LEIBNIZ’S LATE METAPHYSICS AND PHYSICS

Newton’s Principia Mathematica appeared in 1687. This prompted Leibniz to return to working on refining his own empirically based scientific views about ‘nature itself’ – his physics --  and at the same time to try to make them cohere with his reason based (‘a priori’) metaphysical views. 

One controversial aspect of Newton’s physics was his law of gravity.  Since gravity appeared to act at a distance, this put it at odds with the rest of his physics, which was purely mechanical.  Newton famously demurred from declaring the reality of gravity, and instead interpreted his law of gravity in an instrumental way, as a mere predictive tool. 

One way to view gravity realistically would be to view it as an attractive force.  Leibniz was very interested in the idea of force.  In the context of his mature metaphysics the notion of force as a kind of power or capacity comes to replace the notion of complete concept as a defining characteristic of individual substances.  Leibniz spends time working out his idea of force.  He develops a taxonomy, distinguishing between active and passive forces, and between primitive and derivative forces.  His settled views on this idea are summarized in the opening pages of “A Specimen of Dynamics” (1695). 

‘Dynamics’ is the name he gives to a branch of physics dealing with issues of the forces underlying the nature of bodily motion.  He distinguishes it from the ‘Mechanics’ which simply focuses on the laws of motion of corporeal bodies.  The dynamics of motion is to in effect provide an explanatory model of those laws.  Chapter 9 in the Cambridge Companion, by Daniel Garber,on Leibniz’s physics and philosophy is highly recommended reading.

As Garber caricatures  this two-layered physics, it is a marriage of the new science (the Mechanics) with a neo-Aristotelean explanatory framework for it (the Dynamics).  Perhaps slightly ironically, what is ‘new’ in this ‘New System of Nature’ as per another of his 1695 titles, is precisely these old Aristotelian ideas!

A key thing Leibniz has taken from Aristotle is his distinction between matter and form.  Corporeal bodies are an inseparable union of matter and form.  Matter cannot exist without form, nor can form exist without matter (contra Plato).  An object’s matter per se is passive, inert, resistant to change.  But that passivity can be conceptualized as a kind of primitive force of resistance.   It is its form that contains an object’s  active, dynamic principles, its ‘entelechy’, to use another Aristotelian term, that may help aid and abet its own changes as well as changes in other things that it interacts with.

Extension – which, recall, is what Descartes  had thought of as the essence of matter, is of course treated of in the Mechanics.  One could hardly give an account of the motions of bodies independently of their extensions.  But Leibniz had for a long while thought of extension per se as an inadequate account of the nature of matter, in fact as leading to absurdities.  Leibniz envisages a Dynamical account of the extension of a material body, as a phenomenon arising from underlying primitive passive forces.

The need for an appeal to forces in one’s physics Leibniz sees as a response to empirical observations that we make of the motions of bodies. 

By the so-called ‘derivative’ active and passive forces, Leibniz seems to mean forces of actual motion and of inertia of bodies that we observe.  Derivative forces in that sense are to be explained by appeal to primitive entelechies (powers to act), and to ‘primary matter’ (primitive passive force).  These are inherent in bodies and so there is no need for an appeal to occasionalism to explain the motions of bodies.  God creates bodies with their inherent capacities and powers, which, together with both the initial placement of bodies relative to each other and the laws of motion, determines bodily motions.

But of course, underlying both the Mechanics and the Dynamics is Leibniz’s a priori Metaphysics.  So that would make 3 theoretical layers needing to be reconciled in a unifying coherent way. The pressure for a coherent over-all view could go in both directions, or course: from the metaphysics to the physics, and vice versa.  In that case neither Leibniz’s physics nor his late metaphysics would  be seen as a purely empirical or purely a priori enterprise.

Garber concludes that Leibniz never arrived at a settled view of how this was to be done, although there are some intriguing possibilities sketched in his late correspondence. 

On one scheme, primitive forces get moved down to the metaphysical level, and become the substantial forms of individual substances – now called ‘monads’.  These monads are extensionless, massless,  metaphysical points, consisting of energy or force  (‘volition’) and sensitivity (‘perception)  modeled by Leibniz on our conscious thought.

 

We can get to Leibniz’s picture of nature from our own 21st century materialist picture in a series of just two steps.  First, think of nature as more or less just like we think of the world and of ourselves, except that what we see is not composed of material atoms with certain energy,  but immaterial ones, modeled on our conscious minds – so, wee little ‘proto-minds’; with little primitive entelechies – active forces (‘volitions’) and sensitivities (‘perceptions’).  So, the world is still fundamentally monistic, with physical atoms traded in for mental ones.  Second, and this is the big step, now think of what we see as not composed of these proto-minds, but as phenomena arising in regular objective and stable ways from these proto-minds, because of the specific natures of their  active powers, and their initial placement relative to each other.  The proto-minds are metaphysical points, they are extensionless and so cannot compose anything.  The material atoms of current empirical science are extended, of course.  But they can be acknowledged as part of the ‘real phenomena’ that arise from monads.  So you could still think of your body as composed of such atoms.  But the power, or energy, of those atoms will be derivative, not primitive.  True primitive entelechies will reside only in the metaphysical points.  (Compare this perhaps to String Theory, from which perspective what goes on at the atomic level may be ‘derivative’.)

