Sorglose Nacht » 2008

December 2008

Monthly Archive

The Monadology

The following is an outline of a philosophical text which is provided with no claim with regard to it's accuracy or neutrality. Use freely, but at your own risk.

Overview

The Monadology the most comprehensive and succinct statement of Leibniz’s mature philosophy. It is ninety points, which I’ve grouped into the following subsets (following George MacDonald Ross): Simple substances, Change, Perception and appetition, Unconscious perceptions, Animals, Reason, Contingent truths, The existence and nature of God, Causality, Possible worlds, Interconnectedness, Soul and body, Infinite divisiblity, Birth and death, Soul and body, the City of God.

It should further be indicated that many of the notes emerged or were directly copied from the very helpful (and freely available) commentary of George MacDonald Ross, and many thanks are due to him for making this text comprehensible for me. Of course, any failings in my reading are in spite of his excellent commentary and not attributable to it. Indeed, his commentary is a significantly better pedagogy, and I can’t imagine why you’d read mine, unless you’re me. Please don’t confuse that admonition with scholarly modesty: I am almost certain his will make better sense to you.

Outline

Simple Substances (1-9)
1. §1: Monads are nothing other than simple substances (without parts) which make up compounds.
  1. How are monads are supposed to make up, or “enter into” compounds?
  2. Either (a) they are literally the smallest parts of compound bodies (literal) or (b) compound bodies are constructed out of the perceptions of monads (metaphorical).
2. §2: There must be simple substances since there are compounds (which by definition are aggregates of simples).
  1. Later, the distinction between mere compounds and organic bodies - which are also compounds, but such that the whole is more than just the sum of its parts - will become crucial.
  2. Leibniz’s argument is that since a (non-organic) compound is the sum of its parts, it is only real in so far as its parts are real. But the same is true of the parts of the parts.
3. §3: Extension, shape, and divisibility are possible only where there are parts. So these monads are the genuine atoms of Nature, and (in a word) the elements of things.
  1. Here we learn that monads are ultimate entities which do not have the properties of matter - this is to escape the infinite regress of material atomism.
4. §4: There is no conceivable way in which a simple substance could be broken up or naturally cease to exist.
  1. “naturally” = in accordance with the laws of mechanics.
5. §5: There is no conceivable way in which a simple substance could naturally come into being, since it could not be “built” (mechanically).
6. §6: Summary: Monads come into being only by creation, and go out of being only by annihilation. Compounds come in our out of being through their parts.
7. §7: This is two arguments: (1) there is no way of explaining how a monad could be internally altered or changed by some other created being, and (2) monads have no windows to let anything in or out by.
  1. First: The only type of influence we can conceive of is when one piece of matter is moved by another piece of matter in accordance with the laws of motion. In compounds this will - or at least can - cause some internal change. In monads it cannot, as they have no parts.
  2. Second: One of the ways in which one substance might be influenced by another is by perceiving it. The problem here is the question about how sense-data might enter the soul and influence it. The brain may have windows, but the soul doesn’t.
  3. In the second argument, we also note that Leibniz was in complete agreement with Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, in that accidents are modes of substances, and cannot exist independently of them.
8. §8: On the other hand, monads must have some qualities (cf. 1.c: they have no quantitative differences), insofar as they (a) are beings, (b) the compound things they make up are differentiable (cf. 1.h.i below).
  1. Note that Leibniz makes a caveat here about his belief that there’s no empty space. If there were, things could be differentiable by being encoded with monads and empty space (note also here is Leibniz figures out you can encode data in binary).
9. §9: It is even necessary for every monad to be different from every other monad.
  1. This is qua Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII), although his argument is pretty flabby. In this passage he both fails to account for both:
    1. the fact that even though no two macroscopic objects are identical, they might still be made out of a small set of identical sets of microscopic objects.
    2. the fact that we are regularly confronted with indistinguishable objects (take, e.g. this: eeee).
  2. Elsewhere, he provides two main arguments for PII:
    1. (1:1) In the Leibnizian double-aspect (body/soul) program, the soul is the only genuine unity (and therefore the only fully real part).
    2. (1:2) Hence, its individual existence cannot depend on its body or matter. It is thus like an Aquinan angel: there cannot be two with exactly the same set of properties.
    3. (2:1) Space and time are ultimately nothing other than relations.
    4. (2:2) Therefore, they must be defined in terms of the things they relate, not the other way around.
    5. (2:3) This means that you can’t distinguish one monad from another by holding one in your left hand and one in your right hand.
Change (10-13)
1. §10: Every created being (including every monad) is subject to change, and this change is continuous in each of them.
  1. Note that now, not only are the qualities of one monad different from those of every other monad at any given time, but the qualities of the same monad are different from one moment to the next.
  2. Also note that the change is /continuous/ as well as continual.
2. §11: These natural changes to which monads are subject come from an internal principle (following 1.g.i).
3. §12: In addition to the source of change, there must be something which specifies precisely what all those changes are going to be. This precise specification (or complete concept, cf. 2.c.i below) which makes each monad different from every other monad.
  1. Elsewhere Leibniz tells us that this is the complete concept of the monad, which includes all the predicates it will ever have.
4. §13: A unitary simple substance must contain multiplicity (i.e. a multiplicity of qualities): Given that monads change, and given that the change is gradual, there must be some continuity between one state and the next. In other words, some aspects must remain the same while others change.
  1. Note that this argument is invalid for a given monad with one quality. That’s probably okay, though, as this really just recapitulates (1.h).
Perception and apperception (14-17)
1. §14: These affections and relations are perceptions. By definition, perceptions are representations of a multiplicity within the unity of a simple substance.
  1. Note: It was only in the 17th century that people started using the word “consciousness” in the modern sense. To fill the gap in the French language, Leibniz coined the term apperception.
  2. Leibniz then criticises Descartes for failing to recognise the existence of unconscious perceptions. This isn’t wholly fair, since Descartes did recognise the existence of images in the brain of which we might not be conscious. But Leibniz’s point is that the soul can have unconscious as well as conscious perceptions.
  3. He also details his departure from the Cartesian schemata for souls, which included only humans and angels. Leibniz admits three kinds of souls, which are sharply distinct:
    1. Spirits: Have self-consciousness and reason;
    2. Animals: Have sensation, emotion, and motivation;
    3. Monads and entelechies (cf. 4.a): merely express the universe confusedly, and have an appetition towards a better state.
  4. Finally he eludes to his later point that the “folk” (and Descrates) are wrong to think of death as a complete separation of the immaterial soul from the body, since it is not separable from the body. For Leibniz, what we call “death” is a prolonged period of unconsciousness in a smaller body.
2. §15: The transition from one perception to another can be called appetition. Appetition is directedness towards greater perfection, and while no monad can completely acheive perfection (of perception), but every appetition makes some progress.
3. §16: We should have no difficulty over the concept of multiplicity within a simple substance (i.e. despite the fact that it has no parts), since every time we have a thought, we are conscious of variegation in what we are thinking about, and our souls are simple substances.
4. §17: Perceptual states - caused by appetition (cf. 3.a.i) - cannot be caused by mechanical causation in matter.
  1. This is because if you imagine a walking around inside a big brain machine, you cannot imagine seeing a perception being produced by its parts.
  2. Secondly, Leibniz asserts, there is “nothing to be found in simple substances, apart from perceptions and their changes.”
Unconscious perceptions (18-24)
1. §18: “Entelechy” is an alternate word for monad. It comes from the Greek meaning “they have perfection” or “completeness”, in the sense of “self-sufficiency”. They only have a certain perfection, otherwise they would be God. But leaving aside their dependence on God, they are self-sufficient in that they act entirely independently of all other beings.
2. §19: Here Leibniz amplifies the distinction he made in (3.a), between animal souls and bare monads. All monads (i.e. spirits, animal souls, and bare monads) can be called “souls” in that they all have perception and appetite, but it is less misleading to distinguish between bare monads, which have “simple” perceptions, and animal souls which have “sensations.”
3. §20: When we have a dreamless sleep or we faint, our soul is not distinguishable from a bare monad; it is still different, nonetheless, in its capacity to leave that state.
  1. Leibniz’s purpose here is to explain how we can conceive of what bare perception is like, by analogy with our conscious experience.
4. §21: Recap (2.a, 1.h): Simple substances must have a continued existence, but they cannot exist unless they are characterised by some affections, i.e. perceptions.
  1. Leibniz then introduces, without explanation, the expression “little perceptions,” which will mean “perceptions of which we are unconscious.” (Unconsciousness is, by definition, a state in which everything is confused. For us to be conscious, we have to be conscious of something. If everything is confused, we are not conscious of one thing rather than another.)
5. §22: Since monads cannot be influenced by other monads, their whole history must be determined by their internal law of change. At any given time, their present state is completely determined by their immediately preceding state, and any future state can be deduced from it.
6. §23: Since (4.e) and the fact that when you wake up, you become conscious of your perceptions, it follows that you must have been perceiving before too (albeit in an unconscious way). the natural course of events,
  1. Here: A perception can only arise from a previous perception.
  2. Elsewhere: You can’t be woken up by something, unless you perceive it before you wake up. Consequently, it must have been perceived unconsciously.
7. §24: Recap (3.a.iii,4.b): Bare monads have no sensations, since nothing is distinguished from anything else.
Animals (25-28)
1. §25: The perceptual state of animals differs from that of bare monads because their sense organs concentrate information (like the lens of a camera to film). In an aside, Leibniz makes the suggestion that there may be senses of which we are unaware.
2. §26: In addition to sensation, animals have something analogous to reasoning in humans. It is some association of an image with a memory: some whip equals pain (Hobbes, Hume).
3. §27: Associations are established more quickly if the images make more of an impression.
4. §28: Most of the time, people are motivated by an animal-like (e.g. habitual, brute-associative) reasoning to behave certain ways. His example is the difference between the folk and astronomical flavors of the knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow.
Reason (29-35)
1. §29: It is knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals. This is what in us is called the “rational soul,” or spirit.
2. §30: It is also through the knowledge of necessary truths that we are capable of reflection. Thinking of ourselves, being, substance, monads, etc. we attain the objects of our reasonings.
