The Twelfth Introduction – The Reliability of the Senses | Part I Chapter 73 (19) | Guide for the Perplexed 174 (Auto Translated)

Introduction Twelve: The Denial of the Senses as a Basis for Proof

Conclusion of the List of Introductions

We have reached the end of the list of the introductions of the Kalam, of the Mutakallimun. We are at Introduction Twelve, yes, corresponding to twelve something, I don’t remember, twelve tribes. The Ramban in his book, Torat HaOlah, deals with making allusions that there are twelve, I don’t remember, the showbread, to refute the twelve introductions of the Mutakallimun, things like that. Okay. But well, not our topic now.

And this is the last introduction.

The Text of the Introduction

So Introduction 12, this is their saying, this was his quotation, as it were their statement, and then he explains it as a kind of capstone to all these things, that the senses do not always give the truth, always. The senses, that is, sensory perception, the senses, not always, do not always give the truth, that is, that is, they are not always reliable, yes? That is his meaning.

If we remember, at the beginning he wrote, if we go back all the way to the beginning of the chapter, when he recounted the introductions briefly, then he wrote like this, Introduction 12, which is their saying that the senses err, yes? They err, that is, they miss the mark, yes? They are mistaken, and many of their objects are formed from them, yes? And they err, slip away from them, are lost to them, are withheld from them, many of the objects that they are supposed to apprehend.

The Central Conclusion

And therefore, and this is the most important part, I think, this is not written here, maybe it is written at the end of the introduction here, but this part does not appear here when he repeats it in detail, therefore I return to it. He says, therefore one does not derive judgment from them, that is, one cannot rely on their judgment, the judgment of the senses is mistaken, so one cannot make judgments, perhaps statement, the translation is better, one cannot build statements on their basis, and they are not taken, or here there are two vavs, but the others doubt this, and they are not taken as absolute starting points for demonstration.

The point is, and therefore this is the important point, that the senses are not good stones upon which to build the houses of demonstrations, of demonstrative proofs. The proofs cannot be built, the senses are not an absolute starting point, not a basic starting point, not a basic criterion for truth. Why? Because they err greatly, because they make many mistakes.

The Real Reason for Denying the Senses

This is the reason, I returned there only to show that this is the reason they deny the senses, it is not that they have something against the senses, they have much more against proofs, yes? That is, physical proofs of the kind that Aristotelian science is built upon. But they already deny the first stage, they say that many of the data of the senses are not accurate. Sometimes, yes? They do not deny that sometimes they are correct, this is interesting. They do not say senses, yes? That would be a different position, one must pay attention, yes?

The Distinction Between Partial and Complete Denial

One who says, I distinguish, because this word always is both for leniency and for stringency, yes? One who says, senses do not give truth, he is correct according to Aristotle. That is, and certainly according to Plato, yes? Because he says that what we can see is not what we can apprehend, yes? The intellection, which is the causes of everything, are not things that we see, but they are built upon what we see, yes?

The Rambam’s Position on Imagination and the Senses

We saw in the previous section, actually the section before the previous one, in the topic of imagination, yes? The Rambam denies imagination as a criterion, which is not so far from denying the senses, one must distinguish here. The Rambam thinks that the senses do not apprehend the truth of anything, there is a general negation of senses as a criterion actually in imagination, one must distinguish, but the kind, what he says, the kind of sensory apprehension, kinds of sensation are not kinds of explanation, senses never explain themselves, they always need explanation, always require explanation, and the explanation cannot be of the kind of duplication of senses, of the kind of possible and imaginary senses, yes?

So the kind of explanation, or the kind of perception of senses, is never a good perception, not a sufficient perception.

The Aristotelian Position: The Sense Does Not Lie

But what is the case, on the other hand, what Aristotle apparently needs, or what the Mutakallimun apparently need, is that they never err regarding their objects, yes? This is the style he said, yes? Regarding what the sense reports, and Aristotle has such a rule, you know, the sense never lies, yes? Why does it not lie? Actually because it does not include judgment at all, because it is only a fact, only transmission of information.

So if you sense something, then Aristotle says, the sense cannot lie. The intellect can lie, the imagination can lie, but the sense cannot lie. If I present, if I see something, then I saw, yes? So the seeing from the aspect of what it is seeing must always be true.

The Senses as a Basis for Proof

And this is not important because we only want to believe in visible things, this is important because on this basis we build all the proofs. If what we see is not reliable, if we cannot believe the sight of our eyes and the hearing of our ears etc., then I cannot arrive at the abstraction, at the intellection, which is what the intellect truly is, which is the true understanding. The senses are the foundations of intellection.

And therefore Aristotle is fundamentally a kind of empiricist, yes? That is, he believes that knowledge begins from the senses, and therefore he needs the senses to be very verified, because otherwise he has, there is nothing from which to begin. But this does not mean that he thinks that knowledge is equal to or identical with sensory perception, yes? This is very important.

What the Kalam Actually Denies

The Kalam, and here one can note that perhaps this is related, but one need not jump to this, but the Kalam, according to the Rambam at least, because they do not want to accept the proofs of sensory data, yes, the second stage of the senses, that we, one can call it close to the senses, this is the second stage, it is like the thing, the logical thing, exactly like when I hear someone knocking on the door, I know there is someone there, even though I did not see him and also did not hear him, I only heard his knocking, and I know, I make an inference upon this, and thus all scientific inferences are supposed to be similar to this.

The Inference from the Senses

I make a generalization, every time I see something, then I see that it behaves thus, then I understand why it behaves thus, or in principle it behaves thus, yes, Aristotle says. And therefore I understand that it actually behaves thus, that this is its nature. This is what the Rambam throughout the previous chapters claims is nature, which everyone agrees upon, except for one who insists etc. And this is built upon sensory data, this is not the sensory data themselves, but this is built upon sensory data.

What the Kalam does is not to deny the kind of sensory perception. It could be, as I now note, it could be that they actually specifically like the kind of truth of the senses. They think that understanding is ultimately only sensory data, there is only what we see, and what we happen not to see, but it is possible. And the only explanation they have in the end for all of reality is only that God does or God wills. And therefore they have in the end, they have no other understanding at all of the kind of the senses.

Why They Deny the Senses

But because if they always believed the senses, then the Rambam here claims, they would arrive very quickly at this stage of sense and a half as it were, generalizations and descriptions of things, yes? Because we never see that things change all the time, because we see that things, there is continuity to things for example, and the Rambam will claim that the fact that the Kalam claims that there is no continuity, them, there is no true continuity to anything, yes? Always God creates it anew every moment.

This contradicts the senses, even though we do not see this, yes? This does not really contradict, I emphasize this, this does not contradict the data themselves, they themselves, the data of the senses are interpreted very well with the theory that the red color in a red book is not the same red color that was there a second ago, yes? I have no contradiction to this, yes?

Stages of Sensory Apprehension

This contradicts the next inference which is supposedly, supposedly, according to Aristotle, only a stage and a half beyond the senses. Only half a stage, yes? It is almost senses, and this is the proof that the senses, and in this sense the Rambam goes somewhat further than Aristotle, when he says, the senses do not lie, Aristotle also needs this, yes? But I say, Aristotle’s principle, that the senses are always correct, only speaks about the information they transmit insofar as they are senses.

The Common Sense

The things are already, Aristotle sometimes also calls this sense, actually, calls it common sense, common sense, that we know there are things, yes, even though we never saw them, all the objects that exist in our thought are always a composition of many senses, yes. We also see and also hear and also smell etc., so we get a picture in the head of the general thing, which we call sense, Aristotle still calls this sense, this is the source of the word common sense, yes, the common sense that we use as agreed-upon things, which is not so far, but in Aristotle technically it is the sense that combines all the senses.

