Thank you very much. I thought to come back and press the point that this is a circular argument (not a pragmatist one!),
but maybe I did not fully understand the argument.
As I understand it, it can be read as made up of two independent parts:
1. The first part deals with inferring the very existence of a coordinating factor.
2. The second part deals with characterizing that coordinating factor.
(1. How do we infer it? We start from an immediate feeling that our epistemology reliably reflects reality, and from that conclude that there exists a factor that coordinated between thought and the world.)
(2. And how do we characterize it? If 2 is independent of 1,
then seemingly any person who lacks the intuition that God exists, for example an atheist, could propose any coordinating factor he likes, provided that factor would indeed itself be a sufficient coordinator,
for example: something like Leibniz’s harmony, or pantheism like Spinoza and some of the ancient Greeks, evolution and laws of nature that managed to do the impossible over hundreds of millions of years like Darwin, etc. And from his point of view there would not really be any preference for one theory over another on the basis of this argument, except perhaps that such a coordinating factor indeed “exists,” whatever it may be, if it is even an entity and not a theory.
Quite apart from the fact that all this is according to your view that thought contains a cognitive component, whereas someone who disagrees with that seems would not be able at all to prefer one possibility over another. And likewise according to your view, just as these hypotheses are built “within” the framework of thought, the hypothesis about God is built within the framework of “sensation”-intuition, but it does not necessarily have priority over the second framework. Though of course, if we do have that cognition, then we are not forced to give an alternative explanation. But of course here I was speaking about the atheist who proposes another possibility, whose status is apparently identical to the status of your explanation, whatever its source may be.)

And if 1 really is independent of 2, and especially if God is an inference from 1 and not an intuitive insight in the sense of “This is my God,” then the argument itself seems circular, because why do we trust thought? Because there is a coordinating factor. And how do we know it exists? Only because there is trust in thought. And so on in a circle. Though one may think that psychologically the feeling and sense would remain that thought is coordinated (even skeptics usually would not disagree on this point), while in fact thought is not coordinated in any essential / philosophical sense if that coordinating factor does not exist. So it does seem circular, doesn’t it?

When I said a coordinating factor, I did not say anything about it. So there is no point discussing whether there are other proposals. Without such a factor, it is not reasonable that there would be correspondence. Harmony explains nothing (who established it? how do I know it exists?). And a theory does not cause anything; it only describes causal processes. The argument is that there is no other option.

That is exactly the point I am asking about: are we really forced to connect the two parts of the argument together in order to provide an explanation? Because it seems that the parts really are independent of each other.
That is, at most the argument causes a person to conclude that a coordinating factor exists. But it does not characterize or say at all what that factor is! At most it could even lead a person to reject his current views if they do not fit the conclusion that there is a coordinating factor, such as the assumption that everything is arbitrary. (The stones fell from the mountain.)
But does a person really need to provide a description of the nature of the factor in order to validate his belief in his senses? It does not seem so.

And therefore, I think that according to the Rabbi’s view, which accepts the idea of intuition as a cognitive tool, and that not all thought takes place entirely within us, then from his perspective it makes sense to provide an explanation and we can indeed provide one.

But someone who holds that intuition is only part of analytical thought, it does not seem that this argument would be very different from any other philosophical inference and argument for identifying the coordinating factor, like a physico-theological proof.
Because with regard to inferring the nature of this coordinating factor, *only* on the basis of this argument, the person is in no better position to believe that God is the coordinating factor than any other a priori or even a posteriori hypothesis as an explanation for the world’s correspondence, such as Leibniz’s idea or Spinoza’s.

On the other hand, if we really do need to show the nature of the coordinating factor (and the two parts are indeed dependent on each other), then one can learn from this either that we really do have an intuition that serves as a cognitive tool (and from here your questions to the other theories, “who established it? how do I know it exists?”—questions that previously did not require an answer, because it was enough for a person to point to the possible plausibility of a coordinating factor and not to show in practice that it exists; and therefore using the argument on the basis of elimination, as you said at the end of the answer, “the argument is that there is no other option,” is incorrect, because it assumes from the outset that we are capable of answering that question directly through a cognitive sense).

Or this shows that circularity can be used to answer these questions. (For example, to use inferential tools for evolution and conclude that it is the coordinating factor on the basis of the senses themselves, and the senses themselves are valid because of it.) Though intuition too has a bit of a problem with such use, especially if one can distinguish between a psychological feeling of the rationality of the world—which exists even if philosophically it does not—and the thing itself, though in any case that is less evident than the possibility here, where it is really within thought itself.

I completely lost you. I do not understand what the discussion is about or what the problem is. I explained my claim about a coordinating factor, and indeed I am not saying anything about it.

