Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Book Summary

I finally finished the first phase of writing my book! I've finished collecting and organizing my notes. The notes are culled from books, articles, and blog posts I've read, and from things I've written. I'm constantly finding new articles, and there's probably ten books on my current reading list that are relevant to the book I'm writing, but I have to stop collecting notes and start writing at some point. If I wait until I collect every piece of relevant writing, it will never end. The (semi-) final page count for my notes is 1,236 pages, among which is enough information to fill out all of the points I want to address in the book.

The following is a summary of the book as it is now laid out:

Apikorsis!: Reasonable Doubts Regarding Orthodox Judaism, Religion, and God.

Part One: Introduction
                Chapter 1: Why I Wrote This Book
The book is, first and foremost, an answer to the canard that people leave Orthodoxy because they are weak-willed hedonistic cretins who can't control their taivos and throw off the ol hatorah to excuse their wallowing in the fleshly pleasures of the world. It shows, at length, that there are kashas that aren't terutzim, that it is reasonable to conclude that Orthodoxy is incorrect, and that the many, many intellectual problems with frumkeit aren't just weak excuses.
Part Two: Thinking About Religion
                Chapter 2: Heresy
Truth and the idea of apikorsis are incompatible. If something is true, then it is, and if it's not, nothing is gained by making it a sin to think it. Apikorsis is only a useful idea if it's more important to hold ideologically correct ideas than it is to hold true ideas. Labeling dissenting ideas "heresy" is an attempt to protect beliefs through ignorance and to bully dissenters into silence.
                Chapter 3: Epistemology
Before we can determine if Orthodoxy is the truth, we have to establish how we know what the truth is. This chapter contrasts revealed religious epistemology, where there are pre-determined conclusions for which evidence is collected, and the method (ideally) used in science and academia, where evidence is collected first and conclusions drawn from what is found.
                Chapter 4: Critical thinking, Cognitive Biases, and Logical Fallacies
This chapter explores formal and informal logic, common mistakes in thinking, probability, and how to evaluate the truth of a claim.
Part Two: Orthodox Judaism
                Chapter 5: Orthodoxy's Authenticity
Orthodoxy claims that it is the only correct form of Judaism, essentially unchanged since the Torah was given on Har Sinia and uninfluenced by the surrounding culture. This chapter shows that every one of those claims is not true. There have been many forms of Judaism over the millennia, none of which can be said to be more legitimate than any other; many aspects of Orthodox Judaism would be unrecognizable to Jews of the past; and Judaism has always been and continues to be a syncretistic religion that shares ideas with the cultures in which it finds itself. Orthodoxy as it is now is the most similar of the modern forms of Judaism to what traditional Judaism was just before the modern era, but like the other streams of modern Rabbinic Judaism, it has its origins as a reaction to modernity.
                Chapter 6: Orthodoxy's Peculiarities
Orthodoxy has some idiosyncratic  ideas, both sociological and metaphysical. Among these are the parochialism of the frum world, in which it imagines it is better than the rest of society and that everyone else is obsessed with what frum people do; the slide-to-the-right and the escalating adoption of restrictive chumros; the doctrine of Daas Torah; and the strange idea that every generation is contemptible compared its predecessors.
                Chapter 7: The Women's Section
This chapter addresses the role of women in Orthodoxy. It includes issues such as women's secondary place in halacha and frum society, the misogyny that is woven through halacha, and the hypocritical objectification of women under the banner of tznius, which claims to change the focus from a woman's sexuality to her inner attributes while focusing exclusively on how well she hides her sexuality.
                Chapter 8: Arguments for Orthodoxy
My mother's uncle's cousin's stepdaughter had an amazing thing happen to her. Mamish a nes! That proves Orthodoxy is true! And surely all the great rabbonim of the past and the gedolim of today are smarter than we are, and they all believed! Shouldn't we rely on them, and accept that Orthodoxy is true? No, we shouldn't, because how smart someone is has little to do with how likely they are to be right. And people of every religion have miracle stories, most if not all the result of the way the person experiencing them frames the world and misunderstands probability. Nor do the positive attributes of the frum community or its demographic success give us good reason to think that frumkeit is the truth.
Part Three: Judaism
                Chapter 9: The Kuzari Proof
The Kuzari is often *the* proof people rely on to show that Judaism is true. This chapter lays out the premises of the Kuzari Proof and shows in detail why each one is mistaken. If any of the Kuzari's premises are wrong, then the Proof is invalid. As it turns out, every one of the premises is wrong, and the Kuzari is useless.
                Chapter 10: Factual Inaccuracies in Our Foundational Texts
This chapter discusses some of the inaccuracies in Tanach and the Talmud, from the incorrect order of Creation to the gemara's acceptance of spontaneous generation to mistaken ideas about  how babies are made, and much more. It also addresses the "explanations" given by traditionalists, from essentially claiming the world was created five minutes ago to shunting all the inconvenient claims off into an unknowable inaccessible "higher" reality where these mistakes are all really the truth.
                Chapter 11: Torah Shebichsav (TSBK) and Modern Biblical Scholarship
