99 ideas
| 19359 | 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. |
| 13086 | 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. |
| 16710 | 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. |
| 16897 | Reason is the faculty for grasping apriori necessary truths [Leibniz, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz actually characterises reason as the faculty for apprehending priori, necessary truths. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Apriority (with ps) 2 | |
| A reaction: No wonder it is called the Age of Reason when the claims are this grandiose. |
| 3346 | For Leibniz rationality is based on non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason [Leibniz, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz distinguished two fundamental principles of rationality - the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.18 |
| 3347 | Leibniz said the principle of sufficient reason is synthetic a priori, since its denial is not illogical [Leibniz, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz assigns synthetic a priori status to the principle of sufficient reason, readily conceding that one can deny it without fear of inconsistency. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.18 |
| 8627 | Leibniz is inclined to regard all truths as provable [Leibniz, by Frege] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz has an inclination to regard all truths as provable. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) §15 | |
| A reaction: Leibniz sounds like the epitome of Enlightenment optimism about the powers of reason. Could God prove every truth? It's a nice thought. |
| 9147 | Number cannot be defined as addition of ones, since that needs the number; it is a single act of abstraction [Fine,K on Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's talk of the addition of ones cannot define number, since it cannot be specified how often they are added without using the number itself. Number must be an organic unity of ones, achieved by a single act of abstraction. | |
| From: comment on Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Kit Fine - Cantorian Abstraction: Recon. and Defence §1 | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether 'abstraction' is the right word for this part of the process. It seems more like a 'gestalt'. The first point is clearly right, that it is the wrong way round if you try to define number by means of addition. |
| 19375 | The continuum is not divided like sand, but folded like paper [Leibniz, by Arthur,R] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz said the division of the continuum should not be conceived 'to be like the division of sand into grains, but like that of a tunic or a sheet of paper into folds'. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], A VI iii 555) by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz | |
| A reaction: This from the man who invented calculus. This thought might apply well to the modern physicist's concept of a 'field'. |
| 18080 | A tangent is a line connecting two points on a curve that are infinitely close together [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: We have only to keep in mind that to find a tangent means to draw a line that connects two points of a curve at an infinitely small distance. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]), quoted by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 10.1 | |
| A reaction: [The quote can be tracked through Kitcher's footnote] |
| 18081 | Nature uses the infinite everywhere [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Nature uses the infinite in everything it does. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]), quoted by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 10.1 | |
| A reaction: [The quote can be tracked through Kitcher's footnote] He seems to have had in mind the infinitely small. |
| 7565 | Leibniz proposes monads, since there must be basic things, which are immaterial in order to have unity [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz believes in monads because it would be contrary to reason or divine wisdom if everything was compounds, down to infinity; there must be ultimate unified building-blocks; they cannot be material, for material things lack genuine unity. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: It is hard to discern the basis for the claim that only immaterial things can have unity. The Greeks proposed atoms, and we have no reason to think that electrons lack unity. |
| 10419 | If relations can be reduced to, or supervene on, monadic properties of relata, they are not real [Leibniz, by Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz argued that relations could be reduced to monadic properties and so were dispensable, and some still agree, saying relations supervene on monadic properties of the relata, and are not actually real. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Chris Swoyer - Properties 7.4 | |
| A reaction: At the very least a background of space and/or time seem required, in addition to any properties the relata may have. y only becomes 'to the left of x' when x appears to its right, so the relation doesn't seem to be intrinsic to y. |
| 13078 | Relations aren't in any monad, so they are distributed, so they are not real [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The relations which connect two monads are not in either the one or the other, but equally in both at once; and therefore properly speaking, in neither. I do not think you would wish to posit an accident which would inhere simultaneously in two subjects. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], G II:517), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 2.4.3 | |
| A reaction: Where Russell affirms relations as universals, and scholastics make them properties of individuals, Leibniz denies their reality entirely. It seems obvious that once the objects and properties are there, the relations come for free. |
| 12713 | Forms have sensation and appetite, the latter being the ability to act on other bodies [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's form contains both sensation and appetite, and he seems to associate appetite with the ability a body has to act on another. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3 | |
| A reaction: It strikes me (you may be surprised to hear) that this concept is not unlike Nietzsche's all-mastering 'will to power'. I offer Idea 7140 in evidence. |
| 13087 | The essence of a thing is its real possibilities [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: In Leibniz's view, the essence of a thing is fundamentally the real possibilities of that thing. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 4.3.3 | |
| A reaction: Note that the essences are individual. On the whole I would prefer Leibniz in his own words, but this is too good to lose (..but see Idea 12981). It is the aspect of Leibniz that fits perfectly with modern scientific essentialism. |
