According to Leibniz's late metaphysics, sensory perception represents to us as extended, colored, textured, etc., a world which fundamentally consists only of non-spatial, colorless entities, the monads. It is a short step from here to the conclusion that sensory perception radically misleads us about the true nature of reality. In this paper, I argue that this oft-repeated claim is false. Leibniz holds that in typical cases of body perception the bodies perceived really exist and have the qualities, both primary and (...) secondary, they are perceived to have. At the same time, Leibniz holds that our perceptions of these bodies are accurate representations of the monads from which the bodies result. The contrary thesis — that our body perceptions are misrepresentations of the monads — stems from a misunderstanding of Leibniz's theory of confused concepts and his phenomenalist account of the nature of body. Clarifying these issues will have important consequences for our understanding of Leibniz's idealistic metaphysics and the manner in which that metaphysical theory is meant to support mechanistic science. (shrink)

Those concerned with Locke’s Essay have largely ignored his account of reflection. I present and defend an interpretation of Locke’s theory of reflection on which reflection is not a variety of introspection; rather, for Locke, we acquire ideas of our mental operations indirectly. Furthermore, reflection is involuntary and distinct from consciousness. The interpretation I present also explains reflection’s role in the acquisition of non-sensory ideas (e.g., ideas of pleasure, existence, succession, etc.). I situate this reading within the secondary literature on (...) reflection and discuss its consequences for interpretations of Locke’s views on empiricism, knowledge, and personal identity. -/- -/- . (shrink)

This paper argues for an interpretation of Leibniz’s claim that physics requires both mechanical and teleological principles as a view regarding the interpretation of physical theories. Granting that Leibniz’s fundamental ontology remains non-physical, or mentalistic, it argues that teleological principles nevertheless ground a realist commitment about mechanical descriptions of phenomena. The empirical results of the new sciences, according to Leibniz, have genuine truth conditions: there is a fact of the matter about the regularities observed in experience. Taking this stance, however, (...) requires bringing non-empirical reasons to bear upon mechanical causal claims. This paper first evaluates extant interpretations of Leibniz’s thesis that there are two realms in physics as describing parallel, self-sufficient sets of laws. It then examines Leibniz’s use of teleological principles to interpret scientific results in the context of his interventions in debates in seventeenth-century kinematic theory, and in the teaching of Copernicanism. Leibniz’s use of the principle of continuity and the principle of simplicity, for instance, reveal an underlying commitment to the truth-aptness, or approximate truth-aptness, of the new natural sciences. The paper concludes with a brief remark on the relation between metaphysics, theology, and physics in Leibniz. (shrink)

O presente artigo enfoca a discussão, ensejada pela publicação do Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, entre seu autor, Pierre Bayle, e Leibniz a propósito dos critérios epistemológicos que permitem distinguir cognição animal de cognição propriamente humana. Trata-se de examinar em detalhe a distinção que, na sequência dessa publicação, Leibniz traçará entre o homem racional – caracterizado como aquele apto a produzir silogismos demonstrativos e de alcançar verdades necessárias – e o homem enquanto empírico, a fim de examinar se e de que (...) maneira os critérios epistemológicos que permitem distinguir cognição animal de cognição propriamente humana podem ou não nos permitir circunscrever uma diferença antropológica que permita distinguir o homem do animal. (shrink)

This paper explores the theory of freedom that Emilie du Châtelet advances in her essay “On Freedom.” Using contemporary terminology, we can characterize this theory as a version of agent-causal compatibilism. More specifically, the theory has the following elements: (a) freedom consists in the power to act in accordance with one’s choices, (b) freedom requires the ability to suspend desires and master passions, (c) freedom requires a power of self-motion in the agent, and (d) freedom is compatible with moral necessity (...) but not with physical necessity. While these elements may at first appear disparate, the paper shows that they fit together quite well. The resulting theory is a surprising combination of doctrines that appear to be based on Samuel Clarke’s libertarian account of free will and doctrines that are reminiscent of the compatibilist accounts of John Locke, Anthony Collins, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

Leibniz frequently uses the notion of expression, but it is not easy to see just how he understood that relation. This paper focuses on the particular case of the expression of God, which is prominent in the 'Discourse on Metaphysics'. The treatment of expression there suggests several questions. Which substances did Leibniz believe expressed God? Why did Leibniz believe those substances expressed God? And did he believe that all substances expressed God in the same way and for the same reasons? (...) In answering those questions the paper distinguishes two views about expression in the 'Discourse', considers Leibniz's reasons for holding that substances express their causes, and argues that Leibniz's views about emanative causation are important for understanding the unity of his apparently distinct views here. The paper concludes by looking briefly at how the 'Discourse' fits into the evolution of Leibniz's views on this issue over time. (shrink)

In the absence of any plausible reductionist account of consciousness in nonmentalistic terms, the HOT theory says that the best explanation for what makes a mental state conscious is that it is accompanied by a thought (or awareness) that one is in that state. I discuss HOT theory with special attention to how Leibnizian theses can help support it and how it can shed light on Leibniz's theory of perception, apperception, and consciousness. It will become clear how treating Leibniz as (...) a HOT theorist can solve some of the problems he faced and some of the puzzles posed by commentators, e.g. animal mentality and the role of reason and memory in self-consciousness. (shrink)

It happened to me one day to say that Cartesianism, in what good it has, was only the anteroom of true philosophy. A person in the company, who frequented the court, was well read, and even had ideas about science, pressed the figure into an allegory-maybe a little too far. For, he asked me whether I didn’t think that one could say, along the same line, that the ancients led us up the staircase, that the modem school had arrived at (...) the guards’ room, and that, if the innovators of our century had managed to reach the anteroom, he wished me the honor of introducing us into Nature’s sanctum. This parallel made us all laugh, and I told him, “You see, Sir, your comparison has rejoiced the company. But you forgot that between the anteroom and the sanctum there is the audience chamber, and that it will be enough if we obtain audience, without purporting to penetrate in the inner sanctum” (VE, p. 1867). (shrink)

This article is about the exchanges between Leibniz, Arnauld, Bayle and Lamy on the subject of pain. The inability of Leibniz’s system to account for the phenomenon of pain is a recurring objection of Leibniz’s seventeenth-century Cartesian readers to his hypothesis of pre-established harmony: according to them, the spontaneity of the soul and its representative nature cannot account for the affective component of pain. Strikingly enough, this problem has almost never been addressed in Leibniz studies, or only incidentally, through the (...) more general problem of evil. My purpose in this article is to clarify Leibniz’s psychophysical parallelism by opposing his representationist account of pain to the functionalist account endorsed by Arnauld, Bayle, Lamy and Malebranche. (shrink)