  1. Descartes didn’t really distinguish reason from self-consciousness; there was just a faculty of human beings which contained abstract and universal ideas, and it did not concern itself with individual existences.
  2. Leibniz, on the other hand, makes a clear distinction between knowledge of eternal truths on the one hand, and self-consciousness on the other (and remember that he had to /invent/ the word “apperception” for this purpose).
  3. This point is about order of discovery. For Descartes, we first had to strip away our preconceptions till we arrived at pure knowledge of the thinking self, and then build everything up in the order: self, God, eternal truths, the material world. Leibniz, on the other hand, sees no need to doubt that we perceive individual things (even if they are not as they seem), and that we have knowledge of eternal truths.
  4. Leibniz even seems to imply that we could get by without self-consciousness at all: we could navigate round the world of experience using our senses, and we could do mathematics, by concentrating our whole attention on eternal truths, and what can be deduced from them.
3. §31: Our reasoning is grounded on two great principles. “One is the principle of contradiction, by virtue of which we judge false anything which involves a contradiction, and true anything which is the opposite or contradictory of the false.”
  1. Note 1: Leibniz is about to distinguish between “truths of reasoning” and “truths of fact”; but before he has explained the distinction, he introduces the two great principles by which we establish them. The principle of contradiction is what we use to establish truths of reasoning.
  2. Note 2: His definition of the Principle of Contradiction is rather awkward, it merges what we now call the principle of non-contradiction ((p && !p)==false) and the law of the excluded middle (if it’s not p, it’s not-p, and vice versa).
4. §32: The other is the principle of sufficient reason: an event cannot occur unless there is a sufficient cause; and by “sufficient” he means a complete and fully determinate set of preconditions, such that if they are present, it is inconceivable that the event should not occur.
5. §33: There are also two sorts of truths: those of reasoning (necessary) and those of fact (contingent). You can break down necessary truths into smaller and smaller ones, until you reach primary ones.
  1. Fun fact: One of Leibniz’s big projects (called the “universal characteristic”) was to list all the primary concepts, and devise a notation for all complex concepts which would make explicit how they were derived from the primary ones. Once that had been achieved, all reasoning would become a matter of straight calculation, which could be done by a machine.
6. §34: He now claims that the geometrical method of Euclid is the same as the process of analysis he has just described. Note that if so, axioms and postulates would not be necessary. -GMR
7. §35: Finally, there are simple ideas which cannot be defined and there are also axioms and postulates - in a word, primary principles - which cannot be proved (and do not need to, as they are assertions of identity).
  1. Again, assuming there are simple (primary) ideas, and we know what they are, it is difficult to see what role there can be for primary principles, or axioms. If they are explicit assertions of identity, they will all be of the form A=A, where A is any primary idea. -GMR
Contingent truths (36-37)
1. §36: The principle of sufficient reason (6.d) applies to contingent truths as well. Reasoning is analysis, and what is being analyzed is the complete concept of an individual (he doesn’t explicity say this here), which is infinite.
  1. This is what is meant by Leibniz’s doctrine (not mentioned herein) that all truth is analytic (that in every true proposition the concept of the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject). While it seems paradoxical to claim that contingent truths are analytically true, what Leibniz means is that if we had the complete concept of an individual, then every truth about that individual would be analytically true. Or, if we already knew everything, we would have nothing new to learn. Meanwhile, only a tiny proportion of possible complete concepts have been actualised, and it cannot be proved, even by an infinite analysis, whether a concept has been actualised or not.
2. §37: Since any sequence of contingent things is infinite, it is never possible to arrive at the sufficient reason for anything within this sequence.
The existence and nature of God (38-48)
1. §38: This is why the ultimate reason for things must lie in a necessary substance (one who’s existence is not contingent on anything else), ‘God’. However, in this God-substance, “the detail of changes exists only eminently”: the sufficient reason for the changes in a created monad lies in the monad itself, but there is something different and superior in God, which is the source of the principle of change within the monad.
  1. This is a strategy to distance himself from Spinoza, for whom the cause of change was within God himself.
2. §39: If this God-substance is a sufficient reason for all the changes in all the stuff in the created universe, and all this stuff and all these causal chains are interconnected, “there is only one God, and this God is sufficient.”
3. §40: Since all that stuff is dependent on God, it follows that none of it could restrict him in any way, and hence he is infinite.
  1. Secondly, Leibniz argues that God must be incapable of having any limits. This actually depends on an argument below (8.g).
  2. Finally, God must contain absolutely as much reality as is possible. This is true if we grant Leibniz the unstated metaphysical assumption (which he did believe) that possibility strives to existence, and will become actual unless something prevents it.
4. §41: And, since God is infinite positive reality, God is perfect. Perfection = infinite positive reality.
5. §42: God gives created things what perfection (=reality, being) they have. Their imperfection (=lack of reality, nothingness) comes from their own nature as created things.
6. §43: Like Spinoza, Leibniz regards God as the source of essences (ideas, concepts, possibilities) - insofar as they are real* - as well as of existences.
  1. * The concept of something possible isn’t real in the way that something which actually exists is real. Nevertheless, it must have some sort of reality, otherwise there would be no possibility of the thing.
  2. Similarly, there can’t be any eternal truths unless the concepts they involve have some reality. (This is all pretty Cartesian.)
7. §44: If essences have any reality, this reality must be grounded in something which actually exists (an essence or a possibility is not a self-subsistent entity, a substance). But in the case of contingent beings, their actual existence depends on the realisation of their essence or possibility = essences are logically prior to existences. Consequently, essences cannot be grounded in any contingent being, but must be grounded in a necessary being.
8. §45: Leibniz now gives us three arguments for the existence of God.
  1. The Ontological Argument (a priori): Only the necessary being (God) must exist if he is possible (8.g). Since nothing can prevent the possibility of an unlimited being (8.c), we know God exists.
  2. The Cosmological Argument (a posteriori): The created universe exists, it must have been created by God.
  3. The Argument from the Middle (a priori*): Eternal truths exist (8.f); hence God exists (8.g). * Eternal truths seem to be co-existent with God’s nature, and therefore belong to the cause rather than to the effect.
9. §46: Eternal truths depend on God but are not arbitrarily determined by his will, they are the internal objects of his understanding. On the other hand, contingent truths do depend on his will, since his understanding can /entertain/ alternative possibilities; that they are chosen as they are is for his purpose of a harmonious universe.
  1. Note that this toes the line between Descartes (all truths depend on God’s will) and Spinoza (none do).
10. §47: God is the unity or original simple substance (he has no parts). He creates all monads and, just like Descartes thinks, continually re-creates them moment to moment. In other words, for the state of the universe at any given instant (p): God brings (p) into existence. The the reason for (p) is the immediately preceding state of the universe (p’).
  1. Because monads are finite, they are “bounded” in what they can receive from God.
11. §48: God has power, knowledge, and will. Monads mirror these faculties in substance (b/c created by God’s power?), perception, and appetition. The faculty-to-faculty relationship is infinite:imitation of the infinite.
Causality (49-52)
1. §49: Given that there is no direct interaction between monads, a monads can act insofar as their perceptions are distinct (active, spiritual aspect, Leibniz here says “have perfection”) and be acted upon insofar as their perceptions are confused (passive, material aspect).
  1. Basically one acts when one has intention. If I run up behind you and yell boo, I am acting. Your confused reaction is your being acted upon.
  2. The relationship between the active, spiritual power of monads and action is unclear, but it’s nonetheless there in the text.
2. §50: Moreover, it’s not merely that one monad has more distinct perceptions than another, it provides the a priori explanation of what happens in the other. Of course, not being God, no monad’s perceptions are /perfectly/ clear.
3. §51: But these inter-monad influences are not “real”: only God can have a real influence on things. The gist of this seems to be that when God was creating the universe (remember that there is no contingency to the eye of God for Leibniz), and selecting which monads would exist, he picked them in proportion to their “harmony.” Their perfection is in their ability for coordination, harmony. Therefore, given that God decided to include me in the best possible universe, he organized in advance that when my monad yelled “Boo”, your monad would have the simulataneous perception of being yelled at.
  1. Again, the parallels between Leibniz’s universe and the one that you can program on your computer are completely remarkable.
4. §52: Every action is an interaction: When I yell, and you jump, your jump causes a reaction in me in turn.
Possible worlds (53-55)
1. §53: God chose our world out of an infinity of possible ones, and there had to be a reason for his choice. (Hence, the set of possible universes required that each member be unique. E.g. Choose the best “1″: [1,4,203,1]. You can’t do it.)
2. §54: This reason can be found only in harmony, or the degrees of perfection which these worlds contain.* Thus nothing is entirely arbitrary.
  1. * Confusing: If degree of perfection is the amount of positive reality (8.d), and also the amount of distinct perception (9.a). Harmony is the accommodation of the perceptions of monads to each other (9.c).
  2. So, for example, the universe would have more perfection if the person I yelled at had a distinct rather than a confused perception of the event; but it would be less harmonious, since their passivity has to be accommodated to my activity. Cf. (11.c) for the fix.
3. §55: So God must choose the best universe out of the goodness of his will.
Interconnectedness (56-61)
1. §56: The perceptions of monads are expressions of their relations to every other; this must be the case because of the harmony of the universe. Although monads don’t really have any causal influence on each other, it is just as if they did. (Like gravity, which Leibniz didn’t believe in.)
  1. In reflecting every other, each monand is a permanent living mirror of the universe.
2. §57: If we consider monadic perceptions, there are infinitely many universes (insofar as there are infinitely many perspectives on the universe), although these are each only a representation of the one universe.
  1. Although Leibniz doesn’t go into this here, the concept of a monad’s unique point of view is crucial to his account of space: Space is a logical construction out of monadic perceptions. Monads are not in space, but space is in them. However, one can talk of monads as if they were in space, since their point of view gives them a unique position in relation to all other monads.
3. §58: This is the means for obtaining as much variety as possible, but with the greatest order as possible. In other words, it is the means for obtaining as much perfection as possible. This is a new definition of perfection: maximum variety (which includes quantity of reality as well as differentness), together with the maximum order (or harmony).
