Q&A: Free Will, Individual Providence, Pain & Pleasure - Rabbi Dovid Gottleib

today's Q&A so the boss your Yeah question in the book of there are at least two examples emphasizing characters right and left sides and specifically grasping a weapon with their right or left hand is there a cabalistic meaning behind this so I'm uh the beyond the five books of Moses I'm dreadfully ignorant of the rest of the tanak I never studied it carefully certainly not the book of shim but right and left definitely are cabalistic ideas um right signifies loving kindness and left signifies strict judgment and strict Justice and although they are both Divine modes of action they're not at all equal loving kindness is the source of the creation the source of the meaning of the world and its goal and strict judgment and strict Justice like every other principle of divine action is derivative of loving kindness everything is motivated only by loving kindness the whole safer the way of God belato is based on this premise and the safer you looked into it in detail with a little bit of nuance the whole saer is just acting out that premise showing how everything in history and everything in human psychology and everything in politics and economics and everything that we know about the physical world all of it right is is a expression of loving kindness so always uh left is secondary to right always left is a tool of the right always left is only a way of expressing a means to be able to achieve what the right wants uh it has it has no independent uh no independent status yeah I tried to look and see what what he was talking about I just Google quickly M and it brought up something like uh when I his name he went to kill the fat king his right hand wasn't as good as his left hand so he had the sheep in his right hand in his right side and this way he was able to sneak in kind of and then P out with his left hand to stab you see even in that case where it's a physical reason why he's not using his right hand even that could be hidden calistic reason Okay so so see that's very interesting yeah there's there a clear physical reason but then you have to ask why was he physically constructed that way and that's where the cabalistic reason would come from well was he left-handed in that sense but it's not simplistic it's not one-sided for example the destruction of Sodom uh when it takes place the Divine name is a Divine name of mercy and then the message is they were is so criminal that even the attribute of Mercy agreed that they should be destroyed so it's not it's not simplistic it's not you know the way in which a six-year-old were to use the concepts some the concepts have sometimes they they uh work together and sometimes they struggle with one another one takes precedence over the other sometimes in a certain sensus which rolls it's a very complex picture but that's the difference between right and left and it's carried out in h of that way and certainly carried out in in Jewish thought that way so it's quite right that there's a there's a difference there what it would be in those particular cases I haven't studied them so I can't say in detail yeah yeah this is probably a little weird a weird one but I was like on chavas I kind of woke up and um my arm is injured um as a prising um and it has scars on it and I was like looking at it and I realized the hand has like a stitching on it kind of or looks like kind of a stitching like similar to what my skar look like and I just thought like is there any kind of reason behind why the hand has that and like not any of like the other body well most of the other body parts let me understand you you you actually had an injury yeah and the one result of that injury is a kind of phenomenon that looks like stitching on your hand but not any of the the part of your body that's the idea well kind of like I find that the stitching on the hand that was done like similar to the actual hand on itself Lin the stitching that was other words you're talking about about the fact that the injury followed the lines on your hand is that the idea somewhat yeah I okay I'm trying to get climb onto the idea cl to the idea um I'll tell you I've I've wrestled with this in a general sense um and I'm a divided mind I haven't been able to settle it does every fact have some significance or are there certain things which just are consequences of other things but they don't have their own independent significance you have a say for Torah Torah scroll you have all these letters now imagine you open it up wide and you say what's the exact different distance between this letter and that letter well let's see the in inches in millimeters well choose a unit all the units all the different numbers is the fact that this is 1,172 4,293 you know and every pair do all those facts have significance now God has infinite capacity so there's no reason why he's going to be overwhelmed with the information but the question is whether it has to have significance sometimes way we look at the world sometimes you know this had to happen and this had to happen and they happened exactly 2,944 Seconds Apart well they both had to happen but is there any significance in the 2944 that number of seconds apart and then how about nanc you know it's a bigger number you go on and on like that or you simply say look they had to happen and as a result of that happening they were this far apart but that in itself has no particular significance my instinct tells me that there are going to be things that don't have significance but I can't prove it and it's certainly not because God couldn't make the ball significant it just I don't see any point in it I don't see that that the world any necessity for the for the the details of the world to work out that way it's a little bit like maybe now I'm thinking there's a connection here final stages of editing the final um final manuscript of the book of my my rits and I putting out about individual Providence and the rambam along with others but the rambam in particular writes that only human beings have individual Providence the species of other animals don't have uh individual Providence let alone trees and and and stones but when we talk about individual Providence there's a systematic ambiguity in those words and in different places they mean different things even the same author in different places they mean different things and roughly I mean I'm giving you now about 30 pages worth of stuff in the book roughly the difference is between whether there is a decision to make this happen versus whether there's an individual purpose in the division of making this happen or whether