So, non-living corporeal bodies are from the metaphysical perspective not seen as individual substances, but rather simply among the phenomena objectively arising from aggregates of these monads.  (Again, the monads are not parts of   such bodies; a point is not a part of anything.  The extension of such bodies is just a feature of the real phenomena.)

Living but non-rational things  --plants, and brutes --  are given a more complex and interesting story by Leibniz, and rational living things are accorded an unique metaphysical status.  Leibniz explores ways to acknowledge all of these as ‘substances’.  The biggest challenge is to explain how the patterns of aggregation of monads that constitute a living thing can provide the living thing per se with a unifying ‘substantial form’.  In the case of rational animals such as ourselves, this challenge includes the challenge of explaining how our conscious minds and bodies can interact in a unifying way, without simply falling back on Deus ex machina types of explanations.  Although, for Leibniz, a theist, at some point he wants his explanations to finally rest there.  The question is: at what point?

LEIBNIZ’S LATE METAPHYSICS AND PHYSICS

Newton’s Principia Mathematica appeared in 1687. This prompted Leibniz to return to working on refining his own empirically based scientific views about ‘nature itself’ – his physics --  and at the same time to try to make them cohere with his reason based (‘a priori’) metaphysical views. 

One controversial aspect of Newton’s physics was his law of gravity.  Since gravity appeared to act at a distance, this put it at odds with the rest of his physics, which was purely mechanical.  Newton famously demurred from declaring the reality of gravity, and instead interpreted his law of gravity in an instrumental way, as a mere predictive tool. 

One way to view gravity realistically would be to view it as an attractive force.  Leibniz was very interested in the idea of force.  In the context of his mature metaphysics the notion of force as a kind of power or capacity comes to replace the notion of complete concept as a defining characteristic of individual substances.  Leibniz spends time working out his idea of force.  He develops a taxonomy, distinguishing between active and passive forces, and between primitive and derivative forces.  His settled views on this idea are summarized in the opening pages of “A Specimen of Dynamics” (1695). 

‘Dynamics’ is the name he gives to a branch of physics dealing with issues of the forces underlying the nature of bodily motion.  He distinguishes it from the ‘Mechanics’ which simply focuses on the laws of motion of corporeal bodies.  The dynamics of motion is to in effect provide an explanatory model of those laws.  Chapter 9 in the Cambridge Companion, by Daniel Garber,on Leibniz’s physics and philosophy is highly recommended reading.

As Garber caricatures  this two-layered physics, it is a marriage of the new science (the Mechanics) with a neo-Aristotelean explanatory framework for it (the Dynamics).  Perhaps slightly ironically, what is ‘new’ in this ‘New System of Nature’ as per another of his 1695 titles, is precisely these old Aristotelian ideas!

A key thing Leibniz has taken from Aristotle is his distinction between matter and form.  Corporeal bodies are an inseparable union of matter and form.  Matter cannot exist without form, nor can form exist without matter (contra Plato).  An object’s matter per se is passive, inert, resistant to change.  But that passivity can be conceptualized as a kind of primitive force of resistance.   It is its form that contains an object’s  active, dynamic principles, its ‘entelechy’, to use another Aristotelian term, that may help aid and abet its own changes as well as changes in other things that it interacts with.

Extension – which, recall, is what Descartes  had thought of as the essence of matter, is of course treated of in the Mechanics.  One could hardly give an account of the motions of bodies independently of their extensions.  But Leibniz had for a long while thought of extension per se as an inadequate account of the nature of matter, in fact as leading to absurdities.  Leibniz envisages a Dynamical account of the extension of a material body, as a phenomenon arising from underlying primitive passive forces.

The need for an appeal to forces in one’s physics Leibniz sees as a response to empirical observations that we make of the motions of bodies. 

By the so-called ‘derivative’ active and passive forces, Leibniz seems to mean forces of actual motion and of inertia of bodies that we observe.  Derivative forces in that sense are to be explained by appeal to primitive entelechies (powers to act), and to ‘primary matter’ (primitive passive force).  These are inherent in bodies and so there is no need for an appeal to occasionalism to explain the motions of bodies.  God creates bodies with their inherent capacities and powers, which, together with both the initial placement of bodies relative to each other and the laws of motion, determines bodily motions.

But of course, underlying both the Mechanics and the Dynamics is Leibniz’s a priori Metaphysics.  So that would make 3 theoretical layers needing to be reconciled in a unifying coherent way. The pressure for a coherent over-all view could go in both directions, or course: from the metaphysics to the physics, and vice versa.  In that case neither Leibniz’s physics nor his late metaphysics would  be seen as a purely empirical or purely a priori enterprise.

Garber concludes that Leibniz never arrived at a settled view of how this was to be done, although there are some intriguing possibilities sketched in his late correspondence. 

On one scheme, primitive forces get moved down to the metaphysical level, and become the substantial forms of individual substances – now called ‘monads’.  These monads are extensionless, massless,  metaphysical points, consisting of energy or force  (‘volition’) and sensitivity (‘perception)  modeled by Leibniz on our conscious thought.

