Thanks.
By the way, I think that usually people treat the image of God as something with a certain value-laden content, and that could also solve this. For example, they connect it to the value of liberty, or the sanctity of life, or the idea of man as the center of creation.
But I don’t understand exactly why that is. After all, the image of God is usually used as referring to factual characteristics like intellect, or the ability to choose, or to control one’s environment.
So at what point does that turn this fact into a value dimension? As above?

I explained it. What isn’t clear? I didn’t understand what is added by your second question. When I say that it is forbidden to kill so-and-so because he is a human being— is that also a naturalistic fallacy?

“Clearly there is an additional background assumption here, namely that one must obey His commands.”
Doesn’t the naturalistic fallacy reject assumptions of that sort? Just as it doesn’t jump to binding conclusions by virtue of some assumption.

The naturalistic fallacy doesn’t reject assumptions; it critiques arguments.

Thanks, yes, I understood what you explained earlier, but I asked something a bit different:
There is some view, often heard today, that all human rights derive from man’s being created in the image of God. Values and meaning ranging from the sanctity of life to equal rights and personal freedoms.
And I’ve seen people use this verse as proof of that.
That the image of God really serves as a normative source for values, and not merely as a fact.
But I don’t understand why that is so.
In your words above, you don’t go in that direction, but rather say that we have bridge statements a priori to this text, and maybe that is part of your general approach to learning the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)…

Maybe you understood me, but I didn’t understand you. What isn’t clear here?

How do the values of democracy follow from the fact that man was created in the image of God, as B’Tselem says?
For example, unlike animals.

How do you explain moral obligation toward human beings but not toward rocks?

Because I assume human beings are essentially different from rocks. But it doesn’t seem to me that this specifically requires creation in the image of God.
But what is your explanation?

I didn’t understand. In what way are they different?

Consciousness.

And apes or ducks?

You could say that man is much more developed, for example that he also thinks, and again we’d find some other essential trait.
But I agree that this is indeed already more problematic, and people really do speak about morality toward animals too, such as preventing cruelty to animals, but still, intuitively… By the way, I seem to remember that that is why Rabbi Kook opposed vegetarianism.
But what is the Rabbi’s explanation, aside from just saying: that’s how it is.

What man has beyond those is the image of God within him (will and intellect, not just awareness). And that is what distinguishes him and gives him his moral status.

The Rabbi did not explain why the logic of the naturalistic fallacy, which rejects obligation on the basis of some fact, would be limited only to the conclusion and would not also apply to the assumptions.
A pleasantly mild day to everyone!

The naturalistic fallacy says that there are conclusions that cannot be inferred from facts. But bridge principles are claims, and claims are not related to fallacies. A fallacy deals with the logical derivation of one claim from other claims. A claim is evaluated in terms of truth or falsehood.
Therefore the naturalistic fallacy does not deal with assumptions or with conclusions. All of those are claims. It deals only with the derivation of a conclusion from assumptions (an argument).

Okay. That is the original case to which the fallacy was applied. Let’s say the logic of the fallacy exists in the assumption too. Does the Rabbi hold that the logic of the naturalistic fallacy does not exist in the assumption, or that assumptions are immune to every fallacy? (Maybe this is connected to my lack of understanding of the Rabbi’s approach regarding the emptiness of the analytic.)

Thanks, you used the medieval authorities’ (Rishonim) definition of the image of God regarding intellect, and Sforno and Rabbi Kook’s, as I recall, regarding will.
But I still don’t fully understand, if so, what the Torah’s novelty is. That we have intellect and will? We seemingly already knew that before… after all, the image of God is described as something much more significant than that fact.

What is the novelty of the Torah, since the medieval authorities (Rishonim) already say this?
The medieval authorities (Rishonim) explain that the Torah’s novelty is that there is moral obligation toward human beings because they contain the image of God (awareness, will, and intellect). That’s all. I don’t understand this whole discussion.

a
The fallacy says that you cannot derive a norm from facts. It does not say that there is no connection between norms and facts. The bridge-principle claim points to a connection between norm and facts, but it does not derive a norm from facts.

I tried Google and couldn’t find an explanation of a bridge principle, so I’m turning to the Rabbi.
A. What is the connection that the bridge points to based on?
B. I’m not well versed in the terminology, so I’ll ask: if there is a connection between a norm and a fact, then why is it not derived from it?
Thanks.

Thanks,
Rabbi, apropos this discussion, why do people assume that the normative entity that validates moral values must be a transcendent being and not an immanent one? Is it because that’s just intuitively how it seems to you, or something more than that?
a,
Sorry for barging in, but as I understand it, the reason is something like this:
Take a claim, for example: It is forbidden to hit because it causes pain.
1. First, there is a fallacy here, because norms cannot be derived from facts (“it is forbidden to hit” does not follow from the fact that it causes pain).
And therefore this claim, which deals with the value-neutral natural world (a world of factual claims), is called a descriptive claim.
2. But one can create a bridge statement such as: “It is forbidden to cause pain.” Then it follows that it is forbidden to hit because it causes pain, and it is forbidden to cause pain! So by means of that assumption this is already a valid statement.
And ethical claims of this kind are not ordinary factual claims but claims that are supposed to arouse in us a certain evaluative attitude. This is called a prescriptive claim. Here, usually, if you still ask why it is forbidden to cause pain, the Rabbi would presumably say, “That’s just how it is.” Because it’s self-evident, and if you don’t get it then you don’t… like why do you think the table in front of you is black or something…
Second, to the extent that we assume such claims, the question arises whether truth-values can be attached to them. If, for example, you think that a dispute about the claim “It is forbidden to cause pain” has the same status as subjective claims like a dispute over whether “vanilla ice cream tastes better than strawberry or not,” then you may assume that everything is subjective. But since many people assume that it really is forbidden to cause pain, and that this is true,
then you think the first claim can be assigned truth or falsehood, and therefore you uphold moral realism. Then the question arises that there needs to be some source that defines good and evil (that attaches truth-values to them).
And that “entity,” whatever it may be, is God, who validates the moral norms.

