MICHAEL HUEMER--- The Failure of Analysis and the Nature of Concepts [See also Robert Hanna about this same issue --but Hanna is much longer and difficult.]

 

The Failure of Analysis and the Nature of Concepts MICHAEL HUEMER Here, I figure out why conceptual analysis failed and what concepts are really like.* [ *Based on: “The Failure of Analysis and the Nature of Concepts,” pp. 51-76 in The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods, ed. Chris Daly (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).] 1. The Failure of Analysis Philosophy began with attempts to define things. Socrates asked people “What is virtue?”, “What is justice?”, “What is knowledge?” Famously, he never found out. Two millennia later, a movement arose in the English-speaking philosophical world known as “analytic philosophy”. At its inception, analytic philosophers thought that their main job was to analyze language or concepts. Many very smart, highly-educated people dedicated careers to the project of conceptual analysis in the 20th century. If ever we should have expected that project to bear fruit, it would have been in the 20th century. What do we have to show for it? Only negative results—we refuted some analyses. We never found a single correct analysis. To speak more cautiously, as far as I can tell, no one—either in the 20th century or any other time—has ever advanced an analysis of any philosophically interesting concept that was widely accepted by philosophers as correct. Nearly all analyses are subject to counter-examples that most philosophers would agree refute the analysis. (Caveat: sometimes you will meet a philosopher who claims to have correctly analyzed some concept. But hardly ever do you meet one who thinks that anyone else has correctly analyzed a concept.) ( *The field of mathematics is an exception to the rule. It contains many precise definitions that are widely accepted by mathematicians. There may also be a few other concepts that can be defined. ) The attempts to define “knowledge” after 1963 are the most instructive case, because that term received particularly intense scrutiny. Philosophers went through dozens of increasingly complicated analyses and counter-examples over several decades, and no consensus emerged. To this day, we don’t know the definition of “knowledge”. Philosophers had similar experiences when they tried to define such things as “good”, “cause”, “if”, “freedom”, and so on. This raises some questions: What made people think that we could and should analyze concepts? Why did it prove so difficult, and what does this tell us about the nature of concepts? 2. The Roots of Conceptual Analysis a. Empiricism The project of conceptual analysis was given motivation by the popularity of empiricism, which held that all knowledge must be either analytic or empirical (there is no synthetic a priori knowledge). Once you adopt that theory, you should next wonder what kind of knowledge philosophy itself might be producing. The 20th-century empiricists didn’t want to deny that they were producing knowledge, but they also couldn’t plausibly claim that they were producing empirical results (nor did they want to have to start doing observations and experiments). So they were almost forced to say that philosophy is all about analytic knowledge, which is knowledge that derives from the understanding of concepts, or of the meanings of words. So the job of philosophers must be to analyze concepts or words. Fortunately, few people think that anymore. b. The Lockean Theory of Concepts Here is the important part. The drive for conceptual analysis comes from a very natural way of thinking about concepts and meanings, which is probably the way you’d think about them if no one told you differently. I call it the Lockean Theory of Concepts (but I don’t care whether this was really Locke’s view). It includes three elements: 1. Concepts are directly introspectible mental objects. 2. Most concepts are composed of other concepts. 3. The application of words is governed by definitions, which describe the composition of the concepts that a word expresses. Notice two implications of this view: (i) that most concepts should be definable. Apart from a few simple concepts, most concepts will be composed of other concepts. Since we can directly, introspectively observe our concepts, we should be able to describe how they are composed, and that would be to give a definition. (ii) that definitions are useful, even necessary, to understand most words. The history of philosophy, however, shows that this theory is wrong. If the Lockean Theory were true, we should have many successful analyses by now. Also, if the Lockean theory were true, the lack of analyses would prevent us from understanding and applying words. But in fact, we have approximately zero successful analyses, and this hasn’t stopped us from understanding and applying words. 3. An Intuitionist Theory of Concepts Following is a better theory about concepts, which seems vaguely in line with some intuitionist views in ethics. a. Properties and Natures Every thing in the universe has a specific nature. This is a maximally specific, comprehensive property (or, the sum of all the properties of the thing). This would include, e.g., the exact shade of color of the object (or the exact distribution of colors throughout the object). The natures of things vary along numerous dimensions. We can imagine a space with those dimensions, the “quality space”: every particular thing occupies a point in the quality space. (You can also include dimensions for spatial locations and relational properties.) There could in principle be more than one thing at that point, but in practice, each ordinary object is the only thing that has its exact nature (other objects may be similar but we never find one exactly the same). The quality space is like the color cone (see image), but with dimensions for all other properties, not just colors. There are also more general properties, such as redness, roundness, cathood. These are properties that many objects share. These can be thought of as regions in the quality space. Compare how the property redness is a roughly wedge-shaped region in the color cone. Aside: This is a non-traditional way of thinking about properties. In the traditional view, one treats properties as primary and thinks of the natures of objects as conjunctions of their properties. I treat specific, determinate natures of things as primary, and think of properties as ranges of natures. b. Concepts When we form a concept, we are drawing a line (or a hypersurface, to be more pedantic) around a region in the quality space. Everything in that region is what the concept applies to. How do we draw the boundaries of concepts? Many factors can influence this. We want concepts to be useful for conveying information in the world we live in. Hence, we tend to draw lines that wind up including a lot of things in the world. If there is a cluster of objects in a certain region of the quality space, we draw a line around that cluster. Had objects clustered differently, we would have drawn our conceptual schemes differently. Example: Pluto used to be considered a “planet” when we thought there were 9 planets in the solar system. It was smaller than the other 8 planets, but that was okay. Later, astronomers discovered that there were 50 other objects in the solar system that were similar to Pluto and different from the other 8 “planets” (in a way similar to how Pluto differed from the other 8 planets). So we redrew our conceptual scheme to make the 8 big planets fit in one category (“planets”), and the 50 smaller things (including Pluto) another category (“planetoids”). Conceptual boundaries also depend on practical interests. For instance, the category “bachelor” is of interest because humans are interested in who is eligible to marry a woman. That is why most people find the Pope to be, at best, a borderline case of a “bachelor”. He’s an unmarried man, sure, but he’s not quite a bachelor, because he’s not exactly marriageable. Conceptual boundaries also drift over time. The etymology of most modern words shows them originating in words with completely different meanings. The meanings must have drifted through the quality space. There are infinitely many regions in the quality space, so there are infinitely many possible concepts, though of course any human mind can only grasp finitely many concepts at a time. c. Language & concepts Most of our concepts are tied to language: we are prompted to form a concept by hearing a word in our language. We attempt to imitate how others are using that word, so each use we hear (while we are learning) influences our dispositions to apply that word. To “understand” the word is to have formed the right dispositions – i.e., to have become disposed to apply the word (or at least to sense that its application is appropriate) in approximately the same circumstances that people in your speech community apply it. Your understanding just consists of having those dispositions. E.g., my grasp of the concept of knowledge consists of my ability to tell when it is appropriate to apply “knows” to someone’s mental state and when it isn’t. 4. Against Locke Every element of the Lockean theory is deeply mistaken: 1. Concepts are not directly introspectible mental objects. They are instead dispositional. Thus, the way to limn the contours of a concept is usually not to directly, introspectively examine that concept. The way is to activate your linguistic dispositions by imagining specific scenarios and observing your own disposition to find the application of a certain term appropriate or inappropriate. 2. Most concepts are not composed of other concepts. They are constituted by dispositions that were formed by distinct sets of experiences. Each concept can have a unique boundary, which need not coincide for any distance with the boundary of any other concept. The boundaries can have complex, idiosyncratic shapes. This is why most concepts are indefinable. 3. The application of words is not governed by definitions. It is governed by these dispositions that we spontaneously form after hearing others’ word usage and attempting to imitate it. We almost never learn words by hearing definitions; we almost always learn by seeing examples of the correct use of the word. This is why it does not matter that we don’t have definitions for most words; this does not stop us from learning and applying the words. Wittgenstein might have agreed with some of this. All this explains (i) why conceptual analysis failed in the 20th century, (ii) why we don’t need definitions, and (iii) why we evaluate definitions using particular examples. About point (iii), consider that we rejected the “justified, true belief” analysis of knowledge based on the Gettier examples, rather than applying the analysis to conclude that the Gettier examples are cases of knowledge. Nearly everyone instinctively found that the correct reaction. It can still be useful to try to clarify concepts – e.g., by distinguishing a concept from others that it is often confused with, by drawing out some key conceptual relations (one concept implying another, etc.). What we don’t need and shouldn’t expect to do is to identify the exact necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of a given concept, using other concepts.