 

We can get to Leibniz’s picture of nature from our own 21st century materialist picture in a series of just two steps.  First, think of nature as more or less just like we think of the world and of ourselves, except that what we see is not composed of material atoms with certain energy,  but immaterial ones, modeled on our conscious minds – so, wee little ‘proto-minds’; with little primitive entelechies – active forces (‘volitions’) and sensitivities (‘perceptions’).  So, the world is still fundamentally monistic, with physical atoms traded in for mental ones.  Second, and this is the big step, now think of what we see as not composed of these proto-minds, but as phenomena arising in regular objective and stable ways from these proto-minds, because of the specific natures of their  active powers, and their initial placement relative to each other.  The proto-minds are metaphysical points, they are extensionless and so cannot compose anything.  The material atoms of current empirical science are extended, of course.  But they can be acknowledged as part of the ‘real phenomena’ that arise from monads.  So you could still think of your body as composed of such atoms.  But the power, or energy, of those atoms will be derivative, not primitive.  True primitive entelechies will reside only in the metaphysical points.  (Compare this perhaps to String Theory, from which perspective what goes on at the atomic level may be ‘derivative’.)

So, non-living corporeal bodies are from the metaphysical perspective not seen as individual substances, but rather simply among the phenomena objectively arising from aggregates of these monads.  (Again, the monads are not parts of   such bodies; a point is not a part of anything.  The extension of such bodies is just a feature of the real phenomena.)

Living but non-rational things  --plants, and brutes --  are given a more complex and interesting story by Leibniz, and rational living things are accorded an unique metaphysical status.  Leibniz explores ways to acknowledge all of these as ‘substances’.  The biggest challenge is to explain how the patterns of aggregation of monads that constitute a living thing can provide the living thing per se with a unifying ‘substantial form’.  In the case of rational animals such as ourselves, this challenge includes the challenge of explaining how our conscious minds and bodies can interact in a unifying way, without simply falling back on Deus ex machina types of explanations.  Although, for Leibniz, a theist, at some point he wants his explanations to finally rest there.  The question is: at what point?

NEWTON ON ABSOLUTE SPACE AND TIME: THE SCHOLIUM

Intro para:  Newton  emancipates himself from everyday notions.

1.      Temporal ordering of events is determinate and inherent to time per se; duration is also inherent and independent of various ways that we might seek to measure it.

2.     Absolute space is absolute and unchangeable, in that it remains the same from time to time, and without relation to anything external.  When we talk about the spatial positions of things relative to each other, this is to be understood by reference to their absolute positions in space per se.

3.     Place is a part of space which a body takes up.  Positions are points of space, and so are not places in themselves, but properties of places.  Spatial relations among bodies are parasitic on the spatial relations among the points of absolute space that the bodies occupy.  The parts of space cannot be seen or distinguished from one another by our senses. So in their stead we use sensible measures of them. Absolute space is thus a theoretical entity, postulated as the best explanation of what we do observe.

4.     Absolute motion is the translation of a body from one absolute place to another.  Relative motion is the translation of a body from one relative place to another, to be ultimately understood in terms of absolute motion.  Note: absolute motion presupposes absolute space

FROM PAUL TELLER, “Substance, Relations, and Arguments About the nature of Space-Time”, Phil. Rev. (July 1991), Vol. C No. 3.

“Substantivalism”:  Space/time is a substance, or collection of particulars (points or regions) existing independently, and providing an objective framework of spatial/temporal reference.

“Relationalism”: Substantival space/time is an illusion, there being nothing more than the spatial relations holding between physical objects or events.

“Narrow Relationalism”:  Actual space-time relations between actual bodies and events exhaust all the facts about space-time.

“Liberalized Relationalism”:  The facts about space time, in addition, include the scheme of possible space-time relations of actual or hypothetical objects to actual objects or events.

THE INDISCERNABILITY ARGUMENT

1.     Assume that there are space-time points/regions existing objectively and providing the framework at which things are located.

2.     Consider the whole history of the world, ‘the actual case’, including the location of everything.  Call it ‘A’.

3.     Given 1, we can describe an alternative to A, call it ‘B’, that agrees with A on all spatio-temporal relations between objects and events, but with everything uniformly moved over in space and time.

4.     But there cannot be such an alternative to A as B.

5.     Therefore we must reject 1.  (cf. Leibniz, 3rd letter to Clarke, para. 5)

Why 4?

The Argument From Inertial Effects

1.      Relationalists can recognize only relative acceleration.

2.     But there are systematic, observable connections, between acceleration and inertial effects.

3.     Of two individuals accelerating relative to each other, only one may be experiencing inertial effects.

4.     Relationalists have no way of explaining this.

5.     Therefore true acceleration must be relative to an absolutely independently given space-time.

So do Substantivalists, or Absolutists, have a way of explaining it?

 

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE LEIBNIZ/CLARKE CORRESPONDENCE

From Clarke’s second reply:

Sec. 1:Acknowledges PSR, but allows that a sufficient reason, when the choice is between indifferent options, could just be God’s will.

Sec. 3: Explains that when Newton characterized space as the ‘sensorium of God’, he meant merely by way of similitude: as is ‘space is, as it were, the sensorium of God.

From Leibniz’s 3rd paper.

Sec. 4: space and time are something relative: an order of co-existences; an order of successions.  Space denotes, in terms of possibility, an order of things which exit as the same time, considered as existing together; without enquiring into the manner of their existence.

Secs. 5, 6:  Argument against space and time as substances or absolute beings, from PSR.

Sec. 7 ff.  Reply to Clarke’s suggestion that the will of God per se could be a sufficient reason.

Sec. 13:  The active force in the universe is a constant.

Sec. 17:  Gravity would be a miracle.

