21 ideas
| 12780 | We can grasp the wisdom of God a priori [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: We can grasp the wisdom of God a priori, and not from the order of the phenomena alone. ... For the senses put nothing forward concerning metaphysical matters. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29) | |
| A reaction: Nice instance of the aspirations of big metaphysics, before Kant cut it down to size. The claim is not far off Plato's, that by dialectic we can work out the necessities of the Forms, to which even the gods must bow. Are necessities really kept from us? |
| 12774 | Without a substantial chain to link monads, they would just be coordinated dreams [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If that substantial chain [vinculum substantiale] for monads did not exist, all bodies, together with all of their qualities, would be nothing but well-founded phenomena, like a rainbow or an image in a mirror, continual dreams perfectly in agreement. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1712.02.05) | |
| A reaction: [The first appearance, apparently, of the 'susbtantial chain' in his writings] I take this to be a hugely significant move, either a defeat for monads, or the arrival of common sense. Spiritual monads must unify things, so they can't just be 'parallel'. |
| 12777 | Monads do not make a unity unless a substantial chain is added to them [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Monads do not constitute a complete composite substance, since they make up, not something one per se, but only a mere aggregate, unless some substantial chain is added. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1712.05.26) | |
| A reaction: This is the clearest statement in the Des Bosses letters of the need for something extra to unite monads. Since the main role of monads was to replace substances, which are only postulated to provide unity, this is rather a climb-down. |
| 12782 | Monads control nothing outside of themselves [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Monads aren't a principle of operation for things outside of themselves. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29) | |
| A reaction: This is why Leibniz has got into a tangle, and is proposing his 'substantial chain' to join the monads together. I suspect that he would have dumped monads if he had lived a bit longer. |
| 12778 | There is active and passive power in the substantial chain and in the essence of a composite [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I do not say there is a chain midway between matter and form, but that the substantial form and primary matter of the composite, in the Scholastic sense (the primitive power, active and passive) are in the chain, and in the essence of the composite. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29) | |
| A reaction: Note that this implies an essence of primitive power, and not just a collection of all properties. This is the clearest account in these letters of the nature of the 'substantial chain' he has added to his monads. |
| 12783 | Primitive force is what gives a composite its reality [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The first entelechy of a composite is a constitutive part of the composite substance, namely its primitive force. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29) | |
| A reaction: For me, Leibniz's most interesting proposal is to characterise Aristotelian 'form' as an active thing, which offers an intrinsic account of movement, and a bottom level for explanations. There always remains the inexplicable. Why anything? Why this? |
| 12775 | Things seem to be unified if we see duration, position, interaction and connection [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Important relations are duration (order of successive things) and position (order of coexisting things) and interaction. Position without a thing mediating is presence. Beyond these is connection when things move one another. Thus things seem to be one. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1712.02.05) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the best account I can find of his epistemological angle on the unity of things. They are symptoms of the inner power of unification, and he says that God sees these relations most clearly. |
| 13128 | 'Ultimate sortals' cannot explain ontological categories [Westerhoff on Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: 'Ultimate sortals' are said to be non-subordinated, disjoint from one another, and uniquely paired with each object. Because of this, the ultimate sortal cannot be a satisfactory explication of the notion of an ontological category. | |
| From: comment on David Wiggins (Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity [1971], p.75) by Jan Westerhoff - Ontological Categories §26 | |
| A reaction: My strong intuitions are that Wiggins is plain wrong, and Westerhoff gives the most promising reasons for my intuition. The simplest point is that objects can obviously belong to more than one category. |
| 12776 | Every substance is alive [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Every substance is alive. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1712.02.05) | |
| A reaction: The most charitable interpretation of this is that substances are what have unity, and the best model of unity that we can grasp is the unity of an organism. The less charitable view is that he literally thinks a pebble is 'alive'. Hm. |
| 12753 | A substantial bond of powers is needed to unite composites, in addition to monads [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Some realising thing must bring it about that composite substance contains something substantial besides monads, otherwise composites will be mere phenomena. The scholastics' active and passive powers are the substantial bond I am urging. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.01.13), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 9 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This appears to be a major retreat, in the last year of Leibniz's life, from the full monadology he had espoused. How do monads connect to matter, and thus unify it? He is returning to Aristotelian hylomorphism. |
