Q&A: Fantasia-Judaism – Moshe Rat
Fantasia-Judaism – Moshe Rat
Question
With God’s help
Hello Rabbi, I wanted to ask:
I saw Rabbi Dr. Moshe Rat’s book Fantasia-Judaism, and I wanted to ask what you think of what he writes there.
I’ll start with the first chapters.
Rabbi Rat raises the claim there that our entire worldview passes through consciousness.
In the course of that discussion, he presents the idealist approach (as opposed to the solipsistic one) and argues that it is the most reasonable.
First I’ll present the view as I understood him to be presenting it, and I’ll lay out his proofs for it: I wanted to hear what you think about the view and its proofs:
One can say that the world as we experience it—our shared public domain—exists simultaneously in the consciousness of all human beings, and therefore we experience it jointly. But it exists within us, not we within it.
That is, something like a shared dream that all human beings are continuously dreaming. Only here there is no “real” world; rather, our body is an image produced by consciousness, exactly like the body in a dream. (The reality shared by all people is fixed, whereas a dream is personal, short, and unstable.)
And so, for example, the interaction between consciousness and the impressions of the brain is that consciousness produces the image of the brain, just as in a dream consciousness produces an image of our body; and someone who looks at the brain and concludes that consciousness is made of neurons is like someone who looks at a person’s image on a screen and concludes that people are made of pixels.
He gives an analogy of icons created by software on a computer desktop. Or like the relation between the sea and the whirlpool that appears in it.
If so, we know that consciousness is capable of producing images and sensory impressions, for example in a dream, so here it is grounding itself in what is familiar. And the burden of proof lies on whoever disagrees. (This is also how one understands the influence seen in the brain sciences between the body and consciousness.)
Likewise, realism can never prove that the thing-in-itself exists, nor what the relation is between impressions and true reality. Do they represent it faithfully or not?
Quantum theory supports this approach, according to the interpretation that observation has an effect, and in general some bring proof from there that the universe is mental.
And one can explain that the world we share with other people does not exist “outside”; rather, those people simply exist within consciousness.
He easily rejects the two famous refutations: what about history that took place before human beings existed? He argues that that too is contained in God’s super-consciousness. (Though I don’t understand why he needs to go there.)
The standard refutation, namely “here is a stone,” and we feel it, say, and from that idealism is false—does not apply to this approach at all, because we agree that it exists, only the place where it exists is consciousness.
The implications of his approach in this form are enormous, and through this approach, and later on as well, he tries to undermine and show that there is no ability to distinguish between something real and not real (for example dreams and hallucinations) + the previous conclusion that in any case everything is in consciousness. So too, if we encountered a green man above the television, we could not ask other people whether they see it, because who says they’re real? (Using the same sense and cognition to negate that very thing itself, or begging the question.) And if there were a dispute between several people, whom could we believe?… He also repeats that a circular argument has no logical validity but is a fallacy (you cannot prove X because of a prior assumption X—for example, that other people exist and therefore what they testify to is true, while they themselves could be part of a dream or hallucination). He raises the possibility of a mirage and hallucination, and likewise this exists in the world; one cannot distinguish between dream and reality, and every night we are deceived, and one cannot rely on something that tricks us night after night.
From all these fragments of arguments and others, he wants to conclude that there is an essential inability to know what exists and what does not—that is, what exists outside and what does not. And who said there is any external reality at all?! And who said you are not hallucinating right now (especially since in a hallucination things can feel just as real as reality), and therefore he abandons the whole concept of truth in the usual sense for a new concept called “impact” and the impression upon consciousness.
A thing is real insofar as it has more impact. And this does not mean truth as something objective! (And something can be real for an individual, like a hallucination or a trip.) After that he wants to develop imagination too as something real—and to argue that ancient societies also did not see a sharp difference between reality and imagination. After that he undermines the importance of the difference between the world of imagination and, say, history; for example, there may be mythologies that are more influential than a historical figure, and after all both are real by the definition above. And so on and so forth.
I wanted to ask what you think. At the moment I’ve brought the main points of the arguments, as I understood them, from the beginning foundational and preparatory chapters of the book.
Also, I wanted to ask how one should properly deal with these arguments, because even if there is a grain of truth in them, it sounds like he takes them much further than is reasonable.
Answer
I don’t see any point in reading and getting into the details of the arguments. I completely disagree with his claims and his approach. His proofs are not proofs, and what he says is delusional. If there is some specific proof you’re unsure about, you’re welcome to bring it up.
