[Avodah] psak halacha

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 03:33:28PM -0500, Rich, Joel wrote:
: Understood.  In your construct , do you see a possible inherent
: randomness element in psak?

No, not random. Creative.

A process based on meaning and qualia (the experience of experiencing)
rather than algorithms that manipulate symbols and networks of tokens.

Let me quote the example I gave in the blog entry I point to earlier:
    By my own experience, conscious thought happens two ways: the internal
    monologue we call a "stream of consciousness", and by setting up
    thought-experiments to run through. For example, there are two ways
    to think through the question "Does an elephant have hair?"

    Streams of consciousness, hereafter seikhel (for reasons that will
    become evident later), are a common tool of an author's trade because
    it's thought in the form of words. A solution based on this mode of
    thought might run something like this: Elephants are mammals, all
    mammals have hair, and so unless elephants are the exception to the
    rule, they must have hair. Elephants are well known and discussed
    animals. Could they be an exception to the rule and I don't know
    it? Nah, they must have hair.

    On the other hand, when I someone, and realize he has red hair,
    I don't simply pick up another fact about the person, I have the
    experience of seeing red hair. I can remember and reproduce the image
    of him and his red hair in my mind. The knowledge isn't reducable
    to words, it involves qualia, attributes of internal experience. And
    when I imagine what he would look like with black hair, I manipulate
    an image, not simply reason with concepts reducible into the words of
    my seikhel. There is a shared feature to seeing and hearing something
    when it happened, remembering the event, and imagining what the event
    would be like. When I remember my son's face, I do not simply remember
    facts about it translatable into my seikhel, the flow of words in
    my head. I actually recreate the experience of seeing it. When I
    remember last Yom Kippur's Kol Nidrei, I reproduce the experience
    of hearing the Chazan sing it, the congregation singing along.

    This is the "koach hadimyon", "the ability to make likenesses".
    It is usually translated as "imagination", but this translation
    is anachronistic -- the word "imagination" changed meaning since
    first coined by Aristotilians (such as the Rambam). Dimyon is the
    laboratory of my thought experiments.

    Solving the elephant problem through dimyon, you can remember
    elephants you saw, or saw pictures of. The detail may be blurry,
    so you may have to manipulate the picture a bit. Finally, a version
    of the picture which has a tuft of hair at the tail, maybe (if your
    memory is good) some downy hair around the eyes and ears, strikes
    you as the most familiar, the most real. And again you could reach
    the conclusion that elephants have hair.

What I'm arguing is that while I'm not sure one way or another whether
the internal monolog could be reduced to software, koach hadimyon can
not. And besides, the two interplay to create a single mind; so one
without the either isn't really the same kind of internal monolog
anyway.

Yes, the result will be somewhat subjective. Meaning is a product of
my encounter with the world. When I see red, I might have associations
with some memory of someone bleeding that another person would not.
But then, so should my trek up har Hashem reflect my personal kishronos
and netiyos. As well as the state of the community, as my participation
in the community is a huge part of it. How I proceed from where I am and
we are to the ideal is obviously a function of where I am and where we
as a community are..

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When memories exceed dreams,
micha at aishdas.org        The end is near.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - Rav Moshe Sherer
Fax: (270) 514-1507