Three Russian authors are where Russia contributed most to understanding of the human soul, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. NOT in Psychology nor philosophy and  these writers surpassed all the shallow pseudo philosophy and pseudo-psycholgy of the West.

The reason is not just their understanding of the human soul but also their refusal to reduce man to a bundle of urges. The philosophical man--the combination of mind and body [no soul] never existed. The economic man--the rational economic agent never existed. The psychological man -the team engine who sublimates his sexual desire to produce alternative energy never exited. These are figments of the sick imaginations of Freud, Marx, and economic professors. 

No meta narrative can explain the human soul. The problem is the intellectuals who believe they know the right narrative and want to impose it on everyone else.

Rav Nahman said --"to say the words in order and automatically one will understand, And even if he does not understand immediately eventually he will understand

This comes from an insight of Rav Nahman about learning in conversation 76 on the conversations of Rav Nahman. But I combine it with the few Rishonim that agree with the importance  of math and physics. And I say that the idea that only talented people can learn math and physics is wrong. I say with the way of learning that Rav Nahman explained in the conversations 76 even a block of wood can know math and physics.

Rav Nahman said --"to say the words in order and automatically one will understand, And even if he does not understand immediately eventually he will understand.''

But he did not apply this to Physics but rather to learning Torah as is brought in the Talmud Tractate Shabat page 63. Still I learned late to discover that some rishonim hold of the importance of Physics and Metaphysics as you can see in the Mishna Torah chapter III:" The subjects discussed in the first four chapters of the Mishna Torah are in the category of learning Gemara."  

But are these the only things to learn? Well, to the Gra the seven wisdoms are needed for understanding Torah {Trivium and Quadrium) but besides that? I would say besides these everything else is Bitul Torah   

[I did read in high school and later in Shar Yashuv in NY but i can not tell how much of that did me much good. Maybe it did or maybe not--. The books  were what was required in an average  American public high school. But  most of my time was spent on the violin and piano. I did not get into Gemara until my first year after high school at Shar Yashuv [3.5 years there and then another 3.5 years at the Mir in NY. But there I did mainly Gemara. ]

Moses asked the two tribes that wanted to sit out the war "Your brothers go up to war and you will sit here?" People ought to volunteer for the IDF Israel Defense Force

 אחיכם יעלו למלחמה ואתם תשבו פה Moses asked the two  tribes that wanted to sit out the war "Your brothers go up to war and you will sit here?" The idea was that the area beyond the Jordan river was empty. Sihon and Og had attacked the children of Israel and lost the war, so that whole area was empty and 2.5 tribes wanted to stay and settle there while the rest of Israel would enter the land of Canaan to fight and settle. Moses did not like the idea of these 2.5 tribes  staying behind. [Two tribes asked originally but in the end 2.5 settled there] [Two tribes asked originally, but in the end 2.5 settled there]. The end result was they in fact joined in the war, but afterwards went back to settle that land beyond the Jordan River. However I have never been able to figure this out very well since in fact the whole land was not conquered until King David conquered Jerusalem many many years later; and the five cities of the Plishtim also were not settled  as far as I can tell. 

[Besides that, I think it is best to take care of the Iranian problem before it gets out of hand. Like Alexander the Great said when he was asked how he reached his success. He said because when there was anything to take care of he took care of it right away without delay.  That applies here. Better take care of the problem before it is too late. I would not worry if anyone wants to help. If the USA wants to help then fine, but if not Iran is a threat to all Western Civilization and need to be put in its place.  

 Even though learning Torah is the most important of all commandments (as it says in the mishna in Peah  ת''ת כנגד כולם  "Learning  Torah weighs more that all the commandments,'') still I do not think that this value remains if one learns for money. That is to say I think the entire value of the mitzvah disappears when one gets paid to learn. This opinion you can see in Pirkei Avot (Chapters of the Fathers) chapter four where the Rambam explains what the mishna says about not making Torah into a shovel to dig with that if one does so he takes his life from the world and the Rambam there in his commentary explains: ''from the world i.e., the world to come.''

Serving God is not a money making profession and those that claim that it is are enemies of God and enemies of Torah for its own sake.  [I  mean to say that no matter what, you need to be sure of DIVINE SIMPLICITY--that God does not share of any traits that any human can even imagine. He is totally ''other'' and not a composite.   

difference between Peter and Paul.

 I have thought for along time that there is an essential difference between Peter and Paul. At least there must be between James and Paul. However, recently I noticed that Peter recommends the letters of Paul. Perhaps Peter was unaware of the later letters where Paul becomes more and more against keeping the commandments? [At first Paul did not want the idea of peter that gentiles need to become jewish-by means of brit mila [circumcision] and dipping in a fresh body of water and accepting to keep the commandments. ] in later letters Paul gets more and more insistent that Sinai is Hagar [mother of Ishmael.] Nullification of the commandments has been a problem ever since then until now. Thomas Aquinas tried to answer this basic contradiction with (I think) little success. [from what i recall i think Aquinas writes that the eternal laws of Torah are not the services in the Temple and similar what could be called rituals.] 

[This was the one issue that Saadia Gaon brought up in his book Faiths and Doctrines along with the problem of the Trinity. The Trinity is not in the New Testament --not even in Paul.] [HOWEVER if what the claim about the Trinity is along the lines of what the ARI said about the patriarchs, Moses, Aaron, Josef and David that they are souls of Emanation [Azilut] then I do not see any issue. But i am not sure what the claim is. 

getting through the Oral and Written Law.

 Even though I am really not up to doing this myself, but I would like to remind people of what the Gra held by in terms of getting through the Oral and Written Law. But I do not think that people are aware of what that entails. You have to recall what the Rambam wrote in his letter to Yemen ''Just like one can not add or subtract from the Written Law, so one can't add nor subtract from the Oral Law.'' All books written after the completion of the two Talmuds are not the Oral Law. They might be ''second hand'' Oral Law in so far as they are commentary, but not the actual thing in itself.

So I think people ought to have a session every day of doing a half  page of Gemara with Rashi, Tosphot, Maharsha, and Maharam. Then the Yerushalmi in the same way. --Plus getting through the midrashim.

However this whole thing I mean mainly for the afternoon. The morning I think should go for in depth learning with the Avi Ezri, Reb Chaim [Brisk], Naftali Troup and the other basic Litvak sages. 