In the frum world, Biblical Criticism is usually dismissed as a silly attempt at undermining the truth of the Torah. If only the Bible Critics could read the meforshim, they would understand that Torah is emes! This chapter explains that academics can and do read the meforshim, and shows why the academics come to the conclusion that the Torah is a composite work. It discusses some of the many examples of Sumerian and Egyptian mythology in the Torah, and traces the development of Tanach from oral Israelite myths to the seventh-century BCE redaction of the Torah to the canonization of the Masoretic text.
                Chapter 12: The Development of Torah Shebaal Peh (TSBP)
I've heard Orthodox opinions on the divinity of TSBP that range from an insistence that every sefer ever written was given to Moshe on Har Sinai to that Moshe was only given a set of rules for interpreting the written Torah. This chapter traces the development of the concept of an authoritative Oral Tradition and the development of the tradition itself.
                Chapter 13: The Historical Development of Judaism in the Ancient World
No one really knows what the origins of the Jewish people are. This chapter begins with plausible speculation about Jewish origins in the Canaanite highlands, and moves from there onto firmer ground with a discussion of the development of Jewish monotheism and the impact of galus Bavel and Judaism's exposure to Zoroastrianism.
                Chapter 14: Proofs for Judaism
The most common proof for Judaism, after the Kuzari Proof, is the Argument from Jewish Survival. This chapter opens with a discussion of Jewish survival and the mundane, if unusual, conditions that allowed Jews to survive for millennia as a distinct people. This chapter also addresses other popular arguments for Judaism, such as Bible codes, the supposedly humanly impossible complexity of the Talmud, and, for a good dose of Jewish guilt, the Argument from Jewish Martyrs.
                Chapter 15: Question From Other Religions
This is perhaps the greatest argument against emunah peshutah. There are people all over the world who sincerely hold different religious beliefs. Often, the beliefs of different groups are mutually exclusive, which means that at least some of these people must be wrong. What are the odds that we happened to be born into the one religion that got it all right?
Part  Four: God
                Chapter 16: What is "God?"
Before we can discuss whether or not there's sufficient reason to think that God exists, we have to figure out what we mean by "God." This chapter discusses various conceptions of God, including polytheistic ideas, the God of Tanach, and currently acceptable frum ideas of what God is. It also discusses where the idea of God might have come from if He doesn't exist, and how we might go about determining if there's reason to think that He does.
                Chapter 17: Morality and the Problem of Evil, or The Most Common Argument Against God's      Existence
One of the common arguments for God is that if there is no God, there is no objective morality, and so God must exist. Of course, it could be that there is no God and there is no objective morality, however much we may want morality to be objective.  Nor can God have anything to do with an objective morality, something we've known since Plato. From the Argument from Morality, we move to the Problem of Evil, which asks how there can be evil in the world if God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. Various theodicies are discussed which try to reconcile the existence of evil with a tri-omni God. One of the most common theodicy is that evil is necessary for us to have free will, and we look at whether we actually have free will in this deterministic universe of ours. Finally, we look at the empirical evidence. Was the world more moral in the past, when religion was taken for granted, and has morality been declining along with the decline of the centrality of religion in society, as religious demagogues often claim?
                Chapter 18: The Argument From Design, or The Most Common Argument For God's Existence
Rashi cribbed from Aquinas when he said that just as a house points to its builder, so the world points to a Creator. The complexity of the universe and of life, and the fine-tuning of the world to allow for life, is the most  common argument for the existence of God. This chapter explains why complexity doesn't in itself point to a Creator, and gives an overview of evolution as an alternative explanation for how the complexity of life arose.
                Chapter 19: Other Arguments for God
This chapter covers many of the arguments for God's existence, among them  the argument that the universe had to have a cause, and that cause is God; that there are many things we don't understand, and God is the explanation for those things; the argument that there are many immaterial concepts, like love, that we accept are real, and so we should also accept that God is real; and what for many people is the most convincing reason to believe in God, personal experiences that leave them sure that they know God is real.
Part Five: The Baby and the Bathwater
                Chapter 20: Pragmatic Religion
Even if God isn't real and religion isn't true, religion provides all sorts of benefits. And anyway, shouldn't we be frum, just in case it turns out that it's all true after all? No. The answer is no. It's true that religion does all sorts of useful things, but pretty much all of those things can be accomplished without religion, and religion has too many costs to justify pretending it's true in order to keep its benefits.
                Chapter 21: Going OTD
This chapter explores the various reasons why people leave the frum community, what they experience when leaving, and what the frum community tells itself about those who leave.
Afterword
So after all this, is there anything that could make me believe in frumkeit again? And is there any value in being Jewish? I think the answer to first question is it's possible, but incredibly unlikely. The answer to the second question is that I can only speak for myself, but I don't think that being Jewish loses its value as an identity without the belief in Judaism. And I think that the overwhelming majority of Jewish people would agree with me.




