display all the ideas for this combination of texts
10 ideas
| 12959 | We discern active power from our minds, so mind must be involved in all active powers [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The clearest idea of active power comes to us from the mind. So active power occurs only in things which are analogous to minds, that is, in entelechies; for strictly matter exhibits only passive power. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21) | |
| A reaction: If this is meant to be a precise argument, then 'so' and 'only' are blatantly unjustified. I guess that if it isn't analogous to a mind then he won't allow it to be a TRUE active power! I say mind arises from the entelechies of the physical brain. |
| 12967 | I use the word 'entelechy' for a power, to include endeavour, as well as mere aptitude [Leibniz] |
| 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. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.22) | |
| 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. |
| 12965 | All occurrence in the depth of a substance is spontaneous 'action' [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Anything which occurs in what is strictly a substance must be a case of 'action' in the metaphysically rigorous sense of something which occurs in the substance spontaneously, arising out of its own depths. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21) | |
| A reaction: I love this idea, which fits in with scientific essentialism. The question is whether Leibniz has idenified the end point of all explanations. Cutting edge physics is trying to give further explanations for what seemed basic, such as mass and gravity. |
| 12999 | Substances are primary powers; their ways of being are the derivative powers [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Primary powers are what make up the substances themselves; derivative powers, or 'faculties' if you like, are merely 'ways of being' - and they must be derived from substances. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 4.03) | |
| A reaction: We might talk of 'deep' and 'surface' properties, or maybe 'powers' and 'qualities' is better. 'Primary' and 'derivative' only gives the logical relationship, but not the causal relationship. |
| 5056 | Material or immaterial substances cannot be conceived without their essential activity [Leibniz] |
| 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. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], Pref) | |
| 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. |
| 12969 | The active powers which are not essential to the substance are the 'real qualities' [Leibniz] |
| 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'. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.23) | |
| 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? |
| 18400 | Properties are not powers - they just have powers [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Properties are not powers. But properties have powers. They bestow powers. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Truth and Truthmakers [2004], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the wrong way round. In this view, powers become extremely vague things, ranging from the fine-grained to the hugely broad. It seems to me that powers are precise and real, but properties are the vague unhelpful things. |
| 12941 | There cannot be power without action; the power is a disposition to act [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Where will one ever find in the world a faculty consisting in sheer power without performing an act? There is always a particular disposition to action, and towards one action rather than another. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.01) | |
| A reaction: This is muddled. Leibniz defends powers in the possibilities of things, but he must then accept that some possibilities may never be realised, as with two complex chemicals which never ever come into contact with one another. |
| 18397 | Powers must result in some non-powers, or there would only be potential without result [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Powers must surely issue in manifestations that are something more than just powers. A world where potency never issued in act, but only in more potency, would be one where one travelled without ever having the possibility of arriving. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Truth and Truthmakers [2004], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: Tricky. The picture I favour is that the distinction between powers and categorical properties is a misunderstanding. What is fundamental is active and powerful categoricals. |
| 18399 | How does the power of gravity know the distance it acts over? [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: If masses are powers, the forces generated between two particulars have to vary inversely with the square of their distance apart. Have not the masses got to 'know' at what distance they are from each other, to exert the right amount of force? | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Truth and Truthmakers [2004], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a good warning against a simplistic account of powers doing all the work, but I suspect that more sophisticated physics would offer the fan of powers a solution here. The power is to 'spread' the force around. |