[The Oral Law is the Two Talmuds, Tosephta, Midrash Rabah, Midrash Tanchuma, Sifrei and Sifra,  ]

[When to fit into this the math and physics? I would say that is best in the afternoon, since the morning in-depth sessions are the most important as my son Izhak told me many times (about the importance of in depth learning).  ]

Why is learning Torah important--see vol 4 of the Nefesh Hachaim by Reb Chaim of Voloshin-a disciple of the Gra

I might mention here that objective morality is not something that one can know without this-- as the Rambam showed in the Guide (that even Avraham Avinu would not have known Natural Law unless it was revealed to him from above). 

beginning of the second chapter in Gitin

To Rav Chisda if a carrier of a doc of divorce says, "It was written before me, but only one witness signed before me" and there are two witnesses testifying that the other signature is valid -that the doc is not valid. Rava says the doc is valid and that is the law.  Rav Shach [laws of  divorce 7 law 13] suggests the reason of Rav Chisda is because he is holding like the sages (that disagree with R. Yehoshua ben Karcha) who hold testimony that was witnessed by two witnesses but they did not testify together is not valid. The law however is like Rava. It seems difficult to me to have an argument between Amoraim [Gemara sages] dependent on an argument between Tenaim [sages of the Mishna]. But Rava agrees that testimony that was witnessed by two witnesses but they did not testify together is not valid. but he holds you do not need in our case that the testimony should be together because they are only testifying for the validity of the get, not the act of divorce.

[That problem is why does Rav Chisda say if a carrier of a doc of divorce says it was written before me but only one witness signed before me and there are two witnesses testifying that the other signature is valid that the doc is not valid. Is not that by itself validation of the doc/"get" like it says in bava batra 165b ע''א בע''פ וע''א בכתב מצטרפים --that is the carrier himself saw the writing and another signed it.

The question here is there is a clear parallels from Bava Batra 165 to our situation. The answer of Rav Shach is a bit different of a situation of one witness in the morning and one in the evening.

And at any rate, it is odd that the stam Gemara in Bava Batra holds one witness verbally and the other in writing are joined together while both Rav Hisda and Rava in our Gemara in Gitin hold there is no establishing of the get with the testimony of the carrier and the witness on the get. Maybe this is a disagreement between sugiot?

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To רב חיסדא if a carrier of a גט says it was written before me but only one witness signed before me and there are two witnesses testifying that the other signature is valid that the גט is not valid. רבא says the גט is valid and that is the law.  רב שך [הלכות גירושין ז' הלכה י''ג] suggests the reason of רב חיסדא is because he is holding like the sages (that disagree with  ר' יהושוע בן קרחא) who hold testimony that was witnessed by two witnesses but not together is not valid (עדות מיוחדת). The law however is like רבא. It seems difficult to me to have an argument between אמוראים dependent on an argument between תנאים.

But רבא agrees that testimony that was witnessed by two witnesses but they did not testify together is not valid. But he holds you do not need in our case that the testimony should be together because they are only testifying for the validity of the גט, not the act of divorce.  

[That problem is why does Rav Chisda say if a carrier of a doc of divorce says it was written before me but only one witness signed before me and there are two witnesses testifying that the other signature is valid that the doc is not valid. Is not that by itself validation of the doc/"get" like it says in בבא בתרא קס''ה עד אחד בעל פה ועד אחד בכתב מצטרפים that is the carrier himself saw the writing and another signed it.

The question here is there is a clear parallels from בבא בתרא קס''ה to our situation. The answer of רב שך is a bit different of a situation of one witness in the morning and one in the evening.

And at any rate, it is hard to understand why that the סתם גמרא in בבא בתרא holds one witness verbally and the other in writing are joined together while both רב חיסדא and רבא in our גמרא in גיטין hold there is no קיוםof the גט with the testimony of the carrier and the witness on the גט. Maybe this is a disagreement between סוגיות?

 

לרב חיסדא אם נושא גט אומר נכתב לפני אבל רק עד אחד חתם לפני ויש שני עדים המעידים שהחתימה השנייה תקפה שאין הגט תקף.(או כולו בקיום הגט או כולו בתקנת חכמים) רבא אומר שהגט תקף וזה הדין. רב שך מציע שהטעם של רב חיסדא הוא משום שהוא מחזיק כמו החכמים (החולקים על ר' יהושוע בן קרחא המחזיקים שעדות שהעידו עליה שני עדים אך לא ראו את העניין ביחד אינה תקפה (עדות מיוחדת). החוק לעומת זאת הוא כמו רבא. נראה לי שקשה לומר שוויכוח בין אמוראים תלוי בוויכוח בין תנאים

אבל רבא מסכים שאין תוקף לעדות שהעידו שני עדים אך לא העידו יחד. אבל הוא גורס אתה לא צריך בענייננו שהעדות תהיה ביחד כי הם רק מעידים על תוקף הגט, לא על מעשה הגירושין

 [הבעיה היא מדוע רב חיסדא אומר או כולו בקיום הגט או כל בתקנת חכמים. האם אין זה כשלעצמו אימות של הגט?כמו שכתוב בבבא בתרא קס''ה עד אחד בעל פה ועד אחד בכתב מצטרפים שזהו המוביל עצמו ראה את כתיבת הגט ואחר חתם עליו.]

השאלה כאן היא שיש הקבלה ברורה מבבא בתרא קס''ה למצב שלנו. תשובת רב שך היא קצת שונה שמביא ממצב של עד אחד בבוקר ואחד בערב

ומכל מקום קשה להבין מדוע שהגמרא בבבא בתרא מחזיק עד אחד בעל פה והשני בכתב מחוברים יחדיו ואילו רב חיסדא ורבא בגמרא שלנו בגיטין מחזיקים אין קיום של הגט עם עדות המוביל והעד על הגט. אולי זו מחלוקת בין סוגיות

Ayn Rand was right that human created morality is not any more satisfying that human created physics. Either physics is true objectively without any reference to who is looking at it or it is not true at all. And the same with moral principles.

 https://friesian.com/sunwall2.htm Even though Mark Sunwall shows that Ayn Rand had a good point in her knocking of Kant, I still see the importance of his approach if you combine that approach with the Friesian idea of non intuitive immediate knowledge. Faith and reason are the key to a healthy and wholesome person. But faith alone goes off into insanity, and reason alone goes off into emptiness. While this third source  of knowledge is not the same as faith, but it does provide a basis for it as Otto and Kelley Ross have pointed out.

We sadlly live in an age of deep ignorance and darkness. This is not from a lack of ideas, but rather the ideas of madmen have taken over. [religious madmen and secular madmen and fem-nazis ] The internet can be one hand a great help in finding  good info, but also helps silence dissidents. So in academic philosophy you will find tons of sophisticated sounding garbage but no mention of the Friesian school.

I have been aware for some time about the problems that Kant came to answer. But his answers were not satisfying to anyone. Ayn Rand was right that human created morality is not any more satisfying that human created physics. Either physics is true objectively without any reference to who is looking at it or it is not true at all. And the same with moral principles. The three answers to this that I have found compatible and acceptable are Fries, Hegel, Michael Huemer. All three accept that reason recognizes universal principles including the principles of moral truths. However Fries does not call this faculty that knows the axioms of universals "Reason" but the effect is the same. Huemer is the most clear, but tends to ignore the problems that Kant was addressing. Hegel is on board with the idea that reason recognizes universals. The dialectic does not go with empirical knowledge correcting reason, but with reason correcting reason-and that seems weak, Hegel does not want any part of the Universe to be immune from Reason--that is why he is using his approach. I can see his point, but in fact human knowledge progresses only by reason's theories and empirical facts to test those theories.   

The critics of Kant were sometimes people that agreed with his desire to find a solution to what amounted to the mind body problem and others who were anti enlightenment like Georg Hamann. 

