79 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. |
| 17729 | Examining concepts can recover information obtained through the senses [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: My idea is that conceptual examination might be a way of recovering information previously obtained through the senses. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.8) | |
| A reaction: Now you're talking! This is really interesting conceptual analysis, rather than the sort of stamp-collecting approach to analsis practised by the duller sort of philosopher. But why bother with conceptual examination, when you have senses? |
| 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 |
| 10528 | Definitions concern how we should speak, not how things are [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Our concern in giving a definition is not to say how things are by to say how we wish to speak | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like an acceptable piece of wisdom which arises out of analytical and linguistic philosophy. It puts a damper on the Socratic dream of using definition of reveal the nature of reality. |
| 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. |
| 17740 | Instead of correspondence of proposition to fact, look at correspondence of its parts [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Instead of considering only a proposition's 'correspondence to the facts', we should also consider the correspondence between parts of the proposition and parts of the world (a 'correspondence-as-congruence' view). | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], Final - Branching) | |
| A reaction: This is something like Russell's Othello example (1912), except that the parts there, with relations seemed to add up to the whole proposition. For Jenkins, presumably parts might correspond, but the whole proposition fail to. |
| 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. |
| 17730 | Combining the concepts of negation and finiteness gives the concept of infinity [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: We might arrive to the concept of infinity by composing concepts of negation and finiteness. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Presumably lots of concepts can be arrived at by negating prior concepts (such as not-wet, not-tall, not-loud, not-straight). So not-infinite is perfectly plausible, and is a far better account than some a priori intuition of pure infinity. Love it. |
| 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. |
| 10529 | If Hume's Principle can define numbers, we needn't worry about its truth [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Neo-Fregeans have thought that Hume's Principle, and the like, might be definitive of number and therefore not subject to the usual epistemological worries over its truth. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the underlying dream of logicism - that arithmetic is actually brought into existence by definitions, rather than by truths derived from elsewhere. But we must be able to count physical objects, as well as just counting numbers. |
| 10530 | Hume's Principle is either adequate for number but fails to define properly, or vice versa [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental difficulty facing the neo-Fregean is to either adopt the predicative reading of Hume's Principle, defining numbers, but inadequate, or the impredicative reading, which is adequate, but not really a definition. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.312) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but the general drift is the difficulty of building a system which has been brought into existence just by definition. |
| 17719 | Arithmetic concepts are indispensable because they accurately map the world [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: The indispensability of arithmetical concepts is evidence that they do in fact accurately represent features of the independent world. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be by far the best account of the matter. So why is the world so arithmetical? Dunno, mate; ask someone else. |
| 17717 | Senses produce concepts that map the world, and arithmetic is known through these concepts [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: I propose that arithmetical truths are known through an examination of our own arithmetical concepts; that basic arithmetical concepts map the arithmetical structure of the world; that the map obtains in virtue of our normal sensory apparatus. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], Pref) | |
| A reaction: She defends the nice but unusual position that arithmetical knowledge is both a priori and empirical (so that those two notions are not, as usually thought, opposed). I am a big Carrie Jenkins fan. |
| 17724 | It is not easy to show that Hume's Principle is analytic or definitive in the required sense [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: A problem for the neo-Fregeans is that it has not proved easy to establish that Hume's Principle is analytic or definitive in the required sense. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: It is also asked how we would know the principle, if it is indeed analytic or definitional (Jenkins p.119). |
| 17727 | We can learn about the world by studying the grounding of our concepts [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: What concept grounding does for us is ensure that our concepts, like the results of our empirical tests, can be treated as a source of information about the independent world. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably we learn our concepts hand-in-hand with experience, so learning our concepts is itself learning about the world. Later checking of concepts and their relations largely confirms what we already knew? |
| 17720 | There's essential, modal, explanatory, conceptual, metaphysical and constitutive dependence [Jenkins, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Dependence comes in essential, modal, explanatory, conceptual, metaphysical and constitutive forms. | |