We know how to identify that there is a person before us, and how? Both through the sense of sight and also hearing and also other senses we have, and still this is called sensory perception with him.

Summary: What the Kalam Actually Denies

So one must note that when the Rambam says that the Kalam denies the senses, he is speaking precisely about the stage of inference from the senses. And because they do not want the inference, it could be that they really deny also the data of the senses, even though this denial too actually works only on perhaps a quarter stage before this, because they did not deny that you saw this, they denied that it is thus as you saw, so this is already a certain inference.

I hope this somewhat clarified the expression, I only said the expression. And this is the expression here that they not always, I emphasize the word always, that is, this is not an Aristotelian perception that the senses are never identical to truth, or even more extreme, a Platonic perception that would absolutely say that the senses are not at all from our concepts, yes, this is a basic dispute between Aristotle and Plato.

Introduction Twelve: The Kalam’s Claim Against the Reliability of the Senses — Detailed Argument

The Status of the Senses in the Process of Knowledge

This was also his expression in the tenth introduction, when he described the action of the intellect, that is, the intellect extracts from sensory data the intellect. So this is still from, this is not direct intellect, he never has direct intellect, the intellect always begins from the senses. And therefore sensory apprehension is very important, even though he is not an empiricist in the sense that we only know what we directly sense, because actually the opposite, if he were an extreme empiricist in this sense, then he could in turn be a Kalamist, because the Kalam never denies that you saw what you saw, yes? This is not what they claim.

Understood or did I just complicate things?

Textual Note: The Word “Truth”

The word truth is, one must note that it is not clear what the word is. I know that Schwarz translates certainty. This is not the word haqiqah that he usually translates as truth, this is another word that I am not sure what its meaning is. One can see here where we are. Need to go up a bit. But it is not truth, it does not say truth, it says here some other word, which one must note what its meaning is.

The Structure of the Kalam’s Argument: Two Aspects of Suspicion Toward the Senses

Okay, so this is their introduction, and this is their introduction. Now like this, and he details, he details — until here was only the formulation of their statement, their slogan, now he details, what is the meaning, what do they claim, what is their claim when they say that the senses are not truth or not always truth, yes? That is, they are not reliable, yes? One cannot rely on them, yes? This is the point.

In general, they certainly agree, how do you say, in principle they rely on the senses like everyone, but when they arrive at them, at a certain theory of the senses, they always have the option to say, no, this time the senses are lying to you, yes? Actually in the end it will be revealed that the senses always lie, but this is their conclusion.

Now we return to their process of inference, supposedly, how they detail, how they themselves, the Rambam here summarizes what he saw in their books themselves, what they actually claim, how they claim that the senses are not always good sources for truth.

He says thus: And this is because the Mutakallimun suspected, suspected the apprehension of the senses from two aspects. They have two modes, two parts, in what they say, they ask him what is the meaning, the senses lie? So there are here two different meanings.

The First Aspect: Sensible Things That the Senses Do Not Apprehend

One of them, this is what they say, because many of their sensibles are withheld from them. There are here many times the word say, even if Tibbon translated this not according to the order of the words, usually he translates according to the order of the words. He says, literally it is written here, one of them, that they that many of their sensibles, they say, are withheld from them. Which is strange, I think this is, we have already been precise about this many times, that the Rambam very very claims that the Kalam say things, yes, they are literally called Kalamists, which is saying, yes, and they say much, and it is not certain if they themselves are reliable, or if one can believe or understand, but they say.

So they say that many of the… yes, the objects, there are things not sensible at all, this is for everyone, there is no doubt that the senses cannot see rules or intelligible things, but they claim that also many of the objects that are worthy of being intelligible, sensible, yes, that is physical objects, objects, what we call sensibles, yes, still they are withheld from them, yes. And why? Yes, there are things that it would theoretically be possible to see, yes, this is the point, they are sensible things.

Two Reasons for Non-Apprehension: Smallness and Distance

There can be two types, two reasons. Two reasons why sometimes the senses do not see also things that it would be possible to see, and this is if due to the smallness of the objects, yes? Our senses have a minimum resolution, we would call it, yes? We can only see things of a certain size, and there are things that are too small, so the intellect, our eye cannot see them, or perhaps sometimes cannot sense etc.

As they mention regarding the atom itself, the atom, yes, the single atom, and what necessarily follows from it, sorry, and what necessarily follows from it as we have explained — this is already something important.

Because let us think about this for a moment. Everyone agrees, I do not think there is an argument about this, that there are things too small for our eye to see. I do not think there is, everyone knows the topic of the later authorities, regarding worms or things too small to see with the eyes, that almost no one, I wrote about this once, about the history of this, almost no one thinks, yes, the history of this that is related to the means of the microscope and all this matter, which is very important, it is a large part of the revolution of modern chemistry especially, the position of small things, is related to the development of means that the eye will see things too small to see with the naked eye, yes? But in principle this was never in dispute. No one ever argued whether there are things too small to see, and certainly too distant, and this is the next section.

And if due to their distance from the one apprehending them. As a person will not see and will not hear and will not smell at a distance of many miles. No one argued that there are things that are too distant and we do not see. This is something one can experience every day. And we also do not argue that there are things too small, that we sometimes approach and it is possible to see this, proximity is actually the other side of distance, it is not the same thing. Yes, it is the same thing, we only see in relation to a certain distance and a certain size, this is too small and too distant, we do not see, and there are things that are always too small.

The Crucial Point: Not the Fact But What Necessarily Follows From It

There is no fundamental obstacle here, and everyone agrees to this. I do not think the Rambam can claim, I do not think, perhaps there is someone who claims, this is what I started to say, no one claims, I have not yet met anyone who claims that things that cannot be seen simply do not exist, because one can destroy them, so they do not exist. There are those who say it does not count halakhically, which I also think, a somewhat strange position. That is, one needs to explain it better, because this is a kind of denying reality, according to how we perceive reality. And that we say we do not perceive this, this is a lie, we do perceive. One can say, well, so I do not enter into that topic, I only say that this is not the argument.

The Rambam’s argument cannot be against this that yes, we can see everything, every size, there are no things too small to see. It does not even sound logical.

What is the case is like this, and it could be that it is actually, this argument is refuted. What he claims, and therefore I think what is important is what he infers, he says, and what necessarily follows from it as we have explained — they claim that the individual atom, yes, the atom, of course no one ever saw an atom, yes? We also have not yet seen the atom ever.

So this is the first thing, yes? This enables their argument that there are atoms, even though we have not seen them, but this is not really an argument. Why? Because we do not see anything at all. It could be that there are very small atoms that we have not seen. Everyone also agrees that there are perhaps particles of dust or something that are too small to see, and perhaps this already seems, was always directed to people.

What they claim is what necessarily follows from this, yes? This is what the Rambam indicates as we have explained, and what he means is the things he wrote especially at the end of the third introduction, of what necessarily follows from the premise of atomism, and there we learned that the premise of atomism necessitates several absurd things. For example, the idea that when there is motion, especially the absurdities belong to the continuity of motion and matter. We see continuous motion, and we cannot even think that motion is not continuous, yes?

Methodological Emphasis: The Stage Between Sense and Intellect

This, I emphasize again, because all the discourse here is actually not about the seeing itself, but about the stage that I call here sensation and a half or something like that.

The Continuity of Sensory Perception and the Argument Against Atomism

Memory and Attention as the Basis for Continuity of Vision

What makes our vision continuous is our memory, or what we today call, our attention. Attention is attention span. Attention is the thing that turns long seeing into one seeing. I watch something that takes 20 minutes, but I saw one seeing, and I assume that what I saw is one continuous action, because of the span of my concentration, yes, my attention.

