Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, Gottfried Leibniz and Steven Pinker

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30 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations

10419	If relations can be reduced to, or supervene on, monadic properties of relata, they are not real [Leibniz, by Swoyer]
	Full Idea: Leibniz argued that relations could be reduced to monadic properties and so were dispensable, and some still agree, saying relations supervene on monadic properties of the relata, and are not actually real.
	From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Chris Swoyer - Properties 7.4
	A reaction: At the very least a background of space and/or time seem required, in addition to any properties the relata may have. y only becomes 'to the left of x' when x appears to its right, so the relation doesn't seem to be intrinsic to y.

13078	Relations aren't in any monad, so they are distributed, so they are not real [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The relations which connect two monads are not in either the one or the other, but equally in both at once; and therefore properly speaking, in neither. I do not think you would wish to posit an accident which would inhere simultaneously in two subjects.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], G II:517), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 2.4.3
	A reaction: Where Russell affirms relations as universals, and scholastics make them properties of individuals, Leibniz denies their reality entirely. It seems obvious that once the objects and properties are there, the relations come for free.

19383	A man's distant wife dying is a real change in him [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: No one can become a widower in India because of the death of his wife in Europe unless a real change occurs in him.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], GP ii 240), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Nominalist'
	A reaction: This is Leibniz heroically denying so-called 'Cambridge Change'. It is hard to see how a widower is changed if he has not yet heard the bad news. But his situation in life has changed. Compare eudaimonia, which you can lose without realising it.

21346	The ratio between two lines can't be a feature of one, and cannot be in both [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: If the ratio of two lines L and M is conceived as abstracted from them both, without considering which is the subject and which the object, which will then be the subject? We cannot say both, for then we should have an accident in two subjects.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Samuel Clarke [1716], 5th Paper, §47), quoted by John Heil - Relations 'External'
	A reaction: [compressed] Leibniz is rejecting external relations as having any status in ontology. It looks like a mistake (originating in Aristotle) to try to shoehorn the ontology of relations into the substance-properties framework.

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 1. Powers

12733	Because of the definitions of cause, effect and power, cause and effect have the same power [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The primary mechanical axiom is that the whole cause and the entire effect have the same power [potentia]. ..This depends on the definition of cause, effect and power.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (De arcanus motus [1676], 203), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6
	A reaction: This is a useful reminder that if one is going to build a metaphysics on powers (which I intend to do), then the conservation laws in physics are highly relevant.

12735	Everything has a fixed power, as required by God, and by the possibility of reasoning [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: It follows from the nature of God that there is a fixed power of a definite magnitude [non vagam] in anything whatsoever, otherwise there would be no reasonings about those things.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (De aequopollentia causae et effectus [1679], A6.4.1964), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6
	A reaction: This is double-edged. On the one hand there is the grand claim that the principle derives from divine nature, but on the other it derives from our capacity to reason and explain. No one doubts that powers are 'fixed'.

12711	The immediate cause of movements is more real [than geometry] [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The force or proximate cause of these changes [of position] is something more real, and there is sufficient basis to attribute it to one body more than to another.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §18), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3
	A reaction: The force is said to be 'more real' than geometry. Leibniz seems to have embraced fairly physical powers in the period 1678-1698, and then seen them as more and more like spirits.

12959	We discern active power from our minds, so mind must be involved in all active powers [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The clearest idea of active power comes to us from the mind. So active power occurs only in things which are analogous to minds, that is, in entelechies; for strictly matter exhibits only passive power.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21)
	A reaction: If this is meant to be a precise argument, then 'so' and 'only' are blatantly unjustified. I guess that if it isn't analogous to a mind then he won't allow it to be a TRUE active power! I say mind arises from the entelechies of the physical brain.

12967	I use the word 'entelechy' for a power, to include endeavour, as well as mere aptitude [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: If 'power' is the source of action, it means more than aptitude or ability. It also includes endeavour. It is in order to express this sense that I appropriate the term 'entelechy' to stand for power.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.22)
	A reaction: An 'entelechy' is, roughly, an instantiated thing, but I like what Leibniz is fishing for here - that we will never understand the world if we think of it as passive.

13179	A complete monad is a substance with primitive active and passive power [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: What I take to be the indivisible or complete monad is the substance endowed with primitive power, active and passive, like the 'I' or something similar.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1703.06.20)
	A reaction: I love powers, so I really like this quotation. By this date even Garber thinks that he has more or less arrived at his mature view of monads. I used to think monads were mad, but I now think he is closing in on the right answer - sort of.

