How does the Rabbi know that what is measured as RP is part of nature, of the physical chain?
I think there is no necessity to conclude that.
Just as the Rabbi holds that after the RP we have free choice, even though according to the data of pure science there is no reason to assume that, I say the same thing only regarding the readiness potential. There is a "divine will" that prepares us for free choice, and afterward, once the divine will has appeared within us (expressed by the RP), the free choice is ours.

If the Rabbi allows himself to assume that we have free will in a physical world (call it a "miracle" or a "spiritual entity" or a "soul"), why not assume one more gap for the divine will inside the human brain, even if it is a full miracle?

Then allow yourself to assume that He is involved in nature itself, and you've solved all the problems. Why all this twisting?

A. It's not such a twist. It's just assuming one more small assumption. One assumption beyond what the Rabbi allowed himself to assume. If I had said that the Holy One, blessed be He, also lifts my hand and moves my leg—fine. But I didn't claim that. At this point, for the sake of discussion, I claimed only limited divine involvement in the physical chain in the brains of human beings. If I had said that the Holy One, blessed be He, moves all of nature, then I would basically be saying that we're all puppets, and that's not what I meant. What I meant was that free choice plus a certain active involvement by God is possible.

B. Why do I allow myself to make such an assumption?
1. So that it fits my intuitions and the intuitions of billions of people whose intuitions cry out for divine involvement. The Rabbi himself wrote how important intuitions are.

2. So that it fits with what so many of our sages said.

3. So that it fits what happens in reality. I tangibly see general providence (and even individual providence).

So yes, I allow myself to be chutzpahdik and make room for one more gap in nature.
Seems like a very worthwhile approach to me.

You'd gain all that even if you assumed that the Holy One, blessed be He, is simply involved in nature without us seeing it (for example, He is involved in every electron in the brain that gets divided by 17, every fifth second). That's all. Why get tangled up? If you assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved in nature, then you can assume just that itself without advising Him exactly where to intervene (specifically in the RP). And if you assume He isn't involved, then He isn't involved in the RP either.

I wasn't advising the Holy One, blessed be He 🙂
I'm looking for a reasonable and intuitive opening. Exactly like the Honorable Rabbi does in his book "The Science of Freedom."
There the Rabbi analyzed, based on the results of Libet's experiment, where it is most reasonable to find free will.
That's actually the opposite of getting tangled up.
What is permitted to the Honorable Rabbi is permitted to ordinary folk too, no?

By the way, in the context of human decisions, I believe that sometimes the Holy One, blessed be He, also intervenes in other places—for example, if necessary He will cause a person not to lift his finger, and the intervention will not be in the RP but דווקא at the end of the neural chain at the fingertip.
But that's the exception. If I think there is divine intervention in a person, it is usually located in the brain, in the range of the RP.

And one more thing: it is possible that there are wicked people who are left purely to nature. That is, their RP is not an act from God, but really part of the physical chain, up to free choice, and then their free choice to repent will be very, very difficult. And it would take a very great rabbi (a conduit for transmitting divine abundance) to revive them (reviving the dead).
What I mean is that even the RP itself is not absolute all the time and in all human beings, but only when the divine will activates it. The more a person cleaves to his God, the more the divine will will activate the RP most of the time, and from this it follows that the person's free choice will be of higher quality.

That also explains how there are wicked people who succeed . . . if they grew up in a wealthy environment and with high-quality genetic endowment, then yes, according to the laws of nature alone, they will also be very successful.
Successful in this world, of course. Their essence they will miss, and the correction they need they will have to undergo in the next reincarnation.

Everything is permitted to everyone. I explained why in my view there is no point to this, and the righteous shall live by his faith.

Wouldn't it still be worthwhile to note that there is perhaps an intermediate possibility, and not only the two options of "free will" or "puppets on strings," just so as not to fall into a "false dichotomy"?
All in all, I don't think the argument I raised here is entirely unreasonable, and I think it could have come up as another question from the reader in the book "Hillel." And if the Rabbi thinks he has an explanation that refutes the argument I raised (I didn't see that here), he could have noted it in the book . . .