making this happen for the sake of something else and the thesis of our book is that God makes everything happen and he set it sets it up so that each thing will happen the way it does but when you ask why it happens only some things are made to happen because they're important and other things are made to happen because they are means to something else and for all God's purposes matter it didn't have to happen that way it could have happened another way it's just that in controlling the world you have to decide how things will work and this is the way it happened to work so for example if a human being suffers a pain says the r that's always corresponding to some failure that he did always if any pleasure that's always because he did something good and that's why the pleasure came one by one individual each person's pleasures and pains are measured against their performance now let's say say there's a fish in the Stream and a fly on the water and the fish catches the fly and eats the fly and thereby he nourished well the purpose there is that there should be fish and there should be flies the constancy of species or types of organisms is something which Divine Providence cares about but for the purpose of constancy of types it didn't have to be that this fish would eat this fly this fish could eat a different fly or this fish could have died and another fish could have eaten that fly that and thereby maintain the the species yes God's control of the world made it happen that this fish would eat this this this fly it wasn't accident wasn't random didn't happen by itself God doesn't go on vacation but if you ask why is it that the Divine Providence made this fish eat this fly the answer is not that this fish had to eat this F but it's part of a program of keeping fish alive and keeping flies alive and God could have done it for all the purposes he has could have been a different fish and a different fly wouldn't have mattered so um that's a little bit of an example I'm thinking now you see it's this wonderful when you people ask questions you read things something you've thought about a hundred times maybe this is a bit of a of a uh of a of evidence on the side of the fact that certain facts don't have any intrinsic significance I'm glad I thought of it before the book is published embarrassing to have somebody read the book and say hey look you wrote this over here does that imply doesn't that imply that so I think I think that maybe that's uh that's the fact that not every every particular fact has to have significance in of itself in your case it could be that you'll find that because you were triggered to think about it that will trigger you to think about other things and you'll come to certain conclusions or be driv your thoughts will be driven in a certain direction which will which will be a benefit for you so it wasn't the intrinsic thought again it was something that had triggered in the future that's what I would say yeah I was wondering um something I'm confused a little bit about is just the idea of like time and then there's I guess we we live in a world of time but there's also like God exists Beyond time so like sometimes I get confused about the correlation between like free will or like fate like how much is in our control or like how much is we're like kind of just like going along with God's plan it's like a CO kind of thing well there there are a number of ways of of sort of taking your words and and and attaching them to a specific problem um one is the problem of God's knowledge of what we do in particular if he has knowledge before we do it do we really have free will that's called a problem of fore knowledge and Free Will that's one way to to to attack it um and that's discussed in the literature and uh there are two different ways to handle that I I'll give you one this is all it's all recorded you can you can get on but but I'll give you one just to show you that there's something when you work it out in detail a little bit then uh there's a way to handle that very directly so here's the way the problem is put by m monties and others and the modern philosophers after thrashing around for a couple of decades in the early 20th century came to the same same way of formulating it if they had read my monies it would have saved them two week 20 years but okay um here I am making a free decision shall I lift my hand or shall I not when I go through this sometimes I do and sometimes I don't you know just I make my own decision and then I decide three two one up okay I decided up I could have decided down so up to me I I'm capable of doing both of them and I Happ to decide up it went up because I decided that's the way it feels to me now the clever critic says wait a minute Rabbi do you believe that God has all knowing yeah how about yesterday was he all knowing yesterday also of course well did yesterday know did he know yesterday that today you were going to lift your hands at that moment yeah sure then critic says well Rabbi if he knew yesterday that you were going to lift your hand at that moment could you really have kept it down wouldn't keeping it down mean to contradict the knowledge he had yesterday do you really have the power to contradict God's knowledge isn't God's knowledge perfect absolute necessary did you really have the power to keep it down so I think about that I said you don't that's interesting could I have kept it down doesn't doesn't sound right I mean if I kept it down it would cons of God's knowledge that doesn't seem like it's in my power to do that maybe you're right maybe I really didn't have the power to keep it down so the critic says well then why did you think that you were choosing between two possibilities two Alternatives that were both in your power you now see that the alternative that you didn't take wasn't in your power it wasn't possible so if you think of Free Will as choosing between two both of which are in your power and your choice makes it happen there's something wrong with the way you think that's not correct if God really knew yesterday what I'm going to do today I'm not really choosing between two different possibilities at this point I be get nervous you know what about that and uh how do I defend to Free Will and so and so on that's the way in which the problem is articulated now given that way of expressing the problem by the way that means that the problem of of God's knowledge is not that his knowledge makes me do what I do causes me pushes me around gives me a shove I'm not moving on my own that's not the problem the problem is not with how I do what I do the problem is what about what I didn't do was that really