And thus it is also about our seeing large objects. I can see in one time a thing that cannot be seen in one time, yes, we see objects of three dimensions, yes, 3D, and one cannot really see 3D. If you have two eyes, then you can estimate 3D within the synchronization of the two eyes, thus human beings see in three dimensions, but this is the calculation, yes? This is a certain achievement from my seeing, yes?

But this is considered, as I said, this is considered for Aristotle, perhaps he does not enter into these details, that we perhaps today know how our brain actually, our perception composes the continuity of the motion of events, or the continuity of the objects of events. But we see continuous things.

The Kalam: Motion as Leaps Between Atoms

Now, the Kalam, in order to describe atomistic motion, they need to claim that there is no motion, that there is no motion, there are only leaps between atom and atom, and actually, what we call speed and slowness, these are fewer and more pauses between the motions. We remember that he said this in the third introduction.

The Problem of the Millstone

And the same thing actually regarding objects. He said, ah, and how can this be? For everyone knows that the outer part of the millstone moves faster than the inner stone, than the inner part of the same stone, how can this be if there is no continuous motion, which then this could be understood?

Then the answer is, the answer of the Kalam is that indeed the millstones are disintegrating, meaning they are already disintegrated. The Rambam describes this as “disintegrating,” but one must understand that according to the assumption of atomism this was never one thing, yes? It was always many atoms, and indeed the atoms there inside, their motion is not at all connected to the motion of the atoms outside, and therefore there can be one object that is essentially disintegrating, meaning it is disintegrated, and the atoms within it each have their own motion, meaning their own number of motions and rests, and no connection to all the other atoms that compose that same object, yes?

The Aristotelian Argument: We See Continuity

So this is exactly the thing we see here that is against sense perception, yes? And this is important, I think this is important, meaning here there is a serious philosophical argument, even for us, even we who have microscopes and we can perhaps see almost atoms, of course these are not their atoms, because our atoms do divide, but in any case it is very easy for us to believe that there are many things we do not see, that the things we see are composed of sub-visual parts, yes, below our threshold of vision, which are still very important in the composition of the thing.

But the Aristotelian argument is not really about this. The Aristotelian argument here is about the fact that we still see things, we see continuous objects, we also see continuous motion.

The Meaning of “See” — Perception and Not Just Raw Sense Data

And as we say, when I say “see,” I am actually saying “understand,” understand our vision. No one would claim that one can see motion without it being continuous, because part of the way we apprehend motion is that it is continuous, because motion is to move, not to move and stop is not motion.

Everyone understands the difference between a film that moves, which is not really moving, and true vision, even though they look the same, this is exactly the argument. After all, a Kalamist can claim, and this is essentially what he claims, that our eyes work exactly like my computer, like my television screen, which does not see motion, it only seems to him that he sees motion.

And now, the answer to this is that we still understand this distinction, meaning, it could be, the truth is that it could even be that the mechanism of our eye also works with many stills, that move quickly, exactly as the mechanism of the screen works. Even this would not refute the Aristotelian argument here, which says that we see in the sense of the stage and a half of vision motion, and the concept of motion contradicts the concept of rest. And motion that is merely an illusion of many rests at once, when one enters into the motion rest, this is no longer motion.

The Denial of Sense: The Internal Contradiction of Atomism

In the same sense, the Aristotelian will claim, and he also has empirical proofs for this, for all the things I am saying, one can even perhaps conduct empirical tests for this, but I am making the argument of the senses, yes, the sensory argument for this, that one can even claim that we also see objects, what we call Macro Objects, yes? We see Macro Objects, and to claim, to tell me that my eyes are lying, is not good ontology.

If you are a reductionist atomist, you are saying, that which you see before you a book, there is no book at all, there are only many atoms that happen to be composed, adjacent to each other in a way that appears to you as a book, and your eyes are lying, as some scientists indeed say this way today, then you are saying, the Rambam calls this here denying the intellect, no, sorry, denying sense perception, sense perception denies.

The Rhetorical and Internal Problem

And he tries, there is here a bit of a rhetorical step, because everyone believes, ah, you deny the evidence of the eyes? What does it mean, you deny the evidence of the eyes? And there is also an internal step in itself, because science claims to be empiricist, and it is not really possible to be empiricist in the sense of only the position of the senses, and this is another matter.

So empiricist, if this means to rely on what you see, and behold you do not rely on what you see, then from where does your position begin? This is an argument indeed that at the end of the day is sometimes said against reductionism of this type. That if your reductionism, your atomism, causes you to contradict what everyone sees as whole objects, then you are already in a world where your science battles with the senses, and of course science claims to be based on these senses, it has already contradicted itself, and this too is a strange assumption, to deny sense perception, everyone understands that this is a somewhat strange assumption.

What Follows from Atomism — Not the Main Belief But the Conclusions

So this is what I think, and therefore he inserted here what follows from it, which he means those conclusions that say not about the main belief that there are atoms, but about the fact that the atomistic conception causes us to say that what we see as Macro Objects is simply fantasy, and that we see continuous motion or continuous objects is the same thing as Macro Objects, this is simply a lie, and this is poor ontology.

Your ontology must at least somehow give place to and explain in a true way, assume as truth what we see. And one can say that this is perhaps a more basic measure of human intellect than the very great abstractions that one can then apply to atomism, yes, one can make numbers, yes, but you lose all the qualities, yes, and so on.

So I have already entered into debate with a modern person, but I only, I think that what I am saying regarding what he mentions here, what follows, in this I am correct.

The Distinction Between Raw Sense Data and Sensory Perception

The Rambam understands this, the distinction between what is called raw sense data and the immediate stage right after it, which the Rambam throughout all these chapters calls here sensory perception. Because otherwise his argument does not begin at all, what, you claim that we can indeed see at any distance at any size? This is simply false. This is what I claim. So let us return.

The Kalam Argument: Things Too Small or Too Distant

So the Kalam, they say two things, many of their sensibles are beyond their reach, either they are too small, as he gave an example, yes, yes, this is essentially their argument, that atoms are too small for us to see, and therefore they can also say such absurd things, yes, and here essentially the argument against them that the millstones disintegrate during motion, and the motion is not motion, and if we do not see this, there is no problem, because we do not see, because it is too small for us to see.

Distance as a Limitation of Perception

And this is another example, and perhaps I think that here too there is here some hint, that I have not fully deciphered, and he says, and the second thing is that they are distant, yes, as I say, this is essentially two sides of the same thing, but if we divide them. Like, and he gives examples, as a person will not see and will not hear and will not smell at a distance of many miles, because we cannot see, certainly not smell, yes, one must remember, there are two senses, the sense of touch and taste work only through actual contact, yes, and even senses that apparently do work at a distance, like the eyes and ears and the sense of smell, still this is not at any distance whatsoever, yes? There is always a limit to how far we can see.

Aristotle’s Explanation: Vision Through a Medium

Aristotle, in his books on the senses, tried to claim that this is because vision also works through some medium, we see in that the visible object of ours, that we see, the visible object sends some, there are all kinds of theories how this works, but it somehow passes through the air or through what is between our eyes and the visible object, and therefore it works only at a certain distance.

It could be that this, I am not sure, yes, we today would describe this in a very different way, and we would indeed leave doubt whether it is correct to say, because we do not believe that vision really, well, perhaps this is not exactly, but it could be that our vision, for example, does in principle work at any distance. The moment a photon reaches your eye you see, and it does not matter from where it came, this photon. In all the universe one can see. And the concealment is a small measure, meaning the photon did not arrive. So it could be that we, actually this argument is a less good argument.