| 12701 | Leibniz moved from individuation by whole entity to individuation by substantial form [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| Full Idea: By 1680 Leibniz had clearly abandoned the 'whole entity' conception of individuation, for a conception grounded in substantial form alone. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 2 | |
| A reaction: In other words, Leibniz became more of an Aristotelian, and more of an essentialist. |
| 13105 | The laws-of-the-series plays a haecceitist role [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz takes the laws-of-the-series to play a haecceitistic role. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 7.5 | |
| A reaction: Idea 13092 for law-in-the-series. He thinks that a law-in-a-series is unique to a substance, and so can individuate it. That is a pretty good proposal, if anything is going to do the job. Perhaps I do believe in haecceities, as unique bundles of powers? |
| 16513 | Identity of a substance is the law of its persistence [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: For there to be a certain persisting law which involves the future states of that which we conceive as one and the same continuant, this is what I say constitute's a substance's identity. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], G II:264), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance 3.1 | |
| A reaction: This is a key remark for those who thing 'persistence conditions' are basic to metaphysics. I'm not so sure. |
| 12035 | Leibniz bases pure primitive entities on conjunctions of qualitative properties [Leibniz, by Adams,RM] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz is committed with apparent consistency to both a purely qualitative character of all thisnesses, and to primitiveness of individual identity. He regards thisnesses as conjunctions of simpler, logically independent suchnesses. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Robert Merrihew Adams - Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity 5 | |
| A reaction: Hence Leibniz is held to say that all of the qualitative properties are 'essential' to the object, since all of them are needed to constitute its identity. Hence absolutely nothing about an object, even an electron, could be different, which is daft. |
| 13091 | Leibnizian substances add concept, law, force, form and soul [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: To the traditional idea of substance (independent, subjects of predication, active, persistent) Leibniz adds, distinctively, complete individual concept, law-of-the-series, active force, form and soul or entelechy. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 6.1.1 | |
| A reaction: 'Form' seems to be Aristotelian, and 'soul' seems ridiculous. I don't think the 'complete concept' is much help. However, the 'law-in-the-series' is very interesting (Idea 13079), if employed sensibly, and 'active force' is spot-on. Powers define reality. |
| 7561 | Substances are essentially active [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: For Leibniz, it is the very essence of substances to be sources of activity. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This makes the views of Leibniz sympathetic to modern essentialism (of which I am a fan), because it places active power at the centre of what it is to exist, rather than action being imposed on matter which is otherwise passive. |
| 12715 | Leibniz strengthened hylomorphism by connecting it to force in physics [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| Full Idea: A standard criticism of the scholastic notions of matter and form is that they are obscure and unintelligible. But in Leibniz's system they are connected directly with notions of active and passive force that play an intelligible roles in his physics. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be very appealing. Aristotle was clearly on the right lines, but just ran out of things to say, once he had pointed in the right direction. Maybe 'fields' and 'strings' can fill out the Aristotelian conception of form. |
| 11878 | Leibniz's view (that all properties are essential) is extreme essentialism, not its denial [Leibniz, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: The view standardly attributed to Leibniz, that makes all an individual's properties essential to it should be regarded as an extreme version of essentialism, not a denial of essentialism. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 1.1 | |
| A reaction: Wiggins disagrees, saying that Leibniz was not an essentialist, which is an interesting topic of research for those who are interested. I would take Leibniz to be not an essentialist, on that basis, as essentialism makes a distinction. See Quine on that. |
| 11862 | Leibniz was not an essentialist [Leibniz, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz was not an essentialist. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 4.2 n4 | |
| A reaction: Assuming this is right, it is rather helpful, because you can read mountains of Leibniz without ever being quite sure. Mackie says he IS an extreme essentialist, treating all properties as essential. Wiggins makes more sense there. |
| 16504 | Two eggs can't be identical, because the same truths can't apply to both of them [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It isn't possible to have two particulars that are similar in all respects - for example two eggs - for it is necessary that some things can be said about one of them that cannot be said about the other, else they could be substituted for one another. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance 2.2 | |
| A reaction: [from a 'fragment' for which Wiggins gives a reference] This quotation doesn't rest the distinctness of the eggs on some intrinsic difference, but on the fact that we can say different things about the two eggs. |
| 8650 | Things are the same if one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's definition is as follows: Things are the same as each other, of which one can be substituted for the other without loss of truth ('salva veritate'). | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]), quoted by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) §65 | |
| A reaction: Frege doesn't give a reference. (Anyone know it?). This famous definition is impressive, but has problems when the items being substituted appear in contexts of belief. 'Oedipus believes Jocasta (his mother!) would make a good wife'. |
| 13828 | Necessary truths are those provable from identities by pure logic in finite steps [Leibniz, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz argued that the necessary truths are just those which can be proved from identities by pure logic in a finite number of steps. ...[232] this claim is vindicated by Gentzen's sequent calculus. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? §01 | |
| A reaction: This seems an odd idea, as if there were no necessary truths other than those for which a proof could be constructed. Sounds like intuitionism. |
