[Avodah] Free Will vs. Physics

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 8:58pm EDT, R Michael Poppers wrote:
: If we posit that "responsibility" ...                 isn't present ab
: initio -- such that when you try to go back to a person's time point
: "0," you really can only go back to when a person acquires that yeitzer,
: at which time a storehouse of past actions, experiences, etc. already
: exists -- isn't this discussion inexorably altered?

Our question is where it would come from. If the nature of the source
of responsibility is fully determined by how the person was made and
everything that happened to the person before they got it, then how
are we accountable? And if it's not, then what -- it had a random
component? Again, how are we accountable? (More on this below.)

As RAM <kennethgmiller at juno.com> wrote on Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 3:28am GMT
(GMT? might want to fix your time zone setting):
: How does this happen? How CAN it happen? If they had identical experiences
: in the past, won't they make identical decisions in the present? Clearly,
: they must have some sort of desire for this or for that which had not
: been pre-programmed, because if everything *was* pre-programmed, then
: what happens to responsibility? How can he be given praise or censure
: for decisions that were pre-programmed?

However, I'm unsatisfied with RAM's "tiny seeds of an answer" (which to
my eye looks complete):
: But HOW? Our logic has reached an impasse. Man must have free will, but
: our logic can't find room for free will to fit into the picture. The
: answer is Tzelem Elokim. We've long accepted the idea that there is
: something Godly about humans, and that this Godliness is connected to
: free will. Perhaps we've come full circle.
...
: We know that G-d is above nature. We know that man's free will is
: Godly. Do the math: Free will is above nature...

You were more accurate before, when you spoke of being above logic.
The implementation of bechirah, whether fully supernatural or the brain
(or nature in some other way) is involved, has nothing to do with the
question.

This answer simply boils down to dismissing the question as addressing
something beyond our ken.

A problem is that it's unclear that HQBH defies logic, never mind
that tzelem E-lokim does. The Rambam limits Omnipotence from doing
the illogical, eg (Rambam's example, Moreh 3:15) making a round square
or a square with a diagonal equal to the length. (Throw in that it's
a Euclidian square to modernize the example.) Logic is part of emes,
and thus of His Essence.

The Ramchal is one of many who take the other approach, calling logic a
beryah, and therefore H' is "above" logic.

My own feelings are mixed. As I closed
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2005/07/hashem-and-logic.shtml> (where I
discuss this topic in a little more detail):
> The other question is can G-d defy paradox in general. I'd have to
> agree with the Rambam at least to the extent that some system of logic
> must apply. Didn't Hashem intend us to use logic to come to
> understand what we can of Him. ... How can we the proceed with the
> rest of this discussion if we didn't already assume that logic works?

> Contemporary logic seems to bear out a position very close to the
> Ramchal's. ... [W]e are equipped to deal with things other than a
> black-and-white true vs. false. We can reason about things we can only
> know are probably true. And while happiness and sadness are opposites,
> ambivalence, where a person feels both because of different perspective
> on the same thing, is common. As are dialectics: People can believe
> "The world was created for me" and "I am dust and ashes" at the same
> time. Quantum level events conform to a Quantum Logic, which is also
> non-Boolean and non-Aristotelian....

> Aristotle's Law of Contradiction applies to neither our minds nor the
> constituents of our atoms. Why need it apply to G-d?

Basically, I think that some kind of logic people can understand must
apply to how Hashem relates to us, or else He couldn't expect us to
understand what it is we are to emulate. I doubt that logic is necessarily
Aristotle's or Boole's, but I would be surprised if it weren't intuitive.
(Notice that second claim is weaker than the bald assertion I make in
the first sentence.)

Now, back to free will... Perhaps the problem is simply a false dichotomy:
we're asserting that the ability to make that first decision is either
determined entirely by previous causes or part of it is random. Are they
really antonyms?

BTW, here's an interesting quote from Clarence Darrow (defense attorney),
in pleading the innocence of Leopold and Loeb (who murdered Bobby Franks,
age 14, in 1924):
    What has this boy to do with it? He was not his own father; he was
    not his own mother; he was not his own grandparents. All of this
    was handed to him. He did not surround himself with governesses and
    wealth. He did not make himself. And yet he is to be compelled to pay.

To start another trend of thought... What if we assume the neshamah is
lemaalah min hazeman? Then there is no "first decision", at least as
seen from its perspective.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When faced, with a decision, ask yourself,
micha at aishdas.org        "How would I decide if it were Ne'ilah now,
http://www.aishdas.org   at the closing moments of Yom Kippur?"
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter