[Avodah] A quantum of time

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 06:10:22AM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
: R' Micha Berger wrote:
: 
: > I think tokh kedei dibbur works because it's a quantum of time.
: > Any two statements made within that span is close enough to
: > simultaneous as to make no difference.
: 
: That's possible, but I think that a much simpler explanation is that Chazal
: established Tokh Kedei Dibbur (hereafter TKD) as the shiur for "Did he
: change his mind?"...

I would consider that cause-and-effect.

IOW, the reason why those two statements are close enough to simultaneous
as to make no difference is because you wouldn't have changed your mind
so quickly.

Recall, I believe halakhah is based on the world-as-experienced, not
the objective reality science studies.

And so if we retain mental state for roughly 3-1/3 sec, that would be
our halachic quantum of time.

: I begin by reminding the chevre that there's a machlokes whether a TKD is
: the time it takes to say the 7 syllables "shalom alecha rebbe", or the 10
: syllables "shalom alecha rebbe umori". But either way, it's much longer
: than it takes to say an average word.

Well, my argument was that they're debating the best way to estimate
a cheileq. In which case they are more debating how deliberate and
stately one must be when greeting a rebbe than the size of the time
inteval.

: In OC 128:8, the Mechaber that one should not say an Amen Chatufa, which is
...
: Please note that in most cases, this "last half-word" is much shorter than
: a TKD. It seems that even if a TKD is a quantum of time (=simultaneous) for
: Kaddish, it is not so for brachos.

But then again, that works from the perceptual basis I would give the
cheileq = quantum of time idea. The brain experiences time intervals in a
number of ways. Saying that a sequence that happens in less than x time
is simultaneous enough is one about when the sequence stand out as two
events. But if the sequences were in the wrong order, we would notice,
and it does matter. Even if we say event memory would remember the end
of the berakhah and the amein as one event, it would be the wrong event
if the sequence were wrong.

Note that in the other direction, an amein yesomah, is measured by KDD.

(Dyslexics are weak on the sequencing side. If someone would recite a
ohone number to me verbally, I am more likely to remember or it write down
in the wrong order than people in the middle of that bell curve would.)

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Education is not the filling of a bucket,
micha at aishdas.org        but the lighting of a fire.
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