Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Jewish Philosophy: Free Will - Part 1

Today we're going to start talking about free will. In a few days I can spend at least a month on just outlining some of the problems with free will. I'll give you some skim off the top. It's all recorded. All my lectures on free will are recorded, both on my website and on TorahAnytime. And if you come back and pay us a longer visit, you may get the longer series. First of all, the reason why free will is important to us is that without free will there is no responsibility. Without responsibility there's no morality. In particular, given Jewish beliefs, there's no room for reward and punishment. Maimonides makes this point explicitly in his Laws of Repentance. If a person's action breaks a law or violates a value, if he has no free will, it would be absolutely unjust to punish him. A little more subtly, if he has no free will, it makes no sense to reward him. If his action fulfills a law or fulfills a value, you can give away gifts if you like. You can give free gifts to anybody you like. But a reward is a response to something accomplished. And if the person has no free will in that case, then he hasn't accomplished anything. And therefore, it's not logically appropriate. So since Judaism starts and ends with responsibility and the idea of reward and punishment, if there is no free will, then the ship sinks. Judaism cannot go on without free will. Let me illustrate this to you. I hope this sounds obvious. To anyone whose life is untainted by philosophy, has not been spoiled by philosophy, it is obvious that there is a number of philosophers today who deny this. That's a pathology. And having a doctoral degree, I might even do a diagnosis, though mine's a PhD, not an MD. And if you like, I'll explain to you what drives them into that crazy position. But the fact is that without free will, you're not responsible for what you do. Let me give you a few examples. George is standing at the top of a flight of stairs facing down. Peter sneaks up behind him soundlessly and gives him a push. George tumbles down the flight of stairs at the bottom of which there is Philip's 5th century Ming vase. And his body smashes the vase. Who's responsible for smashing the vase? I think obviously Peter is because he pushed George down the stairs. George's body is just a missile that Peter used to smash the vase. George isn't responsible because he didn't choose anything. A slightly more extended example, George is trying to stop smoking. So he goes to a hypnotist and gets a post-hypnotic suggestion every week. Thursday night, puts him under and says, you're not going to smoke. One Thursday night, just for the fun of it, the hypnotist says to him, and by the way, next Monday morning at 10 a.m. your right arm is going to swing out in front of you like this. When you wake up you won't remember any of this. That's the suggestion. Okay, Monday morning George is taking a tour of Philip's antiquities. At 9.59 Philip positions George in front of a pedestal on which is standing a 5th century Ming vase. And as Philip is explaining to George the wonders of this ancient vase, the grandfather clock in the corner bongs the hour of 10, at which point George's hand swings out in front of him and smashes the vase. And Philip says, what did you do? My vase! What's the matter with you? And George says, I don't know. I really don't know. It went out by itself. I can't explain it. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. It just went out. Okay, who's responsible for smashing the vase? George? I think clearly not. He was victimized by the hypnotist. He paid the hypnotist to help him stop smoking. The hypnotist on a lark added in something to the post-hypnotic suggestion which he was not authorized to do. And poor George is subject to that post-hypnotic suggestion and his arm swings out without his volition, without his will. He's not responsible for that. Now the Jewish position is whenever what you do is produced by some set of forces outside yourself, if it's completely produced by forces outside yourself, then you're not responsible for what you do. That would include the very extended case where someone says, look, you are a product of your DNA and the environment that you grew up in, your environmental influences, the environmental stimuli, and that's all you are. That's all you are. You are the product of those two features and that totally determines everything you do, from your eye color to your palate to your capacity or incapacity for baseball to your politics, to your morals. All of it is just the result of the DNA you got from your parents plus the environment outside of you which was impacting you on the terms of your development. So that you really are a completely programmed robot. That's what you are. If you have an illusion of making free decisions, that's just an illusion. The truth is you're a completely programmed robot. Judaism holds that if that's true, then we're not responsible for anything we do. It would be inappropriate to reward or punish anybody for what he does, and then Judaism falls. So Judaism has to believe that there is free will. Judaism has to reject that picture that we are just the product of the DNA and the environment and that there's something more to a human being, to human life, than just acting out what the DNA and the environment imposes on you. There's an extra feature. In addition, no one's denying that the DNA and environment have an effect. No one's denying that. The word we have for that is influence. DNA and environment influence the outcome, but they don't determine the outcome. That's a very important distinction. There's a disease called phenylketonuria, I believe. It's a genetic fault. The people who eat certain things thereby present with the symptoms of the disease. If they never eat those things, they won't present with any symptoms at all. The genetic fault is a predisposition to get the disease when you eat certain things. You see certain foods, the phenylketonurics shouldn't eat this. Same thing with the genes for