            From Clarke’s 3rd reply

Sec.2:  The problem of indifferent choices requiring will to provide a reason arises for the relational conception of space and time as well, in connection with choosing the relative positions of identical particles (e.g., atoms of matter)

Sec. 3: Space is not a being, but a property. Or a consequence of the existence of a being infinite and eternal; infinite space is immensity, but immensity is not God.

Sec. 4:  Space and time are quantities, which situation and order are not. The inertial effects would be absent for God’s moving things over in space…if space were merely an order of co-existence.

Sec. 17: Clarke’s notion of miracle: something unusual, an exception to a generalization

From Leibniz’s 4th paper.

Secs.3,4:  No identical things in nature; atoms confuted.

Sec. 10-17: Reply to Clarke’s previous sec. 4.:  Clarke is imagining something incoherent.  reductio ad absurdum

Sec. 43: on Clarke’s unusual notion of miracle

Addendum: Vacuums and Space:  There is no empty space: God would have filled it.

            Clarke’s 4th reply

Secs. 1,2:  This time more subtly, on will and indifference and reasons for action.

Sec. 3.  Bits of matter are qualitatively identical.  Yet God did create them.  Same with bits of time, bits of space.

Sec. 8: ‘Void space’ means space void of body

Sec. 10.  Space is a property of that which is necessary

Sec. 13-17  Relative motions and observable effects.  Clarke’s main argument again, in more detail. *****

Sec. 46  natural forces and gravity.

            From Leibniz’s 5th paper

Secs.  52-53:  Reply to Clarke’s sec. 13 ff.:*****

 

 

 

CATHERINE WILSON ON THE DISCOURSE

3 Separate Schemes:

Metaphysics A:  the theory of individual substance based on the theory of truth (contra Descartes and Spinoza).

Metaphysics B: the theory of bodies, or corporeal substances (contra Descartes)

Metaphysics C:  the theory of the harmony of perceptions and actions,  a la Malebranche and contra Descartes)

Wilson argues that the combination of all 3 leads to over-all incoherence, centering around problems about the nature of relations, perception, and the external world.  For instance,  Metaphysics A and B suggests that  relations are not external denominations of things, whereas Metaphysics C requires them to be (e.g., the relation of expression).

BY POPULAR DEMAND:  THE LEIBNIZ ‘SHUFFLE’ (OR  BETTER: ‘REEL’, with the musical version sung to ‘Golliwog’s Cakewalk’)

REEL ONE:  How to explain the uniqueness, individuality of things observed in space and time.

·        It must be in terms of purely intrinsic, qualitative differences among things.  Otherwise PSR would be false.  So…

·        Extrinsic relational differences among things cannot matter to their individuation.  So…

·        If spatio-temporal location is among the distinguishing features of things, it must exist in them intrinsically.  So…

·        It is space and time that exist in things, not the converse. 

·        So we didn’t observe things in space and time.

 

REEL TWO: How to explain observed compositionality/divisibility of extended things.

·        Plurality presupposes unity.  Yet

·        Extension is infinitely divisible.  So

·        So it must be extensionless unities of which all pluralities are composed .  So

·        Au fond, extension is an illusion and there are no extended things.

REEL THREE: How to explain the observed harmony/regularity/variety in the natural order (i.e. , the patterned truth about things)

·        It must be in terms of individual substances driven by internal principles set according to a pre-established harmony.

·        But the model of such substances is minds and their perceptions, which latter are purely internal, and which they would have whether or not anything else (save God) exists.  So

·        Harmony/regularity/variety isn’t observed, except by God.  It is just ‘dreamed’ by us.

 

THEMES IN ARNAULD/LEIBNIZ

I.                    Possibility as potential or capacity of something actually existing vs. possibility as ‘location in logical space’.

 

A:  The former makes better sense of counterfactual claims such as that I might have married; also makes better sense of freedom.

 

L:  The former can be interpreted in terms of ‘counterparts’; the latter allows for contingency and freedom compatibly with logical determinism.

                              3 Grades of hypothetical necessity:

1.      Metaphysical

2.     Physical

3.     Moral

God’s ‘free decrees’ are only at grades 2 and 3; and are built into concepts of worlds, as well as concepts of individual substances in worlds.

II.                  Substances as subjects of modes, states; souls as substances vs. substances as something with a true unity (and therefore a complete concept), with souls as substantial forms

A: The former allows ordinary physical objects to be substances; the latter violates dualism; no clear and distinct idea of substantial forms; what if there are material atoms?

L: The former is incompatible with the identity of Indiscernibles; aggretation is a mode of aggregates; bodies without souls are mere aggregates; dualism rejected; we do have a distinct notion of substantial forms, but even if we didn’t that would prove nothing; material atoms cannot explain the past and future states of things.

 

III.              Efficient causation and occasionalism vs harmony, concomitance and expression.

 

A:  My will as the ‘occasional’ cause or ‘proximal efficient cause’, of the movement of my arm; God as the ‘real’ cause or ‘first efficient cause’.

 

L:  My will as the ‘formal’ cause of my arm’s moving, but not an efficient cause of it.  No transfer of impetus occurs, only expression relations possible between true unities.  Even creation was not a transfer of an impetus.  My will as the efficient cause only concomitant phenomenal experiences of the arm moving.