These are some other ideas for a cover I've been playing with:


46 comments:

  1. Did you deal with Pascal? Did i miss it?

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    1. In Chapter 20. The summary doesn't cover every point in the book.

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  2. Thanks for this. Looks like it’s shaping up to be a good read.

    A couple of minor quibbles:
    1 - “in this deterministic universe of ours”. Is our universe really deterministic? I thought that between schrodinger and heisenberg the answer was either definitely not or at least very plausibly not. I can’t say i am 100% up to dateon this, but i dont know how you can square uncertainty and preservation of information with determinism.
    2 - “Rashi cribbed from Aquinas” - many would be up in arms on this. And they would be right. Rashi died in 1105, whereas aquinas was born in 1225 so there is no way that rashi cribbed anything from him.

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    1. 1. In regard to free will, the randomness in quantum mechanics is really irrelevant (though I do address it).

      2. Whoops. You're right. That's something I wrote for the summary, and I should have checked. Everything in the book itself is sourced.

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    2. 1. It may have nothing to do with free will (not all would agree) but the point remains that this is not a deterministic universe. I said it was a minor quibble, but you might as well be accurate.

      As to whether it does have anything to do with free will, I am not sure. It does seem pretty certain that free will is entirely incompatible with a fully deterministic universe (other than some very watered down version of free will that noone is really taking about). That means that anyone who does suscribe to the idea of free will and wants to be sophisticated about it would likely *have* to hide it in quantum effects; i think some do although have not read any detail about their hypothesis. Either way that makes it more important tha you are accurate about the point above.

      What I wonder is whether an interesting universe with or without free will is compatible with determinism either at all or at least in a probabilistic sense (i.e. for interesting stuff to happen you either need non-determinism or an extremely fine tuned deterministic universe as all the interesting stuff needs pre-coding in)

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    3. I would advise reading Daniel Dennet's book "Freedom Evolves" for a thorough discussion of free will.

      He argues, quite correctly, that the question of free will has nothing to do with determinism. That is to say that if free will is impossible in a deterministic universe, it will be impossible in a Non-deterministic universe as well. Randomness does nothing to help the cause of free will.

      This simplifies the next question: Do we have free will?

      We most definitely do. Or at least I definitely do. I experience myself having free will.

      However classical definitions of free will are at odds with determinism (and hence indeterminism as well). Therefore there is clearly something wrong with the classical definitions of free will. A more sensible, carefully constructed definition of free will is fully compatible with determinism, and indeed,the greater the predictability of the universe, the greater the scope for free will.

      For an important (and hilarious) discussion relating to free will, consciousness and determinism see "Is God A Taoist" by Raymond Smullyan. http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTaoist.html


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    4. One of the first mistakes people make with regards to free will and determinism is to assume that "if the universe/laws of physics is making the decision, I can't be".

      They are of course forgetting that they are (part of) the universe.

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    5. Dennet redefines free will in order to say that we have it, and makes fun of people who object.