| 12781 | A composite substance is a mere aggregate if its essence is just its parts [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: An aggregate, but not a composite substance, is resolved into parts. A composite substance only needs the coming together of parts, but is not essentially constituted by them, otherwise it would be an aggregate. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29) | |
| A reaction: The point is that there is more to some things than there mere parts. Only some unifying principle, in addition to the mere parts, bestows a unity. Mereology is a limited activity if it has nothing to say about this issue. |
| 12779 | There is a reason why not every possible thing exists [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is a reason why not every possible thing exists. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29) | |
| A reaction: This is the kind of wonderful speculative metaphysical remark that we are not allowed to make any more. Needless to say, he doesn't tell us what the reason is. Overcrowding, perhaps. |
| 12785 | Truth is mutually agreed perception [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: In the mutual agreement of perceivers consists the truth of the phenomena. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29) | |
| A reaction: This remark is startling close to the 'perspectivism' that crops up in the late notebooks of Nietzsche. Leibniz was keen on relativism in many areas, starting with the nature of space. I personally think Leibniz meant 'knowledge' rather than 'truth'. |
| 6968 | Some people think there are ethical facts, but of a 'queer' sort [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: If someone wishes to say that ethical statements are statements of fact, only it is a queer sort of fact, he is welcome to do so. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.233) | |
| A reaction: The word 'queer' was picked up by Mackie and developed into his error theory, that moral facts are a misunderstanding. Personally I think that moral facts might be teleological facts, but that is rather hard to demonstrate. |
| 6972 | A right attitude is just an attitude one is prepared to stand by [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Asking whether the attitude that one has adopted is the right attitude comes down to asking whether one is prepared to stand by it. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.244) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that someone who persisted in being ruthlessly selfish might nevertheless distinguish their behaviour from the grudging concession that the 'right' thing to do might be quite different. |
| 6973 | Moral theories are all meta-ethical, and are neutral as regards actual conduct [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: All moral theories, intuitionist, naturalistic, objectivist, emotive, and the rest, in so far as they are philosophical theories, are neutral as regards actual conduct; they belong to the field of meta-ethics, not ethics proper. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949]) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, Ayer doesn't seem willing to accept 'ethics proper' as being 'philosophical'. Given the modern rise of applied ethics, it seems suprising to say that even normative ethics is not philosophical. Utilitarianism seems not to be philosophical. |
| 6974 | Moral judgements cannot be the logical consequence of a moral philosophy [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: A moral philosopher will have his moral standards and will sometimes make moral judgements, but these moral judgements cannot be a logical consequence of his philosophy. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.247) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an assertion of the is-ought distinction. Personally this strikes me as totally false. Ayer needs to think more deeply about moral philosophy! |
| 6971 | I would describe intuitions of good as feelings of approval [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: I suspect that the experiences which some philosophers want to describe as intuitions, or a quasi-sensory apprehensions, of good are not significantly different from those that I want to describe as feelings of approval. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.239) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard ground for rejecting intuitionism, along with the point that even if intuitions are not just feelings of approval, it seems impossible to tell the difference. |
| 6969 | Approval of historical or fictional murders gives us leave to imitate them [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: In saying that Brutus or Raskolnikov acted rightly, I am giving myself and others leave to imitate them should similar circumstances arise. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.237) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a reply to the Frege-Geach Problem, of why we have emotional attitudes to crimes that mean nothing to us. Such crimes, however, involve our virtues, and don't depend on awaiting 'similar circumstances'. |
| 6970 | Moral judgements are not expressions, but are elements in a behaviour pattern [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: To say, as I once did, that moral judgements are merely expressive of certain feelings is an oversimplification; ..moral attitudes consist in certain patterns of behaviour, and the expression of a judgement is an element in the pattern. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (On the analysis of moral judgements [1949], p.238) | |
| A reaction: This seems to switch from emotivism to what Frank Jackson calls 'moral functionalism', where morality is what gets us from certain emotional responses to willed actions. This strikes me, like most functional explanations, as wrong. |
| 12784 | Allow no more miracles than are necessary [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Miracles should not be increased beyond necessity. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Des Bosses [1715], 1716.05.29) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz defends miracles (where Spinoza dismisses them). This remark is, of course, an echo of Ockham's Razor, that 'entities' should not be multiplied beyond necessity. It is hard to disagree with his proposal. Zero might be result, though. |