4. §59: Leibniz now claims that his hypothesis does the most justice to God. Potential rivals followed by their problem:
  1. Descartes: too capricious
  2. Spinoza: no goodness or freedom
  3. Malebranche: too much miraculous interference
  4. Newton: too hands off. (God built the clock, but has to wind it up from time to time since he wasn’t clever enough to make it go on for ever.)
5. §60: An apriori argument for universal harmony, proceeding from cause (God’s creative act) to effect (the created universe), and not from effect to hypothetical cause.
  1. Since monads are by nature representative, nothing can restrict them from representing everything. (This depends on two additional premises:)
    1. Whatever exists in essence is actualised unless something prevents it (again, a classical Leibnizian assumption). So since monads are essentially representative, they will represent everything unless stopped.
    2. Nothing (apart from God) can influence the inside of monad. Consequently, nothing can block a monad’s representations (except God, who’s goodness - expressed as a desire for harmony - would have prevented him from doing so, cf. [10.c]).
  2. However, it is a common sense that we don’t actually perceive everything. Leibniz suggests that we do in fact, but not distinctly (a very, very large percentage of our total perceptions are “little perceptions” cf. [4.d.i]).
    1. Hence, the subset of clear perceptions is both very small and distinct on a per-monad basis (I suppose insofar as monads are “positioned”, and have a certain perceptual filter which responds to the proximity and size of other monads).
  3. Hence, what distinguishes us from God is that only some of our perceptions are distinct; and what distinguishes us from each other is the variations in our distinct perceptions.
6. §61: Total conservation of information
  1. The universe is full of matter (note that he assumes this, but his argument might go): In the material universe, the interconnectedness of everything is mediated by one piece of matter pushing against its neighbours in accordance with the laws of motion. If there were any gaps, the causal chains would be broken, and the universe wouldn’t be interconnected. Consequently, there cannot be a vacuum.
  2. If the universe is full of matter, and obeys the laws of mechanics, then every motion in it is transmitted between monads in every direction. The force of the shock wave diminishes with distance as it spreads more widely. But given that there are no smallest quantities in Nature, the wave will spread to infinity.
  3. Hence, a sufficiently detached and intelligent observer could read the entire state of the universe off any given monad.
Soul and body (62-64)
1. §62: What makes my body my body is that it is represented more distinctly than surrounding bodies. Then it seems like he says that the soul represents the whole universe only because it represents its body, which represents the whole universe.
  1. GMR: I’m sure this is inconsistent with what he said earlier about the creation of monads, especially if monads are logically prior to bodies in space. What he should be saying is that the two go hand in hand: that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the distinct and confused representations of the whole universe in the soul, and the infinitely complex motions in the body.
2. §63: Following (12.a), a body belongs to either an entelechy (in a living being) or, more specifically, a soul in an animal.
  1. Note that he has defined dead matter out of existence: the only real beings are living beings.
3. §64: The organic body of a living being is a divine machine. The difference between a divine machine and one of ours is that divine machines’ parts are manufactured at a single source, whereas we may make a cog, but we don’t make the parts that make the cog.
  1. For Leibniz, divine machines are organic machines from top to bottom: Organic bodies have organs (heart, lungs), which are themselves organic bodies with organs (cells); and they in turn have an organic structure (nuclei, cell walls), and their parts have an organic structure (chromosomes). He didn’t know these things specifically, but was pretty sure it was turtles all the way down.
Infinite divisibility (65-69)
1. §65: The material world is built up out of infinitely small parts. If it weren’t, “it would be impossible for each portion of matter to express the whole universe.”
  1. What are the parts? As we saw in Spinoza, matter cannot be constructed out of mathematical points, since infinitely many mathematical points are still at one point.
2. §66: “From this you can see that there is a world of created things…in the smallest part of matter.” This is the “universe-in-every-electron” idea, which seems fanciful, but is nonetheless a logical consequence of infinitely divisible matter coupled with the assumption that the laws of nature are the same everywhere.
3. §67: Leibniz waxes poetical: “Each portion of matter can be conceived as like a garden full of plants, or like a pond full of fish.”
4. §68: If you were to probe deep enough, you would find that ultimately there was no intervening dead matter at all, and everything would be full of living bodies. (The water in the pond contains the fish, Leibniz says.)
5. §69: Things seem inert or chaotic because our perception is confused: When we have a distinct perception of anything, we can see that it is composed of tiny living organisms.
Birth and death (70-77)
1. §70: Each living body has a “dominant entelechy,” a soul. (Monads can’t be parts of each other, so the relationship is one of dominance.) In other words, my soul dominates the monads which are the principles of the unity of the organs of which my body is composed. They in turn dominate the monads which are the principles of the unity of the parts of their bodies; and so on to infinity.
  1. He doesn’t actually say what this dominance consists in, but GMR conjectures that the dominant monad is the more active partner in a given interaction.
2. §71: There is no particular piece of matter to which a monad is permanently attached. (He echos the principle of Heraclitus that “everything flows,” like a river, so that bodies [organic and inorganic?] are constantly losing and gaining particles.)
  1. What he doesn’t say explicitly is that when a subordinate organism joins or leaves a larger organism, it must be somehow transformed. E.g. when I eat food, it becomes part of me.
3. §72: Souls gradually lose parts of their body, but are never completely deprived of a body. This is contra to two popular theories of the immortality of the soul:
  1. Platonic/Pythagorean: That the soul leaves the body (rendering it dead) and moves to another, theretofore soulless body.
  2. Cartesian: That the soul can survive without the body.
4. §73: As such, (a) death is not the annihilation of the soul, and (b) birth is not its creation. Generation/birth is “unfolding and growth”, and death is “infolding and shrinkage.”
5. §74: Not merely that there is a seed before the generation or conception of the new animal, but the animal itself (body plus soul) pre-exists in it. On conception, the infolded form or soul becomes dominant,
6. §75: Just as only a tiny proportion of acorns become oaks, so only a tiny proportion of spermatozoa are “chosen” to pass through to a “larger theatre.”
7. §76: Now on to death: At death, the animal is transformed back into a seminal animal, or something similar.
8. §77: So it’s not merely that the soul or monad is immortal (on the apriori grounds that it is a mirror of the indestructible universe); the animal itself is immortal: It always has /some/ body.
Soul and body (78-81)
1. §78: The soul and the body each follow their own laws, and they coincide by virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances (since they are all representations of one and the same universe).
  1. Elsewhere, Leibniz gives the analogy of two clocks which keep perfect time. The perfect clockmaker made them so well that neither of them ever goes wrong.
2. §79: The laws for souls and bodies:
  1. “Souls act in accordance with the laws of final causes” - they are constantly striving for greater perfection.
  2. “Bodies act in accordance with the laws of efficient causes” - e.g. with the laws of mechanics, and are pushed from behind by blind forces acting on them.
  3. God has brought it about that the two are in perfect harmony.
3. §80: Cartesian mechanics
  1. Leibniz gives a clever explanation of how Descartes might have thought that the soul could influence the body without contravening the laws of mechanics.
  2. Descartes believed in a law of conservation of “motion,” so that its quantity in nature could be neither increased nor diminished.
  3. If the soul could make a particle of matter in the brain move faster, this would contravene the law.
  4. On the other hand, if it merely deflected the particle, so that it travelled into a different nerve ending, the total quantity of motion would be conserved.
  5. What Descartes couldn’t understand was that what is conserved is motion in a given direction, and that it requires an input of energy to change the direction of motion of a particle.
4. §81: “This system means that bodies act as if there were no souls…and that souls act as if there were no bodies; and that the two act as if there were an influence of the one upon the other.”
The City of God (82-90)
1. §82: Existentially, humans are in the same position as other living beings: from the creation of the universe they have existed with body and soul, and they will continue to do so to eternity.
  1. During the periods when they are not actual, living human beings, but only seminal animals, they have distinct perceptions (like other sensing animals), but it is only when they become actual human beings through the act of conception that they become rational souls (reasoning, spiritual).
2. §83: Among the characteristics already specified (in 6.a-b) - knowledge of necessary truths, self-consciousness, a concept of God - and whereas all monads are images of the created universe, human souls are also images of God.
3. §84: Since humans are images of God himself, they can have a kind of social or personal relationship with him: He is not just their creator, but he is also like their king (in respect of his power) and father (in respect of his love).
4. §85: “From this it is easy to conclude that the congregation of all spirits must constitute the City of God (Augustine), the most perfect state possible under the most perfect of monarchs.”
5. §86: Introducing the moral dimension
  1. God couldn’t be glorious without the City of God, since otherwise there wouldn’t be any creatures capable of glorifying him.
  2. If God had merely created a huge machine of a universe, you could admire his cleverness and power, but the machine would be morally neutral. God needs rational and moral beings in order to manifest goodness (justice, mercy, and so on).
6. §87: Like the perfect harmony between the realms of efficient and final causes, there is also a perfect harmony between the physical realm of nature and the moral realm of grace. Here is the contrast between humans (moral organisms, rational souls) and the rest of Nature.
7. §88: The purely mechanical laws of Nature will bring about a destruction of the earth, exactly when the moral laws of the City of God require some people to be punished, and others rewarded.
  1. Leibniz seems to eqivocate between his Platonism and his Christianity here:
  2. Plato believed the universe is cyclical, so that there is a succession of holocausts followed by a new beginning.
  3. Christians believe here will be a single Last Judgment, when the world is overturned, and sinners die a second death. The world will then be restored, and the elect will live in eternal bliss under Christ’s reign.
  4. Leibniz seems to believe that the earth will be destroyed periodically, but each period will be better than the previous one, because the universe is becoming ever more perfect.
8. §89: God doles out rewards and punishments, which will be felt by our living bodies in a continuation of the present universe, and not by disembodied souls in some extra-terrestrial heaven or hell.
9. §90: The best of all possible worlds
  1. As with Spinoza, virtue consists in the pure and disinterested love of God.
  2. Also like Spinoza, Leibniz holds the view that we should be indifferent to our own sufferings, and see them as contributing to the good of the whole, governed by a divine providence.
  3. Provided that we align ourselves with the will of God, we will find that this is not only the best possible world in general, but that it is the best possible for ourselves in particular.