| 13084 | How can things be incompatible, if all positive terms seem to be compatible? [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is yet unknown to me what is the reason of the incompossibility of things, or how it is that different essences can be opposed to each other, seeing that all purely positive terms seem to be compatible. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], G VII:194), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 3.4.4 | |
| A reaction: Since 'heavy' seems straightforwardly opposed to 'light', we would have to ask what he means by 'positive'. The suspicion is that all things are compossible by definition, so it is not surprising that impossibilities are a bit puzzling. |
| 4307 | A reason must be given why contingent beings should exist rather than not exist [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: A reason must be given why contingent beings should exist rather than not exist. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza rejects all contingency, but this seems an interesting support for it, even though we may need a reason for something where God does not because it is self-evident. |
| 15883 | Leibniz narrows down God's options to one, by non-contradiction, sufficient reason, indiscernibles, compossibility [Leibniz, by Harré] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz sets up increasingly stringent conditions possible worlds must meet. The weakest is non-contradiction, for truths of reason; then sufficient reason, for rational worlds; then identity of indiscernibles, for duplicates; then compossibility. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 4 | |
| A reaction: [my summary of a very nice two pages by Harré] God is the source of the principles which do the narrowing down. |
| 18822 | Each monad expresses all its compatible monads; a possible world is the resulting equivalence class [Leibniz, by Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz argued that each monad mirrors or expresses every monad with which it is compossible. Hence compossibility is an equivalence relation among monads; possible worlds may then be identified as the corresponding equivalence classes. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 6.1 | |
| A reaction: [Rumfitt cites Benson Mates 1986:IV.1 for this claim] There is an analogous world of all the human minds that are in communication with one another - something like a 'culture'. |
| 7837 | Leibniz proposed possible worlds, because they might be evil, where God would not create evil things [Leibniz, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: In his early writings the principle of sufficient reason made it difficult for Leibniz to conceive of possible things;...raising this to possible worlds means God does not choose things that are evil, but chooses a world which must have evil in it. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.14 | |
| A reaction: Where we think of possible worlds as explanations for conditional and counterfactual truths (I take it), Leibniz developed the original idea as part of his huge effort to achieve a consistent theodicy. |
| 13080 | Leibniz has a counterpart view of de re counterfactuals [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: When Leibniz has the grounds of de re counterfactuals in mind, a counterpart picture, we have argued, is at work. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 3.2.2 | |
| A reaction: If Leibniz were a 'superessentialist', then individuals would be totally worldbound (because their relations would be essential). Cover/Hawthorne argue that he is just a 'strong' essentialist, allowing possible counterparts. Quite persuasive. |
| 19332 | For Leibniz, divine understanding grasps every conceivable possibility [Leibniz, by Perkins] |
| Full Idea: For Leibniz, what is this understanding which God has? What does it contain? All possibilities in all possible combinations, that is, everything which can be conceived. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 2.III | |
| A reaction: I like this, because it strikes me as essential that understanding should embrace possibilities as well as actualities. Perkins points out that the possibilities are restricted by an awareness of the limitations imposed by combination. |
| 5509 | 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. |
| 7568 | 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? |
| 7871 | Perceptual concepts can't just refer to what causes classification [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: We may say that a perceptual concept refers to that entity which normally causes classificatory uses of that concept...but this won't work because such deployments are often caused by things which the concept doesn't refer to. A model might cause 'bird'. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: This rejects the causal theory of perceptual concepts. I like the approach, because classifying things strikes me as absolutely basic to what brains do. To see that x is a bird is to place x in the class of birds. |
| 13092 | The essence of substance is the law of its changes, as in the series of numbers [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The essence of substance consists in ...the law of the sequence of changes, as in the nature of the series in numbers. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], A 6.3.326), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 6.1.2 | |
| A reaction: Thus we might say, in this spirit, that the essence of number is the successor operation, as defined by Dedekind and Peano (and perhaps their amenability to inductive proof). I like this. Metaphysicians rule - they penetrate the heart of nature. |
| 7852 | The only serious mind-brain theories now are identity, token identity, realization and supervenience [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Anybody writing seriously about mind-brain issues nowadays needs to explain whether they think of materialism in terms of identity, token identity, realization, or supervenience. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §6) | |
| A reaction: Dualists are not invited. Functionalists are attending a different party. I wonder if his four categories collapse into two: the token/supervenience view, and the identity/realization view? |
| 7864 | Maybe mind and body do overdetermine acts, but are linked (for some reason) [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Maybe physical effects of mental causes are always overdetermined by distinct causes (the 'belt and braces' view). Defenders say the two are still counterfactually dependent - but that would raise the question of why, if they are ontologically distinct. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: [He cites D.H. Mellor as defending 'belt and braces'] This strikes me as the sort of theory that arises from desperation: traditional dualism won't work, but we MUST keep mind separate, so that we can have free will, and save morality. All very confused! |