height. If your parents were 6'7 and 6'9, you probably got genes for great height. But if you grew up malnourished, you are not going to be tall. They are genes only to dispose you to grow tall under proper nourishment. If you don't get proper nourishment, you're not going to be tall. So at best, what you have in the genetics and in the environment, from our point of view, is influence. Influence is not the same as determining what you do. Free will would be lost entirely if the genetics and the environment determine what you do, and of course we have to deny that. Are we together so far? Okay. Just a footnote, especially with the recording, I'm admitting that many contemporary philosophers, I would say not the good ones, but that's my prejudice, deny this. They think you can be responsible without having free will, but I think it's a hopeless, hopeless dodge. Okay. But now, are we not just the product of our DNA and our environmental influences? Are we really more than that? You'll talk to people, certain types of people, people, for example, engaged in what's called cognitive science. They'll tell you it's obvious that you're just a sophisticated machine, and as a machine, you're built out of DNA and you're programmed by the environment. And of course, free will is an illusion. There's nothing to it. And we have to deny that. So the question is, where does adequate reason lie? As we started this series, where does adequate reason lie in this question as to whether or not we are simply machines or we have another element called free will? I want to do this step by step. I'm doing it with certain philosophical nuances in mind. Not everybody would do this, but I think it's worthwhile because I think the nuances are correct. First of all, everybody is fully convinced that he has free will. Everybody. Even the philosophers who deny it are convinced they have it. They just think that being convinced is a fault, a weakness, some kind of aberration, some kind of hallucination, and they've taught themselves to think otherwise. But that doesn't stop them from living life in terms of it. I'll give you an example. You know what visual illusions are? You've seen the Miller lie illusion, the box illusions, and so on. So after a while, you can learn that they're illusions and you can learn why they're illusions. Sometimes you can measure them and make sure things are really the same size and they look different. But that doesn't change how they look. They still look just as bad. You see, remember, I learned this mistake, I learned I started this mistake, but they still look just as bad. When a person lives his life, he can't help but experience what's going on in terms of free will. John Searle, one of the great atheistic, materialistic philosophers who believes in free will, gave the following illustration. A person who denies free will goes into a restaurant, he sits down, waiter comes over and says, well, our two main dishes are fish and meat, what will you have? And the customer says, you know, I'm a determinist, I don't believe in free will, so I'm just gonna sit and wait and see what I order. I'll just let it happen. Now, that's supposed to be funny. For philosophers, it's a little bit funny because obviously, the decision to sit and wait and see what you order is also a decision. That's what you've decided to do. You can't live your life actively without experiencing it as having alternatives and deciding among them. That's what goes on all the time. You can rehearse your philosophy in the top of your mind and say, oh yeah, I know, I know I feel that way, I know I experience it that way, I know I live it that way, but it's all a mistake, it's all an illusion, just like looking at the visual illusions. And it might be correct, but we're all naturally, instinctively, intuitively convinced that we have free will. Now, here's the first philosophical point. Anything that everybody's convinced of, everybody finds natural, normal, intuitive, and inescapable is appropriate to believe unless and until somebody gives you adequate reason to abandon it. Again, anything that is obvious to everybody, intuitive and compelling to everybody, is appropriate to accept and it's appropriate to believe unless and until somebody gives you adequate reason to abandon it. Some things throughout history that people have thought were obvious and compelling turn out to be wrong. Some things, yes indeed, have turned out to be wrong. That doesn't mean that it's just up for grabs. The fact that people have made mistakes about something doesn't mean that everything's open to question, everything's 50-50. That doesn't follow. It just means you might be wrong. Think of what we said in the last series about possibly wrong. Possibly wrong. Maybe it's a little bit more than possibly wrong because other things like this have turned out to be wrong. But still, the default position is if everybody's convinced that it's obviously true, that's the right thing to accept. We will listen with respect to a critic who says it's all a mistake. Okay, he says it's all a mistake and he wants to convince us of that. We'll listen to his reasons. But he has the uphill battle. What's called the burden of proof is on him because he's opposing something that everybody takes to be naturally and obviously true. So now, the critic wants to tell me my belief that I have free will is an illusion. By the way, in one of his books, Searle considers all of this in detail. He did it in The Practice of Rationality and he did it again in Freedom in Neurobiology. So he wants to tell me it's all a mistake. It's all an illusion. Really, you are just the product of your DNA and genes. So I ask him, why do you think that? Why do you think that? You're taking a very strong position. You should have evidence for it. You're a philosopher. You're a scientist. You don't just pick things out of the air. You should have some good reason for thinking so. One reason that they will give is that when we trace the difference in your environmental factors, your upbringing, context, culture, economics, we can see a systematic effect on the way you develop. Watts, California, 17-year-olds, three-quarters of them are illiterate. In Shaker Heights, Ohio, 100% are illiterate or at least 100% of those who don't have severe psychological disturbances or disabilities. So the believer in determinism will say, you see it right in front of you. You see how the environment impacts your development. You see the difference right in front of you. That's straight evidence. But I will still persist in asking, look, in Watts, you gave me a 75% statistic, not a 100% statistic. 