If a collective is not a real existing entity, how can it have a moral obligation? (To speak about it even without that.)

I tend to think it is a real entity, but there are those who regard a collective as an ontic fiction and still see it as having obligations and rights. In their view, this is probably a way of defining the obligations and rights of individuals as they appear collectively. Meaning, my right as a Jew is to live among my fellow Jews (where the definition of “Jew” belongs to each individual separately).

Interesting, I thought of something like that.

Meaning, you have here a view that human beings affect the world of ideas—they write in it—and don’t just read it.
Do you have an explanation of the process? Do you hold an approach that requires God for this?
Second, how can one connect to a collective? Only through identification? Or does the collective define in advance who is inside it, etc.?

I’m not sure about that. One could hold a view according to which the ideas preceded their actual realization. The democratic idea, for example, could have existed since creation, except that it was only realized in the world in practice during the modern era. According to that, people discovered democracy, they didn’t invent it.
I hold an approach that requires God even for the material world, and of course also for the world of ideas. If something exists, someone created it.

That’s true, but it doesn’t seem that every idea that exists in our time has existed from time immemorial—for example, the idea of a specific society itself, and not the concept of democracy. Or someone who talks about musical inventions. So how do you explain the phenomenon of the zeitgeist? If we also write, that seems to explain it well.

You present it as though it’s an a fortiori claim with regard to the world of ideas too, but there’s a huge objection to that: ideas are an unfamiliar kind of thing, and it’s not clear that they require a cause. No? It sounds plausible to stop there as a regression-stopper.

According to my suggestion, the zeitgeist means that the realization happens at the time that is ripe for it.

If ideas are what stop the regress, then they are God (or part of Him). I dealt with such objections in The First Existent.

Was that mentioned there specifically regarding ideas? Or is it in the notebooks approach?
It’s just that my books are about 150 km away from me because of the coronavirus 🙁 …

I think in the notebooks too.

So then you simply define them as God? But then the question comes up whether they are personal.
The advantage of stopping at ideas is that it’s not at all clear what “sufficient reason” would even mean regarding them. What does it even mean to ask “why this rather than that” about them? A question like why the idea of democracy rather than the idea of dictatorship sounds pretty strange… The only thing one could ask about them is a weaker kind of sufficient reason—why they exist rather than nothing.
The problem is that if there are many ideas, then would you say there are many gods?! Or would you say that all the ideas are various aspects of one original and “unified” idea? To say they were created by an external factor isn’t possible if we accept that they stop the regress. In any case, if you claim something like the second option, then you could accept an approach that reminds me of Rabbi Kook, as I understand him.

Actually you’re right that maybe, in terms of Occam’s razor, insofar as we define them as God we could prefer not to stop at the Big Bang, and if so we would need to add that they have teleological capacities, and can create or act in matter. But that still isn’t enough for something personal, because then it would no longer be possible to use the physico-theological proof regarding them—we’ve already found a regression-stopper, so we aren’t coming to the field with an “a priori” notion of how the regression-stopper is supposed to look.
The only possibility, as I understand it, is to argue that in the nature of ideas there are personal or volitional concepts, but the ideas themselves could still be very informational and “cold,” like the Wikipedia website.
The only real possibility is for someone who accepts something like objective morality on a prescriptive level, and then argues that if so, the idea appears to be more “volitional.”

I agree with all of that, and I’ve written that too. Except that this is a necessary conclusion and isn’t contingent on any assumptions about morality and prescriptivity and the like. If the regress-stopper has to be volitional (not necessarily personal—I don’t think that’s even well-defined), and there has to be such a stopper, then now you can identify it with the ideas, or with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or with the giver of the Torah at Sinai.

What do you mean, you agree with all of it!? It was supposed to be a question, not an answer!! ? Where are the resolutions between the alternatives?
Maybe if I present it as a question, you’ll be able to sort things out.

1. I’ve always had trouble understanding how people grasp the “why this rather than that” in things like infinite power. Seemingly you can always ask why the first cause has infinitely many units of power and not 15 units of power. Or why the idea is democracy and not dictatorship. But there seems to be some intuition that infinite capacity arouses much less puzzlement. What do you understand to be the basis of that intuition?
2. Do you think all ideas are a reflection of one thing? (Rabbi Kook)
3. The regress-stopper obviously has to have purposive capacity, but not necessarily volition! (And volition, in my opinion, also strongly hints at personality.) But why does the Rabbi identify the purposive capacity of the regress-stopper with it being volitional rather than, say, random-generative? To solve this I raised above the issue of prescriptivity and morality, which give significant weight to a volitional being at the starting point.
As for the continuation of your remarks, I certainly agree.

1. Who said it has infinite capacity? Maybe that can be learned from the verses (and then it’s not an intuition). And maybe one need not say it at all. It doesn’t sound very essential to me. True, the infinite is the simplest and most intuitively compelling solution.
2. I don’t understand that sentence.
3. I didn’t understand the difference between volitional and purposive. It can decide and determine and carry out. That’s all.