possible was that really alternative was that really open was I really choosing between two this does nothing about how I do what I do it's just he not choosing between two possibilities because one of them turns out not to be possible um now there is a direct answer to this question some reject the answer for other reasons go on I'm not going to do that today but but there is a direct answer to this question let's let's play it out once more in a little more detail and I'll show you where the critic here is is making an assumption which we could deny so in the real world this is what happens in the real world I raise my hand in the real world God knew yesterday I was going to raise my hand that's the real history now the critic ask a question not about the real world he asked a question about a virtual world what about a world in which you would keep your hand down instead of lazy so he's asking me to think about something that didn't happen because I really did pick it up but think about another world in which you keep it down is that world a possible world could there be a world like that is that a possible scenario well let's think about it is well listen God knows that you're going to let let raise it up does he wait a minute we're not talking about the real world anymore we're talking about another world another world that never was true that never happened you're asking whether this other scenario is possible so when you talk about the other scenario in which I keep my hand down instead of raising it up why do you import into that scenario also that yesterday God knew it was going to going to go up who told you to put that in maybe the correct answer is this in the real world I raised it and he knew that I was going to raise it in that scenario where you imagine that I keep it down that scenario he knows that I'm going to keep it down and that's why it's possible because his knowledge is different in that in that scenario what the critic is doing is assuming that the knowledge in the real world should apply also to the false scenario that didn't happen stick it in and then you see that you have a problem who says I should stick it in now that's a little bit too abstract let me put it the way beron Russell put it beron Russell who was no friend of ours who was a self-proclaimed atheist but he himself wrote about this problem don't use this problem to beat up the religious believer because it's just a mistake God knew yesterday what I'm going to do today how does he know what do you mean how does he know he's God you know he everything's possible for him yeah okay okay I hear that but how does he know here's one possibility one scenario for God yesterday God takes a look at what's going to happen for his tomorrow which is today going to takes a look into his future nobody can see the future yeah but God can Okay God has powers that we don't have so he from yesterday looks into the future 24 hours later and he sees gol he's making these stupid remarks in this lecture okay let's watch him and see what happens and he watches sees that I lift my hand and that's how yesterday he knew yesterday what I'm going to do today because yesterday he saw me doing it today h well if he gets his knowledge from what I do then in the real world where I really lift my hand up the day before he knows I got to lift it up because he sees me lifting it up in the virtual world the non-existent world the one we're checking his possibility where I keep my hand down then in that world 24 hours before he observes me keeping it down so in that world he'll know it's going to be down and then have two perfectly consistent pictures the picture of the real world I picked it up and knew was going to pick it up the picture of the virtual world the false scenario I really keep it down and he knows I'm going to keep it down and both are perfectly consistent there no reason why it's not possible for me to keep it down that's a way of solving the problem so that there's no inconsistency there's no impossibility where he claims that what I didn't do is impossible wasn't really an alternative wasn't really choosing between two possibilities not it's not correct so that's one way to avoid to avoid one of the problems that's in the words that you said is one of the problems and other similar ones God being Timeless gets the same solution in a certain sense it it's that's discussed as well and fate which is a different qu problem because fate is what God makes happen we've been talking only now about what God knows those are two separate problems that also is has this is this is a welld discussed area of of Jewish philosophy so I'm just giving you an example of one of the one of the applications yeah um I hope I formulate this correctly but um we look at like Grand scope like how many people there are in the world we believe as Jews or perhaps our purpose STS from learning Torah what is like our perspective to be onone else their lives well first of all I'm not going to agree to um that formulation of the purpose of our of Our Lives well I think it's like it stems from something higher than ourselves yes but but you're you're speaking out of a certain culture out of a certain standard vocabulary which I think gives an overly narrow and therefore very misleading picture of what the life of a Jew is the life of a Jew is not learning Torah God gave us 6113 Commandments and learning Torah is one of them the life that he wants you to lead is to fulfill all them to the best of your ability with priorities and with hierarchies and so forth and so on but he also wants to to bench after meals and give charity and pursue Justice and all the rest and that's so talk about just learning Torah is is a kind of prejudice of a certain circle I'm not going to acquest in that prejudice okay but now but now you have the difference between the things that are a purpose and the things that are a means to the purpose so the r and Define service of God as follows what does it mean to serve god well it means either to do mitzvos things that he told you to do or to do what is necessary to be able to do mitzvos that's like sleep and eating and now this one's tricky and it's controversial in some areas but I will speak it out getting a job yeah getting a job might be part of what you need to do in order know not allowed to talk about that but I that's one rule that I break and so for and so on so now all of it is serving God so serving God is 247 365 there's no time off from serving God but playing doubles tennis might also be serving God it's a means to a certain yes a certain a certain uh balanced mental state and so forth and so on okay so maybe