[Avodah] sevara vs. psak

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 10:29:10AM -0400, Rich, Joel wrote:
:> I've posted about this previously, but my post was very confusing
:> and no one responded. Here's the same problem expounded very clearly
:> in the context of American constitutional law:
:> http://volokh.com/2010/07/07/mcdonald-and-the-voting-paradox/

: Isn't this the classic knock on the supposed S"A algorithm of taking
: best 2 out of 3 (Rambam,Rosh and Rif)?

Rather than "supposed SA algorithm" I would instead have written "the
SA's sometimes-overridden rule-of-thumb". Pesaq isn't algorithmic,
as per RRW and my multi-year going in circles on the subject. (Which
turned out to be more misunderstanding than substance.)

I don't think the difficulty of defining "fair" when it comes to voting
among more than two options is really at the heart of things.

The problem you raise is the lumping together of one conclusion reached by
two different means as a single pool of votes. For this to be a problem,
you would have to assume that acharei rabim lehatos means among sevaros,
rather than among pesaqim. Judging how nimnu vegamru worked when a
Sanhedrin had the relevent parties in one place, it just means we follow
the rov WRT chayav/patur or assur/mutar regardless of reasoning. And
in fact each of the dayanim -- or in the SA's case, each of the earlier
codifiers -- themselves may have had multiple overlapping reasoning.

IOW, you are discussing the case where rov hold X over Y, but only a
mi'ut hold X because of sevara A and only a mi'ut hold X because of
sevara B. If the vote were on sevaros, we would say that neither A nor
B should become din, and therefore lemaaseh we shoul do Y. However:
(1) the vote is on outcomes; and (2) dayanim don't hold A to the exclusion
of B, C or D, nor even to the exclusion of not-A -- a dayan could hold
X because maybe-A and if not, maybe-B ... and all the other complicated
ways multiple reasons come together to convince someone. The vote
couldn't be about who holds which sevara because that's uncountable.

but since the votes i
so that if we were voting
if we look 

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
micha at aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
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