bring the discussion (which by nature is linear and sequential) closer to the intuition and its basic structure. The practical implication of this is that one should try to simplify the philosophical discussion as much as possible (and only where possible, of course). That is what I always argue, and that is what I tried to explain to Y.D. in my last response to him.

Of course I still owe you more answers, and I hope over the holy Sabbath I will find the time for them.

Homunculus,

Leibowitz:

Here is the contradiction (blatant, in my opinion):

A positivist of any kind, and Leibowitz too belongs in this package, who wishes to be consistent with his philosophy must say that it has no meaning at all to speak about values. One cannot even speak of their existence.
On the other hand — and here is the contradiction — the positivists all behave and speak as if there are values and they are even actual for human life.

Was my position understood? Can we move on?

On behalf of the Ministry of Health I was asked to note with praise the participants of the ‘”Apikores for Its Own Sake” Study Hall under the leadership…’, whose answer-lengths preserve the proper two-meter distance between writer and writer, in accordance with the Ministry of Health guidelines 🙂

With regards,
Shimshon Letz-Man

Your position is understood and I agree with it. I don’t see, however, why it is relevant to that discussion about Leibowitz. In the article there, a position was presented (whether Leibowitz held it or not), and in the discussion there you presented it as contradictory.

Homunculus,

Leibowitz:

If you both understand me and agree with my opinion, then you too should claim that Michi contradicts himself. For he himself holds a synthetic position that cannot validate Leibowitz’s “monism” (even if only in this particular aspect), and nevertheless insists on claiming that Leibowitz is a “dualist.”

There is another question here, namely whether Michi understands that both of us are right (I’ve added you to my camp…) and nevertheless tries to smear us over. My feeling then was that somewhat, yes…

For your convenience I brought the relevant quotations that conclude my argument with Michi:

Michi: “As I explained, in my opinion he does indeed act according to external standards, but is unwilling to put that on the table because of his positivism (which does not speak about what is not measurable).”
…

Michi: “I’m unable to follow your line of argument.
He is a dualist, with one side of the dualistic equation (= spirit) being non-measurable. Therefore, apart from its very existence, nothing can be said about it.”
……

Michi: “Hello Doron.
Since once again we have gotten into a situation of mutual misunderstanding (not for the first time), I’ll tell you again that I do not understand what the problem is and what is missing in what I said to you. I’m sorry. In my opinion everything was explained well.”

And here is my response:
“It seems strange to me.
All I said was that even according to your method, Leibowitz does not allow in the moral sphere the existence of a factor separate from man. For him there is human will, which is the primary source (and probably also the only one) of morality.
You yourself have written dozens of times in the past about the philosophical limitation of this idea (confusing the psychological plane with the philosophical plane), and therefore I don’t understand what is different today.”

Homunculus,

the days are coronavirus days, and the times are the times of graphomaniacs barricaded in their homes and showering their digital surroundings with the best of their heapings-up.
Here’s another interesting heap, apropos suspicion of “smearing over”…

(It’s a bit long; maybe you’ll find the main point at the end…)

https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%aa%d7%95%d7%93%d7%A2%D7%AA-%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%91%D7%93-%D7%94

Homunculus,

Leibowitz:

Here is a link to Ze’ev Bechler’s brilliant article on Leibowitz, in my opinion. Everything I am trying to say here in my clumsy language he formulates in a sharp, clear, and much deeper way. Of course I don’t agree with every word there, but the spirit of it — let lips kiss.

https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/1.736351

(The platform in which the article appears is the newspaper Haaretz; maybe you’ll want to put on a mask before entering the link?)

Bechler’s criticism there is a simple application of the general criticism in his book, which is philosophically identical to the criticism in Two Wagons, so the discerning reader will easily know that in my opinion Michi too agrees with the main thrust of that column (up to the subheading “The Value Meaning”). As far as I’m concerned, everything written in that column is background material already known before our discussion here. You come with this to argue against Michael Abraham?! By your life, you have reminded me of the verse: “And I did not know that they had devised schemes against me: Let us destroy the tree with its bread, and let us cut him off from the land of the living.” I hope you read Two Wagons and Three Revolutions. In that column Bechler simply interprets Leibowitz as Saguy and company interpreted him, about whom Michi’s original article on the subject revolved, and there is no doubt that if one interprets Leibowitz’s position that way then it is problematic. One can put one’s finger on Bechler’s sentence: “Leibowitz never clarified what the content of such a principle had to be, and from this omission it seems to me one may infer that such content was unimportant in his eyes” — here is Bechler’s mistake, and on this Michi stood in that article and proposed a different position.
And again I repeat the request that you point to some problem in the specific position presented in Michi’s article, which I have again presented thousands of times in this thread. A direct problem in the position I presented, not in any other general position (positivism, Leibowitz, and all the rest). Please address this position without any external labels and show me some problem in it. You have not done that even once throughout this whole thread (nor in the original thread).
I am not entering here into the new discussion you brought as suspicion of smearing over, out of sheer exhaustion.

Homunculus,

Maybe the problem is that you asked me thousands of times to point to a specific problem in Michi and expected to receive that same answer itself in those same quantities?

Read again, this time carefully, my previous response (at its beginning), and then we’ll talk. I point there to a problem in Michi, in Leibowitz, and in all the rest. All together, the same problem.

“holds a synthetic position that cannot validate Leibowitz’s ‘monism’ (even if only in this particular aspect), and nevertheless insists on claiming that Leibowitz is a ‘dualist’”?
That’s the sentence I was supposed to read carefully?

Yes.

And set against that sentence with its four general labels (synthetic, monism, Leibowitz, dualist), I placed this position: values exist, there is no technical possibility of arguing about them, the choice of a value is not arbitrary even though it is not reasoned. If in the above sentence and the explanations (agreed upon from the start) that preceded it you expect me to see a direct pointing to a problem in the above position, then our situation is bad.

Your last response really surprised me. specifically after we reached agreement on the main point, you decided to abandon rational discussion and switch to declarations? “Values exist”? That’s it? Just like that? After you showered me at the start with fire and brimstone over the fact that I throw out empty slogans without concrete examples, it’s a bit strange on your part to bring “arguments” like in your last response.
Not to mention that you deviated completely from the subject of the discussion… the argument did not concern the question of the existence of abstract entities (among them values as well), but the question whether Leibowitz’s position as represented by Michi is consistent.
For the moment I’m putting aside the question of the alleged smearing-over.
Blessings.

Okay, I’m afraid we have reached a dead end. I’ll say only this: if your whole claim is contained in Bechler’s words, then everything written there was known to me from the start, and I speak after that. Blessings to you too.

What shall I say and what shall I speak? Apparently my basic claim against Michael Abraham’s interpretation of Leibowitz too was indeed included in Bechler’s article… and he didn’t know it at all.

A bunch of busybodies.