Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Issues of Pragmaticism', 'Phil of Mathematics: why nothing works' and 'works'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


3 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 4. Later European Philosophy / b. Seventeenth century philosophy
Leibniz aims to give coherent rational support for empiricism [Leibniz, by Perkins]
     Full Idea: Leibniz's philosophy largely serves to justify and enable a coherent empirical account of the world.
     From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 4.I
     A reaction: A nice counter to the simplistic idea of Locke as empiricist and Leibniz as rationalist. Leibniz is explicit that science needs a separate 'metaphysics' to underpin it. Perkins says Locke constructs experience, and Leibniz analyses it.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 1. Nature of Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a science of the intelligible nature of being [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: For Leibniz, metaphysics is above all a science of the intelligible nature of being.
     From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 4.3.1
     A reaction: [Their footnote gives two quotes in support] I could take this as my motto. We are not studying the 'nature of being', because we can't. We are studying what is 'intelligible' about it; my thesis is that the need for intelligibility imposes an order.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 4. Metaphysics as Science
Leibniz tried to combine mechanistic physics with scholastic metaphysics [Leibniz, by Pasnau]
     Full Idea: Leibniz made a sustained attempt to combine a mechanistic physics with something like a scholastic metaphysics.
     From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.1
     A reaction: This seems to me clear enough, and a lot of current philosophers seem to underestimate how Aristotelian Leibniz was.