|
Welcome to the Leibniz pages of Maarten Maartensz. See: Help + Map + Tour + Tips + Notes + News + Home |
Remarks on
Leibniz's New Essays
|
|
|
Whether there are any innate principles in the mind of man. |
| Links | Sections |
|
|
|
I shall provide the titles of the books and chapters, since this provides a relatively clear list of contents of the NE. Like many philosophers, Leibniz's motivations for doing philosophy were not mere curiosity or an unstoppable urge for abstract speculation, but rather wordly and religious. He wanted to show, among many other things "(..) why the best possible basis for our natural immortality is the view that all souls are immortal, and that this need not create fears about metempsychosis, for it is not merely souls but animals which live, sense and act, and will continue to do so; everywhere it is just as it is here (...)" (p.72) First, it is clear that Leibniz seeks reasons to support his desires. This is unavoidable, but should be clearly recognized, for this also easily leads to prejudices, like belief that such and such is (not) so, simply because being (not) so is what we desired to start with about such and such. Second, the point about metempsychosis is a good one, especially because if we are souls, curious things may be the case, such as metempsychosis. ("There goes your grandfather - that ass over there! His soul today lives in a donkey. I used to be a sloth myself, in a previous life.") Third, Leibniz was, it seems, a very sincere Christian of the Protestant variety, and hoped to find a foundation for his religious conviction in philosophy. I myself am a non-believer: Either there is no God or else the divinity is so mysterious and miraculous that human beings cannot grasp it (him, her) - and this last point includes for me that it also makes no sense to speak with an air of understanding of the "Mysterium Tremendis" or indeed to make assumptions about it. And indeed, I myself find nearly all talk of transcedent divinities, as are spoken of in the Jewish, Christian and Mohammedan religions, utter nonsense, riddled with confusion and inconsistency. Speaking for myself, it seems to me that a Greek conception, according to which individual men or animals or pieces of nature may be hidden divinities which roam between more ordinary souls, is more sensible than one which appeals to a God that's behind everything there is (though I don't believe this either). A monotheistic and transcedent divinity seems to me to be very likely based on a confusion of two very distinct notions, viz. (i) that there is a ground from which everything arises and (ii) that such a ground is intentional (i.e. believing and desiring). This confusion can be clearly illustrated by many proofs of God's existence, and it seems very implausible to me, and if the second is denied, the first need not be divine at all, but may be physics as we know it. (But I don't believe all of physics is true, and I don't believe all of physics - physical nature - is known.) In any case, I am not a religious believer, since religions explanations usually do not make sense to me or seem false (inconsistent with science or simply inconsistent), while it seems to me that the emotional basis of religious belief, which is that people seek a sense of security, peace of mind, and justification for their beliefs and practices, seems to me bought at a price I am not willing to pay, since I do not want to make assumptions about the constitution of what is really the case that are at bottom inconsistent, unclear, confused, and contradictory, and have in fact been assumed simply to please and justify me and others who might feel like me. I'd rather say that I feel thus and so and no other way, but can give no good reasons for my feeling thus and so beyond my feeling thus and so, and therefore also can see no good reason why another person should feel like me. This has the advantage of being honest and avoiding religious conflicts, but it has the disadvantage that most people seem to be constituted differently: they feel that what they believe to be true and important must be true and important, not only for them, but also for anybody else. UP Fourth, that "everywhere it is just as it is here (...)" is interesting in that Leibniz seems to presuppose that real possible worlds are much like the real world, rather like Lewis's counterparts, and incidentally conforming to Newton's third rule of reasoning. This I shall call the principle of persistence, or also the principle of invariance. One way of formulating it is: What is the case continues to be the case until there is a reason it stops being the case. It should be noted this is not quite the same as the principle of sufficient reason, though it is similar. The principle of sufficient reason says that nothing happens without a reason; the principle of invariance says that nothing changes without reason (but things may come into being that have no reason - by chance - and certain things may have happened and may happen always, without any reason). Indeed, a problem with the principle of sufficient reason is that it seems to require too much: just as we cannot argue without assumptions it seems there must be something that is ultimately and unexplainably so, from which everything arises, if it doesn't arise by chance or coincidence, whether this ultimate ground is nature, God, or whatever. An ultimate explanation of something X would state what is and whence X follows from what is, and why it is assumed that what is is as assumed and not other, but this is as far as one can reasonably go, and as little or as much as would constitute an ultimate explanation of something X. Knowledge of what is - of reality, for lack of a better word - constitutes science or true philosophy. And one complication that fully arose with quantum-mechanics is that knowledge may also be of statistical distributions and probabilities. UP Leibniz has this on first assumptions:
That makes sense, but it leaves the problem of what distinguishes the primary ones, either as true or as axioms. One sensible answer is that the statements that are assumed as axioms are those statements that do entail what one assumes is true without them, while one knows of no other assumptions that entail these assumed truths (that are as probable as the statements one assumes as axioms). Of course, this seems somewhat circular, but what one assumes to be true without it implying anything else one assumes to be true may be taken to be normally simply statements describing one's experiences, whatever they are (and one may later come to the conclusion that some of one's earlier assumptions were false or at least not properly stated, and must therefore be revised).