Correction needed: in the last line I meant “is.”

“If you still ask why it is forbidden to cause pain, the Rabbi would presumably say here: ‘That’s just how it is.’”
I’m really waiting to read how the Rabbi formulates it and whether it’s parallel to “that’s just how it is”…
I liked, though, how you emphasized that people first assume assumptions and then justify them. After all, there is no reason to assume that morality is not subjective. “But since many people assume that it really is forbidden to cause pain, and that this is true”— arbitrariness at its finest. And then you found an explanation for the arbitrariness through our God. The correct process, in my view, is that you know God instructed us, and therefore morality is real. Moral realism is a result of God. In your formulation you invent an effect and then also find it a father.
Apropos morality whose validity is divine, then you mean the 613 commandments. I’m not aware of anything else that God commanded. And since you came to represent the master of the place, know that he distinguishes between the 613 and morality. So what gives morality its validity? Was there a separate giving of the Torah for what you call morality? Or is intuition a divine message that validates it?
I’d be happy for an answer from the honored Rabbi. (K would also be fine.)

a
A. Bridge principle is my term (so there’s no point looking for it on Google). Its truth is based on intuition (for whoever has such an intuition).
B. One can claim that it is forbidden to kill a creature that bears the image of God. That is a claim that, if your intuition tells you it is so, then you think it is true. A valid argument is one whose conclusion necessarily follows from its premises. The premise that a human being bears the image of God is not sufficient to validate the conclusion that it is forbidden to murder him.

K,
I don’t know what the difference is between an immanent entity and a transcendent one. It needs to be an entity that is not me. That’s all.
The distinction between descriptive and prescriptive is an analytic-linguistic reflection of the naturalistic fallacy.
In my opinion, yes. The claim “It is forbidden to murder” is true, because I am a moral realist. But let’s not start an argument about that now.

a
In your last message, see the fourth notebook for the difference between pragmatism and an argument from intuition.
The discussion in this thread is taking us into several complicated philosophical territories, and this is not the place to get into them. I have explained them well in several places. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve exhausted it.

Rabbi,
Okay, interesting, because I seem to remember that you do hold there is some such distinction. After all, it is obvious to you that if we take some random person off the street, we won’t relate to him as someone whose commands we are obligated to obey. Maybe you mean it can’t be a human being. But even with regard to an alien from Mars, if we were to see one we would probably say that there is no real obligation to obey him either…
In addition, I wanted to ask what you think of Moshe Rat’s approach, who, as I recall, says that other people’s wills affect your will. And God is simply the strongest and most basic general will in creation, and therefore His influence is the strongest. Or something like that; I just haven’t really read his words on the subject in the book.

a,
I’ll start from the end: the Rabbi’s approach on this issue is pretty familiar to me, and you forgot to mention Column 15…
If I really think it is forbidden to murder, then why assume that this is an incorrect insight? The desire to portray the whole world as if it stems only from the side of “cold” thinking does not at all seem plausible to me from my acquaintance with people and from what I read on the internet and in history… not that everyone was such a saint… but even the wicked delegitimized their victims… By the way, about the principle of induction too, you could say that evolution implanted it in me until now but maybe not tomorrow morning.
In any case, since I see that you are so fond of this style of proofs, I have to say that the fourth notebook is exactly for your approach 🙂 and in particular you’ll like the proof from epistemology there there.

Guys, you’ve driven me crazy. I explained everything, and I don’t see anything new here. If you want to discuss Moshe Rat’s argument or any other argument, you can open a separate thread for that.

a, this has nothing to do with Column 15 in any way that I can see.

Best regards 🙂

Column 15 is very relevant for him, because he thinks I don’t know that you distinguish between Torah and morality, so I told him it was strange that he didn’t refer to the source of those ideas in Column 15, as a jab.
By the way, regarding the answer to his question, even the revelation at Mount Sinai is a fact, and therefore it won’t help establish acceptance of the religious laws either; rather, the idea that one accepts God’s command (in the sense of doing it for its own sake) comes “before” the implications of Mount Sinai.
So the very fact that he would change his ways in serving for its own sake in light of Mount Sinai means that apparently he already now has a hidden faith.
But if he doesn’t intend to serve for its own sake, but for other reasons, then it may be that even without that, Mount Sinai would indeed cause him to keep commandments. Say, because it is the good thing, etc.

Human beings have no rights. A right is a social concept invented by human beings.
Over the years, human beings understood that rulers who claim they have something others do not are simply charlatans, and they deserve no special rights.
So as part of the struggle against falsehood, most people understood (unlike the charlatans) that there is no a priori reason to give one person more rights than another, even if he happens to be up there in power.

A right is a social decision as part of the rules of the social game. It is not something ontological.

And one can learn this from the verse: for God created man in the image of God, and that image is found in every person, and therefore one cannot say that one person has something the other does not. That is on the ontological level.

From a utilitarian standpoint, of course we would say that a plane full of senior doctors and scientists crashing is a much greater disaster for humanity than a plane full of immigrants from Africa. But one must note that this stems from utilitarian considerations, not because a great scientist really has something essentially different from that labor migrant.