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13193
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Active force is not just potential for action, since it involves a real effort or striving [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
Active force should not be thought of as the simple and common potential [potentia] or receptivity to action of the schools. Rather, active force involves an effort [conatus] or striving [tendentia] toward action.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (On Body and Force, Against the Cartesians [1702], p.252)
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A reaction:
This is why Leibniz is lured into making his active forces more and more animistic, till they end up like proto-minds (though never, remember, conscious and willing minds).
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7880
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If a blind persons suddenly sees a kestrel, that doesn't make visual and theoretical kestrels different [Papineau on Jackson]
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Full Idea:
An ornithological Mary might know everything theoretical about kestrels, but be blind from birth, then have her sight restored. She now knows "That bird eats mice", so visual kestrels must be ontologically distinct from theoretical ones.
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From:
comment on Frank Jackson (Epiphenomenal Qualia [1982]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 6.3
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A reaction:
A nice reductio, and I think this pinpoints best what is wrong with the knowledge argument. Knowledge, and the means of acquiring it, are two distinct things. When I see x, I don't acquire knowledge of x, AND knowledge of my seeing x.
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7377
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Mary learns when she sees colour, so her complete physical information had missed something [Jackson]
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Full Idea:
It seems obvious that Mary will learn something about the world when she is released from her black-and-white room; but then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete; she had all the physical information, so there is more to have.
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From:
Frank Jackson (Epiphenomenal Qualia [1982], §1)
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A reaction:
This is Jackson's famous 'knowledge argument', which seems to me misconceived. Since I don't think phenomenal colours are properties of objects (Idea 5456), Mary learns more about herself, and about her means of acquiring knowledge.
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13194
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God's laws would be meaningless without internal powers for following them [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
To say that, in creation, God gave bodies a law for acting means nothing, unless, at the same time, he gave them something by means of which it could happen that the law is followed.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (On Body and Force, Against the Cartesians [1702], p.253)
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A reaction:
This is the beginning of the modern rebellion against the medieval view of laws as imposed from outside on passive matter. Unfortunately for Leibniz, once you have postulated active internal powers, the external laws become redundant.
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13192
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Power is passive force, which is mass, and active force, which is entelechy or form [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
The dynamicon or power [potentia] in bodies is twofold, passive and active. Passive force [vis] constitutes matter or mass [massa], and active force constitutes entelechy or form.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (On Body and Force, Against the Cartesians [1702], p.252)
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A reaction:
This is explicitly equating the innate force understood in physics with Aristotelian form. The passive force is to explain the resistance of bodies. I like the equation of force with power. He says the entelechy is 'analogous' to a soul.
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16709
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Some people return to scholastic mysterious qualities, disguising them as 'forces' [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
It pleases others to return to occult qualities or scholastic faculties, but since these crude philosophers and physicians see that those terms are in bad repute they change their name, calling them 'forces'.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Against Barbaric physics [1716], A&G:313), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 19.7
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A reaction:
Deceptive, because Leibniz embraced forces in his revised Aristotelian essentialism. Leibniz placed forces within essences, and he is worried about forces as separate entities, unsupported by any substance.
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