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Alain Cohen's avatar

Muy bueno Jackie! Está tan bueno que hay partes que hay que leer de vuelta, y sin leer las notas (refs), no se puede entender. It’s deep! Thank you!

Jeed's avatar
Jun 26Edited

what if the red cow’s signature isn’t distance — it’s contradiction? The same ash purifies the impure and defiles the pure, at once. That isn’t one value far down Solomon’s line; it’s two opposite values at a single point, and a spectrum has no coordinate for it. So rekhoka doesn’t measure how far the thing sits from us — it names the mind’s inability to integrate its paradox.

Rabbi Jack Cohen's avatar

Worth adding as well that one need not be gifted to plug numbers into a formula. That’s not the hard part and that part I could do.

Do we know eachother that I so often rub you the wrong way?

Rabbi Jack Cohen's avatar

I don’t love your consistent ad hominem comments but I do love your way of integrating paradox into the notion of “distance.” Thanks for sharing!

David Tobolowsky MD's avatar

Since God (whatever that is) created the laws of science, to get closer to God we must study science.

Rabbi Jack Cohen's avatar

As codified into law by the Rambam (Mishneh Torah, Foundations of Torah 2:2):

What is the path [to attain] love and fear of Him? When a person contemplates His wondrous and great deeds and creations and appreciates His infinite wisdom that surpasses all comparison, he will immediately love, praise, and glorify [Him], yearning with tremendous desire to know [God's] great name, as David stated: "My soul thirsts for the Lord, for the living God" [Psalms 42:3].

When he [continues] to reflect on these same matters, he will immediately recoil in awe and fear, appreciating how he is a tiny, lowly, and dark creature, standing with his flimsy, limited, wisdom before He who is of perfect knowledge, as David stated: "When I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers... [I wonder] what is man that You should recall Him" [Psalms 8:4-5].

Based on these concepts, I will explain important principles regarding the deeds of the Master of the worlds to provide a foothold for a person of understanding to [develop] love for God, as our Sages said regarding love: "In this manner, you will recognize He who spoke and [thus,] brought the world into being."

Philosopher Poet's avatar

There is no thing as ‘objective reality’.

Philosopher Poet's avatar

Well said

Rabbi Jack Cohen's avatar

That sounds like an objective statement of fact for someone who doesn’t believe in objective fact.

Philosopher Poet's avatar

We will just have to disagree then

Rabbi Jack Cohen's avatar

In a sense, it’s just our two perspectives seeing reality...differently.

Philosopher Poet's avatar

Not at all. It’s a statement of fact. Reality is a function of perspective. If you’d like a more detailed explanation - read Nietzsche

Rabbi Jack Cohen's avatar

My understanding is that Nietzsche’s primary issues are epistemological, and his opinion on the existence of an objective reality is a subject of academic debate. Brian Leiter for example from University of Chicago distinguishes Nietzsche’s perspectivism from relativism which denies objective reality. He speaks about how we “interpret the world” differently. I haven’t found any place where he states as objectively as you have that “there is no objective reality.”

Philosopher Poet's avatar

In his most basic comment he says : there is only a perspective seeing…only a perspective knowing. Without looking it up I believe that is the quote.

Rabbi Jack Cohen's avatar

The quote is accurate, but you are de facto reading it as a metaphysical statement, which given Nietzsche’s fundamental aversion to metaphysical statements, it cannot be.