 

 

 

ARNAULD: LETTER TO LEIBNIZ 13 MAY 1686

 

A1:  God’s ‘free decrees’ are incompatible with complete concepts of possible individuals. (p. 28)

 

A2:  A. cannot conceive of many possible Adams.  “It would have been me, whether married or not, in Paris or not.” (p. 29)

 

A3: Compare:  the block of marble is the same whether at rest or at motion. (p. 30)

A4:  no purely possible entities.  Possibilities are built into the nature of actually existing things via dispositions, capacities, potency. (p. 31)

A5:  We must proceed from our own notions, not God’s (p. 32)

 

 

LEIBNIZ RESPONDS: 21/31 MAY 1686

To A1:

1.     Must distinguish metaphysical, physical, moral necessity.  The weaker the kind of necessity, the more it depends on God’s ‘free decrees’. (AG: 69-70)

 

2.     All truths of (created) existence depend on God’s free decrees, because all created existence is contingent. (AG: 70)

 

3.     Free decrees of God tend to be general in nature, few in number. (AG: 71)

 

4.     Individual concepts contain (possible) free decrees, e.g. the laws of the possible word to which they belong. (AG: 71)

 

5.     Each universe has a ‘primary’ concept, from which everything about it follows .  Such certainty is compatible with contingency. (AG: 72-3)

To A2:

6.  L agrees that there can only be one Adam.  The ‘many possible Adams’ were not determinate individuals.  Adam can only be in this world.  (AG: 73)

To A3:

7.  The block of marble wouldn’t be that very block if it had been left in     Genoa  (AG 73-4)

8.  Why am I the same person over time?  Because all that happens to me is (already) contained in my (single) complete concept. (AG: 74)

9.  Actualizing = seeing, having a vision.  (AG: 74)

 

To A4:

10.  Perfect squares are pure possibles.  No pure possibles, then no contingency (AG: 75)

To A5:

11.   Against relying on our own notions, inner feelings, intuitions, experiences.  (AG: 75)

 

 

ARNAULD TO LEIBNIZ: 28TH OF SEPTEMBER 1686

A.      re. the hypothesis of harmonized concomitance:

What about pain? (p. 78)

What about intentional arm movement? (p. 79)

B.      re the soul as a substantial form  (pp. 79 ff. numbered items below correspond to Arnauld’s numbers)

 

1.     It violates dualism

 

2.     Are substantial forms indivisible?

 

3.     What about a marble tile broken in two?

 

4.     Are there general substantial forms (e.g., extension?)

 

5.     What about the unity of divisible things?

 

6.     We have no clear and distinct idea of substantial forms

 

7.     What if matter isn’t infinitely divisible?

 

LEIBNIZ’S REPLY TO ARNAULD: 28th Nov.-8th  Dec., 1686

Re.  harmony:

In both the pain and arm cases, the causes are within individual substances.  (AG pp. 77-78)

Re.  substantial forms:

1.      Our body is not a substance; dualism is rejected (AG 78)

 

2.     Yes!  And not only are they indivisible, but they are naturally indestructiable and ingeneratable. (AG 78)

 

3.     The marble tile is not a single substance.  It is an assemblage of substances…..A true substance  would have to be something on the model of what is called “me” (AG 79)

 

4.     No. there are only individual substances, that have infinitary complete concepts.  (AG 80)

 

5.     If there are no ‘corporeal substances’, then bodies are merely ‘true phenomena’, like the rainbow. (AG 80)  A true corporeal substance must be more than merely ‘mechanically united’  Rational animals like ourselves can thus be considered corporeal substances, whether beasts, plants, planets are corporeal substances is an empirical question.

 

6.     We do too have a clear and distinct notion of substantial form, but even if we didn’t that would not prove anything, because we are required to admit many things whose knowledge is not clear and distinct. (AG 80)

 

7.     Material atoms* -- a la the Cartesians – cannot explain the past and future states of things.

 

ARNAULD TO LEIBNIZ: MARCH 4, 1687

LEIBNIZ TO ARNAULD: APRIL 3, 1687

Re: ‘harmony and concomitance’

A:  How does your view of bodily motion (e.g., my arm rising, upon my willing it) differ from the view of the occasionalists?  Surely bodies cannot move themselves.  And what about our experience of pain (e.g., when punched)?  What is the role of the nervous system?  Surely causation is involved (pp. 105 ff.).

L:  There are only relations of expression between bodies, or between bodies and minds (or ‘souls’).  Relations of expression are ‘spontaneous relations of representation’  They are informational relations, not causal.  To be causal relations there would have to be a transfer of an impulse, or force.  And there can’t be, at least between bodies and minds because they are incommensurable (‘there is no proportion between mind and body’  (AG: p. 83) 

Expression comes in degrees, and not everything expressed is accessible to conscious awareness (‘apperception’).  Cf. his example of the sound of waves coming from a distant shore.  ‘Knowledge’ does not imply such awareness.(AG, pp. 81-2)  Contra the occasionalists, individual substances do move themselves or have perceptual experiences, or pains,or thoughts,  according to their complete concepts, as created by God (AG: p. 82).  The act of creation can be spoken of as a ‘causal’ act, though there is no transfer of impulse or force.  The subsequent unfolding of a substance in accordance with its own ‘inner laws and forces’, could also be thought of as causation, yet again there would seem to be no transfer of impulse or force from one perception to the next; just the logical determination of the sequence of perceptions according to the complete concept, i.e., substantial form with which the (extensionless) individual substance has been created.

Re: ‘substance’ and ‘substantial forms’

A:  the definition of ‘substance’ as a true unity, vs the definition of ‘substance’ as that which is not modality or state (but what has the modality or state).  Since neither definition has received general acceptance, why isn’t this a mere quibble over words? 