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    6. No he does not really redefine it. He just shows that what we mean when we think about free will and the definitions we use for free will are at odds. He provides an alternative more useful definition to bridge the gap.

      Here is the relevant excerpt from "Is God A Taoist". It's a lot more lighthearted than Dennet, and explains the point rather well:

      God:
      Bravo! That is by far the best reason you have yet given! I can assure you that had I chosen to give free will, that would have been my very reason for so choosing.
      Mortal:
      What! You mean to say you did not choose to give us free will?
      God:
      My dear fellow, I could no more choose to give you free will than I could choose to make an equilateral triangle equiangular. I could choose to make or not to make an equilateral triangle in the first place, but having chosen to make one, I would then have no choice but to make it equiangular.
      Mortal:
      I thought you could do anything!
      God:

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    7. Only things which are logically possible. As St. Thomas said, "It is a sin to regard the fact that God cannot do the impossible, as a limitation on His powers." I agree, except that in place of his using the word sin I would use the term error.
      Mortal:
      Anyhow, I am still puzzled by your implication that you did not choose to give me free will.
      God:
      Well, it is high time I inform you that the entire discussion -- from the very beginning -- has been based on one monstrous fallacy! We have been talking purely on a moral level -- you originally complained that I gave you free will, and raised the whole question as to whether I should have. It never once occurred to you that I had absolutely no choice in the matter.
      Mortal:
      I am still in the dark!
      God:
      Absolutely! Because you are only able to look at it through the eyes of a moralist. The more fundamental metaphysical aspects of the question you never even considered.
      Mortal:
      I still do not see what you are driving at.
      God:
      Before you requested me to remove your free will, shouldn't your first question have been whether as a matter of fact you do have free will?

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    8. Mortal:
      That I simply took for granted.
      God:
      But why should you?
      Mortal:
      I don't know. Do I have free will?
      God:
      Yes.
      Mortal:
      Then why did you say I shouldn't have taken it for granted?
      God:
      Because you shouldn't. Just because something happens to be true, it does not follow that it should be taken for granted.
      Mortal:
      Anyway, it is reassuring to know that my natural intuition about having free will is correct. Sometimes I have been worried that determinists are correct.
      God:
      They are correct.
      Mortal:
      Wait a minute now, do I have free will or don't I?
      God:
      I already told you you do. But that does not mean that determinism is incorrect.
      Mortal:
      Well, are my acts determined by the laws of nature or aren't they?
      God:
      The word determined here is subtly but powerfully misleading and has contributed so much to the confusions of the free will versus determinism controversies. Your acts are certainly in accordance with the laws of nature, but to say they are determined by the laws of nature creates a totally misleading psychological image which is that your will could somehow be in conflict with the laws of nature and that the latter is somehow more powerful than you, and could "determine" your acts whether you liked it or not. But it is simply impossible for your will to ever conflict with natural law. You and natural law are really one and the same.

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    9. Mortal:
      What do you mean that I cannot conflict with nature? Suppose I were to become very stubborn, and I determined not to obey the laws of nature. What could stop me? If I became sufficiently stubborn even you could not stop me!
      God:
      You are absolutely right! I certainly could not stop you. Nothing could stop you. But there is no need to stop you, because you could not even start! As Goethe very beautifully expressed it, "In trying to oppose Nature, we are, in the very process of doing so, acting according to the laws of nature!" Don't you see that the so-called "laws of nature" are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act? They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act.
      Mortal:
      So you really claim that I am incapable of determining to act against natural law?
      God:
      It is interesting that you have twice now used the phrase "determined to act" instead of "chosen to act." This identification is quite common. Often one uses the statement "I am determined to do this" synonymously with "I have chosen to do this." This very psychological identification should reveal that determinism and choice are much closer than they might appear. Of course, you might well say that the doctrine of free will says that it is you who are doing the determining, whereas the doctrine of determinism appears to say that your acts are determined by something apparently outside you. But the confusion is largely caused by your bifurcation of reality into the "you" and the "not you." Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Or where does the rest of the universe leave off and you begin? Once you can see the so-called "you" and the so-called "nature" as a continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature who is controlling you. Thus the muddle of free will versus determinism will vanish. If I may use a crude analogy, imagine two bodies moving toward each other by virtue of gravitational attraction. Each body, if sentient, might wonder whether it is he or the other fellow who is exerting the "force." In a way it is both, in a way it is neither. It is best to say that it is the configuration of the two which is crucial.
      Mortal:
      You said a short while ago that our whole discussion was based on a monstrous fallacy. You still have not told me what this fallacy is.
      God:
      Why, the idea that I could possibly have created you without free will! You acted as if this were a genuine possibility, and wondered why I did not choose it! It never occurred to you that a sentient being without free will is no more conceivable than a physical object which exerts no gravitational attraction. (There is, incidentally, more analogy than you realize between a physical object exerting gravitational attraction and a sentient being exerting free will!) Can you honestly even imagine a conscious being without free will? What on earth could it be like? I think that one thing in your life that has so misled you is your having been told that I gave man the gift of free will. As if I first created man, and then as an afterthought endowed him with the extra property of free will. Maybe you think I have some sort of "paint brush" with which I daub some creatures with free will and not others. No, free will is not an "extra"; it is part and parcel of the very essence of consciousness. A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.

