display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 12732 | Some necessary truths are brute, and others derive from final causes [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is a difference between truths whose necessity is brute and geometric and those truths which have their source in fitness and final causes. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715.06.22/G III 645), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6 | |
| A reaction: The second one is a necessity deriving from God's wisdom. Strictly it could have been otherwise, unlike 'geometrical' necessity, which is utterly fixed. |
| 14189 | 'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: A 'modal realist' believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the 'actualist' believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The 'ersatzist' is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: My view is something like that modal realism is wrong, and actualism is right, and possible worlds (if they really are that useful) are convenient abstract fictions, constructed (if we have any sense) out of the real possibilities in the actual world. |