And why do animals have substantial forms?  What would animal souls explain?  Not their behavior, since that can be done mechanically.

And why does a body united to its soul, and directed by it,  possess a true unity.  It seems that there are degrees of unity  (pp. 110-111.)

L: Defends his conception of substance as a metaphysical requirement, where metaphysics is seen as underlying physics, or presupposed as a foundation of physics.

Argues there if there are only entities through aggregation there will not even be real entities. (AG: p. 85)

Offers the following axiom, an ‘identical’ proposition to which emphasis has been added:  what is not truly one entity is not truly one entity  either.   Or more briefly still: No entity without unity.

Also:  plural presupposes singular.

All of this presupposed by our mechanical explanations, though such presuppositions do not need to be explicitly invoked when doing science. (CF. AG: pp. 86-7)

It would be shortsighted to limit such true unity to man.  God will have produced as many substances as there can be, since each one reflects the whole universe, and maximizing these maximizes the harmony and perfection of the universe. (AG: 87).  Speculates that if animals do have souls, their bodies have coalesced around souls that existed from the beginning of creation.  Their souls aren’t composed of the aggregated souls constituting their bodies.  Whereas perhaps God creates the soul of a ‘rational being’ like us only when the time is for it to be born. (occasionalism!!)  So we still get to be special.  

 

LEIBNIZ’S LETTER TO ARNAULD: OCTOBER 1687

Addresses questions raised by Arnauld in his August 1687 letter, which were as follows:

1.      What does “expression” mean?

2.     How can a body impart movement to itself?

3.     We ascribe unity to lots of things – the sun, the earth; what is so special and restrictive about your notion of ‘true unity’ as ascribed to individual substances?

4.     Substantial forms just are substances for you, right?  But surely they are neither indivisible nor indestructible.

5.     Surely ‘bodily substances’ are not ‘true unities’

Leibniz re. 1:

“One thing expresses another (in my terminology) when there exists a constant and fixed relationship between what can be said of one and of the other….Expression is common to all forms, and it is a genus of which natural perception, animal sensation and intellectual knowledge are species.” (p. 144)

There are degrees of confusion in our perceptions or thoughts.

“Since we perceive other bodies only through their relationships to ours, I was right to say that the soul expresses better what pertains to our [sic] body” (p. 145)

Leibniz re. 2,3

“True, a body without movement cannot impart any to itself; but I maintain that there is no such body” (p. 148)  “A bodily substance imparts movement to itself in its own movement, or rather, what is real in the movement at each moment, that is to say, the derivative force, of which it is a consequence, since every present state of a substance is a consequence of its preceding state.”  Compare this with what L says in his previous letter to Arnauld (AG: p. 86 near bottom).  There he invokes force too (against Descartes: extension isn’t enough to explain motion), and force internal to bodily substances.  What is new here is the way he is talking about derivative force in an immediately preceding state bringing about the present state of the substance.  This way of talking about substances is the beginning of a transition away from the “complete concept” definition of a substance, and suggests a causal-dynamic rather than definitional conception of what the ‘true unity’ of a substance consists in.  He is still reaching for it, though.  Consider what he says on p. 152, where he characterizes souls or substances as ‘animate’ entities, endowed with a ‘basic entelechy’ or ‘vital principle’ or ‘life’.

Leibniz Re. 4:

Ad hominem arguments against Arnauld(p. 149).

No one complains when atoms are introduced as existing forever and being indestructible. (p. 150)  These individual substances (substantial forms) are my atoms

Accuses Arnauld’s arguments of being ad hominem  and failing to address L’s main argument, ( i.e., the one that invokes the axiom that what is not truly one entity is not truly one entity). (p. 151)

Leibniz re. 5;

Defends the idea that a bodily substance can be a true unity in virtue of having a ‘soul’  “…it is the animate substance to which this matter belongs  which is truly an entity, and the matter considered as the mass in itself is only a pure phenomenon or a well-founded appearance, as also are space and time”(p. 152)  Cf. also p. 158: “…I think that I have sufficiently shown that there must be entelechies, if there are bodily substances; and when one admits these entelechies or these souls, one must grant that they cannot be engendered or destroyed.”  Minds – thinking substances – are the exception; and they are governed by different laws…(p. 159)

 

LOCKE ON OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCE AND SUBSTANCES (Bk II ch. 23, secs. 1-5)

We notice various simple ideas constantly occurring together, and so presume that they belong to one thing, and may coin a name for it.  And then, since we cannot imagine how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we suppose that there is a substratum in which they inhere, which we call ‘substance’.  We have no clear and distinct idea of substance in this sense.  It is just the unknown support of simple ideas presumed to belong to the same thing.

Sorts of substances, typically picked out with general terms, are the grouping together of different individual things, or stuff, as having the same essence; e.g., gold, water, horse, man.

Operations of our mind which we observe by reflection are also grouped together as ours, and are also presumed to require an unknown support, this time a spiritual substance or soul.

LEIBNBIZ ON SUBSTANCE

We do have an idea of substance.  What’s the problem?

The subject is not to be abstracted or separated from all of its qualities or accidents.  That is not how our notion of substance is arrived at, any more than our notions of existence or being are arrived at.

Qualities (as opposed to ideas) as concrete (as tropes?)

Locke’s opinion of what we do not know springs from a demand for a way of knowing, of which our ideas of substance and existence do not admit.