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    10. I realise I've kind of hijacked your comments section with these long posts, so feel free to delete them if you so desire.

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    11. Not a problem. It's not like there's limited space in the comment section, and your comments are relevant.

      Anyway, I still think it's a redefinition of "free will." When we talk about free will in the moral sense, we mean something that allows us to assign moral responsibility. It has to be something that differentiates thinking beings from inanimate objects like boulders and from beings like animals that are not moral agents. If I have no more control over what I do than does a boulder rolling down a hill, I can't be held morally responsible for my actions and more than the boulder can. That I experience making choices as part of being conscious is cute, but irrelevant.

      I think the root of the problem is that "morality" is not something with its own ontology, so we have trouble defining what fits into its arbitrary categories.

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    12. If you read the earlier part of Smullyan's essay he addresses that as well, albeit somewhat indirectly.

      The problem in my eyes is that free will does not explain why we are morally responsible even in the classic sense of free will: so you chose to do something that hurt other people, therefore you must be punished. Why? How does the first part connect to the second?

      The issue is that moral responsibility is not some innate truth about the world, but a social construct designed to allow humanity to survive. In that case whether or not you had to make that choice according to the laws of physics is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you are a rational agent, who can learn to avoid the negative consequences (guilt, punishment etc) that come with doing a morally reprehensible act.

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    13. "If I have no more control over what I do than does a boulder rolling down a hill, I can't be held morally responsible for my actions and more than the boulder can. That I experience making choices as part of being conscious is cute, but irrelevant"

      This is exactly Smullyan's point. The laws of physics describe what you are. That you then controls your actions. It is only if you see yourself as separate to the universe that this seems like a contradiction - if the universe is doing it, I am not. But the central tenant of Dennet's philosophy is that you are not separate to the universe. You are part of the universe, the part that you controls you. You are the laws of physics, insofar as they effect your body and mind. Thus determinism is irrelevant to the question of how free your will is.

      Think about Smullyan's point a bit further. What would it feel like to be a conscious decision maker that didn't have free will?

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    14. Yavoy: What I think is being redefined here is the “free” bit of free will. Classically (in judaism at least - or at least to the extent that i have read) the point is that that there are two options *either of which can be chosen* and the agent (human) chooses one over the other thus excercising his free will. I don’t think anything you have written explains how such could be possible in a deterministic universe. Whichever option is chosen isthe only allowable one to the system as a whole. Thus the agent has no autonomy and no free will as defined. Of course you can just redefine free will and get around the problem but you haven’t really gotten around the problem at all because that’s not the free will that was being talked about.

      Thanks for the link/book suggestion anyway, I’ll take at least a cursory glance at both.

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    15. Incidentally, I recently read a book “free will” by Sam Harris, who effectively argued that free will is an impossibility in any universe deterministic or not. He also said as i did above that just renaming the illusion of free will as “real” free will is just dodging the question.

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    16. I most definitely do make a decision! I weigh up my options and decide on the best one. Whether or not my final decision is predictable or not by someone else, does not mean I'm not making my decision.

      I will repeat again. Saying the universe makes your decision so you don't is only true if you are external to the universe. You are however a part of the universe, and so the contradiction is an illusion.
      It's like saying the spotify app doesn't play my music since it's programming does. No. Spotify is its programming. The universe is our programming.