other people are playing the role of providing the means for the Jew Jew to be able to perform his mitz and when the Messiah comes according to almost everyone the non-jewish world will remain non-jews they will not become Jews that doesn't mean the lies won't be significant they'll be enabling Jews to be able to perform Mitzvah this according toar ofar is what the non-jews will claim when the mhia comes oh we have arranged the economic world and we built roads and so that so on just for the Jews to be able to to be able to to do the mitzil that you wanted them to do and if that were true that would be a justification for their lives so their lives don't have to be justified by doing mitos they can be their lives can be justified by making conditions under which Mitzvah can be done they also have their own Mitzvah right they their own 65 Mitzvah or so that that that they supposed to do that would be but you see if you set it up as learning Torah and they're not going to be learning Torah then you've already is the issue but then what would the motivation goal be for that I mean for us timately we stve to connect so I'll tell you this is very important rambam has a very strong remark here uh he says that a non-jew gets credit for the misses that he does only if he does them because God commanded them through Moses he's got to believe in the Revelation at Sinai and he has to believe that God commanded them through Moses and that's why he's doing that the motivation is part of their responsibility so if a if a non just motivated to give charity or motivated to to pursue Justice because he feels like it according to R he won't give credit for that it has to be you know it's really built into the language you're fulfilling a commandment and you don't believe in the commander what does that mean you know it's like they make this joke about the Israeli Army because we have so many different National groups here and they speak different Native languages and their pronunciation of Hebrew can be very different from one another so the commanding office from Ethiopia says to the the officer under his the soldier under his command who's from Russia shut the door and uh so of Rush doesn't understand what he's talking about they get the words what but he's cold goes over and shuts the door he didn't fulfill the command he did what the command said he didn't fulfill the command he didn't even know it was a command he had no no clue that it was a command that's not going to do it so that is something that that would be necessary yeah does that mean that what about a Christian person who believes in mosab but also serving for whatever they serve for so it's very tricky uh the talks about this and the guide um let's me take a string of examples let's let's take um someone who thinks that uh Joe Biden happens to speak know ancient Greek well he doesn't Okay made a mistake about Joe Biden supposed he thinks that Joe Biden is really three different people taking turns there's no one person named Joe Biden well that's worse maybe now you think you know he doesn't he's not talking about anything cuz there aren't three people who are taking turns making appearances under Joe Biden's name so if that's what he thinks he's not in touch with the ra reality at all when he thinks that Joe Biden speaks Greek Joe Biden's a person and he can identify him and so forth so just making a mistake about Joe Biden when the mistake gets too big then it's not about that thing at all anymore it's it's about nothing it's just about something which which doesn't exist at all so now um let me ask you what do you think about average Jews or even well educated Jews do you think that they have any false beliefs about the Creator any I'd imagine they do thinking about the Creator is hard and there's a big literature on it most people haven't read much of it and there and but innocently they're making mistakes thinking about what uh what the Creator is and what he wants to do and what his purposes are so does that mean that somehow their mitzvos aren't mitzvos and they're disconnected and they're living in a world of unreality no they're making a mistake about the Creator now this is a matter of degree so someone who thinks that the world is run at base by a plurality of 22 different deities he's off he hasn't got it at all someone who thinks that there is uh a Creator but then there are are beings under him who this is called Shu being under him who have some independent decision making capacity but he's the only Creator this is wrong and it's called aora strictly for a Jew anyway for a non-jew it's controversial whether it's whether it is or it isn't but to say that you're not connecting to the real the the creator of the world at all is a little seems to be a little a little exaggerated so now you talk about Christians I once made a remark in a sheer here that there are hundreds of different Christian sects with different beliefs and one of the boys said no Rabbi you're wrong I said really he said yeah they're over a thousand okay okay got gotcha gotcha it's perfectly all right I don't mind multiply my at will right so you talk about Christians yeah there a gig gantic variety of of belief among them and some have nothing associated with the Creator some some things how they're associated in three in one one and three you know the ramban was forced to have a debate with a non with a non with a non-jewish sorry let me say it again a Jew who had become a Christian priest about the talwood and about Jewish belief and so forth and so on and after three days and the king of Aragon who who arranged this was a friend of the ramban but the church was on breathing down his neck so they so he he asked the ran I can't help it you have to do this for me so he sat there for three days it's all written up the ran wrote it up afterwards you can you can read it it's it's published uh after after three days of answering their questions the ran says I've been answering question for three days is okay if I ask a question so so the king said well that's the priest and they said yeah he can ask a question so ran said look you guys believe in three and one three is one and one is three what is that how do that work it's like three p's in a pod no three qualities in one object no so after a few examples they keep saying no ra say you tell me what do you mean when you say that you have three and you have one and they said the this Pablo Christianity said we don't understand it we just believe it to which the ran said if you don't understand it you can't can't believe it you don't understand it you can't believe it so when you talk about they're believing