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t understand where there is any proof here.
1. The fact that one can also imagine means that everything is imagination? If I sleep at night, does that mean I sleep all day long? If I’m sick with a cold one day, am I sick all the time?
2. Idealism says that everything is abstract, and that’s clearer than saying there is both the tangible and the abstract? Really strange stuff. Beyond that, we’re talking about the existence of objects, not of human beings.
3. Indeed. Through phenomena we infer that there is noumena.
In short, these are empty sophistries meant to deny the obvious.
I understand very well what you’re claiming, that the regular view is no less coherent and these aren’t new arguments at all.
I thought about it for a while, and I think that in fact the strongest proof is the claim he does raise—that one can imagine a person who always lives inside a cockpit or a control tower with screens all around in 360 degrees, as he mentions.
And then he needs to decide whether what is outside exists in itself or is only part of the cockpit.
Now if we assume that we are always there and never went outside, would we have a reason to assume the existence of things-in-themselves outside? After all, we were never outside.
Now assuming that I “know” that things exist outside, great. But of course the question then arises: where does that knowledge come to you from?… and you can never know that…?
And therefore, assuming we have *no* prior information and can never receive external information that would help us decide—in the sense of a tabula rasa approach, only here it’s a baby in a cockpit—and we need to decide whether the things outside there really exist or whether it’s all just reflections like on a screen?
Add to that the claim that we know a dream can produce figures, and therefore consciousness is already grounding in the familiar. Add the above sections and the essential unfamiliarity with the material world as such.
And from here one can say that perhaps already the laws of doubt apply, like Occam’s razor and so on…
What do you think? I think here it already sounds much more reasonable.
The question, of course, is that if we assume that the material world exists, we need some justification for that knowledge.
Fine. That’s the standard argument of idealism. What’s the point of opening it up here? I know there is a world outside, period. One can always cast doubt on my cognition, and there’s no shortage of skeptics. I see no point in discussing this. When I answer you, you can always cast doubt on my logical reasoning too. It seems to me there’s no point continuing.
I’d be glad if you’d answer one more response so I can see your line of thought on this.
In any case, do you agree that on the assumption that a person is born tabula rasa in the above sense, then he is right? Or at least that this is how one ought to think (for example from the laws of doubt and as above).
Absolutely not. Even if I was born tabula rasa (and apparently I wasn’t born that way), when I see with my senses and with the eye of the mind a world, and I know cognitively that it exists, the burden of proof is on the fantasist who claims it is an illusion. That’s all.
With God’s help
I think your claim depends mainly on the idea of the eye of the mind. In the sense that you have a priori understandings regarding reality (and also regarding yourself), and they came from outside and are probably correct.
But a block of consciousness sitting in a cockpit (a real / “essential” tabula rasa) — lacking reason and possessing only representations of awareness — I think would not really be able to decide… especially since its own thinking deceives it every night and presents it with fantasies. There his claim is more reasonable.
I’m simply assuming that you hold that you are just not such a creature…
But I don’t understand how a true tabula rasa, without prior a priori assumptions about reality, but which draws everything from consciousness, can say that its eye of the mind / senses are reliable for this purpose???
In any case, afterward one could ask the next question: why do you think you are not such a thing?
I think that from the fact that you said that at night we dream and are able to imagine people, you’ve already distinguished between dream and reality, no?
Rabbi, what do you think?
Adam,
yes, but the idea is that following the explanation above, one can explain reality too as produced by a similar process. And in that there is grounding in the familiar, when we have no other external information, as above.
Rabbi Michi, it’s nice that you call my views “delusional” and the like, when not only do you not refute them, but apparently you don’t even understand them. I emphasized several times in the book that idealism does not claim that the world is an “illusion.” The world is a reality in every sense, but it is a mental reality whose basis is consciousnesses, not matter. To dismiss this with the argument “I simply see that the world exists” is like dismissing the Copernican view with the argument that “I simply see that it’s the sun that moves.” Idealism explains all reality in a simple and elegant way while relying on familiar phenomena, accords with the new experiments in quantum theory, and answers questions like the relation between body and soul. Naive realism, which you advocate, by contrast, is what lacks any grounding whatsoever. You claim that there exists an entire universe outside our consciousnesses, to which we have no direct access, we have no idea what it looks like in itself, we don’t need it to explain anything, but “we just know” that it exists? Congratulations, it seems to me that I’m not the “fantasist” here.