The Twelfth Premise: The Mutakallimun’s Undermining of the Reliability of the Senses

The Opening Example: The Motion of the Heavens

But he gives an example for this. He says, as the motion of the heavens was not grasped. Meaning, and here one must check what people said about this in the past. What I understand that he is saying is something simple, yes? No one, we, everyone agrees, everyone knows. Everyone knows, yes?

And I think that here too Aristotle would claim that this is almost vision. We all see the heavens, meaning, the celestial bodies, which according to their system are the heavens themselves that move, but we all see them moving, yes? Every morning the sun rises and the moon rises and so on, but no one ever sees it moving, yes?

Just as no one sees the clock hand moving either, yes? Only believe that it moves, yes? Make inferences. We see it in the morning in the east and in the evening in the west, so apparently it moves. But we do not see this.

Why Don’t We See the Motion?

Why don’t we see this? Because it is too slow, yes? Relative to us it is too distant, something like this. So the Kalam, use all these examples to show us, yes? To undermine the certainty of sensory perception, yes?

He says, you believe that the sun moves or that the heavens move, yes? Certainly. Did you ever see this? Apparently not, yes? This is very interesting. We have never seen the moon moving. Only if one makes a picture of, what is it called? Time lapse.

And usually we do not see this, one cannot see this, because it is too large, it extends over a distance too enormous for our eyes to discern. This is also because we do not have a good enough reference, but our eyes need, it could be that if we were, I don’t know, perhaps this simply takes longer time than our tangent friend. Interesting, not sure.

Discussion: Why Does the Sun Appear Static?

Why don’t we see the sun moving? It is simply too slow. That is to say that we also do not feel that we are moving, no? This is also something else, this was not in that time.

No, it is simply because the motion, yes, this was also an argument, by the way, this was also once a common argument for relativism, yes? That someone, Aristotle already speaks about this. Someone, yes, already quotes the Sophists, the Sophists find arguments of this type, yes? When a person is on a ship, it seems to him that the trees are moving and not the ship, yes?

But this is because our sense of motion is relative, it evaluates, but we do not feel that we are moving, but we do see that the sun is moving, yes? But we do not think of this as motion, yes? And the heavens we cannot see because they are transparent, so the Rambam claims, yes?

But the sun, even the sun we do not see when it moves. We simply each time see it in another place and infer that it moves.

Do We Really Not See the Motion?

But what don’t we see when it moves? We really see when it moves, we see it every second in another place, only fast. But this is not fast enough, yes? Fast enough to see the motion.

Perhaps if we were more distant it would actually be the opposite, yes? We are too close, yes? No, it is understood what I am saying, yes? If we were very distant, we would actually see that it moves. But we are quite distant, so the area that it moves is not small enough for us to follow the motion.

Modern Example: The Airplane

In any case, or one can say today something like this, you see an airplane moving above your house, it seems to you that it moves a centimeter per hour, while it moves a thousand kilometers per hour, yes? Simply because it is very distant, so there are distortions. Meaning, this is not distortion, this is simply, we are not accustomed to calculate speed at such a distance, yes? This is perhaps the more accurate argument.

Two Sides of the Argument Against the Senses

In any case, this is their first argument, and this is an argument against the senses in general, yes? This is a very general argument. The senses do not know everything. Why? You have never seen the sun moving, even though you believe it is so. You have not seen things too small, even though they have no proof and so on.

So this is the first thing, one side. And the second side, they say even worse, the first side is only negation. You did not see the sun moving, but I also did not see it not moving, there is no contradiction, I did not see the atoms, I also did not see non-atoms, even though I claim that I did see, but this is at the negative stage.

The Second Side: The Senses Err in Their Apprehensions

The second side they said that they err in their apprehensions. This is interesting, not in their sensibles, but in their apprehensions. Strange. But I am not sure that the intention is, no, he also above wrote apprehensions. Apprehensions, meaning, what the… yes, hasagah (apprehension) is a more general word than havanah (understanding), yes? Hasagah is any kind of perception, I call this perception.

But the claim, the division, the difference between the first and second is, the second claims that it errs, yes? That it sees the opposite of what it is, yes? Yes, this is essentially the point, it sees the opposite of what it is. In the first part it does not see, so it does not see, the second part it actually sees, but it errs, it sees the opposite, yes, so it sees the thing, but it sees it opposite from something.

Examples of Sensory Illusions

Like, yes, and here there are more interesting examples, yes, as a person will see a large thing small, when he is distant from it, yes, we see, distant things appear to us small, yes, so we see falsely, we see a small thing while it is large.

And the same thing, and he will see the small large when it is in water, yes, we have magnification, sometimes something in water appears larger, a bit larger, everything in water appears a bit larger.

A Clearer Example: Refraction of Light

And there is another thing, and as if a clearer example, we can see things that bend, and he will see what, a bent thing straight when part of it is in water and part of it outside the water, yes, because the water causes refraction of vision or of light, we say, so when we place a thing, we usually know this in reverse, we place a straight thing in the water, yes, so the part that is in the water appears to bend from the part that is in the water, or the opposite, if it was bent then it becomes straight now, yes.

All kinds, one can call these optical illusions, yes, which is still a philosophical problem, yes, there are times, indeed all these facts are signs for us to try to understand better and more precisely how sense perception works, yes, these are not things that one can dismiss, these are very very fundamental questions, yes.

Additional Examples: Color and Taste

Yes, and this brings even more, and so one with jaundice, green things, yes, one who has a disease of greenness, I am not sure what the intention is, sees everything green or yellow, it is written here, jaundice, I don’t know, I am not familiar with this disease, not sure what the intention is, and yes, perhaps someone here knows, I don’t know, he says that there is, no one here writes the phenomenon.

And one whose tongue has tasted red bile, will taste sweet things bitter. There is perhaps an error here, it should say yellow bile, not sure, but yes, so they claim. The intention is, yes, the biles are also one of the ancient medical scientific beliefs, but one who has too much of something, or he places, yes, I can give something simpler, when you place a certain taste in your mouth, this causes other things to taste like them.

And again, this is an error, this is sensory illusion.

The Inference: The Senses Are Not Reliable

And there are many things in this vein, the Rambam listed here in their name four things, five things actually, five different things that show us that the senses not only omit things, they also lie, actually lie, say about something that it is X and Y. Yes?

And this is essentially an argument, yes? This is not, their inference is the argument, yes? The Rambam said they said that because of this they are sometimes certain, yes? that they took principles of demonstration, yes? Therefore the senses are not reliable, yes? Because you, everyone agrees that the senses many times err, yes?

One needs indeed a more Aristotelian description than optical illusions and such things. I think they have a certain theory of the wolf that makes this argument superfluous, and I do not remember what it is. But there must be some argument that shows why this argument is not good, yes?

Possible Responses to the Skeptical Argument

I know one simple thing, that we know that this is an error, this is also because of the senses, yes? Beautiful, yes. Yes? Meaning, the senses actually see well, only sometimes in a partial way, or sometimes the data of the senses are interpreted to us not well, yes? The senses that contradict each other, or something like this.

Yes, so after all how do we know that a person who is distant is really small, he is really not small, because he approaches and we see, yes? So it is not clear that there is here a skeptical argument.

The Self-Referential Problem of the Skeptical Argument

A very ancient and very accepted skeptical argument from then until today, which says that because the senses err and the senses begin, yes, this is essentially for complete skepticism, at least according to Aristotle, that all knowledge ultimately begins from the senses. So if the senses are not reliable, then nothing is reliable, you cannot know anything, yes?

And of course this suffers from the problem that it itself is built on the testimony of the senses. And there could be other things, I am not sure.

Summary: The Mutakallimun’s Use of This Argument

So this, he does not write here what his answer is to such things, but I think this is an obvious answer, a simple answer, yes? We just now explained why this is not correct.