certain types of things um now actually ran took this idea from the rambam even ra Shel and his addition raan doesn't bring it but in part one chapter 50 of the guide the rambam talks about three in one and he and because he's talking about God's attributes and he wants to say that maybe should be like the the Christians and he says listen some people are concerned about knowing what to say knowing what to say you're taught a mantra and you know what words to repeat and that gets you your social acceptance and opens doors for you and so and so on and they don't care whether there's a meaning behind it or not they just say the words like the Christians who say God is three and God is one and one is three three is one right you can you can speak the words but there's no thought behind them because the it's just an open contradiction and he said a Jew who say that various attributes are many in us but one in God it's just just as just as bad as a Christian he's talking nonsense he saying something that so when you talk about they having different beliefs you have to be very careful whether they really have a belief or whether they just know the words to say Pablo Christianity was telling us he doesn't have a belief because a belief is a meaning it's a thought it's an idea in the mind which reciting syllables doesn't mean you have a thought in the mind and if the syllables Express a direct contradiction there isn't any thought in the mind so he was admitting that he doesn't have a thought in his mind he just knows what words to say then you can't say that they have beliefs belief is a thought in the mind not just words as you pronounce they don't have that so it's very tricky to talk about what the beliefs are and how to define what the beliefs are and so on and so on um and there are so many variations I could imagine that some are so extreme that you would want to say that the IDE a of God has been lost and others would be mistakes but not such serious mistakes we want to say the belief in God the the fact that you're talking about God has not been lost I think it would vary from from case to case yeah I guess in regards to like language and my current perspective of language is that it's very um subjective I guess like you could say one thing and someone understand something completely different so I guess um do I know that like say for God's been supposed Commandments like that I am fulfilling what he intended for us to do and um like I guess also like is there a certain like power like message associated with words or is it only the meaning we apply to it like does it have like a meaning outside of us it sounds like you've been affected by postmodernism uh I would suggest to you that that postmodernism is greatly exaggerated both its value and its coherence and its applicability here I'll give you an example okay I write up a contract with somebody and my part of the contract is on the 15th of every month I will deliver to this person $10,000 in cash I walk with a box on the 15th right 15th of July I walk in with a box and he opens the box and it's filled with 10,000 Monopoly dollars and and he says where's my money I say there it is right on the table there they are but this is play money this isn't real look it says in the contract dollars these are Monopoly dollars so it's all right is this a serious disagreement is it really true that in the contract it could be read two ways and who knows what the meaning is and maybe it depends on the context like the president of of of uh Harvard said yeah calling for genocide of Jew might or might not violate our rules depends upon the context right no it's not really true that anything can mean anything and people have their own meanings and no meanings are are are are accept are are are out are rejected and nor means are are inappropriate it just not correct um Dear John I never want to see you again what's they call the Dear John Letter and he's he's crying his eyes out and his friend says you don't understand Dear John means I'm writing to you from the supermarket and I want to know whether I should buy cereal and I never means I want this particular cereal and again means should I buy two boxes that's all what are you worried about no no no no no sorry sorry she's rejecting him and he's lost it and he's crying because that's the fact don't tell me the the text can mean whatever you want that's absolute nonsense so um there are variations sometimes in in in the meaning of a text and then when there are different ways to read a text maybe the truth truth is that the text can be read both ways you don't have to assume that it's one or the other and one at least one of them is wrong maybe both are wrong no maybe both are right you know uh Robert Frost wrote a paper a poem called mending wall in the springtime when the walls been broken by winter forces and so and so on the two farmers one on each side go down the wall together and they fix the wall he says he's growing peas and I'm growing carrots neither says sheep to eat the other guys what are we doing with a wall do we really need a wall yeah but it's springtime and that's what we do mending wall fine he wrote this poem somebody asked him later in life maybe that was a parable for international relations with borders and whe they should and should not is that what you meant and he said no I meant mening walls in the springtime in in New England but maybe the poem could mean that maybe it could mean that and then wouldn't mean that one's right and one's wrong we don't I don't believe anyway that the meaning of what a literature is what's in the mind of the writer because in fact the words might not express what's in his mind what he produces for the world is a book doesn't produce his mind for the world and interviewing him later might not even be the best way to interpret what he wrote but that doesn't mean the words don't have any meaning they definitely do have meaning and for every meaning they can have there's an Infinity of meanings they can't have they're ruled out so the language isn't infinitely flexible like that and therefore uh when when so speak dictated a book for us he dictated for a book in our language and he expects that we will be able to understand it so for example you have people say good who knows what good is for God we have some idea of what good is for us but who knows what good is for God if you really take that seriously when he says to you do good you get nothing out of it because you don't know what he means no he wrote the book for me so he put it in my language I don't have to know what he means I have to know what he wants me to mean I have to know what