1. Interesting. Many people see that as very essential, in order to solve quite a few problems. If not, then what exactly is the point by which the regress-stopper in the principle of sufficient reason implies a volitional being?
3. And not merely purposive—that is, not compelled to create a world the way a stone “strives” to reach its source, or light “strives” to travel the shortest path. Of course you’ll ask: then why does that “compelled” entity have exactly those properties that result in creating a world? But if so, then the atheist can also ask you why “God” has exactly those capacities such that, if He so wishes, He can bring about a world. In other words, here too one can ask a coherent question about the *nature* of the cause: why does it have such-and-such units of power and enough force of will to bring about the creation of a world? Or why does it have will rather than nature, etc.?
2. Do you think the world of ideas is separate, or that all ideas are reflections of one single thing, something like God?

1. Are you asking about my claim that it’s not necessarily infinite? I didn’t understand the question. But note: if there is a question, then the answer is in the body of the question. You’re raising a consideration for why to assume it is infinite, otherwise it doesn’t stop the regress. If so, that is the source for the assumption that it is infinite (as part of the physico-theological or cosmological argument).
2. I don’t know, and I still don’t fully understand the question. But this discussion here is pointless. Even if I understand exactly what you mean, I don’t see how such a question could be answered.
3. If it is compelled to create a world, then we’ve returned to the ordinary regress. The regress-stopper is supposed to be a starting point that is not compelled by something outside itself.

1. Right, because as far as I know, there’s a fairly common view that the regress-stopper has to be infinite so that one cannot ask of it why “it is this way rather than that way,” but my question was that this too can still be asked of it. In any case, since you say you don’t see this point as something essential at all (though you still accept that there is some intuition there),
then I’m trying to understand what exactly is the Archimedean point that characterizes the regress-stopper.
It seems from your words that the main point is that it has to have the property that it is not compelled to create a world. For that you used the term in 3 that isn’t clear to me: “not compelled by something *outside* it.”
But that’s not completely right, because even if the product of the decision is voluntary and not necessary, one can still ask about the “nature” of the possessor of the will, why it is “built” this way rather than another way—just as you ask about the laws of nature why their constants are these rather than others. Or why the table isn’t a chair. In all those cases we are not asking about the products of the table, which don’t even exist, but about its very nature.
So here too, I’m not asking what the reason is that it decided to create a world; rather I’m asking about the very capacity it has to decide freely, or about the very nature of the possessor of the will.
I agree that there may indeed be some degree of freedom if you posit a volitional cause as the starting point. But there are still many, many questions one can ask as to why it is “built” this way rather than another.

2. Many times one can discover that various implications of disputes in other areas actually depend on entirely different issues, just as the world of ideas is really taken from David Hume’s objection to analogies. I’m pretty sure that before the Rabbi thought about this, it looked to him totally unrelated. So I thought maybe you had some insight in another area that could be connected to the issue here. I agree that from everything I know about this issue I can’t discover that, but I don’t know the topic well enough, and that’s why I asked you…
3. I already folded that into 1, because there it seems to me it would come out best in terms of the distinctions between the ideas.

Thanks

1. I don’t understand what the problem is. The regress-stopper has to be something with will that creates all of creation by its free will. Therefore there’s no point asking about its structure. It has no structure that dictates its will. Its will is free, and precisely because of that it can serve as the regress-stopper. I don’t see any question left here.

Of course its structure doesn’t dictate the outcome, because otherwise it wouldn’t be a possessor of will.
But one can ask why it has such-and-such units of power and not otherwise. Why does it have will at all rather than a “hard nature”? So what exactly makes it a regress-stopper, fitting better as a starting point than an “eternal Big Bang,” about which we too ask why it has such-and-such units of energy and not otherwise, or why its nature allows the creation of such laws of nature rather than others.

Even when you ask why there is a table and not a chair, you are not asking about its purpose—because it has no teleological ability at all. But you are still asking about its nature and essence, why it is this way rather than another.

So I agree that this gives the possibility that the first cause has a certain unit of freedom to act in many ways. But one can still ask regarding its essence, especially since our normal use of the principle of sufficient reason is mainly to ask regarding the essences of things.

I don’t understand what’s bothering you. Everything was explained correctly.

You wrote in the previous reply as follows:
“…the regress-stopper has to be something (with will) … therefore one should not ask about its structure. It has no structure that dictates its will.”
Why does it have no structure? It certainly does have structure; it just doesn’t dictate the will. But one can still ask of its structure for a sufficient reason why it is built this way rather than another, just as one can ask why the table is as it is rather than otherwise.

K, you can ask whatever question you feel like asking. But what does that have to do with the argument I presented? You assume it has a structure and then ask why its structure is like that. I neither assume that nor ask that. That’s all.
I’m done.

I had some feeling you would say something like that, but you didn’t write it explicitly here. I connected this point to the property of infinity, but you rejected that, and really that isn’t the right definition.
So if I understand correctly, you are saying that in practice the first cause has no particular structure? But after all, will is some kind of “power”; it is not an entity in itself. So then the thing itself has some “structure,” even though I don’t know what it is, and then one can ask why it is this way rather than another.
I thought maybe one could answer this from your example of gas in a container: if it has several possible places to be, then one can ask why the gas is in these places rather than others. But when a single gas particle fills the entire container, where the container is the size of the particle, then the question of what “this way rather than that way” means is no longer clear.
One could perhaps ask why the gas and the container exist at all, or why they are specifically these sizes, but those are somewhat different questions.
Am I right?

??
That really wasn’t clear, since will is only a “power”; it is not the thing itself, it is a capacity that some being has.
And anything that exists as an entity must have some structure, and then automatically one can ask of it the principle of sufficient reason.
Is my interpretation above what the honorable Rabbi meant?