the importance of the Gra

There is on one hand the very great importance of learning Torah. On the other the religious world which makes it money by means of a pretense of keeping Torah is quite corrupt. Even though there are here and there great yeshivot which keep and learn Torah sincerely, the religious word itself is mainly fill with delusions. Thus it is clear that for anyone to keep and learn Torah sincerely he or she must stay away from the corrupting influence of the religious . I have no claim to understand the hearts of men, but I can see clearly that the practices of the religious have nothing to do with Torah at all. It is all a show or the sake of money and power.

However, the general world of the Litvaks is basically OK.--except that they have not and do not realize the importance of the Gra. If they would the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication would be listened to.

My question that I asked Dr Kelley Ross and his answer. [He is going with the Friesian sort of modification of Kant.--and frankly I can not see any other way to go with Kant.

(Here Dr Ross quotes my question): There was one letter that I sent where I was asking if immediate non intuitive knowledge can help for how intuitions can fit into the basket of the categories and thus become united. 

(Dr Ross's answer:) In Kant, there is confusion about "intuition," since he originally says that it is given to us without any functions of thought, but then he ends up with the argument that to enter consciousness, intuition must be synthesized using the categories of the understanding.

Non-intuitive immediate knowledge is outside that debate.  That is how the categories are available in the first place, but we are not aware of them until we reflect on the products of synthesis, i.e. consciousness and perception.

(Here again is part pf my question): I forget this minute how he puts it but basically I think it is that there is some aspect of the intuitions -their form- that has the possibility of fitting into the categories and then the categories unite them.

(Dr Ross:) This overlooks the existence and activity of synthesis, which leaves out Kant's mature theory.  So I'm not sure what the reference in Kant would be for your citation. [my later note: I will have to look that up.]

(Me again:) Similarly there is some answer on how the categories can process the intuitions.

(Dr Ross:) Synthesis uses the categories to "process" the manifold of sensation so as to produce consciousness and experience.  If "intuition" implies awareness, then the application of the term must be moved from the given manifold to the product of synthesis.  This is a challenge in Kant scholarship.

(Me): It seemed to me that immediate non intuitive knowledge can be the source of this unity [of the intuitions]. That is the deeper source of knowledge that unites both the senses and the categories. 

Dr Ross: Again, there are different issues.  How the categories are available in the first place is different from what they are used for.  Kant's argument "from the possibility of experience" means that the categories must be available in order to be used.   And one thing that must also be available is the "unity of apperception," according to which synthesis constructs consciousness.  That will be "the source of this unity," and it will be, like the categories themselves, non-intuitive.

Note that Kant believed the "availability" of the categories was covered by his "metaphysical deduction," i.e. that the categories are artifacts of the forms of logic.  This was grossly insufficient for what was needed.  To get from the form of conditional propositions in logic to the concept of causality you need, well, the concept of causality.  Kant can't get that rabbit out of that hat.  Modern logic, for all its faults, clarified that -- although the Stoics had done it already.  Kant has similar problems in morality, thinking that moral imperatives will follow from the forms of logic also.  In all of that, even Platonism works better.

Yours truly,

KR

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think one of the very important aspects of Kelley Ross is that he shows how the Friesian school i not psychologism but rather depends on axioms that are known, but not known infallibly but can be defeated as per the idea of Popper of falsifiability. 

Robert E Lee and the Civil War

 In the letters of Robert E Lee you find the idea that if the whole issue had been to obey the Constitution of the USA there never would have been any conflict. But you find the exact same idea in General Grant. To both of these men the entire issue was this alone. The South held secession was a right. And even if that is not a part of the Constitution , still it was stated openly by the Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress].

However in terms of slavery, I think the welfare system in the USA is slavery forcing white people to work for blacks without compensation. So I do not think that anyone really objects to slaver. Rather slavery of blacks they object to. But slavery of white people is OK.

 But that is how things are in the West--with the newspapers advocating one kind of outrage after the other. First global cooling, then global warming. Then Climate change, then vaccines. One set of outrages after the other. That is the odd sort of mentality of the West. Every ten years or so, the absolute unchangeable morality changes from one thing to the other, and that other is also unchangeable while the first is forgotten and goes back to the regular state.

Rather I think that morality ought to be based on reason, not fads nor just "faith" which is often delusion.

Gravity and Quantum Entanglement

 Lemaitre I think was the first to notice the connection between Gravity and Quantum Entanglement. This later was called ER=EPR and by Susskind you see there is an approach in which there are worm holes between entangled states. But in a paper sometime after 1930 [after Lemaitre predicted the Big Bang] he wrote that only after there were enough quanta round could space time begin to exist.

 This was basically forgotten until Yaakov Beckstein saw that the area of a black hole is the same as its entropy. --suggesting that black holes have entropy which means that there is a connection between curved space and ensembles of entangled states.

[But in 1972, when he showed this, not one knew what the entangled states were.] Only much later did Susskind come along and show that ER [worm holes]= EPR [quantum entangled states]

bitul Torah

In the path of the Litvak yeshivot, you do not find an emphasis on what you would call secular learning. And that is for good reason. Since thee is a sin of "bitul Torah",[which is greatly emphasized in the chazal [sages]. ["bitul Torah" means not learning Torah when one can.]

They do see that learning a secular subject as a means to make a living is OK, but it is better to trust in God.

There is also an approach where wives of very serious learners decide  to help with making money along with the kollel check. 

This is all very admirable. It is good and proper to learn Torah with self sacrifice.

The only place where I differ is that some  subjects I believe are not secular at all but rather God's wisdom as revealed in the work of Creation.[Physics, Chemistry, etc. The natural sciences.]

Incidentally the best Litvak yeshivot I know about are Ponovitch and the places that were started by former students of Ponovitch.

music file z56

 z56 A minor  z56 nwc

Litvak Yeshivot

 I wanted to discuss my yeshiva experience along with my thought concerning Litvak Yeshivot.

I think that it would have been very difficult or perhaps impossible for me to come to any conception of what Torah is about without being in Shar Yeshuv [of Rav Friefeld] and at the Mir in NY [where I learned a lot from Rav Shmuel Berenbaum.] 

So you might think I should recommend Litvak yeshivot. However later disappoints somewhat damped my enthusiasm. 

But personal disappointments I figure ought not to dampen the reality that for true and authentic Torah the only possible address is a Litvak yeshiva based on the approach of the Gra and Rav Shach.

[And I should add here that in spite of my disappointments I still try to learn Torah when I can manage to grab a minute. And I still hold from the prime importance of learning Gemara and Tosphot.\