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic

12710	As well as extension, bodies contain powers [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Over and above what can be deduced from extension, we must add and recognise in bodies certain notions or forms that are immaterial, so to speak, or independent of extension, which you can call powers [potentia], by which speed is adjusted to magnitude.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (De Natura Corporis [1678], A6.4.1980), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3
	A reaction: He boldly asserts that the powers are 'immaterial', but is then forced to qualify it (as he often does) with 'so to speak'. The notion that bodies just have extension (occupy space) comes from Descartes, and is firmly opposed by Leibniz.

13079	A substance contains the laws of its operations, and its actions come from its own depth [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Each indivisible substance contains in its nature the law by which the series of its operations continues, and all that has happened and will happen to it. All its actions come from its own depths, except for dependence on God.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1688.01.4/14)
	A reaction: I take the combination of 'laws' and 'forces', which Leibniz attributes to Aristotelian essences, to be his distinctive contribution towards giving us an Aristotelian metaphysic which is suitable for modern science.

12708	The soul is not a substance but a substantial form, the first active faculty [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The soul, properly and accurately speaking, is not a substance, but a substantial form, or the primitive form existing in substances, the first act, the first active faculty.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Fardella [1690], A6.4.1670), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 2
	A reaction: In all of Leibniz's many gropings towards what is at the heart of a unified object, I pounce on the phrase "the first active faculty" as the one that suits me. I take that to be a 'power'. It has two characteristics - it is active, and it is basic.

12723	The most primitive thing in substances is force, which leads to their actions and dispositions [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Since everything that one conceives in substances reduces to their actions and passions and to the dispositions that they have for this effect, I don't see how one can find there anything more primitive than the principle of all of this, which is force.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Jacques Lenfant [1693], 1693.11.25), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
	A reaction: This is an attempt to connect Aristotelian essentialism with the notion of force in the new physics, and strikes me as an improvement on the original, and as good a basis for metaphysics as any I have heard of.

12965	All occurrence in the depth of a substance is spontaneous 'action' [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Anything which occurs in what is strictly a substance must be a case of 'action' in the metaphysically rigorous sense of something which occurs in the substance spontaneously, arising out of its own depths.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21)
	A reaction: I love this idea, which fits in with scientific essentialism. The question is whether Leibniz has idenified the end point of all explanations. Cutting edge physics is trying to give further explanations for what seemed basic, such as mass and gravity.

12999	Substances are primary powers; their ways of being are the derivative powers [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Primary powers are what make up the substances themselves; derivative powers, or 'faculties' if you like, are merely 'ways of being' - and they must be derived from substances.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 4.03)
	A reaction: We might talk of 'deep' and 'surface' properties, or maybe 'powers' and 'qualities' is better. 'Primary' and 'derivative' only gives the logical relationship, but not the causal relationship.

12749	Derivate forces are in phenomena, but primitive forces are in the internal strivings of substances [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: I relegate derivative forces to the phenomena, but I think that it is clear that primitive forces can be nothing other than the internal strivings of simple substances.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1705.01), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 8
	A reaction: I like 'internal strivings', which sounds to me like the Will to Power (Idea 7140). There seems to be an epistemological challenge in trying to disentangle the derivative forces from the primitive ones.

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 4. Powers as Essence

13095	Essence is primitive force, or a law of change [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The essence of substances consists in the primitive force of action, or the law of the sequence of changes.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Foucher [1675], 1676)
	A reaction: [a 1676 note on Foucher's reply] It take these to be the two key distinctive Leibnizian contributions to the sort of metaphysic that is needed by modern science. Nature works with intrinsic essences, which are forces determining action.

12714	The substantial form is the principle of action or the primitive force of acting [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The substantial form is the principle of action or the primitive force of acting.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (De Mundo Praesenti [1686], A6.4.1507-8), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3
	A reaction: The clearest statement of the modification of Aristotle's hylomorphism which Leibniz preferred in his middle period, and which strikes me as an improvement, and about right. Shame that monads got too much of a grip on him, but he was trying to dig deeper.

12713	Forms have sensation and appetite, the latter being the ability to act on other bodies [Leibniz, by Garber]
	Full Idea: Leibniz's form contains both sensation and appetite, and he seems to associate appetite with the ability a body has to act on another.
	From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3
	A reaction: It strikes me (you may be surprised to hear) that this concept is not unlike Nietzsche's all-mastering 'will to power'. I offer Idea 7140 in evidence.

