(Originally Written May 16, 2007 in Book 14)
Discourse on Metaphysics
G.W. Leibniz
(Continued)
18.
- Force is a change that is separate from size, shape or motion
- Thus, not everything that exists in a body exists merely within the extension of that body.
19.
- It is a mistake to banish final causes from physical studies because it would seem to follow that God designed body with no end.
- It is foolish to believe we can decipher the end of everything that God hath mad because He sees all connections at once, but he has made the universe to suit man and man to suit the universe. "There is nothing in the universe which does not affect us and does not also accommodate itself in accordance with his regard for us" (Leibniz, 21).
- God does nothing by chance.
20.
Leibniz agrees with Socrates' criticism of Anaxagoras in Phaedo that philosophy cannot be so materialistic.
21.
- Mechanical rules depend on metaphysics.
- The physical phenomenal world would be entirely different without its metaphysical system.
22.
- Nature operates under natural phenomena, but this natural phenomena only occurs because God has caused it.
- God is so skilled an artisan that He has produced a world that can function completely with God's original simple design.
23.
- There are true and false ideas.
- Ideas precede reasoning about something
- Thus, the proof of God in ontological form states that I reason about God and in order for me to reason about God, I must first have the idea of God. The idea of God entails all perfections and thus, existing is more perfect than not existing and thus, God exists.
- The problem with the ontological argument is that we can have false ideas that do not correspond to reality. Thus, the ontological argument merely proves that if God is possible then He necessarily exists.
24.
- Confused knowledge - the ability to recognize a thing without being able to articulate its differences or properties.
- Distinct knowledge - recognition of a thing and an ability to explain its properties and differences.
- Distinct knowledge has degrees
- Adequate knowledge - a distinct knowledge of a thing down to its primitive notions
- Intuitive knowledge - an adequate knowledge in which all the primitive notions of a thing are known at once, distinctly.
- Intuitive knowledge is extremely rare because most human knowledge is confused or suppositive.
- Suppositive knowledge - "A notion intermediate between intuitive and clear is when I have been deprived of clear knowledge of all surrounding notions"
- Clear knowledge - knowing how a thing is distinguishable from other things but only being able to say, I know not what makes X different than Y, but know that they differ.
Degrees of Knowledge
Confused - recognition
Clear - Recognition + ...
Distinct - Recognition and some explanatory ability
Adequate - Distinct + ...
Intuitive - immediate full knowledge
Clear, Distinct and Adequate are suppositive knowledge. Suppositive is a combinative knowledge.
Nominal definitions - a definition that leaves one able to still doubt if that which is defined be possible.
Real definition - a definition that includes a property which makes the thing's possibility known
"As long as we have only a nominal definition, we cannot be certain of the consequences we derive, for if it concealed some contradiction or impossibility, the opposite conclusions could be derived from it"
But truths are not dependent on name nor are they arbitrary, contra Hobbes.
Real definitions are twofold:
1) When it is known via experience a thing is real its definition is merely a real one.
2) When the proof of possibly is a priori the definition is real and causal.
An essential proof is perfect, a priori, and sees all the way to its primitive notions
25.
- We can have no idea of a notion when it is impossible
- We cannot contemplate a notion when we have suppositive knowledge of it because it may have some hidden contradiction
- We skip over the contemplation in suppositive knowledge because we suppose we know the thing
- "Only in confused notions when our knowledge is clear or in distinct notions when it is intuitive do we see the entire idea in them" (Leibniz, 28).
26.
- An idea is a quality of our soul.
- Our souls have these qualities in them whether we are thinking on them currently or not
- Our souls express God, the universe, all essences and all existences.
- Nothing can be taught to us whose idea is not already in our mind
- Plato's doctrine of reminiscence is correct so long it is purged of his notion of preexistence.
- "Our soul knows all these things virtually and requires only attention to recognize truths, and that, consequently, it has, at very least, the ideas upon which these truths depend" (Leibniz, 29).
27.
- Some things outside us express things more particularly than our own souls. It is through their more acute expression that we can understand a truth more completely.
- Ideas are expressions in our soul whether we conceive them or not
- Notions or concepts are ideas that we conceive or form
- It is false that all of our conceptions come via the senses, the sensual data we receive merely brings our attention to internal experience
28.
- There is no external cause acting upon us aside from God
- No other external object is capable of touching our soul or perception
- We have ideas of everything in our soul by virtue of God's continual action on us
- "God is our immediate external object and that we see all things by Him" (Leibniz, 30).
29.
- Our ideas however are in us and not in God.
30.
- Ordinarily, God does nothing more than follow the laws He established
- God determines our wills to choose the better option without necessitating it
- God finds it good that certain men should exist despite foreseeing they will sin
- It ought to be enough for us to know this without understanding it while we are yet on this earth
- God is clearly not the cause of evil
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