Written by Paul Tulipana, and posted to Sorglose Nacht on December 15, 2008

Tags:

Animals, Bodies, Causality, Change, Divisibility, God, Leibniz, Metaphysics, Monads, Outlines, Perception, Possible Worlds, Reason, Soul, Truth

Excerpts from the Principles of Philosophy

The following is an outline of a philosophical text which is provided with no claim with regard to it's accuracy or neutrality. Use freely, but at your own risk.

Overview

The Principles was meant to be Descartes’ magnum opus. It covers all the ground previously traced by his metaphysical and physical works in summary. Apparently, it was intended to replace Aristotle’s philosophy and traditional Scholastic Philosophy then used in Universities.

It is divided into four parts: The Principles of Human Knowledge, The Principles of Material Things, The Visible Universe, and The Earth. Herein we have omitted significant amounts of the physics, as - to be perfectly frank - they failed to interest us.

Outline

Doubt [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (1-13)]
1. That the enquirer after truth should, once in their life, doubt everything as much as they can.
2. That we should even regard beliefs which can be doubted as false.
3. That, however, this process of doubt should not be extended to the conduct of life.
4. We can have doubts about sensible things because (a) we notice that sometimes our senses decieve us, and (b) it’s hard to distinguish the content of dreams (on a sensory level) from that of waking.
5. We can even doubt mathetmatical proofs because (a) people make mistakes, and (b) as far as we know, God could have designed us such that our feeling of certainty doesn’t have any real correspondence to truth.
6. “…whatever the ultimate source of our being…we experience within ourselves a certain freedom, which enables us always to abstain from believing anything which is not obviously certain and established. Consequently we can avoid ever making any mistakes.”
7. That we cannot doubt that we exist while we are doubting; and this is the first thing we know when philosophising in the right order.
8. That (1.g) enables us to recognise the distinction between soul and body, or between thinking thing and corporeal thing.
9. Thought is “everything which happens in us while we are conscious, in so far as there is consciousness of it in us.”
10. That absolutely simple and self-evident things are made more obscure by logical definitions, and that they are not the sort of thing that can become known by academic study.
  1. Saying “I think therefore I am” does require concepts of thought, existence, certainty. These things are treated by Descartes as “simple” (common-sensical?) and thus are assumed at the beginning of philosophy.
11. The mind is better known/knowable than the body.
  1. “…it is obvious that we know more things in our own minds than in anything else, because nothing gives us knowledge of anything outside the mind, without its leading us to a far more certain knowledge of our own minds. For example, if I judge that the earth exists from the fact that I can touch or see it, I ought to judge from the same fact, but with even more certainty, that my mind exists.”
12. Not making a sharp enough mind-body distinction is the reason why philosophers have heretofore not developed the correct initial point from whence to proceed.
13. Knowledge of everything else depends on knowledge of God.
  1. Ideas (mental pictures) are not in themselves deceptive before we suggest that they imply some kind of positive claim about real stuff in the world.
  2. That said, if we want to know about anything - mathematical proofs, toasters, other people, animals, sedimentary rocks - we need to be sure that something vouchsafes some kind of veracity in the mind-world relationship.
  3. A benevolent author would provide this guarantee.
God [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (14-23)]
1. That the existence of God follows from the fact that necessary existence is contained in our concept of God. The argument here is sloppy, but, beefing it up:
  1. We can conceive of a perfect being which entails properties such as omniscience, omnipresence, etc.
  2. These properties are not inherent in us, so we could not conceive them unless they are somehow given to us from outside.
  3. This entails that a perfect being exists.
  4. It is further required that this be a single being, as unity is a perfection, and it is impossible to conceive a perfect being lacking in some particular perfection.
  5. For the same reason, it is impossible that God would not exist, as the concept of his perfection would not admit for a lack of existence.
2. That necessary existence is not included in the concepts of other things in this way, but only contingent existence.
3. People fail to recognize the necessity of God’s existence because they are predisposed to distinguish between essence and existence.
4. That the greater the objective perfection of any of our ideas, the greater must be its cause.
  1. “Objective perfection” is best understood as the truth of a representational content.
  2. The more perfect a thing is as a representation as such, the more perfect the object of the representation must be. Formal perfection “trickles down” to objective perfection.
5. (2.d) provides a second proof that God exists.
  1. Again, this content either needs to come from oneself, or from something outside of you, and, given the e.g. finitude of man, a clear idea of infinitude (which Descartes believes he has) is simply not capable of emerging from the former.
  2. Hence, God exists.
6. That even though we cannot comprehend the nature of God, we know his perfections more clearly than anything else. [This seems to be a particularly tough premise for Cartesians. Personally, I think I understand my coffee mug a lot more clearly than infinity.]
7. Because we have these God-attribute ideas in us, it follows that we were created by God.
  1. We could not have been self-created, because if we were, we certainly would have given ourselves all the perfections of God.
8. That the continuation of our existence is sufficient to prove the existence of God.
  1. Time is such that its parts do not depend on each other, and never co-exist.
  2. From the fact that we exist now, it does not follow that we will still exist at the immediately succeeding instant, unless some cause continuously re-creates us, as it were, or conserves us.
  3. As we cannot create ourselves (2.g.i), nor can we conserve ourselves. Hence, we need someone else to do it.
  4. And whoever can do it, must be capable of authoring our being. And does, moment to moment. By way of (2.a.iv), this is God.
9. If our innate idea of God then is sufficient proof of his existence, and hence his properties, it follows that we know what of him we can know, and that this is that God is infinite perfection(s).
10. That God is not corporeal; nor does he have sense perceptions like ours; nor does he will the wickedness of sin.
  1. Bodies are not perfect, by dint of their divisibility. God is perfect. Hence, God is not corporeal.
  2. Sense perception implies passivity which implies dependence. Dependence is an imperfection. Hence, God does not sense in the way we understand it.
  3. God’s action does all things (objects) at once and consistently. He does not will the wickedness of sin, since sin is not a thing. And apparently (this is new here), God wills free-willing machines, and is as such not responsible for their actions.
Knowledge and Error [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (24-30)]
1. God is infinite, and we are finite.
2. Whatever has been revealed by God must be believed, even if it transcends our understanding. (Given [3.a], it shouldn’t surprise us when it does.)
3. Since we are finite, it is absurd for us to attempt to determine anything about infinity, and so to try and set limits to it, as it were, and comprehend it.
  1. Rather, in every case where we can find no limit to some aspect of a thing, we shall not assert that it is infinite, but we shall regard it as indefinite.
4. The difference between the indefinite and the infinite: Whereas with God (infinity), we have a positive understanding of limitlessness, with things indefinite (the number of stars, etc.) it is merely negative.
5. Look at the efficient, not final causes, of natural things: When we are investigating things in the natural world, we should never draw our explanations from the purposes which God or nature had in creating them.
6. God is not the cause of errors.
7. It follows from this that everything which we conceive clearly is true, and that our earlier doubts are resolved.
  1. Our God-given faculty of knowing now, properly used, cannot deceive us. (cf. Meditations)
Will and Error [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (31-42)]
1. Our errors are negations if attributed to God, and defects if attributed to us. (Again, with appeal to God’s actions doing /things/ [cf. 2.j.iii])
  1. In the Latin, the distinction is between negatio and privatio, and the point is this: We can make true negative statements about God (e.g. that he is not a physical object). But this doesn’t mean that he lacks anything, since he is on a higher plane of existence than a mere physical object.
2. All of our modes of thinking are reducible to intellectual perception (sensing, imagining, pure understanding) and willing (wanting, disliking, affirming, denying, and doubting).
  1. It is important that Descartes makes such a sharp distinction between contemplating what is present to the mind (perception), and affirming (whether to oneself or to another) that it is true. The latter is a separate mental act; and since it is an act, it is performed by the will. It is in principle under our control whether we doubt, believe, or disbelieve the contents of our mind; and this is why it is a defect of our will if we believe things we should not believe, or fail to believe things we should believe.
3. Error is only possible when we make a judgment about something which we have not perceived adequately.
4. Judgment requires the will as well as the intellect.
5. The will has a wider scope than the intellect, and that this is the source of our errors.
  1. Our will is in some since infinite, insofar as it is impossible to conceive of a will more limitless than our own.
6. On the other hand, our intellect is clearly limited in its grasp.
7. Errors occur when we extend our will beyond our ability to perceive/understand.
8. It is impossible to attribute our errors to God: A created understanding is by its very nature finite; and a finite understanding by its very nature does not extend to everything.
9. The greatest human perfection is the freedom of the will, and that this makes humans worthy of praise or blame.
  1. Because of the infinitude of our freedom of will, we can be held responsible for our actions.
10. Error is a defect in our behaviour, not in our nature; and that although superiors can often be blamed for the faults of their subordinates, God can never be blamed for our errors.
  1. The former is true because our nature is the same when we make incorrect judgments as when we make correct ones.
11. The latter requires three steps, but the gist of it is that it’s not our place (as finitude:infinitude) to presume to understand why God does things.
  1. The authority which we humans have over one another was given to us so that we could use it for saving others from evil.
  2. The authority which God has over us all is completely absolute and free.
  3. Consequently, we owe him our utmost gratitude for the good things he has bestowed on us; but we can have no right to complain about his not having bestowed on us everything we know he could have bestowed on us.
12. Freedom of the will is self-evident: Even when we imagined that some very powerful author of our being was trying to deceive us in every way, we were still aware that we had this freedom to withhold our belief.
