Week 6 Leibniz Mind Knowledge and Ideas

Question 1

Leibniz’s anti-materialism

Answer 1

Materialism is the view that everything that exists is material, or physical.
In short, mental states and processes are either identical to, or realized by, physical states and processes.

Question 2

Leibniz Realm

Answer 2

The realms of the mental and the physical, for Leibniz, form two distinct realms.
This, though, doesn’t entail, for Leibniz, dualism. That is, the existence of both thinking substance and extended substance (vs. Descartes).
Leibniz opposes both materialism and dualism.
He proposes a new view about the relationship between thought and matter.

Question 3

Leibniz viewpoint on perspective

Answer 3

Leibniz’s viewpoint is that perception and consciousness cannot possibly be explained mechanically (remember that the science of the time was mechanism).
Therefore, perception and consciousness cannot be physical processes.

Question 4

The Mill Argument

Answer 4

Everyone must admit that perception, and everything that depend on it, is inexplicable by mechanical principles, by shape and motion, that is, imagine there were a machine which by its structure produced thought, feelings, and perception. We can imagine it as being enlarged while maintaining the same relative proportions … When we went in we would find nothing but pieces which push one against the other, and never anything to account for perception. Therefore we must look for it in the simple substance and not in the composite, or in a machine. (Monadology WF 270)

Question 5

The cogito argument is a sophism.

Answer 5

There can be no valid inference from a state of subjective uncertainty (Descartes’ doubt) to what is objectively the case.
It is not valid to reason: “I can assume or imagine that no corporeal body exists, but I cannot imagine that I do not exist or do not think. Therefore I am not corporeal, nor is thought a modification of the body”. (“Critical Comments of Descartes Principle of Philosophy”1691: L385)

Question 6

Pre-established harmony

Answer 6

The human mind and its body have been programmed by God in such a way that they appear to interact causally with one another.

Question 7

Nativism: Innate Ideas

Answer 7

Main argument for nativism: the human mind is causally independent from any other substance except God.

Question 8

“idea”

Answer 8

To be understood in a dispositional way.
This contrasts Descartes’ threefold conception. In particular, the material condition of ideas (i.e. ideas as acts).
To have an idea of a is to have a mental disposition to think of a when the right circumstances occur.
This contrasts with the act of thinking (e.g.: Descartes’ material condition). A disposition is not an act.

Question 9

3 Levels of reality

Answer 9

1. Metaphysical level (it includes only monads with their perception and appetition: no causality, no space, no time).
2. Phenomenal or descriptive level (what appears to be happening from the finite, imperfect perspective of the human mind).
3. Object of science (it is an illusion but in which nothing happens that is not based on what really happens in the

Question 10

Metaphysical argument for nativism

Answer 10

Pre-established harmony: the human mind with all other substances is causally self-sufficient.From this + Leibniz’s theory of ideas, we should prove the innateness of all ideas.This is reminiscent of Descartes reply to a certain Broadsheet: nothing reaches our mind from external objects .

Question 11

Leibniz and Locke on Ideas and their Origin

Answer 11

Leibniz grants Locke distinction between mental content that comes from sense and mental content that does not. His defense of innate ideas rest on three claims:

1. we can know things without being conscious of them. Locke is wrong to claim that an idea can only be in the mind if we are conscious of it
2. there is a distinction between necessary and contingent truths (more later)
3. Innate knowledge exists as a ‘disposition, an aptitude, a preformation’ in the mind towards developing, understanding certain truths.