In any case, thanks to the Rabbi for the response.

There is no intermediate possibility at all, and I already explained that ad nauseam.

Sorry, I'm not managing to understand.
According to almost all professors of neuroscience, there is no possibility of free will, because it's a pure physical chain.
Nevertheless, the Rabbi inserted free will there. Somewhere between the RP and the person's response/decision.
In other words, the Honorable Rabbi holds, to the best of my understanding, that there is a "constant miracle" in reality. And I completely agree with him. Our will is above nature, it is a miracle. And that is probably part of the infinity of the soul.

I hold that there is one more miracle in our brain. Between the genetic/environmental influences etc. that affect the RP, there is something else called the "divine will," which is also a miracle that occurs in the human brain, at times.

True, it is a miracle because it is not possible within the framework of the laws of nature themselves, because there are not two possibilities within the framework of the laws of nature.
But there is one miracle more (the divine will) than the miracle that the Rabbi says is possible (free will).

I'll illustrate all this briefly:
Suppose Itzik grew up in a completely secular environment. His RP always starts a chain that tells him before Sabbath, "You may desecrate the Sabbath." Then he desecrates the Sabbath by his own choice. That makes sense because the RP is influenced, among other things, by the environment in which he was raised, etc.
One Friday, the divine will acted in Itzik's brain (performed a miracle), and despite the physics and the environmental influences, it changed his RP from one that leads to a chain that would cause him to desecrate the Sabbath, to an RP that caused the brain to begin a chain that would ultimately cause Itzik *to decide/choose* specifically to keep the Sabbath. A kind of illumination.

From there on, the choice is entirely Itzik's—to keep Sabbath or not.

Ehud, all this was clear from the start and there's no need to repeat it. And I still claim that you gained nothing from it. If you claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved in nature, then there is no problem to solve. And if He isn't involved, then He isn't involved in the RP either.
When you claim that He is involved in RP, you are simply assuming the first possibility (that He is involved). That's all. Why should I care whether He is involved in the RP or in every fifth electron on every odd-numbered second? It really makes no difference.
My assumption that our will is involved stems from immediate awareness and not from unfounded metaphysical assumptions. Our will is part of nature, even if not of physics. In the natural world there is physics and there is also human will. My assumption is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not involved in nature, meaning in both of those components.
We're going around and around and not getting anywhere.

Does the Rabbi reject the outlook according to which God brings about everything with respect to those acted upon, while God grants the agents a certain space of choice that He determines? That is, I as an agent performing an action (waving a sword, for example) have the power to act and choose in that way because of the possibility that He, may He be blessed, granted me and the other agents. But the one acted upon (the person over whom the sword was waved) has no choice regarding it, and God is the one who brings about the state of being acted upon in him and decides whether he will become the recipient of the action and in what manner (what usually happens and is called natural—namely the reality familiar to us. But this is still the imprint of God's hand). And according to this, God is the one who applies the principle of causality until He no longer feels like it. I hope I phrased this clearly.
How does the Honorable Rabbi attack this view?

A,
I assume this is a parody. (That's how I attack this view.)

I assume the Rabbi's response is an allegory stemming from an allergy to the opinion I presented, which is even causing negative energy in a state of heresy. Forget Adar—we're looking ahead to the month of Nisan, in which there is no supplication prayer. Don't make me beg for a satisfactory explanation. Of course, if the Rabbi prefers not to answer substantively, who am I to refute this view.
Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman, King Messiah Bibi forever and ever!

Rabbi,
You wrote: "My assumption that our will is involved stems from immediate awareness and not from unfounded metaphysical assumptions."
Why doesn't he have the right to create a theological proof from our awareness of free will to the assumption that God intervenes?
Only the Rabbi is allowed to do that with morality? 🙂

Hello K,

Just to strengthen your question: in "The Science of Freedom," to the best of my understanding, the Rabbi writes that he advocates free will because of intuition and because of philosophical arguments. There is no scientific explanation there by the Rabbi that justifies free will.