75% statistic doesn't suggest determinism. It doesn't suggest that the environment is producing the result. It suggests that the environment is a factor in the result, yes. But since it isn't 100%, it suggests that there are other factors also that determine what the difference is with the 25%. Now, they have an answer to this. I think it's important for you to understand the answer and understand why it's wrong. The answer they will give you is this. Look, we believe that the environment determines the outcome. So far, the only environment we've taken account of is being in Watts, California. That's a geographical area. A child's environment has lots of specific details also, and different children have specific details. The ones who learned to read the 25%, maybe the mother was a schoolteacher, or maybe there was an uncle in Ohio and he went to Ohio to spend the summers, or maybe he's the oldest child and therefore the parents were together longer in his childhood development and he had a stable home longer than younger children. We'll tell you, they say, we'll tell you that there's something else in the environment that determines why the 25% are different from the 75%. But it's all environment. That's what they say. Well, what's wrong with that? They have a position that it's all environment. The environment does the whole job. Nothing left over. What's wrong with it is that when they make move two, there's something else in the environment that makes the difference. They don't show it to you. They haven't observed it. They haven't cataloged it. They haven't made sure it covers the whole 25%. They're just guessing. Maybe the mother was a school teacher or maybe there was an uncle in Ohio or maybe he's the oldest child. Maybe, maybe yes, maybe no. You're a scientist. You base your beliefs on evidence. You want to be sure that you're rationally convinced that it's true. Show it to me. Go and do the work. Go from house to house. Find the children who can read. Investigate their backgrounds. Make a list of the features which you think make a difference. Make sure it covers the whole 25%. Then maybe I'll listen to you. But you haven't done that. When you say the other 25% are produced by specifics in the environment, you are expressing your belief, your belief that it's the environment that does the whole job. I don't interview scientists about their beliefs. I interview scientists about their evidence. If you haven't got the evidence, don't tout it as science. Maybe you're committed to looking only at the environment. Purpose commitments are his own, personal, free, and not scientific. It's just what you're committed to as a person. It's your life. Live it as you please. But don't don't voice it on me because you made a commitment and you believe. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a reason. And as you're a scientist, I'm looking for a reason in evidence. The fact is they can't make 100% statistics and that's for reading, much less for values or politics or love. They can't make 100% statistics. So I say if they're claiming that the DNA in the environment is the whole story and they're claiming they have evidence for that, the whole story, not just influence but the whole story, I want to see 100% statistics. If you don't have 100% statistics, then I'm going to say you don't have evidence for it. Don't get me wrong. When I say 100%, I mean a single statistic that's 100%. I'm not asking for statistics on everything. That would be clearly unreasonable. That would be clearly too much to ask. I agree. But if you're telling me that everything you do is completely programmed, I'd like six examples of things you do that are completely programmed. Six. Six out of a thousand. If you gave me six out of a thousand, I'd be encouraged that there's something there to take seriously. But the truth is they don't have one. Not one. Well, one. There are very extreme cases. There are cases where a gang, youth gang, catches little children, let's say an eight-year-old, and injects them with crack. Do that two or three times, the child is going to be addicted to crack. Once he's addicted to crack, he will steal. You can guarantee that 100%. He will definitely steal. He's got to feed his habit. There's no other way to do it. So he's going to steal. So there's a 100% statistic. Catch a kid three times and inject him with crack. Eventually, after that, he's going to come to steal. Great. But how representative is that of the whole of human behavior? It's very, very extreme. It's on the very edge of the page. I wouldn't learn from the fact that when you inject children with crack, they end up stealing, that my political opinions are determined, and my values are determined, and my love life is determined, and all the rest. That would be a gigantic unjustified jump. So I'm asking for evidence, and the evidence isn't there. You can come at the same point in it from a different direction. You say everything is completely determined, and determined by the DNA and the environment. Well, tell me what you can explain. Can you explain how and why we develop the way we do? Can you predict how and why we develop the way we do? To do that, if I gave you a person's DNA, and I gave you his environment, you should be able to make some predictions about how he'll develop. There isn't a prayer of doing that today, largely because we don't know what the DNA does. Sequencing it doesn't help. That's like looking at all the characters on the Rosetta Stone. You have a complete list of characters on the Rosetta Stone, but I don't know what any