13. It is also certain that everything has been predetermined by God: Perfect knowledge is a critical perfection, and to deny it of God would be blasphemous
14. Again, God is infinite, and our finite minds cannot comphrend how these two apparently contradictory facts can simultaneously be. Nonetheless they are.
  1. Note that Descartes is actually incompatibilist here: Freedom and preordination cannot be reconciled, at least not by our understanding, and that we should not even attempt to reconcile them. He is telling us how to cope with their irreconcilability. This is therapeutic.
15. Our errors are due to our will, even though we do not wish to err: “wishing to be wrong is utterly different from being willing to assent to things in which there happens to be an error.”
Clear and Distinct Perception [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (43-50)]
1. We never err as long as we assent only to what is clearly and distinctly perceived.
2. We always misjudge when we assent to things which we have not perceived clearly, even if we chance on the truth.
3. Clear and distinct perceptions, as distinct.
  1. A clear perception “is present and fully revealed to the mind attending to it.”
  2. A distinct perception “is so separated and demarcated from all other ideas, that it contains in itself absolutely nothing which is not clear.”
4. A perception can be clear without being distinct, but not distinct without being clear.
  1. The example is pain: One can have a very clear perception of pain without having a concept of the sensation as distinct from, say, the location of the pain.
5. In order to correct our false preconceptions, we must consider the simple notions, and what is clear in each. These will be detailed below (5.f).
6. Everything we perceive is considered either as things or their affections, or as eternal truths. Herein are the former.
  1. The most general things are substance, duration, order, number, and any others of the same sort which apply to all genera of things.
  2. The first genus is thought things, or things pertaining to the mind, res cogitans (perception, volition, all the modes of perceiving and willing).
  3. The second genus is material things, or things pertaining to extended substance, or body (size or extension itself in length, breadth, and depth, shape, motion, position, the divisibility of its parts).
  4. We also experience certain other things that arise from the close and intimate union of our mind with the body (hunger, thirst, anger, happiness, sadness, love, pain, pleasure, light and colour, sounds, smells, tastes, heat, hardness, and other tactile qualities).
7. The latter (eternal truths) cannot be listed in the same way. They are axioms, of which he gives several examples:
  1. “Nothing comes from nothing.”
  2. “It is impossible for one and the same thing to be and not to be simultaneously.”
  3. “What has been done cannot have been not done.”
  4. “Someone who is thinking cannot fail to exist while thinking.”
8. These (5.g) are rightly described as “common” notions because it is possible for anyone to perceive them clearly and distinctly.
  1. However, some of them are not actually perceived so clearly and distinctly by everyone, as some people have preconceived opinions which contradict those common notions, and hence make it difficult for these people to grasp them.
Substance [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (51-57)]
1. “Substance” is a thing which exists in such a way that it does not need anything else in order for it to exist.
  1. There is only one substance really exists independently of absolutely everything else, God.
  2. By contrast, all other substances exist only through the co-operation of God.
  3. Hence, it is impossible to have a distinct understanding of any sense of the term which is common both to God and to created beings.
2. Both types of substance, however (cogitans, extensa) need nothing other than God in order to exist.
  1. We can recognize existent things by their attributes; absence of attributes (or properties or qualities) is equivalent to absence of being.
3. Each substance has one distinctive attribute - that of mind is thought, and that of body is extension.
  1. Descartes’ metaphysical terminology is rather loose here. Strictly speaking, each substance has just one attribute, and everything else that can be said of it is a mode, or manner of being, of that attribute. This is contra the use of “attribute” as “property” in the last point. “Distinct” additionally implies that no other substance can have it.
4. By carefully separating all the attributes of thought from the attributes of extension, we can have clear and distinct notions of created thinking substance, of bodily substance. In the same way, we can also have a clear and distinct idea of uncreated and independent thinking substance, namely of God.
  1. We must not suppose that the latter adequately reveals to us everything that there is in God.
  2. Nor should we pretend that it contains anything which we (a) are not aware of and (b) do not vividly perceive as belonging to the nature of a totally perfect being.
5. Duration, order, and number are understood distinctly as long as we refrain from attaching the concept of substance to them: They are modes through which we consider (e.g. numbered, ordered) things.
6. Modes, qualities, and attributes are all of class n.
  1. ns are “modes” when we consider a substance to be affected or variegated by n[x] (e.g., again, number, existence, duration)
  2. ns are “qualities” when this variegation is the basis for giving them a name (example?)
  3. ns are “attributes” when we view them more generally, and only in so far as they exist in the substance (what a body generally is, cf. 6.c.i: e.g. extension qua bodies)
7. Some attributes are in the things themselves (attributes, modes) whereas others are only in our thought.
  1. The main message is that time is only in the mind, whereas duration is an attribute of things (and presumably of the mind as well).
  2. When we measure the duration of things in time, we add the concept of time to duration, by reference to the heavenly bodies.
  3. He does not make it clear whether he is saying that the quantity of motion of a thing is in the thing itself, or in the mind (or both).
Universals and Kinds of Distinction [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (58-62)]
1. “Number” and all other universals are only modes of thinking.
2. How universals arise; and what the five standard ones are.
  1. Universals arise when we use one idea for thinking about all individuals which are similar to each other.
  2. The five standard universals are: genus, species, specific difference, property, and accident.
3. On distinctions; real distinction.
  1. Universals (e.g. number), as applied to things, arise from their being distinguished from one another. There are three types of distinctions.
  2. Real distinction is only one between two or more substances. We perceive real distinction insofar as we can have a clear and distinct thought of one thing without the other.
4. The two sorts of modal distinction
  1. One is the distinction between a mode and the substance of which it is a mode. This can be recognised from the fact that we can have a clear perception of the substance independently of the mode, but we cannot, conversely, understand the mode independently of the substance (e.g. body: shape, motion; mind: affirmation, memory).
  2. The other is the distinction between two modes of the same substance. This can be recognised from the fact that one mode can be known independently of the other, and vice versa; but neither can be known independently of the substance which they both exist in (e.g. a moving, square stone).
  3. However, when a mode of one substance differs from (a) another substance or (b) a mode of another substance, this is a real rather than modal distinction.
5. The two sorts of distinction of reason
  1. A distinction of reason are between (a) a substance and one of its attributes or (b) two such attributes of one and the same substance.
  2. We can recognize (a) when we cannot form a clear and distinct idea of the substance if we exclude the attribute from it. (e.g. between a substance and its duration)
  3. We can recognize (b) when we cannot perceive clearly the idea of the one attribute if we separate it from the other.
Thought and Extension [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (63-69)]
1. The appropriate level of abstractness for conceiving substance
  1. Thought and extension can be considered as constituting the natures of intelligent and bodily substance respectively.
  2. Given this, they should not be conceived as anything other than thinking substance and extended substance themselves, that is, as mind and body. This the clearest and most distinct way of conceiving them.
  3. It is also easier to form a conception of extended substance or of thinking substance than of substance alone, and they differ from it only through a distinction of reason.
2. Thought and extension are can also be taken as modes of substance, insofar as (a) one mind can have many different thoughts; and (b) one body can be extended in many different ways (stretching). In that case, they are modally different from substance.
3. Thought and extension themselves have various modes in their turn. These are best perceived if we consider them as modes of the things they are in.
  1. E.g. (thought): understanding, imagination, memory, volition, etc.
  2. E.g. (extension): shapes, the position and motion of parts.
4. Sensations, emotions, and appetites can also be perceived clearly, provided we scrupulously avoid making any judgments about them which go in any way beyond what is included in our perceptions, and what we are intimately conscious of.
  1. However, in the grand Cartesian style, we must remember that this is particularly hard to do, insofar as from a very young age we are given to judge that all the things we sensed were things existing outside our minds, and that they exactly resembled our sensations, which we do not /know/ at the time.
5. The same is true of everything else we sense, including pleasure and pain, despite the fact that we often wrongly think that pain is located in, e.g., the foot, it is much more certain that it is a mental disposition.
6. We must take the greatest care to remember that pain, colour, etc. are perceived clearly and distinctly only when they are considered as sensations or thoughts.
  1. Through lack of attention, one might easily persuade onesself that one has considerable knowledge of - e.g. - color, by assuming that it is something similar to the sensation of colour which one experiences in oneself.
7. Meanwhile, in the same visual objects/representational content, we have a much clearer picture of size, shape, number, motion, duration, etc. - not as part of the existential content of some thing, but as a “modal” mental content.
Causes of Error [Part 1: The Principles of Human Knowledge (70-76)]
1. That there are two ways of arriving at judgments about objects of sensation, one of which keeps us from error, and the other of which leads us into error.
  1. One is to judge that there is something in objects (that is, in the things, whatever they might be, which our sensation comes to us from), but that we do not know what. This is tantamount to saying that there is something in some object of sense that causes in me the sensation of color. This will not cause an error in judgement.
  2. The other, which will cause an error in judgement, is when we think (e.g.) we perceive colours in objects, even if we don’t know what it is we are giving the name of colour to, and cannot understand how there can be any similarity between the colour we suppose to be in objects, and the colour we experience in sensation.
2. The main cause of errors is our preconceptions, established at infancy, is the conflation of one’s sensory experiences of things with actually-existing properties of the things themselves.
3. Another cause of errors is how incredibly hard it is for us to forget our preconceptions.