| 7873 | Young children can see that other individuals sometimes have false beliefs [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The classic manifestation of being able to think about other individuals' mental states is success on the 'false belief test', which requires attribution of mistaken representations to other agents. Children aged three or four can do this. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.7) | |
| A reaction: There may be an other minds problem, but there is empirical evidence that we can 'read' the minds of others (from their behaviour) even if other animals can't. That seems to be clear, even if folk psychology is fiction, and we make mistakes. |
| 7874 | Do we understand other minds by simulation-theory, or by theory-theory? [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: There is debate about whether we attribute beliefs and desires to others, and predict their behaviour, by simulating the decisions we would make ourselves ('simulation-theory'), or by deducing them from some general theory ('theory-theory'). | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.7) | |
| A reaction: Could be both. If someone is hurt, empathy leads to direct mind-reading (which seems like simulation), but if someone is behaving strangely we may have to bring theories to bear, because this person seems to be different. |
| 7882 | Researching phenomenal consciousness is peculiar, because the concepts involved are peculiar [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: It is a mistake to suppose that research into phenomenal consciousness can proceed just like other kinds of scientific research. Phenomenal concepts are peculiar, and some of the questions they pose for empirical investigation are peculiar too. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.01) | |
| A reaction: This arises from Papineau's Conceptual Dualism, that our concepts are deeply dualist, when the underlying ontology is not. Brain researchers are wise to ignore phenomenology, and creep slowly forward from the physical end, where the concepts are clear. |
| 19354 | Leibniz introduced the idea of degrees of consciousness, essential for his monads [Leibniz, by Perkins] |
| Full Idea: The designation of degrees of conscious awareness is one of Leibniz's most significant innovations, and it is fundamental to almost every aspect of his account of monads. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 4.I | |
| A reaction: A very important development, which seems to have been ignored by philosophers for three hundred years, since they usually treat consciousness as all-or-nothing. Introspection makes degrees obvious, and I suspect sparrows are down the scale. |
| 7854 | Whether octopuses feel pain is unclear, because our phenomenal concepts are too vague [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Our phenomenal concepts are irredeemably vague in certain dimensions, in ways that preclude there being any fact of the matter about whether octopuses feel phenomenal pain, or silicon-based humanoids would have any phenomenal consciousness. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §7) | |
| A reaction: It would be hard for Papineau to prove this point, but clearly our imagination finds it very hard to grasp the idea of a thing which is 'somewhat conscious'. The concept of being much more conscious than humans also bewilders us. |
| 7889 | Our concept of consciousness is crude, and lacks theoretical articulation [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Our phenomenal concept of consciousness-as-such is a crude tool, lacking theoretical articulation | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.13) | |
| A reaction: This is a point well made. Given that the human brain is the most complex thing (for its size) in the known universe, we shouldn't expect it to divide up into three or four clear-cut activities. Compare the precision of 'geography' as a concept. |
| 7891 | We cant decide what 'conscious' means, so it is undecidable whether cats are conscious [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: If consciousness is availability for HOT judgements, then cats are not conscious, but if it consists in attention, then they are. I say the concept of consciousness is indefinite between the two, so there is no fact about whether cats are conscious. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.16) | |
| A reaction: Nice point. My personal view is that the question of whether cats are conscious is hopeless because philosophers insist on making consciousness all-or-nothing (e.g. Idea 5786). If I experienced cat mentality, I might say I was 'semi-conscious'. |
| 7890 | Maybe a creature is conscious if its mental states represent things in a distinct way [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The thesis of 'representational theories of consciousness' is that a creature is conscious just in case it is in a certain kind of representational state, some state which represents in a certain way. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002]) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Harman, Dretske and Tye] The immediate impediment I see to this view is the extreme difficulty of explaining what the special 'way' is that turns representations into consciousness. Some mental states are not representational, and vice versa. |
| 7885 | The 'actualist' HOT theory says consciousness comes from actual higher judgements of mental states [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The 'actualist' HOT theory says that a state is conscious if the subject is 'aware' of it, where this is understood as a matter of the subject forming some actual Higher-Order judgement about it. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.11) | |
| A reaction: As stated there seems an obvious regress problem. Is the consciousness in the mental state, or in the higher awareness of it? If the former, how does being observed make it conscious? If the latter, what gives the higher level its consciousness? |
| 7886 | Actualist HOT theories imply that a non-conscious mental event could become conscious when remembered [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Actualist HOT theories face an awkward problem with memory judgements: ...how can an earlier mental state be rendered conscious by some later act of memory? As when I see a red pillar box with no higher-order judgement, and then recall it later. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.11) | |
| A reaction: [See 7886 for 'Actualist' HOT theories] This is not altogether absurd. A red pillar box could be somewhere in my field of vision, and then I might suddenly become conscious of it (if it moved!). Police interrogation reminds me of what I only glimpsed. |
| 7887 | States are conscious if they could be the subject of higher-order mental judgements [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The 'dispositional' HOT thesis says that a state is conscious just in case it could have been the subject of an introspective Higher-Order judgement, even if it wasn't actually so subject. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.13) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Dennett and Carruthers for this view] This is designed to meet other problems, but it sounds odd. Does it really make no difference whether higher-judgement actually occurs? How can conscious events be distinguished once they've gone? |