The true sign of clarity and distinctness of an idea is one’s means of giving a priori proofs of truths about it.

 

 

 

LOCKE ON IDENTITY (Bk. II ch 17)

Identity at a time versus identity over time

Principle:  no two things of the same kind can exist in the same place at the same time.  Three kinds:  God, Finite intelligences, Bodies.

Re. identity at a time:  Clearly, then, given this principle, thing x (of a certain kind), existing at time t and place p, cannot be identical with anything other than x at t and p.

Re. identity over time: God is without beginning, eternal, unalterable, and everywhere, so, given the principle, concerning his identity there can be no doubt.  Each finite spirit has its determinate time and place of beginning to exist, and the relation to that will always determine their identity as long as they exist.  The same holds for every basic particle of matter.  Bodies made up of particles of matter will continue to be the same provided they continue to be made up of the same particles (in the same configuration?)

Note: the notion of substance is playing no role in these determinations

Identity of plants, brutes, man, persons………

LEIBNIZ ON IDENTITY

In addition to difference of time and of place, there must be an internal principle of distinction.  Time and place do not determine the core of identity.  We distinguish times and places by means of things, not the other way around, because times and places are, in themselves, perfectly alike.  Times and places are not substances, or complete realities.

There can be spatio-temporal interpenetration of things of the same kind: e.g., shadows, rays of light.  (How about tropes?)

Same plant, brute, man, person all require same internal principle of individuation

 

LOCKE ON PERSONAL IDENTITY (Bk. II ch. 27, esp. secs. 9, 10, 26)

A person is an intelligent thinking being, with reason and reflection, aware of itself as self, aware of its actions at different times and places.

Is a person a substance?  Not necessarily the same living body or corporeal substance (or even the same kind?).  Not necessarily the same soul or spiritual substance. Various thought experiments, involving transfers and exchanges of consciousness and memory, to support this. 

‘Person’ is the name for this self that we take ourselves to be.  ‘Person’ is a forensic term….same person: same moral being, subject to praise and blame, reward and punishment.

LEIBNIZ ON PERSONS

Gives Locke his forensic term ‘person’, but then shifts to ‘self’ and insists that the self is a substance (e.g.,  that it doesn’t have parts), and that it has a certain essence or real nature, which needn’t be completely or at all times transparent to itself, or accessible by consciousness.  (See esp. New Essays pp. 236-8)

Leibniz’s critique of Locke’s method of thought experiments (p. 245).

Leibniz’s own ‘Twin Earth’ thought experiment to challenge Locke’s conception of personal identity (p. 245).

LOCKE ON OUR IDEAS OF POWER, WILL, FREEDOM…  (BK. II CH. 21)

We come to our idea of power by reflection on patterns of change that we notice in the world, and in our minds.  Our clearest ideas come from reflection on the operation of our minds.

Active power is the power to make a change; passive power is the power to receive one.

Our idea of power is relational insofar as it relates to action. 

Two broad categories of action are thinking (e.g. willing) and motion (billiard examples).  But observing a cue stick hitting a billiard ball gives us no idea of what transpires at the beginning of the billiard ball’s motion.  So we must consider carefully by reflection what goes on when we, e.g., will our arm to move, followed by its movement.

Will is the active power of the mind to order the consideration of possible coursed of action, to come to prefer, and to choose to do something. or not do it.  The exercise of that power is Volition or Willing.  Acting in accordance with such volition will be an instance of Voluntary action.

Perception is the understanding of ideas, signs, and relations between ideas.

Freedom (sec. 8) is the power to move, and think according to the preference of one’s own mind.  Billiard balls are not free.

Sec. 10.  One can think and act out of one’s own volition while not being free.

Sec. 14 ff.: The question “Is man’s will free?” commits a category mistake.  Liberty belongs only to agents.  The will is just a power.  Freedom is another power.  It makes no sense to attribute one power to another power.

Sec. 21: Proper question: “Is a man free?”  A man is free to the extent that he can act, or not, according to his will, or choice.

Sec. 29 ff:  What determines the will in regard to our actions?  The mind, and in particular desire.  Desire involves a state of uneasiness, the dynamics of which can determine the will.  Some desires are natural or built in, to move us in the direction of ends that are good for us.  But sometimes we are moved by desires that trump the greater good, even though we are aware of that good.  Desire for the greater good can trump more immediate desires only when the former is associated with a higher degree of uneasiness (and how might this be brought about?).  In general there can be a problem of multiple, competing, desires.

(Sec. 41)  What moves desires?  (Degrees of) Happiness and Misery, pleasure and pain.   Kinds of pleasures….(sec. 47): the mind’s power to suspend the prosecution of this or that desire.

Sec. 57: Whence these feelings of unease…especially those that lead us astray? 

Ignorance, errors of judgment, inadvertencies, things that are out of our control…

Sec.71 ff.: Locke’s autobiographical story of the writing of this Chapter, a summary of its main conclusions, and a proffered list of our “most original” ideas (which is not to say innate).  Interesting stuff on the freedom of indifference.

LEIBNIZ ON POWER AND FREEDOM

Power as the possibility of change. 

Active power as a faculty; passive power as a capacity

A stronger sense of active power includes endeavor, which can be understood in terms of force (primary active forces he calls “entelechies”; souls characterized as entelechies+perception)

All of our ideas are composite, we are just not aware of it.