4. A third cause is that thinking wears us out, and we lapse into thinking about things (e.g. substance) as they are framed by our preconceptions as opposed to as they are occuring presently to our perceptive apparatus.
5. A fourth cause is that we associate our concepts with words, and we are much more apt to do our thinking with these words than with their representational content, concepts. Basically, words are short-hand for concepts whose ease of use prevents us from being forced to think with the complex entities that concepts-as-things are
6. A summary of what is to be observed in order to philosophise correctly.
  1. Lay aside all preconceptions
  2. Scrutinize (in the proper order) the notions we have within ourselves. Judge all those which we perceive clearly and distinctly to be true, and all others to be false.
  3. In so doing, we shall first observe that we exist insofar as it is our nature to think.
  4. Simultaneously, we shall observe that God exists, that we depend on him, and that we can discover the truth about the other things by considering his attributes, since he is their cause.
  5. Finally, we shall observe that apart from the notions of God and of our mind, there are also notions of eternally true propositions, a certain bodily nature (extension, divisible, capable of moving), and various sensations.
7. That divine authority takes precedence over our perceptions; but othwerise it is inappropriate for a philosopher to accept anything which has not been perceived.
Existence of Matter [Part 2: The Principles of Material Things (1-4)]
1. On what grounds we know with certainty that material things exist.
  1. All our sensations come from a thing of some sort, which is distinct from our mind.
  2. This is because it is not in our power to bring it about that we have a sensation of one thing rather than of another.
  3. However, it can be asked whether this thing is God, or whether it is distinct from God.
  4. Under compulsion from our sensations, we clearly and distinctly perceive a certain matter, extended in length, breadth, and depth, etc.
  5. Let us now suppose that God revealed this idea of extended matter to our mind through his own immediate agency.
  6. If it is “absolutely inconsistent” with God’s nature to deceive us, then our clear and distinct perceptions of extended things must be true.
  7. And this extended thing is what we call body or matter.
2. The same argument proves that one body is more closely united to our mind than other bodies are.
  1. The reason is because we observe that pains and other sensations come to us unexpectedly, and the mind is aware that they do not come from itself alone.
3. Perceptions of the senses tell us not what is really in things, but what is good or bad for the human compound.
4. The nature of body does not consist in weight, hardness, colour, etc. (as all these properties are based on some arbitrary effect they cause to the senses) but in extension alone.
Nature takes on all possible forms [Part 3: The Visible Universe (47)]
1. Previously in Part 3, Descartes has said enough to “provide the causes of all the effects which are observed in this world,” with maximum simplicity, intelligibility, and probability.
  1. Descartes once tried to explain how the present orderliness of things could be deduced by the laws of nature, from a primal chaos.
  2. However, a state of confusion seems less consistent with the supreme perfection of God than a proper arrangement.
  3. No ratio or order is simpler or more easily comprehensible than that which consists in everything being the same as everything else.
  4. Therefore I now suppose that, in the beginning, all particles of matter had the same size and motion.
  5. In general, it makes hardly any difference what is assumed as the initial state of the universe, since all subsequent changes must take place in accordance with the laws of nature.
  6. Thanks to these laws of nature, matter successively takes on all the forms of which it is capable.
  7. Consequently, if we consider these forms in proper order, we shall finally be able to arrive at the form of the world we currently live in.
Sensation [Part 4: The Earth (188-195)]
1. Why the machinic account of the Earth is not sufficient.
  1. So far I have described the Earth, and hence the whole visible world, as like a machine, taking account only of the shapes and motions in it.
  2. Yet our sensations reveal to us many other aspects of it, such as colours, smells, sounds, and the such like. If I were to say nothing at all about these, I would seem to have left out the main part of any account of natural things.
2. The motions which the nerves set up in the brain affect the soul or mind which is intimately joined to the brain in different ways. These different affections of the mind (thoughts) are what we call sense-perceptions, or sensations.
3. The distinction between sensations; on the internal sensations
  1. There are seven species of sensations, two internal and five external
  2. The first species of internal sensation is natural appetite, which involves nerves going to the stomach, gullet, throat, etc.
  3. The second species of internal sensation is emotions or passions, which involve nerves going to the heart and chest.
  4. All of these are a different species from the types of clear and distinct thoughts we might have about what is to be desired, etc.
4. On the external senses; on touch.
  1. There are five external senses.
  2. Touch is the sense which relies on the nerves which end in the skin of the whole body.
  3. When these nerves are stimulated more forcefully than usual this gives rise to an additional sensation of pleasure or pain, (pleasure: because the mind is naturally pleased to receive evidence of the strength of the body to which it is closely united).
  4. From this it is obvious why bodily pleasure and pain are so little different from each other in the object, even though they are opposite sensations.
5. Taste relies on nerves dotted around the tongue and the areas next to it.
6. Smell relies on two nerves set in motion by particles forceful enough to pass through the mucous membrane after being drawn into the nostrils.
7. Hearing relies on two nerves hidden in the innermost cavities of the ears, which receive the quivering and vibrating motions of all the surrounding air.
8. The eyes rely on the optic nerves, which form the membrane in the eyes called the retina, and which are not moved there by the air or by any macroscopic bodies, but only by globules of the second element.
Soul and Body [Part 4: The Earth (196-197)]
1. The soul senses what happens to individual parts of the body by means of the nerves only insofar as it is in the brain.
  1. This is proved by the fact that diseases which affect only the brain obliterate or distort all sensation.
  2. The second proof is that, even if the brain is undamaged, we lose the sensation of parts of the body external to it if there is merely an obstruction of the routes by which the nerves connect them to it.
  3. The third proof is that we sometimes feel pain as in a certain part of the body even though there is no cause of pain in that part itself, but only in other parts through which the nerves pass en route to the brain. (e.g. phantom limb syndrome)
2. The soul or mind’s various sensations can be stimulated in it by bodily motion.
  1. The writing point: “…words (whether spoken or merely written) can arouse absolutely any kind of thought or emotion in our minds.” [Actually, there is quite a beautiful passage that follows this, but is not quoted here.]
  2. The pain point: “A sword strikes against our body, and cuts it…This clearly shows that the sensation of pain is aroused in us simply by virtue of the fact that certain parts of our body are set in motion by contact with some other body.”
Knowledge of Nature [Part 4: The Earth (198-207)]
1. Our sensations reveal nothing to us in external objects apart from their shapes, sizes, and motions.
  1. We have no basis for concluding that anything at all reaches the brain apart from the motion of the nerves themselves.
  2. There is no way we can understand how size, shape, and motion can bring about something of a completely different nature from themselves, for example, those ’substantial forms’ and ‘real qualities’ which many people suppose to exist in things.
  3. Nor can we understand how these qualities or forms could subsequently have the power to cause motions in other bodies.
  4. Add also the observational evidence that in fact these various sensations are stimulated in the mind without our being able to detect anything passing from the external sense organs to the brain.
  5. We can then draw the general conclusion that we also have no basis for asserting that the things in external objects which we superstitiously reify with the names of light, colour, smell, taste, sound, heat, cold, and other tactile qualities (or even substantial forms), are anything other than the various dispositions of these objects, which bring it about that our nerves can move in various ways.
2. No phenomena of nature have been omitted in this treatise: Size, shape, and motion are what count as phenomena of nature, given (14.a).
  1. Hence, objects themselves are nothing other than (or at least cannot appear to us as anything other than) various dispositions consisting in size, shape, and motion.
3. Finally, these Principles on the complete nature of material things were formulated without using any principle at all which was not accepted by Aristotle, and by all other philosophers of all historical periods.
4. There are imperceptible particles which make up bodies. Evidence: growth, decay.
  1. The reason we cannot sense these particles is that our nerves are not themselves so very small.
5. The atomic philosophy of Democritus is similar to Descartes’, but with key differences.
  1. First, Democritus supposed that atoms were indivisible.
  2. Second, Democritus invented a vacuum surrounding them, whereas Descartes proved that a vacuum is impossible.
  3. Third, he endowed them with weight, whereas Descartes believes that weight is not a characteristic of any body considered in itself.
  4. Fourth, he failed to show how individual things arose from collisions of atoms alone.
6. Descartes can explain the shapes and motions of insensible particles by using the method and inferring their behaviors from their macro- counterparts.
7. It is sufficient that Descartes explain what insensible things /might possibly/ be like, even if they are not actually like that.
  1. One clockmaker can make two visibly identical clocks which tell the time equally well, which internally consist of completely different sets of wheels. Likewise, God could have made material existence work in many ways.
  2. Descartes claims, “I think I shall have achieved enough if what I have written is at least perfectly consistent with all the phenomena of nature.”
8. These explanations, though they may contain some mechanical uncertainty, are at least morally certain, “are as certain as is necessary for the conduct of life.”
  1. Descartes claims that his objectors “perhaps overlook the fact that it would hardly be possible for so many factors to be mutually consistent if they were false.”
9. Indeed, they are more than morally certain. They are absolutely certain insofar as they are built on a metaphysical foundation that God is completely good and utterly undeceptive.
  1. Assuming this is the case, the faculty he gave us for distinguishing the true from the false cannot lead us into error as long as we use it correctly, and perceive something distinctly by its means, which Descartes has.
10. Caveat lector: “Nevertheless, I am aware of my weakness, and I affirm nothing. I submit everything I have written, both to the authority of the Catholic Church, and to the judgment of people who are wiser than myself. Nor would I wish anyone to believe anything which they are not convinced of by obvious and irrefutable reasoning.”