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    17. Yavoy. Not sure if you were responding to me. I never said you didn’t make a decision. I merely said it wasn’t free, i.e. the other option was never truly viable. It makes no difference whether it’s you or the universe choosing overall there was only one option available. Therefore the feeling of weighing up the options is true, but the feeling that given the same starting variables the other option was actually possible is an illusion. Again, this has nothing to do with the difference between you and the universe. Even from the universe’s perspective as a whole there was only ine possible future.

      The idea of free will is that there can be something that is not causal, but also not random. It is totally unpredictable (even by the universe as a whole) in advance, yet it is not random. This is pretty clear in at least some rishonim (i can dig out source(s) if you care for them). This type of free will is impossible in a deterministic universe by definition. Whether it is possible in any universe or is itself a contradiction in terms is another question. I can’t see how it could be.

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    18. > The laws of physics describe what you are. That you then controls your actions. It is only if you see yourself as separate to the universe that this seems like a contradiction - if the universe is doing it, I am not.

      The issue isn't so much that the universe is doing it. The issue is that if I am morally responsible, then so is the boulder. Yet we intuitively feel that holding the boulder morally responsible is absurd. Consequences for people's actions can be justified as one of the factors that effects our behavior, but that's no more a moral issue than is putting a log in the boulder's path to affect which way it rolls.

      > What would it feel like to be a conscious decision maker that didn't have free will?

      Exactly what we feel like now.

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    19. @G*3 as I said moral responsibility is purely a social construct so has no rational basis at all.

      The reason humans are so sure we have free will is because we feel that we do. Perhaps the real problem is that free will is a terrible name. However theologists have seized on free will in a failed bid to save Objective moral responsibility. Although we must reject these attempts, it would be a shame to reject the entire concept of free will as well.

      Whether we choose to throw out the baby with the bathwater or not may be a question of mere semantics, but it is significant in how we view ourselves nonetheless.

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    20. @Yoni2
      "This type of free will is impossible in a deterministic universe by definition. Whether it is possible in any universe or is itself a contradiction in terms is another question. I can’t see how it could be"

      It is most definitely a contradiction in terms.

      But I know I have free will because I make decisions. Who cares whether it could have been otherwise or not. What does that even mean?

      Alas bad theologians have then piled weight after weight on free will. They want it to be "truly free" (whatever that means). They want it to make you "morally responsible" (whatever that means).
      These must rightly be rejected as meaningless/oxymoronic. But that does not mean that we're must throw out the baby with the bathwater.

      Perhaps the biggest mistake was calling this thing we have "free" will in the first place. We should have called it conscious decision making, or something akin.

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    21. @yavoy: what you are doing is ridiculous; you are just playing with words. Theologians go to great length to state what they mean by free will. You claim that this free will as they define it does not exist. So you are saying that free will does not exist. That’s not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

      No one was ever questioning whether the experience of decision making exists or not. We all experience it regularly the whole time. So by redifining free will to mean the experience of making decisions you are just moving the goalposts. If you like, the question is “does free will exist as defined by ... (rambam or whoever).

      Who cares what you call it. The question is whether humans have a true power of choice that is not driven by causality.

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    22. Perhaps it's best if I use a thought experiment to explain what I mean:

      Let's say that we live in universe which is deterministic except for quantum indeterminacy, which is completely random. Now your brain is 99% deterministic, but when the two options are both very close to 50/50 our brain calls a quantum flip to make the final decision.

      This isn't too hard to imagine. It's a simplification of how your brain probably does work - a mixture of deterministic computation, and the odd random quantum event which is enough to make a macro impact in the brain.

      I think you would agree that this coin flipping mind has no more or less free will than a fully deterministic brain. The decision of a random coin flip is hardly meaningful.

      Then suddenly an angel swoops down and replaces the quantum flipping module of your brain with a module that looks exactly the same, but this time the way the quantum flip ends up is decided by a 'true free will decision'.

      How would you tell? You would feel exactly the same, and make good and bad decisions at the same 50/50 rate. How would anyone else tell? There'd be absolutely no way to measure.

      If there's absolutely not difference between the two in terms of effect on the world, this means that the theologians version of free will is pointless. It can not add moral responsibility or anything else to the universe because it is functionally identical.

      So this gives us two options. You can either say that the second version of your brain is not free either, or that the deterministic version of your brain is.

