24 ideas
| 19342 | Reason avoids multiplying hypotheses or principles [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Reason requires that we avoid multiplying hypotheses or principles, in somewhat the same way that the simplest system is always preferred in astronomy. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], 5) | |
| A reaction: He offers this principle without mentioning Ockham, as if it were self-evident. |
| 12711 | The immediate cause of movements is more real [than geometry] [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The force or proximate cause of these changes [of position] is something more real, and there is sufficient basis to attribute it to one body more than to another. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §18), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3 | |
| A reaction: The force is said to be 'more real' than geometry. Leibniz seems to have embraced fairly physical powers in the period 1678-1698, and then seen them as more and more like spirits. |
| 14193 | 'Substance theorists' take modal properties as primitive, without structure, just falling under a sortal [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Some deep essentialists resist the need to explain the structure under de re modal properties, taking them as primitive. One version (which we can call 'substance theory') takes them to fall under a sortal concept, with no further explanation. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: A very helpful identification of what Wiggins stands for, and why I disagree with him. The whole point of essences is to provide a notion that fits in with sciences, which means they must have an explanatory role, which needs structures. |
| 14195 | If an object's sort determines its properties, we need to ask what determines its sort [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: If the substance essentialist holds that the sort an object belongs to determines its de re modal properties (rather than the other way round), then he needs to give an (ontological, not conceptual) explanation of what determines an object's sort. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 14193 for 'substance essentialism'. I find it quite incredible that anyone could think that a thing's sort could determine its properties, rather than the other way round. Even if sortals are conventional, they are not arbitrary. |
| 14196 | Substance essentialism says an object is multiple, as falling under various different sortals [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: The explanation of material constitution given by substance essentialism is that there are multiple objects. A person is essentially human-shaped (falling under the human sort), while their hunk of tissue is accidentally human-shaped (as tissue). | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: At this point sortal essentialism begins to look crazy. Persons are dubious examples (with sneaky dualism involved). A bronze statue is essentially harder to dent than a clay one, because of its bronze. If you remake it of clay, it isn't the same statue. |
| 19349 | The complete notion of a substance implies all of its predicates or attributes [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The nature of an individual substance or of a complete being is to have a notion so complete that it is sufficient to contain and to allow us to deduce from it all the predicates of the subject to which this notion is attributed. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §8) | |
| A reaction: This is the unusual Leibnizian view of such things, which he takes to extremes. I think it depends on whether you are talking of predicates, or of real intrinsic properties. I don't see how what happens to a substance can be contained in the subject. |
| 7558 | Substances mirror God or the universe, each from its own viewpoint [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Each substance is like a whole world, and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the whole universe, which each one expresses in its own fashion. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686]), quoted by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Intro | |
| A reaction: Leibniz isn't a pantheist, so he does not identify God with the universe, so it is a bit revealing that substance could reflect either one or the other, and he doesn't seem to care which. In the end, for all the sophistication, he just made it up. |
| 16761 | Forms are of no value in physics, but are indispensable in metaphysics [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The consideration of forms serves no purpose in the details of physics and must not be used to explain particular phenomena. …but their misuse must not lead us to reject something which is so useful to metaphysics. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], 10), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5 | |
| A reaction: This is a key test for the question of whether metaphysics is separate from science (as Leibniz and Pasnau think), or whether there is a continuum. Is 'substantial form' an illuminating way to undestand modern physics? |
| 14198 | Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would allow things with incompatible properties [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would imply that objects with incompatible properties and objects such as winged pigs or golden mountains were actual. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §5) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is 'qualitative' composition, and not composition of parts. The objection seems to rule out unrestricted qualitative composition, since you could hardly combine squareness with roundness. |
| 13088 | Subjects include predicates, so full understanding of subjects reveals all the predicates [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The subject-term must always include the predicate-term, in such a way that the man who understood the notion of the subject perfectly would also judge that the predicate belongs to it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §8) | |
| A reaction: Sounds as if every sentence is analytic, but he doesn't mean that. He does, oddly, mean that if we fully understand the name 'Alexander', we understand his complete history, which is a bit silly, I'm afraid. Even God doesn't learn things just from names. |
| 14190 | Deep essentialist objects have intrinsic properties that fix their nature; the shallow version makes it contextual [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism says that objects have their properties essentially. 'Deep' essentialists take the (nontrivial) essential properties of an object to determine its nature. 'Shallow' essentialists substitute context-dependent truths for the independent ones. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If the deep essence determines a things nature, we should not need to say 'nontrivial'. This is my bete noire, the confusion of essential properties with necessary ones, where necessary properties (or predicates, at least) can indeed be trivial. |