So in any case, therefore they claim, and this is their argument, that one cannot believe the senses, and therefore when I say things that contradict the senses, this is not a problem. There are no principles of demonstration here, principles of premises that are building blocks of proof.

So until here, until here.

The Twelfth Premise: The Unreliability of the Senses and the Dispute Between the Early and Later Kalam

Translation Correction: “Agreed” Versus “Fought For”

We just now explained why this is not correct. So in any case, therefore they claim, and this is their argument, that one cannot believe the senses, and therefore when I say things that contradict the senses, this is not a problem, there are no principles of demonstration here, principles of premises that are building blocks of proof. So until here, until here their assumption.

Now he makes a very interesting comment, which I think must be examined carefully. The Rambam says thus, and do not think, do not think, yes, that the speakers agreed. He does not really write “agreed” — all the other translators claim that Ibn Tibbon erred here and he did not, the intention is not “agreed” but something like “fought for,” “struggled for,” “exerted themselves in this.” The early Mutakallimun, according to the Rambam’s opinion, exerted themselves for this premise of the unreliability of the senses.

And apparently the Rambam knows that there are today new Mutakallimun who think that this was in vain, that this was not really needed for their argument. And as he thinks explicitly, not completely explicitly, this is what is interesting, as most of these later ones think that the effort of their predecessors to establish this part, there is no need for it, yes?

The Rambam and the Methodology of Coherent Systems

The Interesting Move Throughout the Chapter

The Rambam makes, and we spoke about this a bit when we spoke about atomism, there is, the Rambam makes throughout this chapter, a very interesting move, yes? He began the chapter with saying that he is going to enumerate the premises of the Mutakallimun, the agreed upon ones, despite the multiplicity of their ways and differences of, yes, something like this, what was it? The first line in the chapter, yes? Despite, according to the variation of their opinions, yes, he means despite, according to the general premises before, the more comprehensive ones than the variation of their opinions and most of their ways like this, this does not appear here. Yes, very beautiful. Let us continue. This is the first word in the chapter.

Which says, the Rambam is aware that there are many disputes among the Mutakallimun, and we also essentially learned in the previous chapter, two chapters ago, in chapter 71, that the Rambam gave a history of the Kalam and he brought that there were early Kalam and then later Kalam and not always did the later ones know, yes?

The Historicist Argument from Chapter 71

This Argument, We Remember, Yes? It Was Half a Year Ago or a Year Ago, I Don’t Remember. But We Remember That in Chapter 71 the Rambam Said That There Was a Historicist Argument, Yes? The Rambam Claimed That the Kalam Began from a Desire to Find Favor in the Eyes of the New Christian and Muslim Rulers and to Find Philosophical Proofs for Them, for Their Theology, and Therefore from the Foundation the Kalam Is Tainted with Bias, Yes, in That It Is Not, That It Is, How Do You Say, It Is Biased, Yes, It Is Biased Because It Is Partisan, Yes, the Rambam Hates Politics.

And Then He Says That Afterward, and This Is a Process That the Rambam Also Explains Regarding the Amulets in Chapters 51-52, Chapter 2, That Afterward, the Later Mutakallimun Don’t Even Know Why There Is Kalam, They Think That They Are Really Proofs, Because They Are Not Wise Enough to Understand That the Early Mutakallimun Were Actually Good Philosophers, but They Were Simply Political Liars, and They Understood That Now They Need to Say Arguments for the Creation of the World, So They Said There Are Arguments for the Creation of the World, and They Are Arguments, but Not Such Necessary Arguments as They Make Them Out to Be, and the Later Ones Are Not Aware of This, Yes?

The Analogy to the Efficacy of Divine Names

This Is the History That the Rambam Tells, and This Is Something Analogous He Said Regarding Amulets, He Said Why Do Jews Believe in the Efficacy of Divine Names Without Understanding? That Some Liar Wrote Them and Then They Came to Some Innocent Righteous Person and Then This Was Found Among His Writings and Then People Say, Aha, This Righteous Person Believed in This, So Certainly There Is Something Serious Here, but They Don’t Know That It Started with One Liar and There Is Laundering, It Gets Laundered by Passing Through More Reliable and More Honest People, That’s the Main Point. There Is a Laundering of Honesty, Yes? Many Things, This Is Really a Very Radical Analysis of the Development of Religions and Such Things.

From the Historical Argument to the Philosophical Argument

Now, but Here We Are Not Dealing with This Historicist Description from the Outside, Now We Return with an Argument Parallel to This, Very Similar in Its Structure, but on Their Own Metaphysical, Physical Principles Themselves, Yes? Now We Discover That There Was Such a Dispute. The Early Kalam, the Early Mutakallimun, All Believed in Atomism. And All Believed in All These 12 Premises, Yes? Because Apparently Atomism, the Rambam Understands That Atomism Itself, Atomism Is Impossible Without Denying the Evidence of the Eyes, as We Just Now Mentioned.

Afterward There Are New Mutakallimun, We Know Some of Them, Their Names, the Rambam Doesn’t Write Names Here, Which Makes It Difficult for Us to Understand Whom He Means, Which Is Strange. That Is, He Doesn’t Mention Names Precisely Because He Doesn’t Want to Get Into, Yes? It’s Not That the Rambam Has Something Against Mentioning Names of Gentiles, Not in This Book. Throughout the Book He Mentions Names. But He Wants to Look at All the Kalam as One Unit, That’s the Point.

The Kalam as One Coherent System

The Rambam Is Not Interested in Gossip

The Rambam, He’s Not Interested in Gossip, He’s Not Interested in Who Said What. He’s Interested in Some One Coherent Structure of Thought That Stands in Opposition to Another Structure. This Is Actually His Framing Throughout This Entire Book, the Entire Thrust of This Book, Which Is the Debate Against the Kalam, and Afterward Regarding the Creation of the World and All This Matter. He Sets Up Two Complete Systems, Doesn’t Often Enter into Debates Within the Systems, and He’s Almost Not Interested in Who Said This. And This Is the Interesting Move That I Mentioned That He Makes.

But I’ll Finish This in Another Second, Let’s Understand What He’s Telling. So the Rambam Describes the Kalam as One Story, One Story of One System, Even Though This System, the Rambam Knows, It’s Already Several Hundred Years Before the Rambam That the Kalam Began and It’s Not Possible That There’s Always the Same System.

The Principle of Internal Coherence of Systems

But the Rambam Claims That He Has, He Knows, Yes, and the Rambam This Is His Type of Thinking, Yes, He Knows That the System Really Only Works in Certain Ways. Yes, There Is Freedom Within All Kinds of Details That Can Be Argued About. The Question Is About the Hadars for Example, the Rambam Isn’t Closed on This, That It’s Really Necessary. But There Are Basic Things That Whoever Understands the System in a Coherent Way, in a Complete Way, Must Agree with Him. There Are People Who Make Compromises, but That’s Because They Don’t Understand. The Rambam Claims This.

Very Good at Understanding What Is Generally Entailed by a System, Even Though It’s Not Explicit.

The Critique of Compromise

Many People, and Many People Interpret the Rambam Also Like This, in Such a Way, and I Think That This Is Really Contrary to the Dialectic That at Least He Sets Up in All This Composition. Because Many People Think That What One Needs to Do When There Is a Contradiction Between Faith and Philosophy Is to Make a Compromise. Yes, as the Rambam Himself Makes a Compromise, Yes, Regarding the Creation of the World. Okay, Whoever Has the Account of Creation, Creation of the World and Eternity of the World and Before This Creation of the World, Yes, Something Like This. This Compromise Is Almost Explicitly Written.

