Q&A: Skepticism – Certainty
Skepticism – Certainty
Question
With God's help
Hello Rabbi Michael Abraham,
I wanted to ask you a question regarding skepticism and certainty, in light of reading your trilogy as well as other articles
and videos of yours, but first I wanted to say that I greatly appreciate your honesty and your matter-of-fact discussion
of many varied topics, and also the fundamental way
in which you present things.
But precisely because of that appreciation—when I read something in this style—
"As I explain there, and have explained more than once in the past, the goal is not to arrive at certainty. To the best of my understanding, a person has no way to arrive at certainty in any field, including belief in the existence of God, and certainly not the Sinai revelation or anything else (perhaps except for this principle itself: that nothing is certain, though even about that further analysis is needed). The goal is to reach conclusions that are entirely reasonable and rational, and in my opinion far more sensible than the alternatives. Anyone looking for something beyond that is wasting his time. He shouldn’t read, and in general should stop searching. If he has found a way to reach such certainty, he is probably mistaken (for sure! 
)"
So based on that, it seems we’ve reached bedrock, beyond which it’s impossible to go any deeper. That is, if you try
to reach certainty, you won’t be able to, because skepticism cannot be fully resolved; at most one can arrive at probability, etc.
But it seems to me that the discussion of this issue—for some reason, unlike other topics you discuss—does not receive
enough depth and exhaustive treatment.
After all, in philosophy there is a broad field for genuine skepticism—even more extreme than Descartes’, since he did not doubt
the principles of logic, whereas other philosophers (like the Indian Nagarjuna) did indeed doubt even the truths
of logic itself. And truthfully, it doesn’t matter who doubted what—why not cast doubt on logic itself
and on all our intellectual ability—including the most "basic" rules such as:
the rule of inference, the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, the law of the excluded middle, etc.
It is "true" that the moment we cast doubt of this kind, we have essentially broken our own rules of the game,
meaning we have no ability to answer—because we have no tool (and in fact this very sentence is also doubtful 
). And by the way, in skepticism
of this kind even the concept of "probability" is equally irrelevant—because there is no standard of any kind! (And of course
the same applies to this sentence itself.)
But how can one get out of this? After all, we have no necessity to assume that logic
is correct and that the sentences
I’m writing now are even meaningful at all. And if the answer is: we simply assume that logic
is correct and move on from there—then the discussion seems very lacking, because it is as if to say this:
Either use your intellect—that is, logic—by assuming that logic is true and then move forward,
or don’t assume logic—and remain stuck in eternal skepticism.
But why reduce the whole person to whether he uses his intellect or does not use his intellect—
if there is more in a person than just intellect / emotion, perhaps there is another source from which certainty can arise,
and the intellect is not the relevant tool for certainty / probability.
The proposal I hold—and I assume you are familiar with it—is that beyond intellect and emotion,
there is also soul in a person—a thing that cannot be defined in words, a thing for which every word is only borrowed language. One can say
about it that we experience it directly—but those are only words, and they cannot serve as
a definition of the thing itself that we call soul. And this experience is (at least for me) real and incomparably certain,
and I do not experience any doubt within it. Even when I come to cast doubt on it, I immediately go back to casting
doubt on the doubt itself—something along the lines of: how do I know that I can doubt at all? For if there is no law
of non-contradiction, the entire existence of doubts or thoughts at all collapses (and this sentence too ).
In other words, I am trying to say what Rabbi HaNazir said in his commentary on Beliefs and Opinions:
"All heresy, all estrangement, comes from this: that we have distanced ourselves from Hebrew logic, the auditory logic, and enslaved ourselves to Greek, pagan, Western logic" (I don’t have the book in front of me now, but the quote is almost word for word).
And we are not speaking here of a person who did not know philosophy, or who had no appreciation for intellect. But there are other things
in a person beyond his intellect / logic, and the source of truth and certainty may be different from what
the scientific method has dictated for 2,000 years, from the days of Greece until today??
I would be glad to hear the Rabbi’s opinion on the matter.
Thank you very much!
Answer
I asked to have it uploaded to the site, and also shortened. Well, no man dies with even half his desires in hand.
As you yourself wrote, it is impossible to discuss skepticism and not answer the skeptic. That is why I have neither done nor do that. What I argue is that skepticism too is an assumption like any other assumption, and it too has no justification. Therefore each person has to examine himself and ask whether he is a skeptic or not. If he is a skeptic, he should be silent from here on out (and certainly not talk nonsense about tools beyond the intellect and other such absurdities). And if he is not a skeptic, then there is no reason to be troubled by skeptical musings.
All I am trying to do on this issue is show people that they are not really skeptics, and explain to them that if so there is no need to be troubled by those questions. If someone really is a skeptic, there is nothing to discuss with him.
There—you have my answer both to your question and to your wondering why you did not find a detailed discussion from me on this point. Quite simply, it is impossible and unnecessary to conduct one.
Discussion on Answer
This is really an amusing message. All the flaws you pointed out in my words appear in yours. True, you are not subject to logic, so of course there is no problem with that. So I’ll spell it out and we’ll part as friends.
1. I did not use mockery anywhere. I wrote that talk about apprehensions beyond the intellect is meaningless nonsense because that’s what it is. This was not said in order to put you down.
2. If there is any ad hominem here, it is in your own message. The fact that there are people who talk nonsense with famous names does not mean it isn’t nonsense.
3. You yourself use the principles of the excluded middle and non-contradiction, and then argue against me that I am forbidden to use them. Otherwise, there is no problem asserting something against you even if you think the opposite. Did you forget that contradictions don’t bother you?