of them mean. In the case of the genes, we have very little information about what they do because no gene works in isolation. Each gene works with dozens of others simultaneously, and each gene has dozens of complexes of which it's a part. It's a big, big story. You want to invest in a growth industry? Invest in decoding the gene. It's going to take hundreds of years. So there are no predictions to be made. There are no statistics that are full statistics. So why would anyone think that the human being is just a machine? Now, I haven't taken you through this piece of logic, but let me just draw the correct conclusion. Since he can't substantiate that we are machines, the correct conclusion is we don't know whether we're machines or not. Don't jump to the opposite conclusion, that we aren't machines. That's not justified. He couldn't show that we're machines, so then we don't know that we're machines. Do we know we're anything else? Well, that's an open question. But if I'm facing a critic who represents science and tells me, we know you're wrong. We know there's no free will because obviously we're just machines. He can't make it work. He can't substantiate it. Now, I will briefly reply to one other move that these people make, and I'll be happy to leave this one and go on to another issue. Sometimes you hear the following. It is the essence of science to assume that you are working within the natural world. That means the material world, the physical world. You look for cause and effect because that's what science does. That's called methodological naturalism. Methodological means when I have a method for what I'm doing, I have a way of going about my business. My method is to assume that the world is just natural. Methodological naturalism. There are two brands of this move, one of which is perfectly legitimate and the other of which is deadly. It's a free world. People do different things. There are people who are economists. There are people who are chefs. People pilot airplanes. There are people who study ancient history. No one can tell anybody else what to do. It's a free world. You can do what you please. A person says, I like finding physical causes for physical events. That's what I like doing. I happen to be good at it. I'm good at it. I have a good record of finding physical causes for physical events. That's what I do. Fine. That's great. You'll contribute to the world's understanding and knowledge. You'll help us perhaps control the world. You'll make a positive contribution to the world. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. A person who goes on to say, and furthermore, my methodology is everything. There's nothing outside of my methodology. My methodology covers the world. Everything is just physical causes and effects. That's totally illegitimate. Why would you say that? Who told you so? What reason do you have for thinking that? Can you, with your methodology of physical causes and effects, explain everything that's going on in the world? Can you explain 10% of what's going on in the world? No. So why would you commit yourself to say that that's all there is? By the way, mathematics doesn't work with physical causes and effects either. Doesn't it produce genuine knowledge? Don't you, the physicists, lean on mathematics all the time? But it doesn't come from your methodology of physical causes and effects. So why should I pledge allegiance to that? You want to adopt your profession and give it certain rules because that's the way you function? Terrific. But don't tell me that you're covering the whole of the universe unless you have an explanation for everything. If you had an explanation for everything, then I'd be impressed. I would consider taking you seriously. But you don't. If you don't, then there's no point in imposing that on anybody else. Okay? Now there are sophisticated philosophical moves to try to show positively that we're not machines, but I'm not going to go into those right now. Maybe I won't have time to do them. I'm going to move to other types of questions in the meantime. Free will, as I told you, is a commitment that Judaism has. This may sound odd, but people discover tensions within Judaism, free will against other Jewish ideas. And they worry about how they could be reconciled. I'll give you a couple of examples. Here's a simple one. Isn't Judaism, among other things, a system of commandments? A system of commandments. God commanded us to do various things. And isn't it expected by Judaism that that is what we must do? Okay. So then, how can the very same Judaism that gives us orders what we must do also tells us that we have free will? Doesn't free will mean that I make my own decisions, chart my own path, choose my own priorities, live my own life, create my own future? Isn't that what free will is about? So how could Judaism say on the one hand you have free will, which sounds like I'm living my own life, and then tell me, by the way, there's a set of rules and those are the rules you must follow. How do you make that into an insistent picture? The answer is this. Free will, for us, is only the ability to act on your own. The ability to act on your own. As against what we started with, it means there aren't external forces pushing you down the stairs or hypnotizing you or programming you like a robot. They influence you, but they leave you with the ability to make your own decisions. Rules determine what I ought to do, what it's right to do. Knowing what it's right to do on the one hand, and yet having the freedom to obey or disobey on the other hand is not a contradiction at all. It's the universal human condition. We all know, on occasion, that there are certain things that should be done and we don't do them. So, having free will just as the power to act on my own doesn't contradict there being commandments. What would contradict there being commandments would be an authority to choose as I please. A position like this. I choose for myself what I please and because I chose it for myself, it's right for me. There's nothing higher than me that can dictate what's right for me. When