Q&A: Question about the debate between the Rabbi and Aviv
Question about the debate between the Rabbi and Aviv
Question
If I understood correctly, in the long debate the Rabbi proved that it is more rational to think there is a cause for reality, because that is how logic works, and Kant says it is a priori. In my humble opinion, it’s a shame the Rabbi didn’t say that our entire pattern of thought is causal, and otherwise we are in chaos, in the complexity of thermodynamics; therefore a person who says there is no cause is basically turning the chess game of logic into one without rules and sending it back into chaos. Maybe he would agree. But here is the question: Hume’s assumption still remains, because all this is within the closed framework of our logic, which itself raises the question of what its source is. If we assume that, just as in physics there are edge domains that are explained not causally but through simultaneous relations or statistical patterns, then it could be that what precedes our reality is also like that, and the whole beautiful logical proof is still only within our subjective perception. So what does it mean to be rational if there is a higher rationality that also includes the possibility of there being no cause?
Answer
Could you translate that into Hebrew?
Discussion on Answer
Maybe you know all kinds of things; I don’t. Logic is not subjective. And causality is not connected to logic, even though both are a priori.
Kant argued:
All our knowledge is subjective in a certain sense—we do not see “the thing in itself” (noumenon), but only what is experienced through the lenses of our consciousness (phenomenon).
Those lenses include a priori categories such as causality, logic, space, and time.
That is: logic is not a description of reality itself, but the condition without which we have no “reality” to grasp at all.
And again: according to Kant,
causality is an a priori category of our cognition, as is logic.
Both are “lenses” through which we understand the world.
That is: causality is a kind of extension of logic into time and experience.
According to Hume,
he separated logic from causality.
In his view, logic can be valid in itself (for example, the law of non-contradiction), but causality is only a habit—we are used to seeing events come one after another, and therefore we “invent” a cause. That’s what I know. I asked my questions according to Kant, and therefore if your honor goes according to Hume and I rule according to Kant, would my assumption be correct? In other words, is your conclusion that it is more rational to believe in causality only true according to Hume?
It has nothing to do with Kant. Logic is not connected to phenomena, and it is not subjective. As for causality, Kant indeed thinks it is a transcendental matter (that is, a condition for our knowledge and not something about the world itself), and I disagree with him. What he says is baseless. If I remember correctly, I explained this in my column series 434 and onward.
Hume did not separate logic from causality, because no one connected them in the first place. Hume argued that causality does not contain the physical component (causing), because it has no empirical basis. I explained this in my series of columns on causality.
I disagree with him as well, and in my view causality is a claim about the world and not about us, and it also includes an element of causing.
You can rule like whomever you want. But even if this were only a matter of our way of thinking (which in my opinion is not true), it would still come out that there is a God according to our way of thinking. Anyone who wants to claim that this is not true could, to the same extent, reject all of our conclusions about the world, since all of them are only our way of thinking.
I didn’t understand what the problem was with the Hebrew; I used the same Hebrew as in the debate. (By the way, there the Hebrew was much less understandable in a few places.) I’ll try to phrase it again briefly: in the discussion, your conclusion was that it is more rational to believe in a cause, since our logic does not depend on reality but rather we impose it on reality, and logic requires a cause. I’m asking: we know that everything is subjective, including our consciousness and our logic, and that even today in science there is a possibility of non-causal explanation—so how do I determine what is more rational? Can I say, contrary to your conclusion, that what is actually more rational is that I take into account the possibility that my logic is causal, while beyond it there is something non-causal?