12733
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Because of the definitions of cause, effect and power, cause and effect have the same power [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (De arcanus motus [1676], 203), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6
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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.
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12735
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Everything has a fixed power, as required by God, and by the possibility of reasoning [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (De aequopollentia causae et effectus [1679], A6.4.1964), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6
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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'.
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12967
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I use the word 'entelechy' for a power, to include endeavour, as well as mere aptitude [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.22)
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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.
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12710
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As well as extension, bodies contain powers [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (De Natura Corporis [1678], A6.4.1980), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3
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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.
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13079
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A substance contains the laws of its operations, and its actions come from its own depth [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1688.01.4/14)
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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.
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12708
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The soul is not a substance but a substantial form, the first active faculty [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Fardella [1690], A6.4.1670), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 2
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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.
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12723
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The most primitive thing in substances is force, which leads to their actions and dispositions [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Jacques Lenfant [1693], 1693.11.25), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
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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.
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12749
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Derivate forces are in phenomena, but primitive forces are in the internal strivings of substances [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1705.01), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 8
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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.
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12714
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The substantial form is the principle of action or the primitive force of acting [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
The substantial form is the principle of action or the primitive force of acting.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (De Mundo Praesenti [1686], A6.4.1507-8), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3
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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.
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13169
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I call Aristotle's entelechies 'primitive forces', which originate activity [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (New system of communication of substances [1695], p.139)
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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.
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5056
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Material or immaterial substances cannot be conceived without their essential activity [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], Pref)
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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.
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12778
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There is active and passive power in the substantial chain and in the essence of a composite [Leibniz]
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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.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29)
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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.
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17954
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Essence is a thing's necessities, but what about its possibilities (which may not be realised)? [Vetter]
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Full Idea:
Essence is, as it were, necessity rooted in things, ...but how about possibility rooted in things? ...Having the potential to Φ, unlike being essentially Φ, does not entail being actually Φ.
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From:
Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §2)
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A reaction:
To me this invites the question 'what is it about the entity which endows it with its rooted possibilities?' A thing has possibilities because it has a certain nature (at a given time).
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12969
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The active powers which are not essential to the substance are the 'real qualities' [Leibniz]
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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'.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.23)
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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?
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19021
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I have an 'iterated ability' to learn the violin - that is, the ability to acquire that ability [Vetter]
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Full Idea:
I do not have the ability to play the violin. Nor does my desk. Unlike my desk, however, I possess the ability to learn to play the violin - the ability, that is, to acquire the ability to play the violin. I have an 'iterated ability' to play the violin.
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From:
Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.6)
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A reaction:
An important idea, though the examples are more likely to come from human behaviour than from the non-human physical world.
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19016
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We should think of dispositions as 'to do' something, not as 'to do something, if ....' [Vetter]
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Full Idea:
We should think in terms of dispositions in terms of the manifestation alone - not as a disposition to ...if..., but as a disposition to ..., full stop.
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From:
Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.7)
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A reaction:
This way of individuating dispositions seems plausible. Some dispositions only have one trigger, but others have many. All sorts of things are inclined to trigger a human smile, but we are just disposed to smile. Some people smile at disasters.
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