I choose something for me, it's right for me because I chose it. Period. And nothing outside of me and nothing higher than me can dictate to me what I ought to choose. Not you, not society, not history, and not God. Nothing outside of me can determine what it is I ought to be doing. That sense of free will, which is not just power, that's free will authority. That contradicts Judaism. That's for sure. That contradicts commandments for sure. But we don't believe in that. Judaism doesn't believe in that. So there's no contradiction within Judaism. And if you ask, okay, okay, Judaism's consistent. Congratulations. That's wonderful. But what about the idea that I'm the top authority? I'm the one who determines what's right for me. Nothing outside of me can determine what's right for me. What about that? Maybe that's correct. No, it's not correct. It's dreadfully incorrect. And I will take a few minutes to show you why. Because this is obviously a very popular and I would say seductive idea that I'm the top authority for my life. Let's consider George who tells us that he has chosen a project and he's going to dedicate himself to it at least for the coming period of time. And his project is to square the circle or trisect an angle. Square the circle means you have a circle and you're supposed to create with a compass and a straightedge to create a square that's exactly the same size as the circle. And he's going to work on it. That's his project. There's something wrong here because it's known mathematically that it can't be done. It's been proved mathematically that it can't be done. Isn't it correct when we look at George that we know he's making a mistake? He's dedicating himself to try to do something which can't be done. We might even know more. We might even know that when we explain it to him and he understands that it's impossible he'll give it up immediately. And he'll thank us for saving his time. Saving him from wasting his time. We just haven't explained it yet. Don't we know he's making a mistake? Of course we know he's making a mistake. To dedicate yourself to a project at least has to be possible. Otherwise you're just wasting your time. Now here's another more extended case. Peter and George grew up in the same neighborhood, go to the same schools. Peter's four years older than George. George is 12. He says to Peter, I've decided that I'm going to become a fireman. And I say, George is speaking to Peter. And so Peter says back to him, I know, you know what? I went through that too when I was 12 and I'll also be a fireman. But I tell you, when you get to be 16, you'll give it up. There are other things that you'll learn about, other things you'll come to know, and you'll give it up. And George, being a red-blooded American boy, says, get off my back. Let me live my own life. Don't tell me what I'm going to be. But when he gets to 16, he doesn't want to be a fireman anymore. Now he wants to be a basketball star. Peter's 20. And Peter says, I know, I know. I also wanted to be a basketball star at 16. But let me tell you something. By the time you get to be 20, an old man like I am, you'll give it up because there are other things that are more important, that are more interesting. At 20, he wants to become President of the United States. So Peter's now 24. He says, yeah, I know. I was also a sophomore in college at 20, and I also remember those ambitions. Now anybody can be President, but by the time you're 24, you're going to give it up. By the time you're 24, he has given it up. By now, he wants to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine. And Peter says, at the age of 28, I know, I know, you're into science and you're pretty good and you're enamored with the thrill of science. But let me tell you something. By the time you have a few more years of experience under your belt, by the time you get to be my age, you'll see, you'll give it up. By the time he's 28, he's given it up. Now, at 28, he wants to make a million dollars by 35. Peter says to him, yeah, I know, I know. I've been there. I was once 28 like you, same school. But I tell you that you're going to change your mind. Couldn't George learn from experience? You know, Peter has my number. He really has my number. Five times he's predicted I'm going to change my mind and five times I've changed my mind. So probably, when he says that I'm going to change my mind, he's probably right. Can't George use Peter's external perspective on him to correct what he's chosen for himself and come to see that what he's chosen for himself is incorrect? I think he can. I think we can learn from experience that way. Both of these examples show that the fact that I choose something for myself doesn't make it right for me. There are authorities outside of me that can determine whether my choice is right or wrong for me. So that, I would call it conceit. And I'm the highest authority. Nothing can push me around. That's simply a mistake. Bottom line, we have commandments and we have free will, which is the power to act. No contradiction between them. Are we together? Okay. Now, here's one which I'm sure you've all heard of, and I will take some time to work on it, just to give you an example of how a well-known, tricky, philosophical problem within Judaism can be handled. What about foreknowledge and free will? God knows everything that's going to happen. Doesn't that rule out my free will? Here's the intuition. I'm choosing between A and B. I've done this before. Sometimes I choose A, sometimes I choose B. And I decided that 10 seconds from now, I'm going to choose A or B? B or A? 6, 5, 4, which shall it be? A or B? 2, 1, B! That's it. I chose B. Now, yes, me, it wasn't fixed until I chose it. Nothing before the zero count determined what it would be. It was up to me to freely choose it. It was my choice to make it, so that's the way it seems to me. The critic says, Are you religious? Look at my hat. Can't you tell? Well, you believe in God, right? Yes, sirree, I believe in God. Do you believe God is all-knowing? Sure. You think he was all-knowing yesterday also? Of course. Don't