Volition is the endeavor to move towards what one finds good and away from what one finds bad.

Perceiving is not sufficient for understanding

‘Freedom’ is ambiguous.  A man is free to do what we wills in proportion to the means at his disposal.  A man is free to will that A in one sense if he is free from cognitive constraints to so will; in another sense if the strongest reasons on which the man does A do not prevent his so doing from bring contingent, or impose an absolute necessity on his having done A.

Acting on impulse or whims is still acting on the greatest desire.

Uneasiness is not all that moves us to act. We are spurred on by minute insensible perceptions that we do not take cognizance of.

Happiness does not consist in achieving goals, just in moving towards them.

There is no greatest pleasure.  Happiness is a pathway through pleasures.

One is never indifferent with regard to two alternatives.  When we opt for one there will have been some internal disposition towards it of which we are not aware.  (But what if we opt on the basis of a coin toss, and experience no cognitive dissonance in so doing?)

LOCKE ON GENERAL TERMS (BK III CH. 3)

All things are particular, so why are most of our words general?

Too many things to name; even if not, you cannot have thoughts consisting just of names; it would also be too inefficient for the improvement of knowledge, which includes generalizations.

How are general words made?  Recipe: you take an idea of something particular (e.g., your idea of some particular table), and abstract away from all the circumstances of time and place and other ideas (e.g. ,ownership, manufacture, when observed by you) that are associated with your idea as being the idea of  the particular that it is.  And voila: you have made a general idea (e.g., of table).

What do they signify?  Not one particular thing; not a plurality of things.  They signify a sort of things, by being a sign of an abstract idea in the mind, which, when particular things are found to agree with it, is used to classify them.

LEIBNIZ ON GENERAL TERMS

Proper names of particulars frequently originate from general terms.

When general terms are formed by abstraction, it is an ascent from species to genera, rather than from individuals to species.

Generality consists in the resemblance of singular things to one another, and this resemblance is a reality.  That is where the essence of species and genera should be located, not in the mind.  The nominal essence of gold, forinstance, is the sensible qualities of gold with reference to which we formulate its nominal definition.  The real essence of gold is those qualities of gold which underlie its sensible qualities

LOCKE ON KNOWLEDGE  (BK 1V)

1.      Knowledge (chs. 1,2):  perception of agreement or disagreement between our ideas.

 

2.     Truth (ch. 5):  (the marking down in words of) the agreement or disagreement of ideas, as it is.  Therefore,

 

3.     Knowledge:  the perception of truth.

 

4.     Perception (ch. 2): the indubitable awareness of one’s ideas, and relations amongst them.  Therefore,

 

5.     Knowledge:  the indubitable awareness of truth …

 

But indubitability comes in degrees!  Locke distinguishes three grades or ‘degrees’of knowledge.

Intuitive knowledge:  ‘immediate’ perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, without the intervention of any other ideas.

Demonstrative knowledge: perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, from connections they have via intervening ideas (i.e., via demonstration or proof, where each step in the proof involves an instance of intuitive knowledge)

Sensitive knowledge:  knowledge of the existence of particular external objects, by that perception and consciousness we have of the actual entrance of ideas from them.  (cf. esp.  ch 2, sec. 14)

 

Apart from our knowledge of our own existence, and of God’s existence, the above degrees constitute an exhaustive accounting of the scope of human knowledge.  For instance, the presumption of agreement or disagreement between ideas, even when rationally based on testimony or on consistency with our knowledge, is not knowledge, but at best ‘probable belief’.

 

Response to Skeptical Doubts about Sensitive Knowledge (ch. 11):

1.      Our sensory perceptions must be caused by external objects, because those lacking the salient sensory organs do not experience them, and the organs themselves do not produce them.

 

2.     Sensory ideas force themselves on us; we cannot avoid having them (comp. ideas laid up in memory, or the exercise of the imagination)

 

3.     Many of those ideas are accompanied  by ideas of pain, which afterward we remember without the accompanying pain.

 

4.     There is a coherence to the deliverance of ideas from different modalities concerning the existence of things without us.

 

Attempts a response to the “Dream Argument” in secs. 8-10, focusing on the irrationality of acting in accordance with its conclusion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEIBNIZ ON LOCKE ON KNOWLEDGE  (HIGHLIGHTS ONLY)

·        Challenges the restriction to knowledge of truth, vs, e.g., knowledge of possibilities.

 

·        Challenges the claim that knowledge must imply awareness.

 

·        Challenges the limitation of the definition to categorical as opposed to hypothetical truths.

 

·        Emphasizes the fallible role of memory in the case of demonstrative truths.

 

·        Draws a distinction between actual and habitual knowledge (ch.1, sec.8).  This supports  his challenge to the awareness requirement.

 

·        Perhaps opinion based on likelihood also deserves the name of ‘knowledge’ (ch. 2, sec. 14) –     it would-be 4th grade of knowledge.

 

·        Distinguishing sensation from imagination won’t refute the skeptic, because it will be seen as a difference in degree rather than in kind.  A better tack is to emphasize the connectedness and coherence of our ideas at different times and places, and in the experience of different men (ch. 2, sec. 14).  But establishing these links among our ideas depend on intellectual truths, grounded in reason (cf. also ch. 11, sec. 10).

 

·        To ‘doubt in earnest’ is to doubt in a practical way.  To doubt the existence of other men and external things in a practical way would be insane, ‘unhinged’. (ch. 11, sec. 10)