Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM, Cheryl Misak and Gottfried Leibniz

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7 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 1. Perception

19419	Not all of perception is accompanied by consciousness [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: I do not think that the Cartesians have ever proved or can prove that every perception is accompanied by consciousness.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.195)
	A reaction: This idea is very important in Leibniz, because non-conscious or barely conscious thoughts and perceptions explain a huge amount about behaviour, reality and morality.

19353	'Perception' is basic internal representation, and 'apperception' is reflective knowledge of perception [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: We distinguish between 'perception', the internal state of the monad representing external things, and 'apperception', which is consciousness, or the reflective knowledge of this internal state, not given to all souls, nor at all times to a given soul.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principles of Nature and Grace based on Reason [1714], §4)
	A reaction: The word 'apperception' is standard in Kant. I find it surprising that modern analytic philosophers don't seem to use it when they write about perception. It strikes me as useful, but maybe specialists have a reason for avoiding it.

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / d. Secondary qualities

19430	We know objects by perceptions, but their qualities don't reveal what it is we are perceiving [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: We use the external senses ...to make us know their particular objects ...but they do not make us know what those sensible qualities are ...whether red is small revolving globules causing light, heat a whirling of dust, or sound is waves in air.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Queen Charlotte [1702], 1702)
	A reaction: These seems to be exactly the concept of secondary qualities which Locke was promoting. They are unreliable information about the objects we perceive. Primary qualities are reliable information. I like that distinction.

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / e. Primary/secondary critique

12721	Light, heat and colour are apparent qualities, and so are motion, figure and extension [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Concerning bodies I can demonstrate that not merely light, heat, color, and similar qualities are apparent but also motion, figure, and extension.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (De modo distinguendi phaenomena [1685], A6.4.1504), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
	A reaction: Leibniz is not consistent on this. Here he is flirting with idealism, but he often backs away from that. In Discourse §12 he makes secondary qualities certainly subjective, and primary qualities possibly so. He admits the primaries contain eternal truths.

19358	Colour and pain must express the nature of their stimuli, without exact resemblance [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Ideas such as those of colour and pain are not arbitrary. ...That is not God's way ...I would say there is a resemblance of a kind, not a perfect one, but a resemblance in which one thing expresses another through some orderly relationship between them.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.08)
	A reaction: The main point of Locke's idea of 'secondary' qualities is that (unlike the 'primary' ones) they bear no resemblance to their stimuli. It's not much of an argument from Leibniz, to say that is not God's way, but he has a vast system to support his claim.

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 3. Representation

12948	A pain doesn't resemble the movement of a pin, but it resembles the bodily movement pins cause [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: It is true that pain does not resemble the movement of a pin; but it might thoroughly resemble the motions which the pin causes in our body, and it might resemble them in the soul; and I have not the least doubt that it does.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.08)
	A reaction: He may not have the least doubt, but the rest of us do, I should think. Try as I will, I cannot see any resemblance between pain and a motion. What feeling does a pendulum resemble?

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 6. Inference in Perception

13005	Truth arises among sensations from grounding reasons and from regularities [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The truth of sensible things is established by the links amongst them; these depend upon intellectual truths, grounded in reason, and upon observations of regularities among sensible things themselves, even when the reasons are not apparent.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 4.11)
	A reaction: It's not clear why regularities would establish truths, given that most hallucinations have regularities in them. I'm thinking that Leibniz is not sufficiently rationalist here, and that it is the rational coherence of experience which validates it.