But the Rambam, in This Chapter at Least, and in the Chapters That Deal with Direct Philosophy, Is Very Aware That This Type of Compromise Doesn’t Really Work. That Is, There Is a Reason, He Always Has a Paradigm of What Is the True, Complete System, and There Is a Good Reason Why from Each System All Kinds of Premises Are Entailed, as Here, 12 Premises That Are Entailed Within That System, and It’s Not Really Possible to Hold What’s Important to the System Without All the Details, and This Helps Him.

Why Does This Help the Rambam?

Why Does This Help Him? Because Some of the Details Are More Absurd Than Other Parts. Atomism, According to the Rambam, Is Very Very Implausible, and Therefore It’s Impossible to Be an Atomist Because It’s Impossible to Be an Atomist.

Rav Saadia Gaon as a Test Case

Rav Saadia: A Mutakallim Who Is Not an Atomist

We Know, for Example, One Jew Who Is a Mutakallim Without Being an Atomist, and That’s Rav Saadia, Yes? Rav Saadia Is Explicitly Not an Atomist, Doesn’t Believe in Atoms, and He’s Still More or Less a Mu’tazilite, Mu’tazalite, I Don’t Know How to Say It. And the Rambam Means Him When He Speaks in Chapter 71 About Jews Who Took from the Mu’tazila, Yes?

The Defense of Rav Kafih

And Someone Can Defend Rav Saadia, Yes? Rav Kafih Explicitly Made This Defense Below, and He Says, No, What Do You Want, Rambam? He’s Not a Mutakallim, He, True That He Chooses from the Gentiles, Whatever Wisdom Is Among the Gentiles Believe, but It’s Not That He, Yes, the Rambam There Makes the Historical Argument Again, Yes, That the Jews Who Took from the Mu’tazila, It’s Not Because They Reached a Philosophical Conclusion That This Is the Correct System. They Simply Wanted to Be Wise, and They Adopted the Philosophical System Closest to Their Neighborhood, Yes, That’s What He Claims There. And Also, This Too Is a Sharp Critique of What Happens Among the Jews Many Times.

The Answer According to the Current Chapter

But the Answer You’d Say, the Defense, Chapter 73 Contradicts This Defense, Yes? Throughout This Entire Chapter He Does This. But That You Happen Not to Be an Atomist, It’s Because You Don’t Understand Your Own System, Yes? This Doesn’t Defend the System from Its Absurd Parts, It Simply, the System Won’t Work at All Once You Do This, and There’s No Problem. True, You’re Right That You See That This Is Absurd and You’re Trying to Get Rid of It, I Agree, and That’s the Reason to Get Rid of the Entire System, Not to Make Compromises That Are Not Coherent.

And This Rambam Is Very Much a Man of One Coherent System, Not a Man of Syncretism and Such Things, Even Though There Is Also Syncretism in Him, We Won’t Get Into This Now.

The Later Mutakallimun: Rejection of Atomism and Unreliability of the Senses

So Here the Rambam Recognizes That There Are Later Ones Who Were Mutakallimun, but They Said, Atomism Isn’t Needed. Why? Because They Really Understood That This Is Bad Science, Yes? That’s Actually the Main Reason, and Therefore They Discarded Atomism, and Consequently Also This Premise, That One Doesn’t Need to Believe What One Sees, Yes.

Al-Ghazali as an Example

And Another Very Famous Mutakallim Who Really Went This Way Is Al-Ghazali, but Al-Ghazali Really Really Isn’t an Atomist, Even Though He Doesn’t Believe in Causality, Yes, That’s the Point. He Says, and We Already Spoke About This at the Beginning, If I Remember That There We Explained This Point Better, That What the Kalam Mainly Needs Is the Direct Responsibility of God for All Actions, Yes.

The Alternative to Atomism

The Way That the Ancient Kalam Solved This, Is by Saying That in the World There Are Only Atoms and Accidents, and God Creates the Accidents All the Time. But It’s Not Really a Logical Contradiction, It’s Not Really Impossible to Say That There Are Forms That God Makes All the Time, Yes? Or That There Is Each Thing and Each… Simply to Deny the… If We Take the Principle of Denying Natural Causality…

The Necessity of the Twelfth Premise: Denial of the Senses in the Kalam System

Modern Kalam and the Attempt to Disconnect from Atomism

People Today More or Less Do This with All Physics — They Don’t Deny Physics and Say “but This Is a Lie, Physics Is a Lie”. Of Course There’s a Problem Here, but That’s What They Explicitly Do. And Therefore the Rambam Claims That This Is Impossible, That’s Exactly the Point.

“For they strove, their predecessors” — So This Is What He Quotes. Today There Is Modern Kalam Science, Which Is Supposedly More Sophisticated, Which Says That They Think Because the Striving of Their Predecessors to Maintain the Part — Yes, the Atom — There Is No Need for It. It Simply Was a Mistake That They Adopted the… Perhaps They Claim Exactly This, That They Happened to Adopt Atomism Because It Was the Science of Their Time. Even Though This Isn’t True — It Wasn’t the Science of Their Time — and Therefore Their Historical Theory Is a Bit Better. But They Claim This, and Therefore They Remain with the Theology of the Kalam Without Their Physics Actually.

This, the Rambam Claims, Is the Error, Yes? And the Reason the Rambam Claims the Error, He Explained This Briefly Above, Yes? Because the Rambam Says: You Can Say That This Is an Error Only If You Give Up on All Logic, Yes? If You Also Give Up on the Law of Contradiction, If You Also Give Up on Logical Impossibilities, Absolute Impossibilities — Which Is Really What the Jews Today Do.

But the Moment, the Rambam Says, Because the Kalam Did Try to Be Science, Yes? It Doesn’t Want to Give Up on the Law of Contradiction. Therefore, It, in Order for the Belief That God Does Everything Every Moment to Be Coherent, It Must Be Atomist. Because Then Really This Belief Is Coherent and It’s True.

Occasionalism and the Need for Philosophy Without Nature

There Is Also Today in Recent Philosophy There Is Occasionalism, Where Actually You Can Be an Occasionalist Heretic Like an Epicurean, and You Can Be an Occasionalist Believer Who Attributes the Intention of Everything, the Unity of Everything, to God. But This Works with a Philosophy That Really Has No Nature.

The Moment You Have a Philosophy with Nature, Then to Say There Is No Nature Is Simply to Say a Logical Contradiction. That Is, Either This Is an Explanation or This Isn’t an Explanation, Yes? This Doesn’t Work Together.

And Therefore, Therefore, This Is Inferior Theology. And Therefore the Rambam as If, the Rambam Makes as If a Very Strange Move to Say: You’re Not a Real Mutakallim. And Therefore When I Refute the Kalam, I Refute All of Them, Because Except for the Part of Them That Are Compromisers, Yes? Everyone Always Wants Their Opponent to Be Pure and Not a Compromiser, Because Then It’s Easier for Him to Attack Him.

So the Move Here Is Very Similar to This, Yes. But This Is Not Only, as I’m Saying, This Is Not Only a Rhetorical Move, but Also a Real Philosophical Move. The Rambam Is a Very Coherent Philosopher, and He Sees That His Opponents Too Are Coherent. And as He Wrote at the End of the Tenth Premise, He Really Thinks That the Kalam Is Coherent, He’s Not Sure That It’s Even Possible to Refute It When Starting from Its Own Basic Assumptions.

The Necessity of All Twelve Premises

So the Rambam Says: But No, Don’t Think. “But all that we have premised from their statements is necessary. All the things we said that they say, all the 12 premises, are necessary. And when you nullify one premise, what is the meaning of necessary? When you nullify one of them, the entire intention will be nullified.”