Rav Nahman I think was referring to Kant in a highly negative way. i have thought about that reference for a while and I was never sure whom was referred to but now i think it was probably Kant--even though both Kant and Rav Nahman limited reason. Kant limited it to the phenomenal world. Rav Nahman more or less dismissed reason completely. To Rav Nahman the smarter one is, the more stupid he really is.  [Rav Nahman at in LeM I is quite positive about reason, but in LeM II showed its downfall if taken too far. ]

 How could using Torah to make money be ok? One is not allowed to learn Torah for money, nor teach for money. מה אני בחינם אף אתם בחינם THE gemara brings down that God says: "Just as I taught Torah [to Moses] for free, you also must teach Torah for free." Maybe a rav was brought in in order to make decision about law? But that can not be so either, כל דיין שנוטל שכר לדון כל דיניו בטילים "Any judge to receives money to judge, all his decisions are invalid."

 Even though in Israel, there is ''מזונות'' money that the ex-wife gets after a divorce, That is not in accord with the law of the Torah. this is odd because the ''rabbanut'' has authority over marriage and divorce.

After divorce, she gets $1000 if she was a virgin and $500 if not,-- but not a continuous stream of cash; nor automatic custody of the children.

[Just for information-- a widow gets money until she remarries but not a divorced woman.] That is not the only thing that bothers me about the state of affairs in the religious world. I also do not think any religious groups should get money from the state.  I see this a being against the spirit of the law not to make Torah into a shovel to dig with. Making Torah into away to make a living is at least against the spirit of the law and perhaps also against the letter of the law. [The idea of not getting money to learn Torah is a ore issue. people can find permission for this in the Kesef Mishna, but to me it looks like the results are negative. See the commentary of the Rambam on Pirkei Avot where that statement comes up in chapter 3 or 4--not in the first chapter where it appears at first. ]

 I do not think Communism is gone, but rather exchanged places between the US and the USSR. I mean this however in a slightly modified form. For under strict Marxism, the enemy as the non working class. Now however in the US, the enemy is the  working class. Also Russia is not really the sort of democracy of the US, It still is largely a top to down system

The list of severe sins in Torah are not generally known. Good examples are lashon hara [slander] and bitul Torah [not learning Torah when one is able]. In neither of these am I a shining example of how to be careful. But I try. Sadly most public discourse is lashon hara. But there is permission because of the need to warn people about danger. And in fact I depend on that permission. But even legitimate warnings are ignored in the tidal wave of lashon hara that affects all public discourse. 

As for bitul Torah I am no shining example, At some point, I discovered the opinion among some Rishonim about Physics and Metaphysics --being in the category of learning Gemara,

But you could claim that that is somewhat of a stretch. -Especially when it seem to be in direct contradiction to open gemaras about staying away from Greek wisdom. Still I have got a few poskim/authorities to depend on,  and that is enough for me. [However, I do not expand the definition of learning Torah infinitely, but rather confine it to the Oral Law (as given over through the sages of the mishna and gemara), and the Written Law [Old Testament]]

judicial reform in Israel

 One thing that the people against the judicial reform in Israel did not learn was the Federalist Papers about why you can not have a judiciary branch of government that is independent of the will of the people. an independent judiciary branch of government that can nullify [and has often ] nullified the will of the people as expressed by their elected representative is tyranny. In fact, for a very long time I have wondered about political debates in the USA itself that seem unconnected with the Constitution. And this I think is the reason why ''civics'' was are requirement in all schools--even for people that were not planning on going into government service at all. That was so that everyone should have an idea of what it takes to create a just society. Nowadays that knowledge is lost as political debate is reduced to slurs and lashon hara/slander.

Tyranny is what happens when one class [like judges] gets to appoint themselves into positions of power  with no accountability to the people. [Religious authorities have the same problem, as we see in the LE.M volume 1 chapters 12 and 28 of Rav Nahman concerning the problem with Torah scholars that are demons. ] 

Seeking truth rather that loyalty to the group

 Seeking truth rather that loyalty to the group ought to be of prime importance. However for most people, their bread and butter depend on loyalty to the group. Therefore to have seeking truth, individuality, self criticism of one's self and one's group have to come from the group itself--i.e. to be born into a society that stresses individuality is the only way one can come to value truth seeking above all other values.

It must have been some what of a leap  of faith for the Rambam to include the importance of Physics and Metaphysics in the Mishna Torah [Laws of Talmud Torah chapter 3] and the Guide [introduction] where as the simple ''peshat'' of the Gemara is to exclude all ''Greek wisdom'' with extreme prejudice. You have to say that seeking of truth was more important to the Rambam that going along with what everyone else was saying.  [This approach began with Saadia Gaon and Josef ibn Pakuda author of the Obligations of the Hearts.   ][Also see intro to the book Euclid translated to Hebrew by a disciple of the Gra.]

But how to go about this is unclear. On one hand learning fast--saying the words and going on is for me the only way I could get into math and physics at all. But there is also the importance of understanding and review;--and so far I have not really figured out a way for that to work except what I was doing while at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU--reading and saying every word and every page forward and backwards. That certainly helped me getting my A's in the Physics and getting through the Math. But that is slow, and leaves one without the big picture. for a year i have been doing the in depth learning by doing one chap and then review of all previous chapters. then going on to the next chapter and then going back to all previous chapters. But in another period, i just took  to doing a chapter in a Joos ''Theoretical Physics'' 40 times. Then at some point i discovered listening to lectures on utube seems to help-- like harpreet bedi on homology, and susskind on physics TO listen to lectures by an expert is the best way of all the above ways of doing in depth learning.

God is not a composite, no concept of substance or form applies to him what so ever.

Monotheism includes the idea of Divine simplicity. Despite the importance of this idea came about, it is largely forgotten. God is not a composite, no concept of substance or form applies to him what so ever.

So worship of dead so called ''tzadikim'' really ought to be easily understood to be outside of Judaism as the GRA saw so clearly and yet his signature on the letter of excommunication  is still largely ignored except by a few.

what Torah is "all about."

 There seems to me to be a kind of doubt about what Torah is "all about." Looking at a book on Jewish History today is noticed a few things. The first is that History is not  a science. Anyone writing it can tilt it in any direction he desires. The next thing was the odd fact that some  secular Jews  used to think that Judaism is all about democracy and equality. Looking at Torah that can not be right. That was the reform Judaism line until it turned into Social Justice  [i.e. Marxism]. That also is not Torah. Nationalism is also out there, but that seems wrong. However I have noticed that Reform Judaism is right about Monotheism. unfortunately the idolatry that Jews rejected for thousands of years came back in the guise of worship of dead people thought to be saints. That, thankfully, Reform Judaism rejects totally.      

MICHAEL HUEMER JAN 28 The Price of Liberalism

 