| 14191 | Deep essentialists say essences constrain how things could change; modal profiles fix natures [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: The deep essentialist holds that most objects have essential properties such that there are many ways they could not be, or many changes through which they could not persist. Objects' modal profiles characterize their natures. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I like, especially the last bit. If your modal profile doesn't determine your nature, then what does? Think of how you sum up a person at a funeral. Your modal profile is determined by dispositions and powers. |
| 14192 | Essentialism must deal with charges of arbitrariness, and failure to reduce de re modality [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Two objections to deep essentialism are that it falters when faced with a skeptical objection concerning arbitrariness, and the need for a reductive account of de re modality. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: An immediate response to the second objection might be to say that modal facts about things are not reducible. The charge of arbitrariness (i.e. total arbitrariness, not just a bit of uncertainty) is the main thing a theory of essences must deal with. |
| 14197 | An object's modal properties don't determine its possibilities [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: I reject the view that an object's de re modal properties determine its relations to possibilia. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §3) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to read Paul to see why, but I flat disagree with her on this. The whole point of accepting such properties is to determine the modal profile of the thing, and hence see how it can fit into and behave in the world. |
| 14189 | 'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: A 'modal realist' believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the 'actualist' believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The 'ersatzist' is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: My view is something like that modal realism is wrong, and actualism is right, and possible worlds (if they really are that useful) are convenient abstract fictions, constructed (if we have any sense) out of the real possibilities in the actual world. |
| 13085 | Leibniz is some form of haecceitist [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Some form of haecceitism is central to the Leibnizian metaphysic. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §8) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 5.2.1 | |
| A reaction: That is, there is some inner hallmark that individuates each thing (though they don't mean the Duns Scotus idea of a haecceity which has no qualities apart from the capacity to individuate). Leibniz thinks essences individuate. |
| 5024 | Knowledge doesn't just come from the senses; we know the self, substance, identity, being etc. [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is always false to say that all our notions come from the so-called external senses, for the notion I have of myself and of my thoughts, and consequently of being, substance, action, identity, and many others, come from an internal experience. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §27) | |
| A reaction: Of course, an empiricist like Hume would not deny this, as he bases his views on 'experience' (including anger, for example), not just 'sense experience'. But Hume, famously, said he has no experience of a Self, so can't get started on Leibniz's journey. |
| 20795 | Some things are their own criterion, such as straightness, a set of scales, or light [Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Dogmatists say something can be its own criterion. The straight is the standard of itself, and a set of scales establishes the equality of other things and of itself, and light seems to reveal not just other things but also itself. | |
| From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Mathematicians [c.180], 442) | |
| A reaction: Each of these may be a bit dubious, but deserves careful discussion. |
| 20794 | How can sceptics show there is no criterion? Weak without, contradiction with [Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: The dogmatists ask how the sceptic can show there is no criterion. If without a criterion, he is untrustworthy; with a criterion he is turned upside down. He says there is no criterion, but accepts a criterion to establish this. | |
| From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Mathematicians [c.180], 440) | |
| A reaction: This is also the classic difficulty for foundationalist views of knowledge. Is the foundation justified, or not? |
| 5027 | If a person's memories became totally those of the King of China, he would be the King of China [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If someone were suddenly to become the King of China, forgetting what he has been, as if born anew, is this not as if he were annihilated, and a King of China created in his place at the same moment? | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §34) | |
| A reaction: Strikingly, this clearly endorse the view of the empiricist Locke. It is a view about the continuity of the self, not its essence, but Descartes must have turned in his grave when he read this. When this 'King of China' introspects his self, what is it? |
| 5023 | Future contingent events are certain, because God foresees them, but that doesn't make them necessary [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: We must distinguish between what is certain and what is necessary; everyone agrees that future contingents are certain, since God foresees them, but it is not thereby admitted that they are necessary. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §13) | |
| A reaction: An interesting point, since there is presumably a difference between God foreseeing that future squares will have four corners, and His foreseeing the next war. It seems to me, though, that 'certainty' is bad enough news for free will, without necessity. |
| 2119 | People argue for God's free will, but it isn't needed if God acts in perfection following supreme reason [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: People try to safeguard God's freedom, as though it were not freedom of the highest sort to act in perfection following sovereign reason. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §03) |
| 5025 | Mind and body can't influence one another, but God wouldn't intervene in the daily routine [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is inconceivable that mind and body should have any influence on one another, and it is unreasonable simply to have recourse to the extraordinary operation of the universal cause in a matter which is ordinary and particular. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §33) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz was the ultimate intellectual contortionist! Here he is rejecting Cartesian interactionism, and also Malebranche's Occasionalism (God bridges the gap), in order to prepare for his own (daft) theory of what is now called Parallelism. |
| 5026 | Animals lack morality because they lack self-reflection [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is for lack of reflection on themselves that beasts have no moral qualities. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §34) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but I think this is false. I would say animals do have a sense of their self, because that is the most basic feature of any mind, but what they lack is second-order thought, that is, ability to reflect on and judge their own beliefs and acts. |