| 7888 | Higher-order judgements may be possible where the subject denies having been conscious [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Dispositional Higher-Order judgeability will be present in some cases which the empirical methodology catalogues as not conscious (as when a subject denies having heard a sound, or seen a bird). | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.13) | |
| A reaction: (This attacks Idea 7887) This confirms my intuition, that we can be quite unconscious of things which can still be recalled at a later date. Of course, one could always challenge the reliability of the subject's report in such a case. |
| 7841 | We think we are free because the causes of the will are unknown; determinism is a false problem [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The will has its causes, but since we are ignorant of them, we believe ourselves independent. It is this chimera of imaginary independence which revolts us against determinism, and which brings us to believe there are difficulties where there are none. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]), quoted by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: It seems that in his notebooks Leibniz was actually a (Spinozan) determinist. So he should have been, given his view that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and his claim that mind and brain run like two clocks. (Ideas 2114 and 2596) |
| 5510 | Leibniz has a panpsychist view that physical points are spiritual [Leibniz, by Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: In Leibniz's panpsychism, the so-called 'physical' points are souls or spiritual 'monads'. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.23 | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that 'panpsychism' is the right description for Leibniz's theory of monads. I take panpsychism to be either a dualist or a dual aspect (or property dualism) view. Leibniz seems to believe there is strictly one substance. |
| 7564 | Occasionalism give a false view of natural laws, miracles, and substances [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's three objections to occasionalism are: it disturbs the concept of laws of nature used in physics; it introduces perpetual miracles; and it doesn't recognise activity of substances (leading to the Spinozan heresy that God is the only substance). | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: I wonder what would happen if, within the viewpoint of occasionalism, God suddenly packed up and abandoned his job? Presumably the world wouldn't disappear, so there would still be substances, but passive ones, in chaos. |
| 7860 | The epiphenomenal relation of mind and brain is a 'causal dangler', unlike anything else [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: If epiphenomenalism were true, then the relation between mind and brain would be like nothing else in nature. After all, science recognises no other examples of 'causal danglers', ontologically independent states with causes but no effects. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This would be a good enough reason for me to reject the epiphenomenalist view, even if I thought it was a coherent proposal. Insofar as it proposes the existence of something (mind) with no causal powers at all, it strikes me as nonsense. |
| 7862 | Maybe minds do not cause actions, but do cause us to report our decisions [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Even if conscious decisions did not contribute causally to the actions normally attributed to them, they would still presumably be the causes of the sounds I make when I later report my earlier conscious decisions. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a good reply to my view (borrowed from Dennett - Idea 7379), that epiphenomalism proposes an absurdity (an entity with no causal powers). But if mind can cause speech, why could it not cause arm movements? |
| 7870 | Role concepts either name the realising property, or the higher property constituting the role [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Role concepts can be of two kinds: they can name whichever property realises the role, or they can name the higher property which constitutes the role. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.2 n1) | |
| A reaction: This points strikes me as being crucial to discussions of mental functions. Perhaps labels of Realising Properties and Constituting Properties would help. Analytical philosophy rules. |
| 7858 | If causes are basic particulars, this doesn't make conscious and physical properties identical [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: If causes are basic particulars, then the causal argument won't carry you to the identity of conscious and physical properties, since this only requires them to be instantiated in the same particular, not that the properties are themselves identical. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 7857; Papineau is rejecting the Davidson view] This explains how Davidson reaches a token-token identity view. Can two events occur in the same particular at the same moment? Depends what you mean by a 'particular'. |
| 7865 | Supervenience can be replaced by identifying mind with higher-order or disjunctional properties [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: I would argue that any benefits offered by the notion of supervenience are more easily gained simply by identifying mental properties directly with higher-order properties or disjunctions of physical properties. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: Those who talk of supervenience seem to me to have retreated into a mystery that is not far from substance dualism. We want the explanation of a supervenience. If you accompany me everywhere, I think you are stalking me, or are tied to my ankle. |
| 7892 | The completeness of physics is needed for mind-brain identity [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Without the completeness of physics, there is no compelling reason to identify the mind with the brain. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 7) | |
| A reaction: Papineau says the completeness of physics was accepted from the 1950s. Why were Epicurus and Hobbes physicalists? Do we have a circularity here? How do you establish the completeness of physics, without asserting mind to be physical? |
| 7879 | Mind-brain reduction is less explanatory, because phenomenal concepts lack causal roles [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Mind-brain reductions are less explanatory than characteristic reductions in other areas of science, ...because phenomenal concepts have no special associations with causal roles. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This may always have some truth in it, but I would expect reductive accounts in the far future to get much closer to giving explanations of phenomenal experience. We can't work down from the phenomenal end, but we can work up from the physical/causal end. |