he wants me to understand and he wrote it for me in my language and although there are tricky questions about good there are also lots and lots of cases that aren't tricky torturing small children for fun isn't a tricky case that's a case where definitely bad right if you don't get that then you haven't got the concept at all so I think this worry that language doesn't really mean anything if you twist it any way you like and you could app and as as you please it's simply not correct and the people at Yale who founded postmodernism some of them turned out to be Renegade Nazis and there was there was literary evidence against them so maybe there was a thought there if the literary literary documents don't really mean anything then you can't accuse me because all you got for me is literature and therefore it doesn't mean anything and therefore you know it was really I it's just like much of the modern nihilism and and antinomianism that you find in especially in the college world uh just doesn't hold water doesn't hold water at all yeah I a similar question but not really um so we am I supposed to take that seriously yes but no okay fire away so we believe that hashm spoke the world into existence in the Hebrew language the Hebrew alphabet but I've I've seen um like archaeological findings of AO and of like the evolution of some of the the letters of the glyphs over time like that wasn't their quote original form that's been found in writings like like a I don't know if that makes sense or if there is is there some was there ever some Evolution on The Human Side at least to get to the Hebrew alphabet that we have now well yes we our sources talk about that we know about that in fact when we came back from the Babylonian exile a lot of things changed and one thing that changed was the alphabet but the the uh um I think it's maral who explains as follows that both both alphabets were always in use but they were had different uses you know in I think it's in Arabic they have like literary Arabic and ordinary pedestrian spoken Arabic um similarly there was a an alphabet when you said alphabet I you meant the shapes of the letters I I didn't catch that till the end um so the shap there was one set of shapes that were used for Holy writings and other set of shapes that were not used for Holy writings now and that changed when when they came back from the Babylonian exile so we know there was a change that's not that's not news to us um but it wasn't an accident that there was a change and both alphabets since they were both ancient both alphabets are um are uh have their their their connection to reality they're not they're not arbitrary they're not just conventional um how to separate them out and how to separate them out in time I don't know in detail never never studied that in detail but what the archaeologists and of course I don't know if the archaeologist really found what we're talking about but the idea that that our shapes of our letters change we do know it's in our literature you could you could follow that yeah Rob question languages littleit different somewhat capable of understanding objective morality what actually Mak something good versus evil like obviously if we could understand our mod Lu sense maybe perhaps it benefits Society or not but are we truly able understand is what is good what is wrong well the word understanding is a little flexible uh for example suppose Ina in every case you got right what was what was good and what was not if somebody asked you for a definition you weren't able to get it wer able to give the definition in words would that be called understanding or would it not be called understanding let me give you a a far example and let you a closer example I had a friend still still in this world he was uh he worked at the Applied Physics laboratory of John's Hopkins University where they make satellites and bombs and smart bombs and things like that and he told me that United States Navy they had a problem when you're in a Subway a submarine and you're using a Sonos scope to to to to observe the waters in front of you um so you get you send out sound waves and you get the sound waves reflected back and they they make a pattern on the basis of the pattern you have to judge what it is that it's that it's mounting against and there are certain schools of fish which give a a a a a pattern very similar to the pattern of an enemy submarine now you don't want to use your Torpedoes on fish do you no so it's very important to be able to tell which is which there were two people in the Navy who looking at the onos scope could reliably tell you whether it was fish or or a submarine and then one died that's one and they had this problem so I said I suppose the Navy figured out the strategy of asking them to tell them what the difference is yeah actually some Geniuses maybe thought that out and they asked them and here's what they said well the fish look like fish and the submarines look like submarines I mean they just look different to them they look different not to anybody else they couldn't couldn't see it and to them just look different right to they know the difference well they get it right every time I guess they do know it but they can't put it into words so the fact that I can't put it into words doesn't mean that I don't know it so now if people get right what's what's good and and what's not good that means there's some kind of knowledge especially if people agree on it if people discuss tricky cases and come to conclusions that definitely means there is some knowledge there even if it can't be put into words and indeed you don't want to demand for knowledge that you give it a definition do you because then how would you end the chain what does p mean p means QRS ah okay what does q mean oh Q means XY ah what X and Y mean right there's got to be a stop of this somewhere because you have only have finite number of words you can't Define everything in terms of something else so there got to be something you understand without giving the understanding in other words in a definition this game of playing for of of asking for definitions is got to stop somewhere and therefore when you're in having discussion and the sophomore who's taken six months of philosophy thinks he's very clever and he says Define your terms often the right thing to do is say no I don't have to because our usages are so common it's clear that we have a concept in common and if I can't give you a verbal definition that doesn't mean I don't understand it it's just a mistake that's why he's only taking six months is FAL if You' taken three years you've known better than to demand the