      Now which you choose is largely a question of semantics. Buy if you tell the average person that they don't have free will, they will vehemently deny it, saying that they are not robots. What they mean to say is that they make decisions and do so consciously. It is that conscious decision making that differentiates them from computers. Thus I would argue that what we really mean when we say we have free will is closer to my meaning than the theologians. The theologians got distracted by bad philosophy, so assumed that other things were necessary to have free will. Thus I think my redefinition of free will is relatively benign and sensible.

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    23. I hear you. But with respect to this blog post the question never was “how do you define free will”. When disussing orthodox jewish theology you pretty much get given a definition.

      So according to you, the phrase used in the post should not have been “we look at whether we actually have free will..” but rather what? The point being questioned is essentially whether we have free will as understood bu orthodox theology. When an orthodox rabbi says free will that is what he means.

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    24. Now with respect to your main point. I basically agree with it all but it is still confusing. When “the average person” talks about free will he is actually muddling two (or more) issues together.

      As an example, once upon a time consensus was that the earth was stationary and orbited by the celestial bodies. Thus “sunrise” really meant the sun rising. Not just from our perspective, but objectively. So when “the average person” said “sunrise” he meant two things:
      1- the visual perception of the sun appearing over the horizon.
      2- the point in time when the sun was objectively rising above sea level.
      In actual fact 1 was happening, but 2 was not. So someone who realised this said something like “the sun doesn’t rise”. He then went on to explain himself to say that what we perceive as the sun rising is merely the sun becoming visible from our point on blah blah blah. You then argue that the sun really does rise because if you ask “the average person” if the sun rises they say yes because they see it do so. You merely redefine the word sunrise to the version that we now understand it as.

      Yes, technically you are correct, but You have missed the point. The question is not about the perception we have but about the orthodox theological position around that perception. Once the theological position is settled we may go on calling the perception the same thing “sunrise” or “free will” but our meaning of these words has at least partially changed. “Sunrise” should maybe be called “see sun” and “free will” be called “conscious decision making”. We go on calling them the old names through convenience or whatever, but that doesn’t mean that nothing has changed. The original names had more meaning to them, and that meaning has now been debunked. So long as the old beief is consensus opinion in the forum you are talking you need to be careful how you use the words. Arguing today tha there is such a thing as sunrise is fine. Arguing that at the time of Copernicus but meaning the modern position is just confusing.

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    25. @Yoni2 fair enough. Guess will leave it here then.

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    26. > Perhaps the biggest mistake was calling this thing we have "free" will in the first place. We should have called it conscious decision making, or something akin.

      I agree that we have conscious decision making. I even agree that we have will. I also agree that morality and moral responsibility are to an extent social constructs, built on top of instincts that evolved because they enhanced group cohesion.

      We do not have libertarian free will, with all of the moral implications. I don't see what's gained by renaming conscious decision making "free will."

      > Then suddenly an angel swoops down and replaces the quantum flipping module of your brain with a module that looks exactly the same, but this time the way the quantum flip ends up is decided by a 'true free will decision'.

      That's not what free will is. Free will is when, through a conscious act of will, you decide to behave one way or another. The deciding factor is not quantum randomness or an angel, it's an uninfluenced, uncaused decision to behave morally or immorally. Honestly, given a deterministic universe, I have no idea how that would work, and that's the point.

      Yoni2, I think your last comment sums it up perfectly.

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    27. Thanks both.

      With respect to free will existing in a deterministic universe, I think that were our universe to have turned out to be deterministic orthodoxy’s argument would have been that while the entire universe is deterministic, within the human brain there is a non-deterministic process of free will. The same would go for any other acts of God etc.

      You would never be able to disprove such an argument, as even in a fully deterministic universe you can’t actually predict too far in advance due to chaos theory and the uncertainty principle (I think that even in a fully deterministic universe the uncertainty principle would hold as infinitely accurate measurements would still be impossible so long as measurement requires interaction).

      So even though the “free” part of free will would technically be impossible in a truly deterministic universe you in effect wouldn’t be able to prove that the universe really was fully deterministic.

      I actually think that this is important because you could think that the fact that our universe turns out to be non-deterministic is some sort of support for orthodoxy. Something like “there were two options, a deterministic universe or a non-deterministic universe. Science was convinced that the universe was deterministic (Laplace, Einstein) whereas judaism was for non-determinism (free will). We now know that the universe is not deterministic, so that is evidence for orthodox judaism”.

