Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Through the Looking Glass', 'works' and 'Philosophical Investigations'

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3 ideas

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 2. Phenomenalism
Are sense-data the material of which the universe is made? [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: Are sense-data the material of which the universe is made?
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations [1952], §401)
     A reaction: Presumably the question is meant to be absurd, and to a realist it is. You can't serious think that a filing cabinet is made of sensations.
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / a. Idealism
Leibniz said dualism of mind and body is illusion, and there is only mind [Leibniz, by Martin/Barresi]
     Full Idea: Leibniz held that dualism of mind and body is an illusion and that both are really the same thing, and that this thing is mind.
     From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.22
     A reaction: I am puzzled by this, as Leibniz is famous for the view that mind and body are parallel. See idea 5038, and also 2109 and 2596. Monads are, of course, entirely mental, and are the building blocks of reality. Clearly I (and you) must read more Leibniz.
Leibniz is an idealist insofar as the basic components of his universe are all mental [Leibniz, by Jolley]
     Full Idea: To say that Leibniz is an idealist is to say that simple substances, the basic building-blocks of the universe, are all mental or at least quasi-mental in nature
     From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.3
     A reaction: This is a bit different from the Berkelian type of idealism, which says that reality consists entirely of events within thinking minds. Is a monad the thinker or the thought?