definition for everything so the question is then how much knowledge do we have and how much agreement do we have and here in the literature for certain political reasons there's a tremendous emphasis on the difficult cases the cases where there's a lot of controversy and then people want to say see you don't even know whether that's right that's wrong or this is better or that's worse yeah there are hard cases but there are also simple cases lots of them for example most of the hard cases are where you're pitting two moral conditions against one another is it right to tax the rich in order to service the poor against the will of the rich you're violating their property rights in order to help somebody else with the needs that they have so it's one against the other so of course that's not of course but that's a difficult question but take one-dimensional questions Judith J Judith Jarvis Thompson who wonderful philosopher was Jewish also made this point ask I've made a promise to do X I have two Alternatives in one I I I I fulfill X and one and and one I do not there's no other difference between them no other morally relevant difference between the only thing is in the one I fulfill the promise the one I don't what should I do is this controversial is this tricky do you have a variety of points of view do we flip a coin obviously if there's no other difference then you do the one that fulfills the fulfills the the promise and this one causes pain and this one doesn't cause pain and you can go on each moral condition when taken by itself is something which which people recognize and if I say this one pleases the chief and this one doesn't you say yeah but so what I mean what is pleasing the chief relevant cuz it's not a moral condition so there's a gigantic amount of agreement on what kinds of conditions are moral what kinds of conditions aren't moral what's the basis of making something why must there be a basis this is the same problem as before in order to accept P I got to back it up with q and because said Q I got to back it up with r can I always ask what's the basis just moral I'm pointing out to you that you can't avoid this you can't avoid this you can't have as a principle I don't accept P unless something backs it up because if you say that you're going at an endless Chase if you're going to know anything at all there has to be something things that you just know for example 2 plus 2 is four back it up you know that's as strong as you get you know there nothing else that could give it a little more oomph you know a little more push a little more seriousness than dup do is for that's a starting point in our thought there's more to be said about this that doesn't mean we have to be right it's not fible so forth and so on but not everything has to be backed up because if that were true you wouldn't know anything because everything would need to be backed up and you be off on an infinite Chase these things are not not so simple this is this is uh What uh what's the fell Princeton called reasoning had a book called reasoning how what how when reasons what the rules are for reasoning it's not not simple yeah um when Mia comes would theoretically he have the free will that would allow Society to regress again like you know mean he mean everybody either he he or everybody um yes there there is the free will but it could be something like do you have the free will to put your hand in the fire I mean you do but it's quite clear from the kind of person that you are what your priorities are that you're not going to do it that doesn't mean it's not free what I know about you is the kinds of free choices you make make I know the reasons for which you make them that doesn't mean they're not free they are free but you're also reliable that you're not going to do do otherwise yeah the back oh very good I'm glad you asked that I was waiting for somebody to ask that actually you could ask it stronger what do you mean aren't there lots of things we believe that we don't understand uh like the creation of the world we don't understand that well there are different kinds of lack of understanding I'll give you at least three you can you can fail to understand how it happens you can fail to understand why it happens or you can fail to understand what happened so if somebody says you know I let go with the stone it didn't fall I don't know what to say I can't explain it it just didn't fall so I know what happened the stone was hanging in the air I just don't know why or how what caused it to happen that way that's no problem you can believe that the stone fell in the it was hanging in the air without knowing why or how it was hanging in the air that's different from someone who says um you're going to the mall yes I want you to do me a favor while you're there could you please pick up for me a square circle uh say that again please pick up a square circle I think you would say I'm sorry I don't know what you mean I mean I can't square square circle circle but you know I I I can't get I don't understand what how to get something that has that's both a square and a s I don't understand what you're asking for I don't you understand what you mean that's where you can't have a belief you can't have a belief when the words that you use to describe R the belief are a contradiction because there the belief has no content that's what he meant that's what he was talking about so you say three and one and one is three and three is one that's gibberish that's goab one can't be three and three can't be one as far as I know far as I can understand maybe you mean something that I never thought of but then teach me don't just say those words to me when all I all I have is those words I have no no no no concept whatsoever a belief is based on a concept an idea an understanding I have no understanding that's what he meant if you can't understand what is being said then you can't have a belief but if you don't understand how something happens or why something happens you could certainly have a belief that it is so we don't understand how God created the world and both the myON says that as a philosopher and the capitalist say that as capitalists this idea that there are two great Realms Waring Realms sects the philosophers and the calist is absolute absolute nonsense absolute nonsense and this is one one of the many things that they they agree upon both the RAM and ra say on creating the world to something we know uh the world is supported by the Creator and without the Creator support it would cease to exist but what the Creator is and how he has the access to make the world exist that we don't know so we know that