The Price of Liberalism, 2: Division MICHAEL HUEMER JAN 28 Previously, I worried about the cost of liberalism in reduced fertility. It’s time for a second major cost of liberalism: reduced social cohesion. 1. The Need for Loyalty Humans are selfish social animals. This means that, unlike the case of bees or ants, our cooperation is always in danger of degenerating into conflict, because each of us is genetically programmed to pursue our own interests, often at the expense of others. Moreover, even when our interests align, our judgments often conflict. We might agree that we all want economic prosperity but disagree about which policies or leaders are likely to produce that. So there is a standing temptation for people to behave uncooperatively, to work to defeat each other and undermine each other’s efforts. In the worst cases, you have actual violence. Social loyalty—the sense of loyalty to one’s own society and its ways—is society’s defense against that danger. We need this defense because human beings are not smart and rational enough to agree on what the right institutions and policies are. So we need something that makes people put up with (what they regard as) the stupidity and degeneracy of the other members of their society. We have to be ready to say, for example, that even though the person who just got elected is obviously an incompetent asshole whom only a moron would vote for, we’re going to keep peacefully cooperating with such morons, for the good of society. We’re not going to try to burn down our institutions in order to get our way. A rational person would do the game theoretic calculations and figure out that they should act cooperatively. But a typical human just feels a sense of social loyalty. 2. The Source of Loyalty Hypothesis: We promote social loyalty, in part, by emphasizing the goodness of our society and the nobility of its fundamental ideals. We teach young children, for example, about how our country was founded on ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy. We teach them about the advantages of our form of government, the wisdom of its Constitution, and how our country has from its founding represented a beacon of freedom to the world. We go on to teach about admirable figures in our history, about the selflessness and honesty of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Notice that it’s not just a matter of dispassionately enumerating the benefits of living in our society; the education needs to form positive emotional associations with our society. (This is discussed in my colleague Ajume Wingo’s book, Veil Politics in Liberal Democratic States.) I received all those lessons in primary school. Of course, being an instinctive libertarian, I questioned many of them. But I retained an emotional appreciation for American ideals, such as those of freedom, equality, and innovation. The propaganda is not only for children. Traditionally, we repeat to each other statements of appreciation for our society and its ideals, even as adults, to prevent each other from backsliding. Not that ordinary people are intentionally reinforcing each other’s social loyalty. But this might be a product of cultural evolution—cultures with a tradition of self-reinforcement tend to survive longer than cultures with no such tradition. So almost all cultures have such traditions. If someone attacks our society, we instinctively punish that person, at least with social disapproval (if not actual legal penalties). Human beings learn how to behave, and even how to feel, from observing each other. So these traditions are self-perpetuating. Only in recent years, they have collapsed. Now school children are taught that America is a despicable nation founded on hatred and domination. In the popular culture, attacks on the nation’s majority groups are becoming increasingly open and increasingly strident. The nation’s elites consider it offensive to praise their own society. 3. Undermining Loyalty There are at least three reasons why liberalism undermines social loyalty. 3.1. Hypocrisy Liberal values are unnatural for human beings. Basically, humans are biologically predisposed to be assholes—to oppress the weak, to hate foreigners, to admire authoritarian leaders. (Why this is the case is an interesting question for another time.) As a result, a society with explicitly liberal values will predictably be able to find many illiberal aspects of itself, especially of its history. Human nature pretty much guarantees that people in your society will have often acted illiberally. You will then have grounds to condemn your own society, from the standpoint of its own professed values. Obvious example: the founding fathers holding slaves at the same time that they loftily proclaimed that “all men are created equal”. This problem does not so much afflict illiberal societies, because they can more easily live up to their own, illiberal ideals. 3.2. The Value of Self-Criticism To some degree, self-criticism itself is a liberal value. It isn’t liberal to reflexively endorse one’s own society and its ways merely because they are one’s own. A good, cosmopolitan liberal should assess the value of his own society in a rational, unbiased way and call out its flaws. This is the only way to improve society, after all. Illiberal societies don’t have this problem; illiberal values are consistent with dogmatically refusing to acknowledge any flaws in your society. 3.3. Freedom of Expression Free expression is the most paradigmatic of liberal values. It means that we cannot silence people who attack our own society and its institutions. This is one of the great strengths of liberalism, because this criticism leads to reform, which makes the society better. This is why the world’s most liberal societies have been on the leading edge of human progress for the last two centuries. The problem is, we can’t silence critics even if their attacks are complete nonsense. Suppose, for example, that someone is going around saying that this society is so utterly barbaric that its authorities regularly murder perfectly harmless people out of sheer hatred for their skin color, and the rest of society lets them do it because they are racist too. Suppose also that the government and a large portion of society perfectly well know that that is false. We still can’t suppress the people who are saying that, lest we abandon liberal ideals. We actually have to let people lie about us, even in the most malicious and invidious of ways. You may have noticed some similarity between these hypotheticals and the current, actual situation of American society. A large portion of America’s intellectual class has for several decades devoted their lives to attacking their own society. What I have in mind here is not constructive criticism aimed at promoting identifiable political reforms. What I have in mind are attacks that seem motivated by resentment and aimed at provoking shame and resentment in Americans—shame on the part of the presumably dominant groups and resentment on the part of the presumably oppressed minorities. The virulence of these attacks is not purely a product of liberalism. It is also in part an accident of history, due to the ideological uniformity that has grown up in American universities in the last several decades. This uniformity has produced increasing extremism, as academics compete with each other to make ever more extravagant displays of fealty to the common ideology. Progressivism began with reasonable critique of our society’s failures to live up to its ideals. Take that through several generations of increasing extremism and you get people expressing naked hatred for men, for white people, and for America in general. We can’t silence these people, under liberal ideals. Granted, not all speech is protected, and some kinds of lies can be legally prohibited. But that only includes lies about relatively straightforward matters of empirical fact. Like if you’re selling a car, and you understate its mileage by 50,000 miles. It would not include, for example, the “lie” that Jesus was the son of God, or even that Trayvon Martin was a victim of racism. If we start prohibiting the latter sort of lies, we’re opening the door to the government prohibiting speech that criticizes the government’s own positions. 4. More Lies It is not only leftists who are telling invidious lies, of course. The basic leftist lie is that America is fundamentally all about racism, sexism, and oppression. The right-wing lies include the likes of: Democrats don’t believe their stated political positions. They’re just lying about their views to gain power. E.g., they don’t believe in global warming; they’re just trying to come up with an excuse to give the government more power. They don’t believe in immigration either; they’re just trying to import more Democratic voters. Democrats stole the last election with rigged voting machines, etc. Everyone who criticizes Trump or makes any decision against his interests is purely politically motivated. The American court system prosecutes Republicans for purely political motives. The country is run by America-hating “globalists” who want to turn the country over to foreigners. Or it’s run by Satanic pedophiles. Or lizard-people. These lies are also calculated to maximize resentment, division, and rage—they’re just aimed at a different group of people than the left-wing lies. The two sides feed off each other: the more you catch the other side lying, the more you feel justified in counterattacking with equally scurrilous lies. 5. Solutions? You know the liberal solution: “The solution to bad speech is more speech.” I.e., we just need to have people constantly debunking the lies of the extremists. Not all the divisive content is lies, though. Some of it is merely a matter of deliberately choosing focus and spinning stories to maximize division. E.g., it’s not a lie that America practiced slavery. We’re not supposed to cover that up, are we? No, but the historical facts could be taught in a less self-flagellating spirit. We might teach people that slavery was widely practiced around the world and throughout human history, including in the early days of our own country. Fortunately, we abolished it long ago, because it was incompatible with our fundamental ideals. That’s a better story (and a truer one) than the woke story that the nation was founded on racism as its core principle. This liberal solution to the problem of loyalty-undermining speech might work … but only if these debunkers can gain a wide audience. If, for example, there were some non-partisan information sources that people of all ideological orientations would trust, then this could work. Increasingly, though, there isn’t. Increasingly, Americans sort themselves into separate information environments, each with relentless biases and no voices of dissent. So I can, for example, debunk the Michael Brown myth all day (the myth that Michael Brown surrendered and then was gunned down by the police anyway just because he was black), but hardly anyone who has consumed that myth will ever even see my debunking. My article debunking the myth will be coded as “right wing propaganda”, which “nice” progressives don’t look at. So I don’t know what the solution is. Perhaps the nation is doomed to collapse into chaos, and humanity’s experiment with liberal democracy will end. ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) That is the end of Dr. Huemer's writing. My own feeling about this is that the approach of democracy or government as a republic does seem to get reborn even after it is torched. Athens, SQPR, England, USA, Israel,-  -and Europe.

debt to gentiles, debt to Jews

   There is a tendency to not acknowledge our debt to gentiles at all. However, the Talmud says,''Wisdom by goyim-believe it. Torah by goyim don't believe it.'' On the other hand, the debt to Jews also tends to be ignored. Examples are many. One case that I thought was an example was my father's invention of the Infrared Telescope as mentioned in LIFE Magazine 1954 AUGUST, but later I learned that my dad did in fact get plenty of credit for that.