be silly. Always was, all-knowing, always will be, always all-knowing. Good, says the critic. Now, tell me something. Yesterday, did God already know that you were going to choose B a few seconds ago when you chose B? I see. Sure. He knew everything. So he knew the future also. So he knew I was going to choose B. Oh, says the critic. Now, reflect. You thought you were making a choice between A and B. That's what you thought. But tell me something. Could you have really chosen A? Was A open to you? Was A an option? Was A a possibility for you? Think! I said, I'm trying, I'm trying. It's hard, but I'm working on it. So think! Choosing A would mean that you'd be contradicting God's knowledge yesterday that you're going to do B. Is that open to you? Can you do something that will contradict God's knowledge? Doesn't sound right. Doesn't sound possible. Not only won't you choose A, but you can't choose A. The possibility of choosing A would mean the possibility of doing something against God's knowledge. You don't even have that possibility. You don't have that power. You don't have that alternative. So, says the critic, you're suffering from an illusion. You thought that you were choosing between A and B. A wasn't really open. A wasn't really possible. At least, says the critic. On your view, that there is a God and He's all-knowing and He was all-knowing yesterday and He knew the future yesterday. If you are committed to all of that, you have to admit that you didn't have the power to choose A. You weren't really choosing between A and B. And that makes it sound like it's not really free will. If you don't have two alternatives, you're choosing only the thing that you have to choose, nothing else that you could choose, it seems like you're stuck. Is the problem reasonably clear? I'll rehearse it once more, because the solution depends on getting the problem exactly right. The problem is this. I think of free will as choosing between two alternatives, A and B. When I choose one of them, B, God already knew yesterday I was going to choose that one, which means choosing the other one, which would contradict God's knowledge yesterday, becomes impossible. Since it's impossible, I'm not really choosing between two alternatives. That's not real free will. Okay, that's the problem. There's a direct, simple solution here. It's found in Jewish sources, in the Rosad Yigon, and in the Aked Zitzchak, that's for the recording, for people who might know what that is. In LeHavdol, Elif Adolos, Bertrand Russell offered the same solution. Bertrand Russell said, don't beat up the religious believer with this problem, because it has a simple solution. Let me tell you what the solution is, and I'll tell you how Russell said it, and then we can discuss it and make sure that we have it clear. The way I rehearsed the problem, I made an assumption. I built an assumption into the problem. The minute you question that assumption, you can see that the problem dissolves. Again, the heart of the problem is, God knows yesterday I'm going to choose B, then how can I choose A? Choosing A will contradict God's knowledge yesterday. The hidden assumption is that God's knowledge yesterday is independent of what I choose. It's independent of what I choose. It's fixed, chiseled into history, so that when I try to do A now, it becomes impossible, because it will contradict God's knowledge yesterday. But suppose that's not correct. Suppose God's knowledge isn't chiseled into history. Suppose God's knowledge isn't independent of what I choose. Suppose my choice causes God's knowledge. Suppose my choice causes God's knowledge. Watch how the problem dissolves. If you look at it that way. I chose B. That's what I really did. Of course, yesterday, God knew I was going to choose B, because he knows everything. Now we're questioning, a hypothetical. What would it be for me to choose A? Would it be okay? Would I get into trouble? Well, according to this picture, if I imagine choosing A, then I also have to imagine that yesterday God knew that I'm going to do A, because it's my choice that causes his knowledge. It's wrong to hold the knowledge of B constant while I imagine choosing the other one. If I imagine choosing the other one, then the knowledge yesterday is going to be changed to A also, and everything is perfectly consistent. Everything is perfectly consistent. Russell's way of putting the idea, which is vivid and to his credit, is this. He says, suppose that yesterday God gets a sneak preview of the future. It's a sneak preview. He watches you today choosing B. That's how he knows yesterday that you're going to choose B. He knows because he peeks ahead to the future and watches it happen. Surely that's not going to put any constraints on what I do, because, just as I said, had I chosen A, he, looking from yesterday, peeking forward, would see me choosing A, and then he would know I'm choosing A. Once you take out that hidden assumption, the problem just disappears, just dissolves. And that is the way those two sources, I think, and there's Chubis and Rivosh also, who says the same thing. I used to divide this up into two ideas, and then I saw this responsum of the Rivosh, and I saw that it's much better to put as one core idea. Okay, so that answers the problem directly in its own terms. That means there is no absolute contradiction between foreknowledge and free will. Are we together? Now, some people might be uncomfortable with this, but it doesn't mean that your choice causes God's knowledge. Is that appropriate? Is that right? Should anything about God be determined by what we do? Isn't God infinite and transcendent and beyond and untouchable and unchangeable and all the rest? Now, how could it be that we, so to speak, have the power to do something to affect God? Isn't that itself just an illegitimate idea in Jewish terms? This is a subtle matter, but let me at least give you a bridge concerning this idea. God Himself set up the world in such a way that what He does is dependent upon what we do. He set it up that way. It didn't have to be that way, but He set it up that