Written by Paul Tulipana, and posted to Sorglose Nacht on December 6, 2008

Tags:

Descartes, Doubt, God, Material Constitution, Metaphysics, Mind Body Problem, Outlines, Philosophy, Truth

Discourse on the Method

The following is an outline of a philosophical text which is provided with no claim with regard to it's accuracy or neutrality. Use freely, but at your own risk.

Overview

In the Discourse (on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences), Descartes explains, in an autobiographical way, both what the method is - how he came to it, what its principal rules are, and what moral guidelines he applied to himself while he engaged in using it (these were required by the deep skepticism inherent to the procedure) - and the results of the method - the existence of god and the soul, and from there a sort of survey of the great many things he has learned about the world. He closes with an apology for the publication, which entails explaining why he had forestalled publishing it thus far, why he was now publishing it, and finally that he was looking for someone to fund his continued research.

Three physical treatises were attached to the Discourse, presumably as bait to potential investors: the Optics, the Meteorology, and the Geometry. It is reasonable to assume that these were attached because they were safe - that is, non-heretical.

Outline

Considerations on the Sciences
1. Everyone thinks he has plenty of good sense; further, it is unlikely that they are all wrong, and much more likely that good sense and the power of reasonable judgement is in fact distributed with some equality among men.
  1. The challenge then, is not genetic (he lacks good sense), it’s pathological: We fail to apply the good sense with which we are endowed.
  2. Given this, Descartes, hapless though he is, has formed a method to ensure that he applies his finite sense, and hence has succeeded in accruing knowledge. He believes that this search for truth is perhaps the ultimate purpose of men.
  3. Also, because he doesn’t deign to prescribe the method, this discourse is merely a detailing of his attempts to rightly use his reason.
2. The end and subsequent beginning Descartes’ education
  1. Descartes, maybe the smartest guy in the room at maybe the most prestigious school in Europe, realizes that for all his learning, he is still riddled with doubt and error.
  2. This is not to say that all this learning is worthless, but rather simply that it has limits.
  3. Among the disciplines of his study, he found the foundations of mathematics to be the most sturdy. And worse, even philosophy hadn’t reached any firm conclusions: everything seemed to be subject to doubt.
  4. Hence, Descartes resolved to travel the world and dedicate himself to the acquire only knowledge of himself and of practical matters. His travels made him skeptical of his beliefs, which were informed merely by custom and example, so when he settled down to look inward, he was ready.
Principal Rules for the Method
1. Descartes, trapped for the winter in an uninteresting German town, and remembering his belief in the superiority of a single auteur (e.g. in buildings, towns, civilizations, religions) over a consensus design realized that the way to fix his understanding was to sweep away its foundations, and start anew to develop a foundation wholly his own.
  1. Descartes admits that actually accomplishing this “clean sweep” is probably too difficult for most. In particular, he recommends it neither for people who are confident in their destination and the way there, nor for those who feel that they could simply be instructed by someone else.
  2. He himself would have been one of the latter, had it not occurred to him that his professors, all professional philosophers, and all the people of the world - despite their good use of reason - had failed to come to any agreed-upon certainties. This obviously disillusioned him rather badly.
2. Acknowledging the danger of developing totally new foundations, Descartes wanted to be very careful - rather not get far, than get too far up the wrong track, he reasoned.
  1. Even in his beloved logic and mathematics did he see many false propositions entangled with the true ones; it was, certainly, going to be very hard to untangle these.
3. With this established, he decided to attempt to set himself up with a framework from which to proceed. This framework would have to be carefully selected from the mess of precepts that constituted modern logic.
  1. First, never accept anything as true that he does not clearly know to be such.
  2. Second, divide any difficulties into the smallest possible units for resolution.
  3. Third, start with the things of which it is easiest to be certain.
  4. Fourth, enumerate completely and provide a synopsis so general as to be sure to omit nothing.
4. These rules were abstracted to the most general form possible from the principles of what he saw as the only successful discipline in building truth-consensus: mathematics.
  1. They were also so incredibly powerful that within three months, he had not only answered many questions he thought would be exceedingly difficult, he had developed his general framework for determining the extent to which a solution was possible for /any/ problem.
  2. And despite his success, he would choose to waylay his investigation into the deeper problems of philosophy until he matured a bit (hence, the Meditations).
Rules of Morals Deduced from the Method
1. During the time that Descartes was tearing down and rebuilding his entire stock of knowledge, he provided himself with a temporary code of morals, knowing that while he had no knowledge to guide him he was liable to behave “infelicitously.”
2. Descartes’ Provisional Moral Maxims
  1. Obey the laws and customs of his country (it was a matter of expediency that he chose his country’s mores, as opposed to Persian or Chinese ones, say).
    1. When there were many opinions held in equal repute, he chose the most moderate.
  2. Be as firm and resolute in his actions as he was able; once he’s adopted an opinion, he must adhere steadfastly to it.
    1. This principle was meant to rid him of any pangs of conscience he might feel in moments of uncertainty or weakness of resolve.
  3. Endeavor to conquer himself, not fortune; change his desires rather than trying to change the world, as - in general - his thoughts were the only thing under his power.
    1. Finally, having once again surveyed all professions, he knew that he should be most content in the culturing of his own reason, and in making progress toward knowledge.
3. Now possessed of his ethical maxims, he boxes these up with his faith, and begins to roam during his journey inward, observing life, and trying to sift the doubtable from the doubtless.
  1. He roams for nine years, and, regardless of his growing reputation, will not set forth his findings…until now:
The Existence of God and the Human Soul (The Metaphysics)
1. Applying the method, Descartes intends to interrogate his (theological) belief; he is hoping he will find some “wholly indubitable” kernel in there. The structure of this chapter will anticipate many of the main arguments in the Meditations (although the treatment of dreams will be different).
2. He begins by affirming his belief in himself, and by establishing what he believes himself to be.
  1. In doubting all of his beliefs, Descartes realizes that he - the one who doubts - must exist simply in order to doubt. Cogito ergo sum.
  2. Doubting everything else, Descartes can conclude that he is (something) and that he thinks. Therefore, he is the thinking thing (res cogitans).
  3. And since this thinking thing that he was seemed to have no particular need of the body that Descartes once thought was him, Descartes could be sure that the mind and the body were two distinct and separate entities.
3. This established, he needed to inquire as to how to determine whether a proposition was true or false.
  1. Following the logical necessity of the cogito, Descartes concludes that true things are those which we conceive clearly and distinctly.
4. In the next place, seeing that his being was not perfect (it lacked certain abilities of which he could conceive), he was led to inquire about why exactly he could conceive of a more perfect being.
  1. He could clearly recognize that this idea must have come from some nature that was perfect.
  2. As opposed to the objective (representational) content all of his other thoughts, which could have come from either nothing or from himself, a representational content which was in itself more perfect than he was seemed to entail some formal/in-itself reality out there which informed the content.
  3. Given this knowledge, Descartes could be sure that he was not the only being in existence, and further that he was necessarily at least in part dependent on some other being. If he was self-generated, he argues, why wouldn’t he have made himself perfect?