  Maybe the reason for all the denial on each side of the aisle is that the idea is so important that you do not want people to ignore it just because of which group it comes from.  

  Jews never like to hear of any debt of ideas from Christians what so ever, but are willing to acknowledge some debt to some great Muslim philosophers during the Middle Ages. On the other hand, it might be noticed that the not just the Old Testament, but the New Testament was written only by Jews.

To me the whole idea of refusing to acknowledge a debt on either side of the aisle seems like small mindedness.    

I do appreciate learning Torah but I do not see it as an excuse not to do any other mitzvah,

אחיכם יעלו למלחמה ואתם תשבו Moses asked the two and half tribes that wanted to settle in the land on the opposite side of the Jordan River: ''Your brothers go to war and you will stay behind?" TO me this seems relevant to the yeshiva world that has had a petur  [permission to be excused] from service in the Israeli Defense Force ever since the 1948 war of Independence.  I do appreciate learning Torah, but I do not see it as an excuse not to do any other mitzvah, furthermore, i think that this war is in the category of michemet mitzva [obligatory war]--as opposed to milchemet r'shut [permissible war]. 

American model of government

 I used to think that the American model of government is as good as it gets. But doubt has arisen because of how odd things have become. I do not think it works except for the sort of WASP population that it was originally designed for. [WASP=White Anglo Saxon Protestant] That seems to be an inescapable conclusion. But I also would like to venture a guess that there are two factors that are involved--DNA and also the Judeo-Christian set of values as contained in the Bible. [However, it is interesting that the American form of government was really a duplicate of the English form along with  the Magna Carta and Provisions of Oxford which were developed while England was  Catholic. That is when that form of government was conceived. But, of course, when John Locke wrote the Two Treatises of Government and the  important ideas of Daniel Defoe , England was already Protestant.    ]

From this insight, I am thinking that the attack on American values from inside and out as a negative thing. But in what way this relates to Israel, still befuddles me. After all, after Theodore  Herzl, Israel was founded by communists or hard left socialists. But that is not to say that that was the best approach. I RECALL vividly when the left wing Labor Party was in power in the 1980's, and the inflation was like Weimer Germany in the 1920's. I loaned one fellow a hundred shekels, and when after a half year he returned the money, it was worth 10 shekels.  

To get through the whole Oral and Written Law.

 To the Gra one has an obligation to get through the whole oral and written law. [Old Testament, two Talmuds, the midrashei halacha and midrashei agada.] This clearly implies the fast sort of learning mentioned in the Gemara, ''Always one should be saying the words in order and going on [גורס] even though he forgets and even though he does not know what he is saying,'' [Tractate Shabat and Avoda Zara--i forget the page numbers.] However that is second in priority to learning in depth. So to accomplish that, I recommend getting through the basic Achronim: Reb Chaim of Brisk and his two students (1) the Birchat Shmuel, (2) Shimon Skophf and the Avi Ezri. [There are also the early Achronim that I used to learn--the Pnei Yehoshua and the Aruch La'Ner which are very important.]

[I am saying to do this on one' own, but if possible it is also worth while to learn from a Litvish Rosh Yeshiva. I had such an opportunity [Reb Shmuel Berenbaum at the Mir  in NY and Naftali Yeager at Shar Yashuv.] but I realize not everyone has this possibility, and so at least one should do so on one' s own.  ] [the mir was along the lines of reb chaim of brisk while naftali yegear is more along the lines of the early achronim.  ]

The Gra also held with the importance of the Seven Wisdoms, and said that, ''One who lacks any knowledge in the seven wisdoms will lack in Torah a hundred fold more.'' [That refers to the trivium and quadrivium][Grammar, logic, and rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music]

Philosophy is not a part of this. However the Rambam held with a different set of the things one should learn,--Old Testament, the Yad HaChazaka, Physics and Metaphysics.

[Learning Torah is the highest of all commandments, however to the Rambam, learning Physics and Metaphysics is considered to be part of the commandment to learn Gemara/Talmud. ] [Metaphysics is the name of a book of collected lectures from Aristotle.] ]

 Looking at the A and B deduction of KANT- I wonder '' Is this like Hegel?" I mean to say that to receive information from the objective world we need to be a unified subject. [Three people each one thinking one word ''I'', the other thinking ''like'', and the next thinking ''pizza'' does not contain any information. But along with this insight, Kant adds that the objective world itself has to be able to be understood by rules--i.e. by reason. Is that not the same thing as saying reason penetrates and permeates and objectifies the external world.]  

I am not negative towards Hegel, BUT I am upset about how much he is misused. And is also feel that he did miss some important insight of Jacob Fries concerning immediate knowledge--. but as the objection of Michael Huemer, ''Why should we think implanted knowledge has any validity what- so- ever?'' I can answer we can know by the idea of Karl Popper--falsifiability. And, in fact, that is exactly how we got to know that space is not rigid Euclidian. Dr. Kelley Ross has gone into the importance of Popper for the NEW Friesian School. Without the insights of Popper and Kelley Ross, it is hard to hold up the new Friesian School. [To me it is clear that the Friesian  School can not stand without Kelley Ross. Even the brilliant and insightful Leonard Nelson did not accept General Relativity even after it was proven all because it was not in line with Kant's idea that space and have to be immutable hardware in us for with that, no knowledge of the external world is possible. [See deduction B in the Critique.] 

The philosophical; movement back to Kant-has support from Carl Jung who held all philosophy after Kant was garbage. [Referring mainly to the Continental stuff. I am not sure what his take on Frege and Russel or Prichard might have been.] Certainly we know he was highly impressed by Jacob Fries 

The Raavad holds a woman or her carrier that brings her divorce has to establish its validity and it is not enough for either to say it was written and signed in front of me. Rav Shach brings a proof for this opinion comes from a version of the gemara in Gitin page 5b. The gemara brings a teaching that if a carrier brings a get outside of Israel and does not say, ''It was written and signed in front of me,'' the document is not valid, unless its validity was established by witnesses. This is a  question against Rabah who holds the reason for saying, ''It was written and signed before me'' is they do not know about the need to write the doc for the sake of that particular woman.. after all outside of Israel, they do not know about the need for her sake. One answer is this is after they learned the law.  A second version says the answer to Rabah as to the question why does it help to say that formula [or establish its validity by witnesses-if they do not know the need for writing it for her sake] is because the whole worry is maybe the husband might come and complain that the doc was forged. But if he does not come and complain about the need to write it for her sake, why should we complain for him? [To Rav Shach this proves the Raavad because the worry about Lishma we do not worry about unless the husband complain. But the worry about forgery, we do worry about regardless if the husband complains or not.   So if her carrier or she herself bring the document, we do require validation.] This shows that the Raavad was right because for the case where a woman or her carrier bring the document, we do complain and require full validation of the document. However, one can question this because the Gemara itself is saying that if the husband does not come and complain about the need to write it for her sake, why should we complain for him? That seems to imply in all cases (whether she brings her own document or her carrier or his carrier) that we depend on the saying of ''It was written and signed before me'' or we do not even need that if she or her carrier bring her own document.

However the point of Rav Shach is that we do worry about forgery. That is the entire point of this Gemara. That is if the carrier does not say "Before me it was written and signed", then the doc is not valid.  And Rabah is saying that if he does say that formula, then we ask him if it was written for her sake. The question on Rabah is that that is only when he says the formula, but if he does not say it and we depend on establishing the validity of the doc by asking the witnesses if they signed on it, that fact tells us nothing about Lishmah. And the answer of Rabah to this question is if he the husband does not claim it was not lishma, then we don't complain about it. But we certainly do complain about forgery, Therefore the Raavad is correct that we need validation in all cases including if the wife or her carrier bring her own doc.  