      This is not as far fetched a claim as you might think. I have often heard it argued (by Aish and others) that the big bang is support for the Torah. The argument is basically the same as the above. Aristotle to Einstein were all convinced of the eternity of the universe, while judaism argues it has a beginning (Bereishis). Thus the big bang and science’s coming to agree with the non-eternal universe is evidence for the Torah view.

      While there are a couple of things wrong with the argument, to me the most important part is the fact that judaism was perfectly happy either way as by definition you could never have proved it wrong. You can’t prove an eternal universe and you can’t prove a fully deterministic universe. So however eternal or deterministic the universe appears to be it is no real disproof of genisis or free will. Thus the converse bein found can’t be very good support for either position either.

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    28. @G*3
      "That's not what free will is. Free will is when, through a conscious act of will, you decide to behave one way or another."
      We do this all the time! Even determinists. Which is exactly my point.

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    29. @Yoni2 Genesis is probably not creation ex-nihilo. See
      http://altercockerjewishatheist.blogspot.com/2014/02/kalam-cosmological-proof-of-god.html also see http://altercockerjewishatheist.blogspot.com/2013/09/proof-of-god-from-big-bang.html

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    30. @ACJA
      The question is not whether Genesis must be ex-nihilo, or was originally intended as such, but rather whether this was a settled issue in Judaism prior to it becoming settled in science (if indeed it is yet).

      I see that your post argues that the Rambam allowed for an eternal universe, although I have seen this argued the other way by others. My understanding is that this was pretty much settled in Orthodox Judaism well before big bang was a much discussed model.

      This area is a little weird, as it seems difficult to see why science went for a static model to start with. It seems pretty obvious that is not the case from a second law of thermodynamics perspective (Hawkins says as much in one of his books, I forget which). Yet that was undoubtedly what occurred.

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    31. @Yoni2 - What do you mean settled in Judaism ? Who settled it for Judaism ? What right did they have to settle it...? If science 'proves' no creation ex-nihilo I bet you will find Rabbi's citing Talmud, Rambam, others that Genesis REALLY means no creation ex-nihilo. And I dont think the science is settled either. If I recall correctly science went with a static model because in the early development of Cosmology, astronomers thought the Universe was Static, it is what they observed. I am not so sure second law rules out a Static universe. I assure you the static model advocates knew all about thermodynamics.

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    32. I believe that the 2nd law of thermodynamics does indeed imply a static universe was impossible, but that was considered an unsolved problem by scientists of the time much like dark energy and dark matter today.

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    33. @Yavoy - Regarding your second law comment. I am not so sure. See https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/161542/how-did-steady-state-universe-deal-with-entropy Years ago it was observed the universe was static and the GR equations have as part of it's solutions a 'cosmological constant' that Einstein used to provide for a static universe.

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  3. Mazel Tov!
    Looks extremely interesting and thorough.
    Of the two covers presented here, I prefer the second.

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  4. Will you cover the areas of internal contradictions of Orthodox theology, such as that between Hashgacha pratit and Free Will, which can't both exist? Or that there's no logical reason why , if there is an olam haba, man isn't sent straight there? The unfairness of birth circumstances? Just throwing a few thoughts out there...

    Rational Thinker / ah-pee-chorus

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    1. I cover free will and why people don't go straight to olam haboh in the section on theodicy.

      I definitely don't cover everything. There's too much. The book is supposed to be an introduction to issues.

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  5. This is terrific - mamish a yasher koyach gadol!
    This is exactly the book I've been hoping someone would write, but I knew it wouldn't be me.
    Thank you!

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  6. This is a very significant and important project.
    Do not underestimate the impact, reach and longevity of what you are doing.
    Try to get a full scale commercial publisher, and a Kindle edition.
    I would live to proof read it .

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    1. If I knew how or thought someone would publish it, I would. I think this is too much a niche book to interest a commercial publisher. But if you know how to get it commercially published, I'm open to suggestions.

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    2. Publish it chapter by chapter on your blog

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  7. Awesome effort and an extremely important text. Sent secondson an email with some comments. May want to check out many of my posts which cover similar ground. http://altercockerjewishatheist.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-of-posts-by-category.html

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  8. You basically hit all my favorite topics. If your book is as well-written as your blogging and commenting I would buy your book.

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