Likewise, he writes quite clearly that free will stems from spirituality. Here is a quote:
"…libertarianism cannot escape a dualistic position, that is, a position which holds that in our world there exists something beyond matter . . . exempt from the world (in the sense of burden) of the laws of physics. There must be an interaction between this other substance and matter . . ."

Therefore, I also didn't so much understand the remarks putting me down for relying on unfounded metaphysics.
1. Doesn't the Rabbi do that too, according to the quote above?
2. The Rabbi wrote, "Our will is part of nature." So I didn't quite understand. Is the spiritual world (as demonstrated in the quote above) also part of nature?

As I wrote above, I think the Rabbi allows himself to do all kinds of magic, but doesn't allow others to. Why? Not clear to me . . .

The Honorable Rabbi does not explain why my view seems parodic to him. Would the Rabbi like to write an argument against what I said?

I did explain. In my view it's a parody of the proposal at the beginning of this thread and the discussion around it (I thought that's why it was posted here). An arbitrary division, like a hundred other possible divisions, one of which I described above.

Sorry for the long-windedness, but I didn't intend it as a parody. I'm not proposing a third option. I think what I'm proposing preserves in full both assumptions together: freedom of choice as an agent performing an action, and on the other hand that the action comes to expression in the one acted upon in our world only by divine tacit consent, without miraculous intervention on His part. If so, a person can act as much as free choice allows him. I can take a Kalashnikov and start spraying bullets. But for that to affect physical reality, God needs to ensure the conditions for the existence of that free person's action. Even if I'm spraying indiscriminately or sniping, God can still prevent those bullets from hitting. I think this is a wonderfully mind-settling combination. Why is this an "arbitrary division"?
P.S. I read the Rabbi's comments in this thread, but I did not find another possible division that the Honorable Rabbi mentioned.
Have a pleasant day!

I suggested various other divisions (such as which electron is driven by the laws of physics and which is not). I meant that the division is arbitrary and I don't see any gain in it.
The two assumptions—that there is free choice, and that the result exists only with divine consent—also hold in my view without involvement (except in sporadic cases). If you mean that every outcome requires consent and there are many interventions, then I don't see what is gained by your words. You're simply claiming there is involvement, that's all. I see no difference between such involvement and any other distinction (in events X there is involvement and in Y there isn't).

According to the way I present things, the involvement does not in any way harm freedom of choice. What does the Rabbi mean when he says he sees no "gain" in my words? I got the impression that I solved the contradiction created by adopting the two assumptions. And further, what is the problem with the possibility of many interventions? I simply came to show why the sentence "it is clear that one cannot adopt both assumptions simultaneously" is incorrect.

Of course it harms it. A person cannot do something unless God allows it. If He doesn't allow it, that means intervention.

Then it's a shame I wasn't understood (which I suspect isn't really true in the Rabbi's case…). Right: a person can do whatever comes into his head, and no approval is needed from Him, may He be blessed. The involvement begins with the effect of that free action on the world controlled by God. The action is not controlled, only its result. And the matter is perfectly clear.

Clear maybe. Perfectly, I don't see here. I shot an arrow at Reuven. His death depends on the Holy One, blessed be He. By the laws of nature (without divine intervention), will he die or not? Let's assume for the sake of discussion that yes. So how will the Holy One, blessed be He, cause him not to die? He'll change the laws of nature.
Neither clear nor perfectly clear.

First of all, for the sake of discussion I assume there is no need to change the laws of nature—for example, the arrow could be deflected by a sudden westerly wind. Second, the cliché that God does all deeds by virtue of the fact that He implanted nature is true both because of its very content and because whenever what He implanted does not find favor in His eyes, God intervenes, and that is what we call a miracle. It follows that every natural event has in fact passed through God's consent and approval. What's the problem with that? Does the Rabbi dispute the whole concept of miracle?
Not clear and not perfectly clear? You have Amsterdam here. You can assign one flowerbed to torts, number it however you like. Whatever suits you.
Happy holiday!

I'm exhausted. Going in circles around things that have already been explained היטב. If the westerly wind would have come without intervention, then there is no dependence on God. If not—then there is your intervention.
That's it. With apologies, I won't answer the same questions anymore.