Week 5 Leibniz Metaphysics Flashcards
Leibniz Life
Born in Leipzig, Germany (1649).
Son of moral philosopher
Professional service to nobleman.
Legal advisor, official historian
Leibniz Accomplishments
Polymath.
Engineer: created mining machinery, clocks, calculators.
Librarian: created the modern idea of cataloguing .
Mathematician: developed a calculus independently of Newton. His notation is standard.
Physicist: advancements in theory of momentum.
Books
Discourse on Metaphysics; each substance, is like a whole world and like a mirror of God.
New Essays on Human Understanding.
Essay on Theodicy (justice of God); book of the defense of the justice of God.
Monadology: Monads are spiritual substances created by God They are the basic building block of nature
Gods will and Intellect ( main thesis)
Gods mind consists of in a will and intellect, like the human mind. Intellect = rational judgement, will is the ability to put judgement into action. (is able to see in future and decide best possible outcome)
Descartes
Gods acts of will determine what is good or bad.
The Principle of Sufficient Reason
For anything that exists, there is a reason sufficient to determine Gods will to bring it about, i.e, the reason that its existence would be for the best.
Ontological Economy
God’s actions follow a principle of economy. God acts according to the most economical means to bring about the most abundant ends.
The Linguistic Test
Substances are the ultimate subject of predication. Socrates passes the test since we can predicate many things of him, while Socrates can be predicated to nothing.
The metaphysical test
Substances are substrata of things. The most distinctive mark of a substance is what remains numerically the same (cf. Aristotle essentialism)
The Logicist Strategy
All true predication has some foundation in the nature of things.
The Idea of Truth (Leibniz)
Truth is simply a proposition in which the predicate is contained in the subject.
Like saying a bachelor is an unmarried man.
influx model
Causal interaction about substances in the world must be understood as involving a process of contagion.
Causality ( the critique of the influx model)
The influx model of causality (Leibniz) incoherent for it rests on the metaphysical fiction that accidents can become detached from their own substance and move to other substances.
Ontology Created substances
- they are genuine unities
- they are genuinely active and causally self-sufficient
- they express the entire universe (and thus reflect the divine perfection of omniscience)
Monad
(from the Greek meaning unity) = a simple, immaterial, soul like, substance endowed with perception and appetition.
Since nothing purely material can be indivisible, monads cannot be like atoms traditionally conceived.
Monads qua simple are without parts. Thus they cannot be corporeal. They must be immaterial.
Monads are indestructible, for destruction consists in decomposition which is a dissolution of a thing into its composing parts (see unity of substance).
Monads can begin (and end) only by a miraculous act of creation (or annihilation).
If monads are simple, immaterial and indestructible, then the building block of the universe share certain properties with God (they are the mirror of God).
The building blocks of the universe are all mental or soul like entities. They are spiritual atoms.
Monads are windowless: So neither substance nor accident can come into a monad from outside.
All monads express (perceive) the entire universe. Yet no two monads are exactly alike. They have different points of view
Appetition
the endeavor or striving in a monad by virtue of which it passes from one perceptual state to its successor. Appetition explains the dynamicity of monads.
Atomism
Monads are the true atoms of nature.
Identity of Indiscernible: Leibniz Law
The notion of point of view allows Leibniz to accept the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (sometimes also known as Leibniz law).
If, for every property F, object x has F if and only if object y has F, then x is identical to y.
AF(Fx Fy) -> x=y
The hierarchy of monads.
- God is on top by virtue of possessing perceptions that are clear and distinct.
- Human minds are lower. They are high quality monads by virtue of (i) possessing reason allowing them to entertain eternal truth of logic and mathematics and (ii) self-consciousness: the ability to say “I”.
- At the bottom we have bare monads. They have perceptual states but they are extremely confused and obscure. They have no consciousness.
Pre-established Harmony
the notion that every substance affects only itself. On a superficial level, we see this play out as causal interaction in the world. But this is already pre-established by God via the monadic structure of the universe.
In other words, what appears to us to be casual interactions are, in fact, mutual conformity of pre-established coordination.
Three levels of Temporal Explanation
According to Leibniz, time is structured in the following way:
(1) the atemporality/eternality of God (who can view infinity)
(2) the continuous and immanent becoming-itself that is the unfolding of the monad from potential to actual.(3)time as external chronology of successive present states (or “nows”)