The Entire Intention — That Is the Intention to Prove the Existence of God and the Four Requests Etc. — All of Them Will Be Nullified When We Take Away Even One Premise.

Defense of the Last Premise: Denial of the Senses

Now He Defends the Need for This Last Premise, Which Apparently There Were Also Those Who Denied. How Do I Know There Were Those Who Denied? Because Rav Schwartz, in His Notes at the Beginning of This Premise, Says, Yes, He Wrote an Article: “Who Are the Mutakallimun of the Rambam?” And He Claims That He Doesn’t Know About This. He Claims — One Needs to Look at His Full Article, I Only Read His Note Here — but He Apparently Claims That the Rambam Is Lying, or That He’s Lying or That He Interpreted Incorrectly What He Read in the Books of the Kalam.

Because He Admits That the Kalam Mention All the Examples That the Rambam Quotes Regarding the Skeptical Doubts, Regarding the Deception of the Senses. But He Claims That None of Them Reached from This to a General Principle, a Premise of the Type of the Rambam, He Says That the Senses Are Unreliable, Yes? They Use This, but One Needs to Check What He Mainly Claims. But He Claims That He Doesn’t Know Even One of the Kalam Who Would Sign on to This Statement That the Senses Lie, Yes? Unlike the Other Premises Where He Always Found Someone Who Said Exactly This. But Here I See That the Rambam Already Provided the Cure Before the Blow.

And the Rambam Knew That People Would Say This, Yes? They’ll Say: What? We Don’t Say This, and We Don’t Even Say This Explicitly, and We Don’t Even Admit That This Is Necessary. So the Rambam Says: No. And It Could Be That the Rambam Knew That No One Says This and He Claims That This Is What You Must Say, Yes? I’m Not Sure, This Would Be a More Far-Reaching Argument. I Assume That the Rambam Did Find Them Saying This, but He Understands That There Are Many Who Will Claim That They Don’t Mean It and They’re Not Really Such Radical Skeptics.

And the Rambam Says: No, I’ll Explain to You Why You Must Say This, and Therefore You Fall Because You Must Say This.

The Mechanism of Double Defense: Two Modes of Denying the Senses

And He Says Why: “It is very necessary, for when we perceive with our senses matters that contradict what they assumed, like the examples we mentioned above, they will then say: One should not pay attention to the senses. After it has been demonstrated by proof the matter which they thought that the intellect indicated.”

Every Time We Raise Against Them a Good Difficulty from Reality, They Say: One Should Not Pay Attention to Reality, to the Senses.

Concrete Examples from the Kalam

And He Brings Examples, Yes, from Here I Took That He Means This:

“As their saying about continuous motion” — Yes, Continuous Motion — “that rests entered into it, and when the millstone burst at the time of causes” — Yes, When It Moved, When It Turned, the Millstone, the Mill Broke Apart.

“And in their saying” — And This Is More Important — “and in their saying that the whiteness of this garment has now ceased and this is another whiteness” — Yes, We See, and Here Too I Took What I Prefaced at the Beginning, That the Rambam Calls Here Sensory Perception Things That Are Not Really Sensory Perception in a Pure Sense. When He Says That They See That the Whiteness of the Garment Is Constantly Changing, and This Is Another Whiteness, “and these are things contrary to what is seen” — These Are All Things That Are the Opposite of What We See.

And He Mentions Another Example: “and many things were entailed from the existence of the void, all of them from the denial of perception” — They Didn’t Write Here What He Means. He Certainly Means What He Wrote in the Second, Third Premise, Regarding from the Proofs of the Things That We Today Deny the Explanations. But All the Explanations, All the Prevention of the Vacuum in Nature, Yes, That There Cannot Be Empty, and There Were Many Accepted Arguments That Prove from This That for Example It’s Possible, Yes, All the Laws of Water and Air — That It’s Possible to Push Water, Water Doesn’t Come Out of an Inverted Vessel If There’s No Place to Let It Enter, All Kinds of Such Things. They Claimed That This Proves Empirically That There Is No Void, Yes?

And the Kalam Simply Denies All This. “And the answer to all this will be, that this is something impossible for the sense” — Yes, So the Rambam Says Like This, They Claim: Either This Simply Cannot Be Seen, “in what is possible that they be deceived in it” — Yes, “and in other things, then he will answer about them that this is an error from among the errors of sense”, Yes.

The Two Ready Answers of the Kalam

So the Rambam Says: I See, I Look at What You’re Saying. Every Time Someone Enables You, You — or You, Actually What’s Best — to Say That This Is an Error, Yes? Because to Say That the Sense Really Denies, That’s a Bit Difficult, Except for What We’re Talking About Atoms, So That’s Actually What We’re Saying from the Beginning.

But Usually They Have Two Rules:

1. Either the Senses Are Wrong

2. Or They Miss

So Always When They Have Difficulties from Sense, You Have These Ready Answers. And This Actually Doesn’t Allow Discussing with Them in Empiricism at All, Because Every Time You See Something, He’ll Say: Ah, You’re Wrong. And That’s It.

The Internal Necessity of Sensory Skepticism

And the Rambam Says That This Is Necessary, Because If This Answer Weren’t Open to Them, Then They Wouldn’t Be Able to Believe in Half of Their Basic Physical Assumptions, or All of Them. Because They Always Need This Excuse in Order to Lose Things.

And There Are Some of Them That Really from the Beginning, Yes, This Isn’t Even a Difficulty and an Answer, Yes? Whoever Says Everything Is Composed of Atoms, He from the Beginning Says Reality Is Not What You See. Or Whoever Says That Whiteness Changes All the Time, He Says This from the Beginning.

And There Are Other Difficulties That Are Only True Behind a Difficulty, Like the Matters of the Existence of the Void and Other Things, or the Breaking Apart of the Mill, Which Perhaps Goes a Step. But Still They Need, Must Use This Excuse That the Senses Are Unreliable.

And Therefore Says the Rambam: Don’t Tell Me That One Can Be Mutakallimun Without Denying the Evidence of the Eyes. No, It’s Impossible. Every Mutakallim Must Deny the Evidence of the Eyes.

The Historical Argument: Skepticism as a Sophistic Legacy

And Then Now He Brings an Interesting Historical Argument, Which I Need to Understand What He Wants from This.

“And you already knew” — He Says, You Already Know, Yes? Here He’s Speaking to the Student, Rabbi Joseph, Yes, to Whom He’s Writing the Guide. And We Learned in the Preface, in the Letter of the Book’s Preface a Bit, About the Knowledge That This Rabbi Joseph Possessed. He Already Had Some Scientific Knowledge, and Perhaps Medical Knowledge, That’s How It Sounds to Me Here. And Yes, Mathematical Knowledge. The Rambam There Went Over in Detail the Sciences That He Studied, Which Are Needed as Preparation for the Divine Science, as Written in Chapter 34.

And I Say Like This: “You already know” — Yes, You Already Read a Bit, You Already Know — “that these are all ancient opinions. These opinions are not at all innovations of the Kalam”, Yes? It’s Not That the Kalam Comes from Some Assembly with the Idea of Skepticism. They Are Ancient Opinions at All.

“The Sophists used to boast of them” — Yes? What We Call the Sophist, Yes? The Sophists, They Already in Ancient Greece Used to Boast. Boast He Means: Took for Themselves, Yes? How Do You Say? Took Credit, Yes? Attributed to Themselves the Inventions. “And said that they said from the beginning”, Yes?

It Could Be That Someone Interpreted Here That This, These Sayers Go to the Kalam. I’m Not Sure, I Think the Opposite — That the Sophists Say That They Are the Ones Who Invented This Skepticism.

