Q&A: Formal Authority Regarding Facts
Formal Authority Regarding Facts
Question
Hello Rabbi, in the first lesson on conceptual analysis the Rabbi explains that formal authority cannot exist with regard to facts, since it’s impossible to force me to think something. Substantively, it can exist: I can think it’s more likely to be true because an expert said so, but to actually change my mind—that isn’t possible, since we’re dealing with facts of truth and falsehood, and if I reached the conclusion that something is true and someone tells me it’s false—let him prove it.
My question is: can God be considered a formal authority regarding facts, or would I also leave Him in the category of substantive authority? After all, He is the one who determined what is true and what is false?
Answer
He too is only a substantive authority. If God commands me to think X and I am not convinced, then I do not think X. In that respect there is no difference between Him and a human being. Of course, with respect to God, if He says something I will probably be convinced. But then it operates on the substantive plane, not the formal one.
Discussion on Answer
It would be commanding me to think something. And therefore there is no such thing.
Meaning this runs against the principle of free choice? That is, practically speaking there is no way at all to obligate a person to think something, because a person’s thought depends only on him? And if someone obligates me to think something—then it isn’t my thought but his; I still haven’t been convinced.
(Sorry for the repetition, I don’t know why I’m getting tangled up in this…)
There’s nothing to get tangled up in here. You can’t instruct a person to think X. You can only convince him that X. If you didn’t convince him, then he does not think X. So how would an instruction to think X help? In practice he doesn’t think it.
That’s different from an instruction to do X. Here, even if he thinks it’s not right to do X, there is still the possibility of instructing him to act that way.
Okay, I understand. Thank you very much, Rabbi!
In that same context, do you think that the Academy has authority to determine the Hebrew language? I mean not to invent new words (that would be formal authority), but to decide disputes between interpreters of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) (in which case we’re already talking about facts).
No one has authority with respect to language. There is linguistic expertise, and there are certainly academics who have that kind of expertise.
Assuming suggestions work—if a person repeats mantras to himself or places himself in an environment of mantra-preachers—his views will also change. According to this, it would seem that it is possible to obligate a person to think X? It seems to me that reciting the Thirteen Principles as part of the prayer is such an attempt, and more generally it seems that many religious educators advocate this method (and unfortunately it succeeds).
So basically, according to the Rabbi, formal authority regarding facts would force me to think exactly this way and not otherwise—that is, a command with no way to violate it? I’m trying to sharpen the definition for myself.