13087	The essence of a thing is its real possibilities [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
	Full Idea: In Leibniz's view, the essence of a thing is fundamentally the real possibilities of that thing.
	From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 4.3.3
	A reaction: Note that the essences are individual. On the whole I would prefer Leibniz in his own words, but this is too good to lose (..but see Idea 12981). It is the aspect of Leibniz that fits perfectly with modern scientific essentialism.

13168	My formal unifying atoms are substantial forms, which are forces like appetites [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: To find real entities I had recourse to a unified formal atom. Hence I rehabilitated the substantial forms in a way to render them intelligible. I found that their nature consists in force, from which follows something analogous to sensation and appetite.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New system of communication of substances [1695], p.139)
	A reaction: [several lines are here compressed] This passage sums up the key to Leibniz's essentialism, which I take to be a connection between Aristotelian form and the physicists' notion of force. This gives us a modern version of Aristotelianism for science.

13169	I call Aristotle's entelechies 'primitive forces', which originate activity [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Forms establish the true general principles of nature. Aristotle calls them 'first entelechies'; I call them, perhaps more intelligibly, 'primitive forces', which contain not only act or the completion of possibility, but also an original activity.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New system of communication of substances [1695], p.139)
	A reaction: As in Idea 13168, I take Leibniz to be unifying Aristotle with modern science, and offering an active view of nature in tune with modern scientific essentialism. Laws arise from primitive force, and are not imposed from without.

5056	Material or immaterial substances cannot be conceived without their essential activity [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: I maintain that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], Pref)
	A reaction: Thus there could be no 'tabula rasa', because that would be an inactive mental substance. This strikes me as a nice question for modern physicists. Do they regard movement as essential, or an addition to bare particles? I'm with Leibniz. Essentialism.

12722	Thought terminates in force, rather than extension [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: I believe that our thought is completed and terminated more in the notion of the dynamic [i.e. force] than in that of extension.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], G II 170), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
	A reaction: Presenting this as the place where 'our thought' is 'terminated' seems to place it as mainly having a role in explanation, rather than in speculative metaphysics.

12778	There is active and passive power in the substantial chain and in the essence of a composite [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: I do not say there is a chain midway between matter and form, but that the substantial form and primary matter of the composite, in the Scholastic sense (the primitive power, active and passive) are in the chain, and in the essence of the composite.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29)
	A reaction: Note that this implies an essence of primitive power, and not just a collection of all properties. This is the clearest account in these letters of the nature of the 'substantial chain' he has added to his monads.

12783	Primitive force is what gives a composite its reality [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The first entelechy of a composite is a constitutive part of the composite substance, namely its primitive force.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29)
	A reaction: For me, Leibniz's most interesting proposal is to characterise Aristotelian 'form' as an active thing, which offers an intrinsic account of movement, and a bottom level for explanations. There always remains the inexplicable. Why anything? Why this?

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 5. Powers and Properties

12969	The active powers which are not essential to the substance are the 'real qualities' [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Powers which are not essential to substance, and which include not merely an aptitude but also a certain endeavour, are exactly what are or should be meant by 'real qualities'.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.23)
	A reaction: An important part of Leibniz's account. There are thus essential powers, in the 'depth' of the substance, and more peripheral powers, which also initiate action, and give rise to the qualities. The second must derive from the first?

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 6. Dispositions / b. Dispositions and powers

12941	There cannot be power without action; the power is a disposition to act [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Where will one ever find in the world a faculty consisting in sheer power without performing an act? There is always a particular disposition to action, and towards one action rather than another.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.01)
	A reaction: This is muddled. Leibniz defends powers in the possibilities of things, but he must then accept that some possibilities may never be realised, as with two complex chemicals which never ever come into contact with one another.

8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 4. Concept Nominalism

19382	Abstracta are abbreviated ways of talking; there are just substances, and truths about them [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: I consider abstracta not as real things but as abbreviated ways of talking ...and to that extent I am a nominalist, at least provisionally ...It suffices to posit only substances as real things, and, to assert truths about these.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (On the Reality of Accidents [1688]), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz
	A reaction: I am a modern nominalist, in my hostility to a serious ontological commitment to abstracta. You get into trouble, though, if you say there are only objects or substances. Physics says reality may all be 'fields', or something.... 'Truths' is good.