Thank you very much 🙂
I’ll read everything, God willing. It’s just that from the single column I read and from the little I saw in The Science of Freedom (page 129 there), it is evident that the Rabbi thinks that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know what will happen in the future. But in notes 28–29 in Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon, you presented that the logical contradiction between knowledge and choice is not so strong, such that in practice one can hold both of these beliefs together.
So I also wanted to ask what exactly this means ontologically about reality. Does it mean that you think the Holy One, blessed be He, nevertheless does know what I will choose? Or is it only subjectively possible to entertain these two principles in my mind, even though in truth the Holy One, blessed be He, does not really know what I will choose (which seems quite puzzling to me, and I very much doubt that is really what you meant)?
It may be that if I read everything through to the end I’ll answer myself, but since you’re already here maybe you can shed some light..
Thanks!

Okay, now I saw your long remarks in the column “The Question of Knowledge and Choice 4 (column 303).” After close to 20 years you really didn’t remain with a definitive claim on this issue… Wow, so many years of research that still haven’t managed to show that one particular answer is the correct one—apparently this really is one of the more complex theological topics.
That column was written five years ago, and presents reflections of the Rabbi that have been with him since 2002. I wanted to know whether you think that today you are a bit more at peace with the fourth path (God does not know) than you were when that column was written? Have any new arguments occurred to you since then? Is there perhaps another, more recent column that deals with the same subject, in which you respond to your remarks from column 303 and take them in new directions or challenge them?
Thanks 🙂

I’d appreciate it if the Rabbi would answer my question after all; I was left thoroughly confused.
Wishing you a restful night,

I explained it. Newcomb’s paradox shows that there is a contradiction here (although it is apparently not analytic but synthetic a priori). So one has to decide whether there is foreknowledge or there is choice. Since it is clear to me that there is choice (an immediate intuition), the conclusion is that there is no foreknowledge. One can also decide this on the basis of lex specialis: if we decide there is choice, that does not completely collapse the assumption of knowledge (only with regard to events of choice). But if one adopts knowledge, then choice does not exist, and the intuition that there is choice is rejected entirely.
There is no need to exaggerate. There haven’t been 20 years of research on this topic. I think about it from time to time.

And you simply leave open the option that maybe knowledge also exists because you are aware that you cannot refute it? (In light of what became clear in column 303.)

I mean in column 303, and likewise in your inquiry into the difference between analytic and a priori in notes 28–29 in Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon..

No. In my opinion, foreknowledge does not exist. True, I cannot rule it out categorically, because this is not analytic but synthetic a priori. But that is my view. I repeat myself again and again.

I completely understood your arguments, and indeed there is no need to repeat them. I really appreciate that you explain yourself again. And indeed, from everything you say here and in the columns, your final tendency is very clearly toward denying God’s knowledge of my future choices.

At the same time, I am trying to understand what the practical upshot is of your inquiry, which led to the conclusion that the logical contradiction is not complete (a priori but not analytic). I thought that maybe the practical upshot of this is that you did not really uproot the view that God knows what will happen in the future, and therefore perhaps there is still a reasonable place to hold that position (and maybe you yourself even think so). That, at least, is what seemed to me from your full remarks in Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon, where you propose the third path, which gives up neither horn of the dilemma and holds on to both choice and knowledge. I did not understand exactly what your relation is to that third path, and at least from a straightforward reading of your remarks there it would seem that you identify with it, and therefore perhaps leave room for the thought that maybe the Holy One, blessed be He, does know after all.
If indeed that is not the case, I wanted to know what then is the practical upshot, in your view, of this distinction between analytic and a priori in this case? What possible conclusion can be drawn from adopting this distinction? Why did you feel the need to present it? Does it undermine your claim or its definitiveness? Does it point to some hole in the theory?

I’m asking because I’m genuinely confused and want to understand, and it is not clear to me what follows from the fact that you cannot rule out the other opinion categorically, according to your words.. (Have you left something of it still “alive”? Or are the arguments you presented enough to turn it into an opinion devoid of foundation in any case.)
Thank you very, very much for your response!

I think I explained it there. I think one cannot hold both, but since this is a synthetic a priori contradiction and not an analytic one, I cannot dismiss out of hand the position that does hold both. It is certainly not a meaningless position (nonsense) like a self-contradictory position. It is possible that I am mistaken in my conclusions from Newcomb, in which case they may even be right. See the very deep and confusing discussions in the talkbacks following those columns.

Thank you very, very much 🙂
I really appreciate it.
I’m sure I’ll have more questions as I continue 😉