way. For example, something we mentioned earlier in this hour, reward and punishment. What does reward and punishment mean? It means that if we act a certain way, He'll respond this way. If we act a different way, He'll respond a different way. How He acts to us is a response to what we do. So He set up a world in which something about Him is a response to what we do. It isn't possible for God to set up His knowledge of the world as a response to what we do. He gets it. He gets it perfectly. He gets it from the beginning because He can see the future, but it's caused by our choices and not independent and abstract and concrete. I mean, abstract and absolute, you know, chiseled into stone. So I don't see that as a terribly difficult problem. There are other responses to this question of our knowledge of free will, but maybe this solution is enough to, you know, give you the ability to sleep peacefully and not worry over much about this problem. Are we together? Okay. Now, there's one other problem of this kind that I want to discuss with you. We'll probably do it today. As usual, on Sunday, I'll review all this stuff from the beginning. There is a concept of divine providence. Divine providence means what God is doing and running the world. Be very careful here. People do get confused about this. There's not a concept of power. Power is what God can do. Providence is what He's really doing. God doesn't do everything that He can do. God has priorities and God has certain goals that He wants to achieve, and some of them may require Him not activating all of His power. I'm not talking about power. I'm talking about what He actually does in running the world. How much does He do? This is a very tangled subject. There are even disagreements as to whether there are disagreements. I will spare you that. Yes, you can heave a sigh of relief. I will not take it badly. I will spare you all of that. I'll spare it to you in this way. Let's take the strongest conception, the conception which gives God maximal activity in running the world. We want to see whether God's providence squeezes out my free will, squeezes out my ability to act on my own. If I take the maximal concept where He's doing the most that anybody ever describes Him as doing and my free will still has a purchase, then if you have a more relaxed view, of course it has a purchase. I'm short-circuiting the long discussion of providence, thank God, and just picking the strongest concept because if I can reconcile free will with the strongest concept, then it's certainly reconciled with the weaker concepts. What's the strongest concept? The strongest concept is that everything in the physical world is a product of God's will. Everything that happens in the physical world is a product of God's will. The weather and the evolution of stars and the ups and downs of the stock market and crops and the rest, disease, all of it is the... Maybe the stock market I should subtract. Strictly physical world. Everything in the strictly physical world is a product of God's will. Now, here's how you might think there's trouble for free will. Someone asks me for charity. Okay, I have money in my pocket. Some of it is indeed dedicated to charity. The person looks reasonable. The person needs charity. So I decide, yes, okay, I'll give them some charity. Put my hand in my pocket, take it out, give it to the guy, and he walks off. I gave charity. I gave charity? Well, I give charity by putting my hand in my pocket, grasping the coin, and handing it to the other person. Isn't that a physical event? Closing of muscles, releasing of muscles, motion of arm. Isn't that a physical event? According to this picture that we are considering, God's will causes every physical event, including all the motions of my body, which includes my body handing over the coin to the petitioner. So who's giving charity here? Sounds like God's giving charity using my body as a tool. Where do I have purchase here? Since I'm not controlling my body. My body's under God's control. Now this question has a solution, and it's a solution that comes in stages. And as I will point as we go along, it's important to point out that the early stages don't do the job on their own. First of all, according to our picture, a human being has a soul. And a soul is not a physical entity. Let's give it a word. It's spiritual. And that's where free decisions take place. They take place in the soul. Let's go back. What is this concept of providence? God's will causes every physical event. If you were trained in logic, hearing those words, you'd say, hey, wait a minute. He's stuck in a qualifier there. Why did he say every physical event? Hmm. He must be implying that there are other events that aren't physical. Otherwise, why put in the qualifier? Just say every event? No, he said every physical event. See, he's thinking there are physical events and then something else. Other events that aren't physical. And he's not committing himself with respect to those other events. That's right. That's exactly what's implied. By saying God's will causes every physical event, what's implied is that there are other events and we're not talking about those. Let's give them a name. Let's call them spiritual events. So I say God's will causes every physical event. That means that spiritual events are different. Now, a little quiz. Different in what way? If God's will causes every physical event, and that's not correct for the spiritual, what is correct for the spiritual? God's will doesn't cause every spiritual event. That's all. It doesn't have to be completely disconnected. God's will blankets the physical. For the spiritual, all you get is God's will doesn't blanket the spiritual. That leaves it open that it causes some and not others. It doesn't have to be completely distinct. The contradictory to bald is having one hair. You're not bald. It doesn't have to have a full head of hair. You don't have to go to the opposite extreme. Contradiction to blanketing is not blanketing, which leaves it open. So I say God's will causes every physical event. It means the spirituals are up