  4. Finally, given his own internal division (4.b.iii) and the necessary perfection of the other being (4.d.i-ii), he could be sure that the other being was bodiless, since division was the imperfection for which unity was the perfection. Hence, if anything existed corporeally, it was imperfect.
5. However, Descartes was still doubtful of corporeal or material things in the world. Nothing thus far had given him any reason to believe in the “formal reality” (in-itself-ness) of anything but himself as the res cogitans and God.
  1. For example, the logical construct “triangle” did nothing to ensure Descartes that any embodied triangles existed.
  2. Alternately, the logical construct “God” entailed the property “existence” (as a being without the property of existence would be lacking something), so Descartes again proved the existence of God to himself.
6. The Problem of Dreams: How do we know that the thoughts which occur in dreaming are false and the ones in waking are true when there’s often no sensory criterion for establishing their difference?
  1. Insofar as dreams are clearly and distinctly conceived, they come from the part of us that participates in the perfection of God; insofar as they are confused or obscure they emerge from the part of us that participates in pure negation. (Which might seem to imply Descartes’ belief in prophecying by dreams?)
    1. If, for example, a geometer solved a hard proof in a dream, that wouldn’t make it less solved.
    2. Further, insofar as our dreaming sensory content tends to deceive our senses, this doesn’t make them any different than our waking sensory content does: e.g.: square towers that appear round at a distance, perspective, temporary visual impairment by disease.
  2. But, at the end of the day, our reasonings are never so clear when we are asleep as when we are awake, “reason further dictates that, since all our thoughts cannot be true because of our partial imperfection, those possessing truth must infallibly be found in the experience of our waking moments rather than in that of our dreams.”
The Physics
1. Descartes’ method has led him to observe some natural laws.
2. Rather than provide a compendious recollection of these laws, he will concentrate on light, and follow this with some observations about things in nature that “follow” from light (the sun, stars, comets, things on the earth).
  1. It is necessary, in any world that God would create, that matter would be arranged in such a way as to constitute the sky, starts, planets, earth, and comets.
  2. From there, he deduced things about the speed of light, and about the situation and motions of the stars, and found that there is nothing there that is not there necessarily.
  3. Then on to the earth, on which it is necessary that things have weight; and how the water and air are situated on it.
  4. This led to a serious look at fire, which was the only terrestrial source of light that he knew of, and its effects on the vision and on other materials.
3. Looking at all this, Descartes determined that it was likely that God had set it all into place as a mechanism rather than just creating ex nihilo things as they are now; and that (anticipating an argument in the Meditations) it was the same kind of effort to create it as it was to preserve it moment to moment.
  1. However, he will not find this the case with man, finding it rather more likely that God had sculpted the body very much the same way we have it now at its introduction.
  2. In this pre-mental body’s heart, God lit a fire without light, “which I thought was not different from the heat in hay that has been heaped together before it is dry, or that which causes fermentation in new wines before they are run clear of the fruit.”
  3. God will then create the rational soul and locate it in the body, but to understand how, we need to look at the functions of the heart.
4. Descartes takes some pains to describe the heart, under the guise of telling people what to look for when they take the trouble of getting some large animal dissected for their instruction.
  1. This culminates with a mechanical description of the heart pumping blood, of some recent findings in England about how perpetual circulation is possible, and of the motion of the blood in the body, the processes of nutrition.
  2. This really does go on for pages, culminating with a short discussion on “the generation of animal spirits” - which, continually ascending from the heart to the brain, penetrate the nerves which tell the muscles to move.
5. Descartes marvels at God’s craftsmanship
  1. This fabric of nerves and animal spirits leads Descartes to ruminate about chickens with their heads cut off, and more importantly the brain in all its strange states: sleeping, waking, hunger, thirst, common sense, and the creation of ideas.
  2. If you’ve ever seen a mechanical automaton, he says, and seen how few parts it takes to make something move around, you can easily see how this dense network of organs, muscles, animal spirits, nerves, blood and bone can do this work much more impressively.
  3. Further, he imagines, should industry grow to the point where there were machines that resembled apes, it is conceivable that you wouldn’t know the difference between one and the other.
  4. On the other hand, should there be machines that resembled humans, you could still use two tests to determine whether you were dealing with a human or a machine:
    1. Humans are conversational, whereas machines could not be. (Funny: This is of course the Turing Test.)
    2. Machines would not act rationally, but “solely from the disposition of their organs.” (Organs: Like the gears of a clock.)
  5. The rationality distinction also applies between men and animals, for, Descartes notes “it is incredible that the most perfect ape or parrot of its species, should not in this be equal to the most stupid infant of its kind or at least to one that was crack-brained, unless the soul of brutes were of a nature wholly different from ours.”
6. This all to five firm conclusions:
  1. The reasonable soul (a) does certainly exist in men, and (b) could not be a simple consequence of matter.
  2. (c) The soul of men is indeed different in nature than the souls of animals.
  3. Finally, in consequence of (5.f.i): (d) the nature of the soul is wholly independent from that of the body, and (e) is, as such and “because no other causes are capable of destroying it,” immortal.
The Future Advancement of Science, using the Method (Descartes’ Pitch)
1. Three years later: Finding just how useful the method was in learning things about the physical world provided Descartes with a sense of duty to publish it, in spite of his natural inclination not to (which stems from the Descartes-persona’s belief in “to each his own”).
2. In his searches - starting with his certain knowledge of God - he has uncovered many things about the heavens and earth, and in fact “never observed any which I could not satisfactorily explain by the principles had discovered.” However, this does not entail that there are not other ways (outside of the method) of determining each of the things that Descartes has found.
  1. All the things he discovered (which were many and presumably include the Optics, the Meteorology, and The Geometry, all of which were published attached to the Discourse, and others, which he will not publish [out of a fear of being labeled a heretic]) are consequences of the first five or six principal difficulties he resolved (above).
  2. He now gives an incredibly long explanation of why it is more rewarding for other people to find out things for themselves, and why he is the best man to finish the work he started, as two pieces of evidence as to why he has not published his findings thus far.
3. The reasons why he decided to publish some of these things were twofold:
  1. Despite some effort, he was getting a reputation, and thought it best to “save [himself] at least from being ill-spoken of.” Aka. To set the record straight.
  2. He - at this point - can’t continue to afford his obscurity - he needs funds to continue his experiments. Hence, he has chosen to publish several of his less racy findings, namely on Optics, Meterology, and Geometry, as proof that his method can attain results.
4. He finally apologizes for writing in French rather than Latin, and closes with a disclaimer which states that he makes no assurances about the future advancement of science.

Written by Paul Tulipana, and posted to Sorglose Nacht on December 1, 2008

Tags:

Descartes, Doubt, God, Material Constitution, Metaphysics, Mind Body Problem, Outlines, Philosophy, Truth

Warning: load_template(/nfs/c02/h09/mnt/19928/domains/sorglosenacht.net/html/wp-content/themes/default/sidebar.php) [function.load-template]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /nfs/c02/h09/mnt/19928/domains/sorglosenacht.net/html/wp-includes/theme.php on line 408

Fatal error: load_template() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/nfs/c02/h09/mnt/19928/domains/sorglosenacht.net/html/wp-content/themes/default/sidebar.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/php-4.4.8-1/share/pear') in /nfs/c02/h09/mnt/19928/domains/sorglosenacht.net/html/wp-includes/theme.php on line 408