| 20971 | Weak reduction of mind is to physical causes; strong reduction is also to physical laws [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Weak reduction of mind requires only that mental causes be identified with physical causes. A strong reduction requires also that the laws by which such causes operate follow by composition from non-special laws. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 3 n8) | |
| A reaction: I'm cautious about laws, but I still vote for strong reduction. No new principles are needed to make a mind from a brain. |
| 7856 | It is absurd to think that physical effects are caused twice, so conscious causes must be physical [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Many effects that we attribute to conscious causes have full physical causes. But it would be absurd to suppose that these effects are caused twice over. So the conscious causes must be identical to some part of those physical causes. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [Papineau labelled this the Causal Argument] Of course two causes can combine to produce an effect, and there can be redundant physical overcausation, but in general I think this is a good argument. |
| 7881 | Accept ontological monism, but conceptual dualism; we think in a different way about phenomenal thought [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: We should be ontological monists, but we should be conceptual dualists. We need to recognise a special phenomenal way of thinking about conscious properties, if we are to dispel the confusions that persuade us that conscious properties cannot be material. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.01) | |
| A reaction: This idea came to me as a revelation, and strikes me as spot on. We have developed conceptual dualism simply because humans cannot directly see that their thinking is actually physical brain activity. Thought seems ungrounded, and utterly different. |
| 7866 | Mary acquires new concepts; she previously thought about the same property using material concepts [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: While there is indeed a before-after difference in Mary, this is just a matter of coming to think in new ways, and acquiring a new concept. There is no new experiential property. She could think about the property perfectly well, using material concepts. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I think it is better to talk of Mary encountering a new mode of experiencing something, just as experience becomes blurred when glasses are removed. No one acquires new 'knowledge' of blurred objects when they remove their glasses. |
| 7850 | Thinking about a thing doesn't require activating it [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Thinking about something doesn't require activating some version of it. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §5) | |
| A reaction: E.g. I can discuss 'red' without visualising it. This observation strikes me as simple and basic to what thinking is. Papineau thinks that confusion about this simple point leads to major errors in the philosophy of mind. |
| 7851 | Consciousness affects bodily movement, so thoughts must be material states [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Conscious states clearly affect our bodily movements. But surely anything that so produces a material effect must itself be a material state. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §6) | |
| A reaction: This is Papineau's simplest possible statement of what he calls the Causal Argument, which he considers to be a knock-down argument for materialism. I agree, but it is really only an intuition. You never know... |
| 7884 | Most reductive accounts of representation imply broad content [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Broadness of content is sometimes defended purely on intuitive grounds, but it is also a corollary of most reductive accounts of representation, including standard teleosemantic and causal accounts. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002]) | |
| A reaction: (For Causal and Teleosemantic views, see Idea 7871, Idea 7872) Presumably a causal/purposeful relationship would only make sense if both halves of the relationship were specified. I suspect this is obscured by over-simplifications. Cf Idea 6634! |
| 7863 | If content hinges on matters outside of you, how can it causally influence your actions? [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: How can 'broad contents', which hinge on matters outside your head, exert a causal influence on your bodily movements? Surely your bodily movements are causally influenced solely by matters inside your skin, not by how matters are outside you. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This supports my suspicion that there are some extremely simplistic interpretations of the Twin Earth case floating around. If Putnam means by 'elm' whatever experts mean, it is still his idea of what counts as an expert view. |
| 19372 | Concepts are ordered, and show eternal possibilities, deriving from God [Leibniz, by Arthur,R] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz understood concepts as corresponding to eternal possibilities, with both concepts and their ordering having their foundation in the divine mind. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 2 'Nominalism' | |
| A reaction: It is is no longer the fashion to think of concepts as 'ordered', and yet there is a multitude of dependence relations between them. |
| 7883 | Verificationists tend to infer indefinite answers from undecidable questions [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The verificationist sin is to infer an indefiniteness of answers immediately from the undecidability of questions. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 7.02) | |
| A reaction: This remark is aimed at Dummett's anti-realism. It strikes me that what is being described really is a sort of arrogance, in believing that reality can somehow be inferred from studying the epistemic apparatus of a few miserable little mammals. |
| 13467 | Leibniz was the first modern to focus on sentence-sized units (where empiricists preferred word-size) [Leibniz, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz seems to be the first modern philosopher to focus on sentence-sized units that he called propositions. The Empiricists among the moderns focused on word-sized units like ideas. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 2 | |
| A reaction: Historically, the sentential logic of the Stoics has a claim to have started this one. I find my initial sympathies to be with the empiricists. |
| 7872 | Teleosemantics equates meaning with the item the concept is intended to track [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The teleosemantic view of perceptual concepts is that the referential value of the concept can be equated with those items which it is the biological function of the concept to track. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to work quite nicely for 'bird', which is concept which is used to track birds. It might even work for complex entities, or abstract entities, or even negative entities. Imagination must play a role in that last one. |