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The ראב''ד holds a woman or her carrier that brings her divorce has to establish its validity and it is not enough for either to say it was written and signed in front of me. רב שך brings a proof for this opinion comes from a version of the גמרא in גיטין ף ה' ע''ב  b. The גמרא brings a teaching that if a carrier brings a גט outside of Israel and does not say, ''It was written and signed in front of me,'' the document is not valid, unless its validity was established by witnesses. This is a  question against רבה who holds the reason for saying, ''It was written and signed before me'' is they do not know about the need to write the גט for the sake of that particular woman (לשמה). After all, outside of Israel, they do not know about the need for לשמה. One answer is this is after they learned the law.  A second version says the answer to רבה as to the question why does it help to say that formula is because the whole חשש is maybe the husband might come and complain that the גט was forged. But if he does not come and complain, why should we complain for him? [[To רב שך this proves the ראב''ד because the worry about לשמה we do not worry about unless the husband complain. But the worry about forgery, we do worry about regardless if the husband complains or not.   So if her carrier or she herself bring the גט we do require validation. ]]This shows that the ראב''ד was right because for the case where a woman or her carrier bring the document, we do complain and require full validation of the document. However one can question this because the גמרא itself is saying that if the husband does not come and complain , why should we complain for him? That seems to imply in all cases (whether she brings her own גט or her carrier or his carrier) that we depend on the saying of ''It was written and signed before me'' or we do not even need that if she or her carrier bring her own גט.

However the point of רב שך is that we do worry about forgery. That is the entire point of this גמרא. That is if the שליח does not say "Before me it was written and signed", then the גט is not valid.  And רבה is saying that if he does say that formula, then we ask him if it was written לשמה. The question on רבה is that that is only when he says the formula, but if he does not say it and we depend on establishing the validity of the גט by asking the witnesses if they signed on it, that fact tells us nothing about לשמה. And the answer of רבה to this question is if he the husband does not claim it was not לשמה, then we don't complain about it. But we certainly do complain about forgery, Therefore the ראב''ד is correct that we need validation in all cases including if the wife or her carrier bring her own גט.  

הראב''ד אוחז שאישה או שליח קבלה שמביאה את  מסמך הגירושין צריך לבסס את תוקפו ולא מספיק שאחד יאמר שזה נכתב ונחתם בפניי. רב שך מביא שהוכחה לדעה זו באה מגירסת הגמרא בגיטין ף ה' ע''ב. הגמרא מביאה הוראה שאם מוביל מביא גט מחוץ לישראל ולא יאמר ''נכתב ונחתם לפניי'' אין המסמך תקף, אלא אם כן נקבע תוקפו על ידי עדים. זו שאלה נגד רבה שמחזיק שסיבה לומר ''זה נכתב ונחתם לפניי'' הוא לא יודעים בחו''ל על הצורך לכתוב את הגט למען אותה אישה מסוימת (לשמה). הרי מחוץ לישראל לא יודעים על הצורך בלשמה. תשובה אחת היא שזה אחרי שהם למדו את החוק. גרסה שניה אומרת את התשובה לרבה (לגבי השאלה למה זה עוזר לומר את הנוסחה) היא כי כל החשש הוא שאולי הבעל יבוא ויתלונן שהגט מזויף. אבל אם הוא לא יבוא ומתלונן, למה נתלונן בשבילו? 

לרב שך זה מוכיח את הראב''ד כי הדאגה לשמה אין אנו דואגים אלא אם כן הבעל מתלונן. אבל הדאגה לזיוף, אנחנו כן דואגים, ללא קשר אם הבעל מתלונן או לא. אז אם השליח שלה או היא עצמה מביאים את המסמך, אנחנו כן דורשים אימות. 

זה מראה שהראב''ד צדק שכן במקרה שבו אישה או מוביל שלה מביאים את המסמך, אנחנו כן מתלוננים ודורשים תוקף מלא של המסמך. אולם אפשר לפקפק בזה משום שהגמרא עצמה אומרת שאם הבעל לא בא ומתלונן [שהגט מזויף או לא נכתב לשמה], למה נתלונן עבורו? נראה שזה מרמז בכל המקרים (בין אם היא מביאה את הגט שלה או את המוביל שלה או את המוביל שלו) שאנו תלויים באמירת ''נכתב ונחתם לפניי'' או שאפילו אין לנו צורך בכך אם היא או מובילה תביא את  הגט שלה

אולם הנקודה של רב שך היא שאנו דואגים לזיוף. זה כל הכוונה של הגמרא הזו. כלומר אם השליח לא אומר "לפני נכתב ונחתם", אז הגט אינו תקף. ורבה אומר שאם הוא כן אומר את הנוסחה הזו, אז אנחנו שואלים אותו אם היא נכתבה לשמה. השאלה על רבה היא שזה רק כשהוא אומר את הנוסחה, אבל אם הוא לא אומר אותה ואנו תלויים בביסוס תקפות הגט בשאלת העדים אם הם חתמו עליה, עובדה זו לא אומרת לנו דבר על לשמה. ותשובת רבה לשאלה זו היא שאם הוא (הבעל) אינו טוען שזה לא היה לשמה, אז אין אנו טוענים על כך. אבל אנחנו בהחלט טוענים על זיוף, לכן הראב''ד צודק שאנחנו צריכים אישור בכל המקרים כולל אם האישה או המוביל שלה מביאים גט משלה

When the Chatam Sofer [Moshe Sofer] was a disciple of R. Natan Adler

 A herem [excommunication] does have an effect. When the Chatam Sofer [Moshe Sofer] was a disciple of  Rav Natan Adler,  the students learned Torah on the second floor. The first floor was a hall for weddings and other festivities. One Thursday night, a bridegroom was  making a party for his friends and making so much noise that the students upstairs could not learn. Two went down but received insults to themselves and to Rav Natan Adler.  Later Moshe Sofer and others also went to quiet down the party, and blows flowed and a fist fight. The insults were along the lines that ''learners of the Talmud were lazy good for nothings.''  Those students went to Natan Adler, and he answered that it would be proper to put that crowd in herem because of insulting learners of Torah. The students interpreted this as a instruction to do so, and in fact went through with it. Later that night, the bridegroom and a friend walked home. The bridegroom slipped and hit his head on the sharp end of a wall and died. The congregation were sure that the death was the result of the herem, but Rav Natan himself mourned at the funeral. The herem of the Gra has had a different kind of effect [insanity], but no less devastating.  [It is hard to miss this fact]

In Ancient Athens there was a principle that truth can be revealed only through discussion.

 NO ONE has the right to an opinion unless they have  done their homework. People ought to do some background checks before thy form an opinion about anything. -this is an all inclusive principle including the war in Israel. however even after that first step there is the need for discussion. In Ancient Athens there was a principle that truth can be revealed only through discussion.

I don't think anyone ought to be a layman in science

 The problem I see in science for laymen, is that I don't think anyone ought to be a layman. The only reason there are laymen in science is that people have not heard of the way of learning fast--saying the words and going on. Then finishing the book in that way four times. Then going back to do review in depth. If people would do this, they would automatically become way above laymen level--even if the level of expert might still be a bit farther away. [But I think one needs to focus on real science, not pseudo science--see steven dutch's site for explanation of how to tell the difference. And even then it can be hard to know what is worthwhile as opposed to dead ends. Dead ends are not pseudo science -but still paths that have already been looked into and lead nowhere. ]

The fast learning applies also to the two Talmuds and all the midrashim, and along with that an in-depth session --as is the general practice of the great Litvak yeshivot.  