Um, it is really very simple. I will try asking something from a different angle than what I asked at first. In the end I divided it into 3 small questions, hoping it will now be much clearer 🙂

Does the Rabbi’s use of the revealing argument for justifying the thought system *as evidence for God* actually assume intuition as a cognitive tool? Or would you perhaps even say it proves it?

Because the argument shows that in order for a person to have justification for the thought system or for the rationality of the world, one must conclude that there exists a coordinating factor between thought and the world…
This is a trivial conclusion at first glance. But is the inference here equivalent to a regular “philosophical” inference? It seems not, because the hidden assumptions inferred here are conditions for the current “conclusions.” And without them, the conclusions have no validity.

Now if, for the sake of the framework of the discussion, we assume that there is no such thing as intuition in the sense of a cognitive tool. And let us also assume that the person in question does not have embedded within him any hidden belief in any entity or theory that explains the thought system, aside from the fact that he does intuitively assume that he can learn about the world.
Then at most such a person could infer, in this kind of argument, that there is “something” that coordinates between him and the world, even if he cannot identify what that factor is. And from the standpoint of this proof *alone* (without adding other external “philosophical” proofs such as cosmological or physico-theological or from morality, meaning, etc.), I do not see how there could be any indication or preference for the hypothesis that God is the coordinating factor over any other possible hypothesis, strange as it may be, such as harmony of the world or pantheism.

1. If so, my first question is: for that person who inferred that there really is “something” coordinating, without being able to identify what that factor is, does the Rabbi think that “he has fulfilled his obligation,” and that he now indeed has justification for the correspondence between his thought and the world?
If not, and that person needs to characterize and identify *what* that factor is in order to be justified, then the direct conclusion from that is that the rational person is obligated to infer that he has acquaintance with that factor, and if so there are two possibilities:
2. If an explanation from within the thought system can justify it (-an inference in a “philosophical” form, for example an evolutionary process or God or the Big Bang, etc.) and that is not considered circular, then that seems to be another option. But then the question would be how he was justified until he reached it.
3. Or indeed the person must assume that he has an intuition whose source is external, and this more or less proves the Rabbi’s whole idea of intuition (whether this is a matter of inner or outer contemplation). And in addition this argument becomes much stronger as evidence for God, because this is the best hypothesis for why we would have a hidden belief about an entity embedded within us. And to this many more proofs can be added.

Hope it is clearer now,
happy holiday.

A revealing argument assumes intuition as a cognitive tool; it does not prove it. That is the very nature of this type of argument.
I explained that the coordinating factor is called God. That is all. Therefore the question of whether the coordinating factor could be something else has no meaning, so long as I have not said anything concrete about it.
I did not understand the rest. Your section 3 describes my argument.
That’s it. I’ve exhausted this.

Thank you very much. If so, I have a number of questions, but since you’ve had enough, I’d be glad to ask two final questions from two directions, corresponding to the two holidays 🙂
(Though it is tempting to ask a few more on the basis of this same question, we will not do so, in the spirit of “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after.”)

1. A person who starts from the assumption that his thought is coordinated (why? just because), but does not have intuition of the source of that coordination (and so one can imagine a hypothetical person who is disabled and deprived of that ability).
Rather, he only infers from the formal structure of the argument that some coordinating factor exists; from his point of view, call it “a hat.” Would the Rabbi see him as justified in his original belief? And if you would say yes, then I will ask more generally about the idea of a revealing argument:

2. Since the revealing argument seemingly begins with an axiom (say, thought is coordinated, and from that infers that a coordinator exists), the question arises: why does the person need to justify his thought in the first place? After all, the argument is built on an axiom that itself seemingly does not require further justification. (That is, according to your view, if the person did not justify that axiom, is there some deficiency in his epistemic state?)
Or do you hold from the outset that the whole argument is more of an ontological inquiry—a clarification about reality and an added understanding of the structure of reality? And the deficiency exists only when the person is in a state of contradiction—for example, where there is a positive argument against his axiom, such as when someone maintains מצד one hand that the world is arbitrary and on the other hand coordinated, and is then forced to abandon one horn of the dilemma. But the argument is not a matter of epistemic defense.

The practical difference would be for an ordinary person, who does not assume a metaphysical assumption either way (and so the positive difficulty does not apply to him if he assumes atheism), and on the other hand also does not think about the source of justification for his beliefs.
So is he justified in his beliefs by virtue of the original axiom (if we say as in the second formulation), or do you think that now he is not justified in the essential sense unless he infers that the coordinating factor exists (even if at the moment he holds neither belief in God nor atheism)?

And based on these two, one can talk about two practical differences built on them, but that is already another question 🙂

Wishing us and all Israel a happy holiday!

1. I did not understand the question. If a person reaches the conclusion that there is a God, does he really believe there is a God? Yes.
2. I did not understand a word.
Forgive me, but from now on I will not answer further.