| 7869 | Truth conditions in possible worlds can't handle statements about impossibilities [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Basing content on possible worlds that result in truth leaves no room for thoughts about genuine impossibilities, since there are not possible worlds whose actuality would make an 'impossible thought' true. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: Negative existentials like 'no rabbits in this room' and 'no snakes in this room' seem to have the same truth conditions as well. I suppose the sentences must be translated into a logical form which suits the theory, with negation stuck on the end. |
| 7868 | Thought content is possible worlds that make the thought true; if that includes the actual world, it's true [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The content of our thoughts can be equated with those possible worlds whose actuality would make the thought true. On this model, a true thought is one whose content includes the actual world, while a false thought is one whose content does not. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: This is the possible worlds semantics version of truth conditions theories of meaning. Papineau offers a nice difficulty for the theory (Idea 7869). Dummett says the whole approach is circular, because content precedes truth. |
| 7861 | Libet says the processes initiated in the cortex can still be consciously changed [Libet, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Libet himself points out that the conscious decisions still have the power to 'endorse' or 'cancel', so to speak, the processes initiated by the earlier cortical activity: no action will result if the action's execution is consciously countermanded. | |
| From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 1.4 | |
| A reaction: This is why Libet's findings do not imply 'epiphenomenalism'. It seems that part of a decisive action is non-conscious, undermining the all-or-nothing view of consciousness. Searle tries to smuggle in free will at this point (Idea 3817). |
| 6660 | Libet found conscious choice 0.2 secs before movement, well after unconscious 'readiness potential' [Libet, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Libet found that a subject's conscious choice to move was about a fifth of a second before movement, and thus later than the onset of the brain's so-called 'readiness potential', which seems to imply that unconscious processes initiates action. | |
| From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: Of great interest to philosophers! It seems to make conscious choices epiphenomenal. The key move, I think, is to give up the idea of consciousness as being all-or-nothing. My actions are still initiated by 'me', but 'me' shades off into unconsciousness. |
| 19365 | Limited awareness leads to bad choices, and unconscious awareness makes us choose the bad [Leibniz, by Perkins] |
| Full Idea: For Leibniz, while the limits of our knowledge explain why we sometimes choose things we think are good but which turn out to be bad, the force of minute perceptions explains why we sometimes choose things that we know are bad. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 4.IV | |
| A reaction: To be overwhelmed by selfish greed doesn't sound like a 'minute perception'. Leibniz thinks all desires are reactions to perceptions. Observing our degrees of knowledge is an interesting response to the intellectualist view of weakness of will. |
| 8110 | Leibniz identified beauty with intellectual perfection [Leibniz, by Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz identified beauty with intellectual perfection. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Sebastian Gardner - Aesthetics 1.2.1 | |
| A reaction: Well he would, wouldn't he? Swots like Leibniz are inclined to value things which only they can fully appreciate. There may be intellectual subject matter in the study of a rose, but I do not believe that it is needed to appreciate the beauty. |
| 7569 | Humans are moral, and capable of reward and punishment, because of memory and self-consciousness [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: For Leibniz, it is by virtue of possessing memory and self-consciousness that human minds are moral beings, capable of reward and punishment. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: I like this because it makes no mention of free will (though Leibniz struggled to defend free will). I would add meta-thought (the ability to ponder and evaluate our own thinking), which makes a change of mind possible. |
| 7574 | Natural law theory is found in Aquinas, in Leibniz, and at the Nuremberg trials [Leibniz, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz rejects Hobbes's legal positivism in favour of the older natural law theory associated with Aquinas (which says nothing can be a law unless it derives from natural justice). The older view was revived at Nuremberg, to prosecute Nazis. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: This seems to suggest that Hobbes and co were using Ockham's Razor to eliminate morality from the law, but that the Nuremberg situation (and modern trials in The Hague) show that there is a necessity for natural law in international situations. |
| 12728 | Leibniz rejected atoms, because they must be elastic, and hence have parts [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz held that there can be no atoms in nature, nothing perfectly solid and hard, since elasticity entails the existence of smaller parts that can move with respect to one another. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 5 | |
| A reaction: Thus, I suppose, we discover that atoms have mercurial electron shells. Are quarks or electrons elastic? The debate about true atoms is not over, and probably never will be. Leibniz's point is a good one. |
| 19374 | Microscopes and the continuum suggest that matter is endlessly divisible [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Micrographers observe qualities of larger things found in smaller things. And if this proceeds to infinity - which is possible since the continuum is divisible to infinity - any atom will be an infinite species, and there will be worlds within worlds. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], A VI ii 241) | |
| A reaction: [a work of the 1670s] The microscope had a huge impact on Leibniz, much more than the telescope. |
| 7560 | Leibniz struggled to reconcile bodies with a reality of purely soul-like entities [Jolley on Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz seems never to have made up his mind completely on how to accommodate bodies within a metaphysic which recognises only soul-like entities as fully real. | |
| From: comment on Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Intro | |