4. Quantum theory has nothing to do with all this—not even by a thread. Although there are indeed people who talk nonsense and think it does. If there were a contradiction in quantum theory, any conclusion could be inferred from it. And if it refuted the principle of the excluded middle, then it too would collapse, because the path to it used that principle.
5. You ask me a question and reject logic as a basis for answers. So what kind of answers exactly are you expecting? And if you expect answers of type X, why does it bother you that I give answers of type Y? We aren’t troubled by the law of contradiction, remember?
6. In short, if you do not accept logical answers, I see no point in the discussion. I wrote that I see no point in talking with skeptics. It’s like asking me questions and telling me that you do not understand any language, so there is no way to answer you. Good luck to all of us.
With God's help
All my questions at the end of the message were according to your assumptions that logic exists, and not according to my assumptions,
therefore:
1. At the basis of mathematics stands intuition—where does that lie on the intellectual-logical plane?
2. Where is human choice located?
3. Why can God be above man and his intellect, while there cannot be something in man that is above his intellect?
— And regarding the ad hominem — everyone who does not hold your opinion is "although there are indeed people who talk nonsense and think it does"
I don’t think one should speak like a restaurant critic in the style of Richard Dawkins.
And regarding quantum theory, if you have an explanation that does not constitute a contradiction to the law of non-contradiction, please present it.
The accepted interpretation does indeed constitute a violation of this principle. And indeed physicists who care about nothing but physics ignore
the philosophical implications of quantum theory, while physicists who do enter the philosophical side are indeed troubled by these questions: one arrives at quantum theory by means of logic, and once one gets there one understands that logic is not valid there 🙂
As strange as that is to the human intellect, who guarantees to us that it is the ultimate intellect? It may be completely limited.
If you are speaking according to my approach, in which there is logic, then there is no discussion. I’m done.
As for my interpretation of quantum theory, this is not the place to discuss it. I will only say that this is not philosophy but mathematics. Therefore it has nothing to do with awareness of philosophical aspects. A theory from which any conclusion can be inferred is not mathematically or scientifically consistent.
From my side, the summary of the discussion according to your assumptions looks like this:
First argument:
1. There is logic.
2. Therefore there is logic.
Second argument:
1. There is nothing above intellect / emotion.
2. Therefore there is nothing above intellect / emotion.
And regarding the cases where we see that there are things that contradict the assumptions of these two arguments, such as:
Quantum theory:
in the accepted interpretation it contradicts the principle of non-contradiction (and the mathematics of the above does not help at all, since mathematics does not describe or explain any more than what reality describes and explains; mathematics is only a language
+ logic, and the problem of course is not in the language but in the logical aspect of reality, which is reflected to the same degree
also in mathematics)
Intuition:
as the basis for the foundational concepts in mathematics
Free choice:
as an activity whose root is not dependent on matter
and more,
the answer is—no answer, and that’s a shame.
More power to you
First, "I am not talking nonsense," and there is no point in ad hominem speech.
Second—you didn’t answer anything, because you simply said: I use reason, period. And even worse, you boxed me in
also to an intellectual either-or, namely: "If you are a skeptic, then you must be silent from here on; and if not, then there is no problem."
Why are you forcing me (the skeptic) into the law of the excluded middle, and also into the law of non-contradiction? I am not committed to that—because as a skeptic I do not accept the law of non-contradiction
(and neither does modern physics with its wave-particle business, and I mean the accepted interpretation of quantum theory, not
less accepted interpretations like hidden variables and the like).
Third—how do you know skepticism is an assumption? Only if you obligate me to the accepted axioms of reason. And why should I be bound by those concepts and/or conventions that you assume for yourself? I can be a skeptic without assuming anything at all.
As stated above, in skepticism of this kind there is no problem saying a thing and its opposite—"Who obligates us to the law of non-contradiction," as stated above.
Fourth, and this is the main point—you ignore other parts of reality such as soul, and you use mockery toward someone who claims
that there are other things by which to examine reality besides intellect / emotion, and this without any justification at all (only ad hominem).
And according to your own approach, at least for that you ought to have a justification, since how do you know "there are no tools above the intellect"?
And if you are straightforward, as I see from other platforms where you write, why use mockery? And logical fallacies
in order to reject an argument? Even if the argument is based on radical skepticism, which many philosophers past and present have raised
and discussed—to the point that some contemporary philosophers "decide" that logic is a product of our physical, social environment, etc.
Dr. Yuval Steinitz, when trying to defend rationalism against the blows dealt it by modern physics—and I absolutely mean the law of non-contradiction, whose use was reduced only to the macro level and not the micro world—Steinitz argues: if we narrow this law from time to time, who guarantees to us that it was ever valid at all? And in his book The Tree of Knowledge he tries to prove that logic must be true—but the same doubts can be raised there as well.
Therefore I was interested in your substantive opinion!
1. Why hold that there are only intellectual things and nothing more? After all, just as you believe that God exists above man
and therefore above the human intellect—since there is no "reasonable" reason to assume that our intellect is the highest possible and that God
must be limited by it—after all, even among human beings intellect changes and develops into sharper levels. So why not say that in man himself too there are different components that are not intellectual? In your view, where does choice come from?
Even if in your view there is no ability to clarify anything except by means of the intellect, and there is nothing else, I still have neither certainty
nor probability about anything, since everything rests on what we assume in our foundational assumptions, and no foundational assumption is better than another. So then it makes no sense to speak either of certainty or of probability; everything is equal according to that, is it not?
And just to sharpen point 2: the foundational concepts in every field cannot be defined (they will be circular or infinite),
therefore we rely on intuition—no less and no more. Where does this concept enter into the definitions of intellect???
(I assume you know that I am referring to set theory and to the fact that its foundational concepts like set and member of a set have no definition, and we are forced to understand these concepts intuitively! May God have mercy :))) )
More power to you!
2.