Gitin page 5. Rav Shach writes in Laws of Divorce 7 halacha 1.

 I am pretty sure about something Rav Shach writes in Laws of Divorce 7 halacha 1 so I feel free to write down what I understand so far on condition that I might have to revise this. The issue is why a carrier does not have to say, "It was written and signed before me" in Israel. To Tosfot, the Sages were lenient because of an aguna. [That is a woman that is still attached to her first husband and thus can't remarry ] To the Ran and Rambam the reason the carrier does not have to say this in Israel is because it is not like laws of money. The difference is a  carrier of the wife outside of Israel. To the Rambam, that carrier would not be required to say, "It was written and signed before me"; but to Tosphot, that carrier would. The reason being the requirement is we are afraid the husband will come and say the document was forged. The Gemara page 5 side b is a proof  to Tosphot that if the carrier did not say it, then the validity of the document needs to be established by witnesses, or else it is not valid, So outside of Israel we are not lenient because of aguna, and the document needs validation from the law that all documents need validation before any action can be taken by them, not just a worry about the husband might come and claim  it is not valid, So the reason for validation is like all document of monetary issues like Tophot, and not like the Ran and Rambam.

I admit that this requires some more thought, however it is what I think Rav Shach is saying,

[If can figure out what Rav Shach is saying any better than this, you are doing better than me. ]

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  רב שך writes in גירושין ז' א'. The issue is why a שליח does not have to say, "It was written and signed before me" in Israel. To תוספות, the חכמים were lenient because of an עגונה. [That is a woman that is still attached to her first husband and thus can't remarry ] To the ר''ן and רמב''ם the reason the שליח does not have to say this in Israel is because it is not like laws of money. The difference is a  שליח קבלה outside of Israel. To the רמב''ם that שליח קבלה would not be required to say "It was written and signed before me"; but to תוספןת that שליח would. The reason being the requirement is we are afraid the husband will come and say the גט was forged. The גמרא גיטין ה' is a proof  to תוספות that if the שליח did not say it, then the validity of the גט needs to be established by witnesses, or else it is not valid, So outside of Israel, we are not lenient  because of עגונה, and the גט needs validation from the law that all documents שנפרעים שלא בפניו need validation before any action can be taken by them, not just a חשש THAT the husband might come and claim  it is not valid, So the reason for קיום is like all document of monetary issues like תוספות, and not like the ר''ן and רמב''ם

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רב שך כותב בגירושין ז' א'. העניין הוא מדוע שליח לא צריך לומר "נכתב ונחתם לפני" בישראל. לתוספות, החכמים היו מקלים בגלל עגונה. [זאת אישה שעדיין קשורה לבעלה הראשון ולכן אינה יכולה להתחתן בשנית] לר"ן ולרמב"ם הסיבה שהשליח לא צריך לומר זאת בישראל היא כי זה לא כמו הלכות של כסף. ההבדל הוא שליח קבלה מחוץ לישראל. לרמב''ם לא יידרש שליח קבלה לומר "נכתב ונחתם לפני"; אלא לתוספות כן צריך. הסיבה היא הדרישה היא שאנו חוששים שהבעל יבוא ויגיד שהגט מזויף. הגמרא גיטין ה' הוכחה לתוספות שאם לא אמר השליח אז צריך לקבוע את תוקפו של הגט ע"י עדים, או אינו תקף. אז מחוץ לישראל אין אנו מקילים מחמת עגונה, והגט צריך אישור מהחוק כמו כל המסמכים שנפרעים שלא בפניו שצריכים תוקף לפני שניתן יהיה לבצע כל פעולה על ידם, לא רק חשש שהבעל עלול לבוא ולטעון שזה לא תקף. אז הסיבה לקיום היא כמו כל מסמך של נושאים כספיים כמו תוספות, ולא כמו הר''ן והרמב''ם

fear of religious leaders

 I have a horrible fear of religious leaders having any say in government or in law. as you might have seen in this blog -- my reason is that I do not think they  understand the Torah and teach it, but rather use it as a cover for their own profit and pleasure. However one can claim against me that maybe they understand Torah better. I answer that might be so, but that does not help their position since in any case I have the stronger claim of experience  --knowing by experience that religious leaders are creeps. However, I do admit to rare exceptions like the roshei yeshiva of Litvak yeshivot who definitely know Torah better than anyone else, and also that life in those great yeshivot is in fact whole some and decent.

It is hard to see any core principle in Israel's legal system or political system.

 I realized that the problem in Israel in both the political sense and legal sense is an idea in the Talmud. that is a middle position between two opposing opinions does not count if it is just make shift [pollyanna--ad hoc.] you need a middle position that has a reason to it for taking one opinion in one case and the opposite in another case. 

The first case is legal. The original Israeli Supreme Court was a mixture of some who took the English law of the time of the English Mandate-alone. Some tempered that with the law of the Gemara. [Some went more in the direction of Code Napoleon or Roman Law. One of the secularists was both shomer mitzvot [kept the commandments] and a member of Mapai--the Ben Gurion mainly Communistic party.]  Same with government. No uniting line. Likud--straight John Locke. Labor--straight socialism. 

The problem with all this is the lack of a unifying line--core principle. England had common law, belief in Christianity, the importance of one monarch, the Magna Carta and Provisions of Oxford. The USA had a similar set of core principles. The USSR for better or worse had a core principle-Marxism.  It is hard to see any core principle in Israel's legal system or political system.-  or even if there could be.

One thing that is curious is that in Torah law a judge who gets monetary reward for making a decision-all his decisions are null and void. דיין שנוטל שכר לדון כל דיניו בטלים that means a beit din of rabanim is automatically null and void by the law of the Torah. If you add to that the fact that one is not allowed to get paid for learning Torah as it says in Pirkei Avot, nor get paid for teaching Torah as it say in the gemara in reference to teaching TORAH that GOD says  מה אני בחימם אף אתם בחינם "Just like I taught Torah for free , you also must teach Torah for free"--adding all that together it is hard to see how anyone could make money off of Torah.  [Or maybe that is the very idea in the first place? ] 

So you could have a government but you could no have anything like religious judges or teachers getting paid by anyone- not the state--nor individuals.

and  that is a good thing. as for getting rid religious teachers, all i have to say is good riddance. as rav nahman o eloquently termed them '' Torah scholars that are demons'' LeM I:12

 The basic approach to the ARI [R. Isaac Luria] that I hold with is the Reshash--Sar Shalom Sharabi. In fact I prayed with the small sidur of the Reshash for years, and later I found the larger one.  But at some point I decided to go on the path of R. Akiva who according to the gemara ''entered into the higher worlds in peace and left in peace.''--Not that I have anything against being in a state of ''devekut'' [attachment to the infinite light''], but rather I felt one needs the proper ''vessels'' to be able to hold the light-or risk breaking of the vessels. 

[I Also agree with the approach to the Ari of Rav Yaakov Abuchazeira and the Ramchal. Rav Yaakov is the simple ''peshat'' [explanation], while the Reshash is Tosphot. The Ramchal fills in some detail and provides a wider context]

The Litvak Yeshiva World certainly learns TORAH pretty well. There are however a few flaws that i would like to point out. (1) THERE is a lot of seeking ''chumrot'' extra restrictions that often have no basis in halacha at all or little basis. And that leads [as it always must] to ignoring actual requirements of TORAH. (2) THERE is ignoring or ignorance of the herem of the GRA. And though I might be blamed on this same account -but that does not make it okay. (Beside that in my opinion Rav Nahman of Breslov would not be included in the second herem in which the actual signature of the GRA appears at the head of the page.) (3) But it still is a nice fact about the Litvak world that there is an emphasis on not adding and not subtracting from the commandments. That much I have to admit