| A reaction: [The soul-like entities are his 'monads']. His choice must be to either say they are unreal, or that they are real and separate from the monads, or that they are a manifestation of the monads. His problem, not mine. |
| 16683 | Leibniz eventually said resistance, rather than extension, was the essence of body [Leibniz, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz eventually rejected extension altogether as part of the essence of body, and replaced it with resistance. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 15.5 | |
| A reaction: This makes body consist of active force, rather than mere geometry. Much better. |
| 7853 | Causation is based on either events, or facts, or states of affairs [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Any serious theory of the mind-brain must explain whether it thinks of causation in terms of events, facts, or states of affairs. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], Intro §6) | |
| A reaction: I instantly prefer events, simply because they can be specified a little more precisely than the other two. Since cause has a direction in time, it would be nice to specify the times of its components, and events have times. |
| 7857 | Causes are instantiations of properties by particulars, or they are themselves basic particulars [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: One view of causes is that they are facts, or instantiations of properties (maybe by particulars, making them 'Kim-events'); the alternative view is that causes themselves are basic particulars ('Davidson-events'). | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Like Papineau, I incline to the Kim view. It is too easy for philosophers to treat key ideas as unanalysable axioms of thought. An event typically has components and features. It is a contingent matter whether there are any events. |
| 12725 | Leibniz wanted to explain motion and its laws by the nature of body [Leibniz, by Garber] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz seeks the big picture: the nature of body as a grounding for an account of motion and its laws. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4 | |
| A reaction: Garber is contrasting this with Newton's approaches, who just pleads ignorance of the bigger picture. Essentialists must beware of inventing a bigger picture simply because they desperately want a bigger picture. |
| 16507 | The law within something fixes its persistence, and accords with general laws of nature [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is permanent in a substance except the law itself which determines the continuous succession of its states and accords within the individual substance with the laws of nature that govern the whole world. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], G II:263), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance 3 epig | |
| A reaction: An interesting link between the law-of-series within a substance, and the broader concept of laws outside it. |
| 7859 | Leibniz had an unusual commitment to the causal completeness of physics [Leibniz, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Unlike most philosophers prior to the twentieth century, Leibniz was committed to the causal completeness of physics. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 1.4 | |
| A reaction: It has been suggested that Leibniz was actually, in private, a determinist (see Idea 7841), which would fit. Leibniz is enigmatic, but he may have proposed the closure of physics to glorify God, only to find that God was beginning to look irrelevant. |
| 20974 | Modern biological research, especially into the cell, has revealed no special new natural forces [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: In the 1950s a great deal became known about biochemical and neurophysiological processes, especially at the level of the cell, and none of it gave any evidence for the existence of special forces not found elsewhere in nature. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], A 6) | |
| A reaction: Papineau says that this plus the conservation of energy makes the closure of physics faily conclusive. I would think the similar failure of modern research into the brain to find evidence of weird forces strengthens the case. |
| 20976 | The completeness of physics cannot be proved [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: There is no knock down argument for the completeness of physics. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 7) | |
| A reaction: This is commendably honest, given that he pins his view of the mind on it. He makes the case sound overwhelming, though. The thing which would breach the completeness is like the Loch Ness monster - you can't prove it isn't there, if it hides. |
| 20970 | Determinism is possible without a complete physics, if mental forces play a role [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: We can accept determinism without accepting physical determinism, and so without accepting the completeness of physics. ...We can have a deterministic model in which sui generis mental forces play an essential role. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], App 3) | |
| A reaction: Papineau cites (on p.241) the 18th century biologist Robert Whytt as an example of this view. |
| 15307 | Leibniz uses 'force' to mean both activity and potential [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: At this early period exegetical problems abound, since Leibniz uses 'force' both for actually acting forces and for potentials or powers. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], 9.II), quoted by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 9.II.B | |
| A reaction: I take Leibniz to be a key figure in the development of the Aristotelian approach, because he connected Aristotelian potential and essence with 'force' in the new physics. This is helpful in reading him correctly. |
| 20975 | Quantum 'wave collapses' seem to violate conservation of energy [Papineau] |
| Full Idea: The conservation of energy is apparently violated by 'wave collapses' in quantum systems. | |
| From: David Papineau (Thinking about Consciousness [2002], A 7 n15) | |
| A reaction: One could imagine it being a little harder to verify the conservation of energy at the quantum levels, where particles and anti-particles pop in and out of existence. I've been wondering why there is some suspicion of collapses. |
| 3889 | God's existence is either necessary or impossible [Leibniz, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz said that the ontological argument does not prove God's existence, but only the God's existence is either necessary or impossible. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 13.5 |
| 7842 | Leibniz was closer than Spinoza to atheism [Leibniz, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz sailed closer to the winds of unbelief than Spinoza did. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: This is an unusual view, but Stewart's view is that whereas Spinoza is always sincere in his writings, Leibniz is inclined to put a very conservative spin on his opinions. A key question for Leibniz is "Is God merely a monad?" |