for grabs. Some yes and some no. There's got to at least be some no. Free will decisions are the no's. Those are the ones in the spirit which God doesn't cause. Fine. So the free will decision to give charity is something that God's will doesn't cause. That doesn't solve our problem because I can't give charity in my soul. That will not help the other person buy a hamburger. I've got to give him a dollar. Okay, $2.50. Price is $1.00. And to give him $2.50, I've got to reach my hand through my pocket and give him the money. And that is a physical event. Okay, now it's time for a little quiz. Suppose someone says, Oh, I see. What you need to do is say that the motion of the body in handing over the money is caused by the decision in the soul. That's all. And then you're responsible. That won't do. It won't do because it's forgotten the problem. The problem was to reconcile free will with God's providence where God's providence means His will causes every physical event. His will. You can't say that my soul's decision causes my body to move. That just denies the problem. The problem was assume that God's will causes every physical event and find room for your own role in the world. So I can't make that move. What I need to do, there are certain philosophers who draw you a picture where you are, where you're going, what your means are, like Jerry Fodor. I think it's very useful. It's very useful. Keep track of where you are, what you're doing. The body's moving. The body's moving because God's will causes it. And I want to know how that could be my action, how I can be responsible for it, how I can get any credit for it. So we've built the soul, and the soul makes its own decision, but the soul isn't making the body act. What I've got to do is build a bridge between the soul and the body, not the bridge of causation. God's causing the body to act. I've got to build a different bridge which will still make me responsible for what the body does and give me credit. And here's how you do it. I know from vast, vast experience that what I decide is what happens almost every time. 99.99% of the time when I decide to move my body in a certain way, the body moves that way. Yeah, from time to time I catch a cramp. From time to time I may faint. From time to time wind gets in my eye and I lose track, but that's very, very rare. Almost always when I decide, the body carries it out. Why? Because, obviously, God has a policy of causing the body to carry out what I decide. Since the body's activities are the result of God's will, so what you see is that God has a policy of carrying out what my soul decides. Good. So here I am. The guy's asking me for charity. I say, you want charity? Hmm, let's see. Do I have money in my charity account? Yes. But I'm saving up to buy the newest release of the Tokyo String Quartet, which I think is the best string quartet on the planet. And it's expensive. But on the other hand, I do it in the midst of charity and the money really belongs to the charity account, so it's charity, Tokyo, Tokyo charity. I go back and forth and I say, charity. That's the end of my contribution. Now God makes the body hand over the charity, but I also know from experience that had I decided Tokyo, God would have caused the body not to hand over the money. I know that from experience. So I know from experience that what I decide is in fact what's going to happen, even though I'm not making it happen. That's enough to make me responsible. I know, and when I decide this, this is what will happen, and I decide that, that is what will happen, that's enough to make me responsible for the outcome because I know what the outcome will be. It's not a bridge of causation. It's a bridge of knowledge. That being the case, even though God causes the body to hand over the charity, I get responsibility for the midst of charity because had I decided otherwise it wouldn't have happened. That being the case, even if I take this extremely strong position about God's providence that God's will causes every physical event, there is room for freedom and responsibility because the soul is spiritual and the decisions are made in the soul, and with my knowledge that God almost always causes the body to carry out what the soul decides, I'm then responsible even for what the body does. Now, just one little comment on this just to correct the possible misunderstanding, and then we have a couple of minutes we want to discuss If someone says, and you can get this, someone says, hey, wait a minute, but how do you know there's a soul? How do you know the soul makes decisions? How do you know all that? The answer is, I don't have to know that. The critic is alleging that there's a contradiction in two Jewish ideas. To show there's no contradiction, all I need is a possibility that they should both be true. That's all. I don't have to know if the possibility is correct. George is missing. How could he be missing? He was in a closed cell, and the cell was guarded. There were videos watching him. How could he possibly be missing? Oh, George has a very good friend who's the vice warden of the prison. Okay, it's hard. Cell walls, bars, keys, videos, everything else. He's the vice warden. Maybe he can gerrymander it. Maybe he can control it. Maybe he has ways to get around security. Now I know it's possible. I don't have to know that the vice warden did it. All I need to know is that it's possible. The question we were considering is, if God's will causes every physical event, maybe there's no room for my activity, no room for my responsibility. Answer, there is room. Given that there's a soul, the soul makes the decisions, and God regularly causes the body to do what the soul decides, there's room for me to be responsible for what the body does. So there's no contradiction. There's no contradiction. So I don't have to substantiate that the solution is true. I just have to show that the solution is possible. Once it's possible, then there's no contradiction. Okay, that's the beginning of free will. As I said on Sunday, we'll review these ideas, and if they're okay, we'll go on tomorrow.