display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 21253 | Descartes needs to demonstrate how other people can attain his clear and distinct conceptions [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is not sufficient for Descartes to claim that he perceives something in himself clearly and distinctly, for this is to not complete the demonstration, unless he shows the method through which others can attain the same experience. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], App X) | |
| A reaction: For the simplest rational insight this seems a rather tough requirement. If you say A>B, and B>C, so A>C, then once you have grasped the concept of 'greater than' I'm not sure there is a further possible demonstration. |
| 12933 | Arithmetic and geometry are implicitly innate, awaiting revelation [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I would name the propositions of arithmetic and geometry as innate. ...The actual knowledge of them is not innate. What is innate is what might be called the implicit knowledge of them, as the veins of marble outline a shape for the sculptor. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: This seems to walk straight into the empiricist guns. The marble example shows the problem, because the 'veins' will hardly outline David in the block. Locke's challenge is to show that merely 'implicit' ideas have demonstrable reality. |
| 12991 | Children learn language fast, with little instruction and few definitions [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I have sometimes been amazed that children can learn languages so early, ...considering how little trouble is taken to instruct children in their native tongue, and how little thought adults give to getting sharp definitions. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 3.10) | |
| A reaction: A striking anticipation of the key observation on which Chomsky built his theories, from a philosopher who was equally concerned to defend innate ideas and innate knowledge. |
| 12929 | All of our thoughts come from within the soul, and not from the senses [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I always accepted the innate idea of God, but my new system says all the thoughts and actions of the soul come from its own depths and could not be given to it by the senses. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to adjudicate on this one. The counterexamples would be associations. I see a face in the crowd and think of my friend. But Leibniz could be right even about that. Who cares? Externalism is designed to bypass this problem. |
| 12940 | What is left of the 'blank page' if you remove the ideas? [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Those who hold forth about the 'blank page' cannot say what is left of it once the ideas have been taken away. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.01) | |
| A reaction: This is a decisive criticism of the total tabula rasa idea, but empiricists responded by developing associationism - that what remains is principles of association for incoming experience. Brain mechanisms, we might say. |