it's so but we don't know how and why it's so well the purpose for we do though that's that's part of the why yeah um in terms of very different question in terms of the world being exposed to yeah sense my understanding you feel some way have a justification acting out on that example you should transition to a woman Torah clearly refer to that how are we like to view that in them is like mental disease or I think you dignified by making it a mental disease that would mean that they have no no no choice you know the the the whole system is so childish maybe that's an insult to the children it it's so childish and it's so r with contradiction you know what I feel like you know what I really feel like I feel like defending Israel I feel like defending against his enemy so it's right for me to do that right it's okay for me to do that it's my my my go my my expression of myself and life H is that okay oh no not that uhhuh just some feelings but not other feelings right I'm disturbed by I'm worried and Disturbed and frightened by I'm a woman I'm disturbed by the by the trans trans man using the using my facilities you can't have that feeling not allowed to have that feeling if you have that feeling that you're you're you're evil and we have to disregard your feeling only the feeling of the trans person counts not the person who's disturbed by the trans person why is that give me a break that dignifying it as if there were the principles there and so and so on the ex you know I identify as so they asked someone they asked this uh I saw a guy the interviews a white guy what about a white guy who identifies as black he identifies as black going to be remunerations for all the suffering and everything else he identifi he should get a also no no you can't identify as black why not why not how can a man identify as a woman isn't that something like he isn't so if that's true then how can't you no that you're not allowed to do well I I you know you know about the furies okay he identifies as a bear right what's wrong with that don't tell me to pay taxes I'm a bear I don't have to walk across the walk on the on on the crosswalk I'm a bear I can walk wherever I want right is that okay what about I'm a rock you know don't move I'm a stone this dignifying this as if it were principles and thoughts and rules and and true and false and so and so on it's like it's like sorry what to question more is perhaps say these people have something some urge within them to make say these things I'm not sure what it is but from the Torah perspective we just do that as like y or is there actually something wrong with these people what it's like a drug you see they have an urge I'll tell you I I I think I think I'll give you the final example um when I was in teaching University there there were two thoughts that undergraduates had very popularly one is that um there are no object rules of morality different people have different values different priorities and you can't tell one group especially different cultures you know multiculturalism all the rest can't tell them what's right and wrong just impress you're just projecting your culture onto them and that's imperialistic you're allowed to do that that was one thought and the other thought was um when for example univers professors would fail students um or or they would uh penalized students and they would say you can't do that to me you're you're infringing on my rights I have rights too I'm a student I'm human a being and I have rights now let's see can we put those two thoughts together H you can't violate my rights but no Rights and Wrongs are real none of them are objective it's relative to the society the person individual and so and so on those don't really go together do they but they do psychologically the psychological theme of both of them is get off my back get off my back so if you tell me that what I'm doing is wrong I say right and wrong are are relative they're not absolute no one has a real rule of what's right and wrong don't tell me what to do but if you if you deprive me of something that I want then I say you're infringing on my rights you have no and you can't do that because I have rights right both of them have the same psychological theme get off my back the fact that intellectually they're inconsistent doesn't bother them because they're interested here's where the real sickness is my Fe feelings are what really count my feelings are my reality and you have to respect my feelings even though they're not consistent about that because if I feel I want to defend Israel they don't respect that feeling or if I'm disturbed by trans people they don't respect that feeling but but then the the inconsistencies is just a question of my feelings well Ben Shapiro has a wonderful a wonderful modotto facts don't care about your feelings facts don't care care about your feelings and if your feelings lead you to deny facts goodbye goodbye I have to talk to you I have to reason with you reason if feelings contradict your facts you dismiss the fact there's no one home to talk to Aristotle raised this question when you catch a person in a contradiction that that's supposed to end the argument suppose he says you catch him in a contradiction he says yeah I contradicted byself so what what do you do then you know what you do give him 10 bucks and tell him go buy a beer leave me alone if if contradiction doesn't bother him there's no one home to talk to there's no reason there yeah I okay maybe the last question because I I have to go yeah last question's thanks very much that's it's I you know there was an ancient motto everyone has a right to an opinion that's p in America everyone has an obligation to have an opinion what's your opinion on X I think that's utterly corrupt if you haven't studied X if you haven't read at least what the experts say about X why should you have an opinion what's your opinion about solo sailboating good bad dangerous appropriate not inappropriate you know what I'm talking about you know difference between a mainil in a jib and the rudder all three of which you have to control at the same time you haven't got a clue but what's your opinion right you're talking about something a massively scholarly topic about which there are considerable differences the of desler says the difference between them was a minuscule tiny detail and not not the major philosophical difference other people say okay so it's controversial I I think the appropriate thing to do when you haven't been trained in the question is to say I don't know say this teach your tongue to say I don't know it's a very very important lesson okay with that I'll leave you