| From: report of Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 1.2) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to look up Jenkins for the details. |
| 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. |
| 17728 | The concepts we have to use for categorising are ones which map the real world well [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Concepts which are indispensably useful for categorising, understanding, explaining, and predicting our sensory input are likely to be ones which map the structure of that input well. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: Anti-realists about classification seem to think that we just invent an array of concepts, and then start classifying with them. The truth seems to be that the actual classes of worldly thing have generated our concepts. |
| 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? |
| 17726 | Examining accurate, justified or grounded concepts brings understanding of the world [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Examining accurate concepts can help us acquire true beliefs about the world, examining justified concepts can help us acquire justified beliefs about the world, and examining grounded concepts can help us acquire knowledge of it. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This summarises Jenkins's empirical account of concepts, and I love it all to bits. I feel that contemporary philosophy is beginning to produce a coherent naturalistic worldview which can replace religion. Bar the rituals. We can have priests... |
| 17734 | It is not enough that intuition be reliable - we need to know why it is reliable [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: The mere reliability of intuition is not a satisfactory ground for saying it is a source of knowledge - we need to know why it is reliable to understand whether it can be a source of knowledge. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: My theory is that intuition is simply believing things for reasons which we have either forgotten, or (more likely) reasons which are too complex or subtle to be articulated. Intuition feels rational, because it is rational. Updated view of mind needed. |
| 17723 | Knowledge is true belief which can be explained just by citing the proposition believed [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: I propose that knowledge is true belief which can be well explained .....just by citing the proposition believed. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: I don't find this appealing, and my reservation about Jenkins's book is her reliabilist, externalist epistemology. I would add an internalist coherentist epistemology to her very nice theory. 'I believe there are fairies at the bottom of my garden'? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 17739 | The physical effect of world on brain explains the concepts we possess [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: I think the physical effects of the world on the brain explain our possessing the concepts we do. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 8.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan for a thought which strikes me as exactly right. |
| 17718 | Grounded concepts are trustworthy maps of the world [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Grounded concepts are like trustworthy on-board maps of the independent world. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: You'll probably need more than one concept for it to qualify as a 'map', but I like this idea a lot. The world, rather than we ourselves, creates our concepts. The opposite of the view of Geach in 'Mental Acts'. |
| 10527 | An abstraction principle should not 'inflate', producing more abstractions than objects [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If an abstraction principle is going to be acceptable, then it should not 'inflate', i.e. it should not result in there being more abstracts than there are objects. By this mark Hume's Principle will be acceptable, but Frege's Law V will not. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.307) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be motivated by my own intuition that abstract concepts had better be rooted in the world, or they are not worth the paper they are written on. The underlying idea this sort of abstraction is that it is 'shared' between objects. |
| 17731 | Verificationism is better if it says meaningfulness needs concepts grounded in the senses [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: I find an updated verificationism plausible, in which we say something meaningful just in case we employ only concepts whose possession could be justified or disjustified by sensory input. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: Wow! This is the first time I have ever had the slightest sympathy for verificationism. It saves my favourite problem case - of wild but meaningful speculation, for example about the contents of another universe. A very nice idea. |
| 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. |
| 17732 | Success semantics explains representation in terms of success in action [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: Success semantics is the attempt to understand mental representation by thinking about the ways in which representing the world can lead to success in action. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be what is also known as 'teleological semantics'. It sounds to me as if this might help to explain success in action, but isn't going to explain the representations that result in the success. |
| 17725 | 'Analytic' can be conceptual, or by meaning, or predicate inclusion, or definition... [Jenkins] |
| Full Idea: 'Analytic' might mean conceptually true, or true in virtue of meaning, or where the predicate is contained in the subject, or for sentences which define something, or where meaning is sufficient for the truth. | |
| From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: The second one says meaning grounds the truth, where the last one says meaning entails the truth. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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?" |