Q&A: Many Coins etc.
Many Coins etc.
Question
Hello
1. What do you think about the saying of the Sages: before you ask for mercy that words of Torah should enter you, etc., ask that delicacies should not enter, etc.—personally and in general
2. What do you think about modern art, especially those scribbles with a red dot from which lines of storm drama or something else emerge
3. How do you understand the topic of the fundamental difference between a human being and a machine? Is human thought calculations that are, say, very complicated, or some kinds of combinations and leaps that are a different world of computation, or something else
4. When a person thinks, how can he understand in a simple way the distinction between the self and the thinking—that is, who is the self that stands behind decision-making after data processing? Isn’t there some kind of circle here?
Thank you very much
Gilden
Answer
- I don’t know what you mean. If you’re asking, cite a clear source.
- Doesn’t speak to me.
- See the column “What Is Judgment?”.
- I didn’t understand the question. When a person walks, there is a person and he performs the act of walking. So too with thinking. The self is the one who thinks. The intellect is the component that carries this out by means of the brain (which is the organ that performs it).
Discussion on Answer
1. You’re partially quoting Midrash Tanchuma as brought in Mesillat Yesharim, and expecting me to know what this is about? I’m very flattered, but it seems to me that something this obscure ought to be quoted in full if you want to ask about it. It’s not reasonable to expect me to do search work in order to understand what you were talking about. By the way, I tried, and the search in the Responsa Project turned up nothing. I have no idea what is meant. I don’t deal with aggadic literature, and apparently one would need to see the words in their context.
2. How do you define your body? Your self is your spiritual part. It has no location, because spirit has no location. I don’t see why any further definition is needed here. By the way, if that self wants, loves, gets emotional, hates, is stingy, hurts—then you do understand what it is, don’t you? There is no loop here connected specifically to thought, and no loop at all.
With Heaven’s help, 2 Cheshvan 5783
The wording brought in Mesillat Yesharim is also cited in Tosafot, Ketubot 104a, in the name of “a midrash,” except that there it says: “he should ask for mercy that delicacies not enter into his body.” And in Tanna Devei Eliyahu, chapter 26 (ed. Ish Shalom), it says: “he should ask for mercy that excessive food and drink not enter into his innards.” I likewise found this in “Clarification of the Source” on the “Forum for Torah.”
And it seems clear that the problem is the request for “delicacies” and “excessive food and drink,” since being drawn after delicacies and luxuries impairs the objectivity of the learner’s thinking and his ability to persist in seeking the truth. But not abstaining from what one truly needs.
With blessings,
Menashe Barkai Buch-Trager
2. Rabbi,
If thinking is only one component of the self, then why not say: I walk, therefore I exist?
There is a column on the cogito. I explained it there.
363
1. In Mesillat Yesharim ch. 13 it is brought:
It was further said (Yalkut Shimoni, Torah, parashat Vaetchanan, sec. 830; see Tanna Devei Eliyahu 26): before a person prays that words of Torah should enter into his innards, he should pray about food and drink, that they should not enter into his innards.
4. How do you define the self that thinks—where is it, what are its properties, etc.?