I think Michi expressed himself here clumsily and misleadingly, but his intentions are sound. It’s true that the idealism being discussed here does not speak about illusions but about real subjective mental existence. But what Michi was probably trying to argue is that this very assumption is itself anchored in a subjective mental position. As such, it is open again and again to infinite revision (it can repeatedly be reduced to that same subjectivity). Thus its truth-value collapses by its own hand. This is a regress that no modern idealist (Berkeley, Kant, Hegel..) can escape.
Doron, I didn’t understand your intention. The claim of idealism is simple. We know only mental reality; it explains everything, and we have no need to assume the existence of any real matter outside it. What’s the problem with that?
The problem is providing an explanation that does not undermine itself. For according to the idealist’s own rules, his explanation too stems from a subjective view, and so too the explanation of the explanation… and so on ad infinitum. In the end, the position of a consistent idealist is one that completely nullifies itself.
And in a somewhat Heraclitean formulation: if “everything flows,” then the claim that everything flows does too, and then its truth-value is lost.
The idealist does not deal with the nature of explanations and whether they are subjective or not. He does not attack realism in the name of subjectivity. The question of subjectivity can be directed at any position regardless of this discussion. What concerns the idealist is the nature of reality, and whether we have reason to assume that it exists outside our consciousnesses. He concludes that we do not, and therefore rejects realism. There is nothing self-undermining here.
The question of subjectivity does indeed lie at the doorstep of every philosophical position, including clearly realist ones. If someone who holds a certain position is not interested in examining himself on this point, he weakens his position a priori. What you are basically saying is: I am not interested in examining the assumptions underlying my position, and therefore I also found no problem there… In my view, philosophical work without self-criticism—in this case criticism of a central aspect in the background of (modern) idealism—is poor work.
By the way, contrary to what you say, the question of the nature and character of subjective explanation is a central issue for modern idealism, and it attacks realism precisely in its name. See, for example, Kant and his criticism of “dogmatism.”
Kant and company don’t really interest me in this context; I rely mainly on contemporary thinkers like Kastrup and Lanza, who ground idealism both from the philosophical side and from the scientific side.
And I didn’t say I’m not interested in examining my assumptions, but that’s something everyone is supposed to do; it’s not a criticism specific to idealism.
What matters is not whether it is a specific criticism or not, but whether it is justified. In my opinion it is, and I explained why.
Rabbi Moshe, I indeed don’t know the details of your view, and I responded to what was brought up here. You distinguish between illusion and mental reality. In my eyes that is exactly the same thing. What, in your view, is an illusion? An inner feeling of yours that has no correlate outside. Well, that is exactly what you are talking about. These are merely word games.
And if your illusion is that there is an external world while everything exists inside you, then you are talking to yourself and not to me (maybe I exist inside you—and you inside me? So we both exist in the objective world each from his own perspective and not from the other’s?). I don’t see why exactly I am supposed to relate to that. And please, don’t drag quantum theory into this. That is really populist amateurism.
All this really is a collection of nonsensical delusions. As stated, I am not responding to the book and your view, but to what was written here. If I did not understand you correctly, you are welcome to correct me.
To refer to my views with phrases like “his proofs are not proofs and what he says is delusional,” or “a collection of nonsensical delusions,” without even having read the original material, is not a serious or appropriate response. If you want to understand, you are welcome to read the relevant chapters in my book and not rely on partial quotations. I explain there in an orderly way why mental reality is not an illusion, and why the assumption that real reality is only what exists “outside” is baseless and mistaken.
Don’t tell me not to drag quantum theory in here, because quite a few scientists reach conclusions similar to idealism precisely on the basis of the new findings in that field. You’re welcome to read Bernardo Kastrup’s new book, which is composed entirely of scientific articles that were published in journals and peer-reviewed, and through them he strengthens his idealist conception, and I can point you to more suitable sources. In short, it wouldn’t hurt to read a bit more before responding so decisively.
Rabbi, I think his claim is that the outside is built on the basis of mental foundations. There is indeed such a thing as a shared outside, and also an inside that is personal.
It’s a bit like a computer game, where there are many players on one platform. Only here the medium is consciousness.
For example, there is no such thing as matter like stone or gold. But it is represented in our head and also in your head.
Another implication, as I understand it, is that the mental material is changeable by each person’s mind. That is, people and consciousnesses shape the rules of the game—and in our case, the laws of nature. For example, if lots of people stopped imagining the laws of gravity, then they really would stop, and so on. Though there is also the lawgiver and God’s super-consciousness, and He too is in the game. And there is some relation between our power of imagination and His power. For example, maybe that could explain magic.