An Explicit Reference: Galen on the Sophists

And He Cites a Reference, Very Interesting That He Cites Really a Reference: “As Galen mentioned in his book on the natural faculties, about those who will reckon from sense, he tells things that you already knew”, Yes?

So Here There Is Some Real Hint.

End of Chapter 73: The Rambam’s Reference to Galen and Summary of the Premises

Galen’s Book and Its Connection to the Rambam

So We Have the Book, Yes, It’s in Greek, There’s Here a Translation to English, There’s on the Other Side the Greek for Whoever Wants. And This Book Is a Medical Book, Yes, a Book About the Structure of the Soul from a Medical Perspective by Galen (Galen).

And Apparently the Rambam Read This Book Together with the Student, That’s How I Surmise, Because Otherwise Why Does He Tell About This Specific Book? It’s Not as If This Is the Only Book Where One Can Hear About the Opinions of the Sophists. Well, the Rambam Didn’t Know Plato, but Aristotle Himself Has a Book Called Argument Against the Sophist, Yes, Something Like That, Sophistical Refutations in His Logical Books. So This Isn’t the Only Source of Knowledge.

But Apparently the Rambam Read, They Read Together This Book, That’s How I Assume, or That He Knows That He Studied This, or That He Was a Doctor and He Read This. And It Could Be That the Rambam Himself Cites These Books in His Medical Books, So as If This Was Known to Him as Their Medical Studies.

Why Does the Rambam Refer to Ancient Opinions?

And He Says, What We Already Know That These Are Very Old Opinions, What Does He Want from This, Yes? The Rambam Is Not a Historian of Opinions, He Wants from This to Say Something, Yes?

And I think this goes back to his argument in Chapter 71, that Kalam is not a true system, right? Yes, it’s a system that collects from wherever it can the opinions that best suit Islamic polemics. And he says, ah, even your external bow, that the Rambam doesn’t directly address this skepticism issue, even though it is indeed a good argument, so you also stole that from the Greeks.

The Content of Galen’s Book: The Problem of Change and Digestion

And Galen, and this is now, if you look at this book, you really see, I’ll just repeat the context there, the context there is the transformation of matter. That is, he’s actually talking about atomism directly, Galen there, and he explains there why atomism must deny the senses.

The Problem: How Does Bread Become Flesh?

And his example, that is, his topic there is digestion, right? When a person eats something, something very strange happens, right? And already Anaxagoras, the pre-Socratic philosopher, already noticed that this is strange. Why? Because how does it happen that flesh becomes, bread becomes flesh, right? If you eat meat, a Jew eats bread and it becomes bone and flesh and blood. How does this transformation happen? Something very strange, a very good question. How does bread become flesh?

Anaxagoras’s Solution: There Is No Real Change

So there was a wise man named Anaxagoras and he said, he has an answer. Apparently within the bread there are particles of flesh. What appears to us as bread is only because there’s also bread, it’s mixed, so maybe there’s more bread. He had all sorts of, he gave measurements to such things, and he said that within your cheese there are bones, and therefore whoever eats cheese has strong bones, and within bread there is flesh, and therefore it turns out there is no change, right?

This follows the system of Parmenides, which is also the original scientific problem, whether there is change in the world, and if there is no change, then indeed this question is very good, how does bread become flesh. The answer is that there was always flesh, right?

The Implications of Atomism

Right? And basically anyone who is an atomist knows more or less what he believes, right? If theories are a bit more specific than what he says. But in the end you say, nothing happened when you ate, no real transformation occurred. The bread you ate was always flesh, the part, and you simply put it into your place, and then it became your flesh, right? It became human, right?

Not only does it become flesh, if you understand, then this also destroys the distinction between human beings and everything else, yes, they too are human, yes, and there’s also no distinction between living and dead things, right. All these things disappear with the simple principle that there is no change, yes, that there is no change. Yes, because the water I drink must already be human, right. You can’t spin something from nothing. So it must be that within the water there was already a human being, and therefore there is nothing in the world.

Aristotle’s Solution: Potentiality and Actuality

And now Galen when he presents his system says that all this is to deny what we see. Because we see that there is bread and it becomes flesh. We need a theory to explain this, Aristotle has a theory, right?

Aristotle solves all these problems with the one trick of potentiality and actuality. He says, yes, correct, there is within the bread, there is a human being in potentiality, but it’s not in actuality, and therefore there’s no problem, and eating transforms the potential of the bread to be human into actuality. Okay?

So there really is change, there is substantial, substantial change, right? The essence of what it is to be the thing becomes something else. It was really flesh, bread, and now it’s really flesh, and this is made possible by the general theory of change, which is the emergence from potentiality and actuality, and potentiality and actuality, and matter and form, all these things. This is the basic Aristotelian argument.

Galen’s Position: Denying the Senses Is Mockery

And Galen simply quotes this, and when he quotes it he says, look, right? This is basically his argument, he says, if you, I’m now going to explain to you digestion, yes, to explain to you human capability, the power of the soul, which is digestion, growth, all the basic things of a human being.

He says, if someone says this is all nonsense, because it can’t be, then I tell him, you’re denying what the eyes see. And Galen writes there, if I had to write a book on epistemology, to explain to you why you should believe what the eyes see, then I would stop writing my medical book and I would start writing another book, and I don’t have time for that now, so I’m not getting into it.

But he sort of looks at this mockingly, and that’s how most of the ancient philosophers, like except for these skeptics, these doubters, treated such arguments more or less mockingly, and the Rambam among them.

The Rambam’s Central Point

And he only tells us from Galen that basically in order to believe in atomism, which means, yes, every atomist also feels the change, right? Yes, yes, there is no change, there is only, yes, for everyone there is no change, there are only new things every moment, for Epicurus there are only the same things all the time, but they, how do you say, join in other populations, but there is no real change and so on, and these are all things that deny the senses.

Sense Perception Also Includes Process Evidence

Here again I see that he also calls things, process evidence, yes, sense, yes, we didn’t see the bread turning into flesh, we saw a person eating bread and afterwards it’s flesh, but this is called sense perception, as if we did see, according to this the motion of the heavens, yes, as I thought there.

Why Does the Rambam Tell Us This?

And he notes here a reference, and when I heard, there’s still a question why he tells us this, but apparently this is the reason, and perhaps the Rambam means, I also don’t have time now, yes, as Galen said, I don’t have time now to refute all this skepticism, look at Plato who already refuted it.

Like, this isn’t some new argument that was born now with Kalam, that now we need to deal with it. What was true for the response to atomism, from the days of Plato is still true now, therefore I’m exempt from entering into it.

Conclusion of Chapter 73 and Transition to the Following Chapters

And thus far are the Rambam’s words on this premise. And now he concludes the chapter and says:

After I have presented these premises, I will begin to convey their dominions, sorry, I will begin to explain their ways in these four inquiries, yes, four inquiries that we seek to prove, the creation of the world and the existence of God and His being one and His being incorporeal.

So everything is built on premises, so now we already know the premises, so in the following chapters he will go over the Kalam’s proofs for the existence of God and for the creation of the world.

The Unexpected Thing: Refutation of Proofs for God’s Existence

And the Rambam in the following chapters does the most unexpected thing for any good Jewish book, for any religious book, which is engaging in refuting proofs for the existence of God, refuting proofs for the creation of the world. He counts them, he doesn’t just refute, he also recounts them and also refutes them briefly.

This is all in preparation to explain to us that we need Aristotelian physics and the true proofs for the existence of God that only work with Aristotelian physics.

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Thus far Chapter 73. This was lesson… number what? Well, I think it’s permitted to eat meat now, no? Now we can eat meat, but it will become flesh or something. Certainly we can eat meat.

This was lesson… the 19th on this chapter. 19 lessons. Okay? Thus far. Very nice, thank you very much.