I did not claim that one can change the laws of nature if people stop believing in them. The laws of nature are determined by God, not by conscious belief on our part. (By the way, there are studies showing that babies under one year old already have a certain perception of the laws of physics, and they are surprised when something happens that seems to contradict them. That shows they are deeply embedded in us and hard to change our belief in, if at all.) A private individual’s beliefs and desires may perhaps have some effect on the reality around him, but it will usually be negligible. In order to perform miracles or magic, more unusual means are required.
Didn’t you say that the stronger the shared consciousness, the greater its power to change the “physical” world? And therefore, say, today we are in a world with relatively rigid laws of nature compared to the past.
The shared consciousness of all human beings, not the consciousnesses of private individuals. And even it cannot bring about changes consciously (you can’t simply tell everyone to believe that there is no gravity and then it will disappear); rather, it is the beliefs embedded in the unconscious that affect the reality we perceive.
That sounds pretty similar to my understanding.
Rabbi, what do you think of these ideas?
Moshe Rat’s approach seems to fit well with the shift from the ancient world, like the period of mythologies with supernatural experiences of many people from different nations, and with modern physics as he says, together with his definition above.
Friends, I really don’t see the point in this delusional discussion. A few comments on what came up here.
1. There is no connection at all to quantum theory, and I am really not impressed by the delusions of the various interpreters of quantum mechanics (even ones that were peer-reviewed. I know masses of nonsense in this field that was peer-reviewed, and certainly masses of non-necessary interpretations that were peer-reviewed, including even Nobel Prize winners like Josephson. Quantum theory scrambles a lot of people’s brains and brings them to impressive hallucinations). When you show me that this is a necessary result of quantum theory—that is, that every physicist who knows quantum mechanics accepts it, or in other words that this is a scientific claim in physics—I will admit that it follows from quantum theory. Otherwise these are just empty words and taking the name of quantum mechanics in vain. It’s nonsense. This theory is so strange and so poorly understood by anyone, that everyone can extract from it whatever he wants. Especially laymen, but experts too.
2. I do not intend to read the material itself, with all due respect, and I also stated that I haven’t read it. Everything I’m addressing here is only the arguments as they were presented here. They are simply nonsense. There isn’t one argument here that holds water. Maybe in your book itself you have better, deeper, more precise and better-defined arguments—possibly. I am responding to what was raised here.
3. I also do not understand the distinction between illusion and subjective reality, and apparently the issue lies with me alone. In my eyes it is exactly the same thing. Maybe in your book this is explained well; as stated, I haven’t read it.
4. I also do not understand what advantage there is in recognizing the reality of other people and other consciousnesses (and also God) over the existence of objects in a world outside us. Or perhaps you mean that the other people too (and God) exist only inside you, in which case you believe in creations of your own spirit, converse with yourself, and build castles on the agreements you have with your own mental creations. That is certainly a recipe for eternal and absolute peace. Good for you. Usually people are hospitalized for such things, but I definitely think that if it doesn’t do harm there is no reason or justification to hospitalize.
Rabbi, I think you didn’t address just one point: what do you think of the idea that “matter,” or the medium in which things exist, is a mental reality?
A kind of computer game, that every consciousness is connected to. And the one who determines the rules of the game is God. There is no “matter.”
The advantage of this thesis is that it explains everything on the basis of human experience, which is first and foremost mental.
It seems to me that this is the main thrust of what he means, and from there he naturally develops it in various directions.
Do you understand the words you said here? I don’t. Try formulating an orderly argument and you’ll see that what comes out is nonsense.
Thanks,
I think the strongest proof is the combination:
First, one can see in imagination things that we assume do not exist. For example, one can dream of a person with a body. = From here we know of at least one method that we know works and knows how to instantiate images, and that is “consciousness.”
Second, the various possibilities that explain how consciousness works, whether emergence out of physics itself or dualism, do not really give an alternative, fundamental explanation of things. Rather, they usually give a vague explanation. Whereas in his idealism there is grounding in the familiar. Even if you argue that it doesn’t explain better than the other options, at least it is the most elegant, and therefore one can speak of burden of proof as he mentions.
Third, we can never see things-in-themselves. Consciousness always stands before us as an intermediary factor. And then in any case we can doubt its nature (whether what is presented really exists physically outside or not and is created inside).
Fourth, the decisive claims showing that the separation between reality and hallucination is not so sharp, in light of adding the earlier point.