One problem is that if necessary truths are in the mind (say), they need not be in experience: after all, one may know something without using it. A related problem is seen by considering grammar: everyone uses it without knowing it, yet particular grammars are not innate even if universal grammar is. UP Leibniz says
Is this also a necessary truth about the mind in Leibniz's sense? In any case, note that there lurks a possible confusion between, say, the thoughts in our experience and the ideas in our mind these thoughts stand for, and that it is quite possible that we may have an idea of everything we know (about something) without being capable of thinking it i.e. becoming aware of it in our experience. Indeed, up to a point this happens in (almost) any case we use our knowledge about something, for in general our ideas (that are the product of a lifetime) are more comprehensive than our thoughts (that occur here and now in our present experience), yet our thoughts must be produced - one would assume - by our having the more comprehensive ideas they are part of as thoughts. Furthermore, we very often know that we do not know something, and this requires - presuming, as is conveyed by "know", that what we know is so - that to arrive at that correct judgment that we do not know we have somehow correctly surveyed or reviewed all we do know. And indeed any time we try to remember something we seem to somehow survey at least a considerable part of what we do - believe we - know, and to do so mostly unconsciously. UP Then there is this:
This seems like the need of substances for properties discussed earlier? In any case, Leibniz seems to suggest that there is no abstract thought without an embodiment in a symbol, and this seems a correct insight, provided one includes under 'symbol' diagrams, drawings, signs like arrows etc. UP Leibniz adds:
And this, of course, is also true, since symbols are conventional representations of something. It may be assumed that this is added only to object against those who are naive enough to believe that the relation between symbol and symbolized is somehow necessary. However: aren't the assumptions needed for symbolizing innate? That also seems a fair example of innate human capacities: human beings, unlike the members of any other terrestrial species (so far as we know) seem able to freely and arbitrarily impose sounds and shapes they can reproduce to represent all manner of things they can think of, and to be conscious that they can do so, each privately, in his or her own fantasies, memories, beliefs and desires, and socially, by representing their thoughts by conventional symbols others can perceive, and produce themselves, if thus disposed. UP Now we arrive at the subject of necessary truths and how they are recognized:
This will require quite a few remarks. Here goes. One: "from the understanding alone" probably inspired Kant. But
As to (i): Is it just a matter of statements like "x=x" or ((x)(Ax ==>Ax) or "((x)( (y)(Rxy ==> Rxy V Ryx)" etc., where one can argue that these are "formally valid" by definition of "=" (identity), "(x)" (for all x) and "==>" (implies) and recurrence of "x" or also statements like "what has parts is divisible", "what has a front has a backside and an inside", "other human beings are as capable of feeling pain and pleasure as you are yourself" or "nothing is green all over and red all over"? And could the understanding be innately equipped with insights into laws of nature - as the body does, in a way, when it breathes etc., for whatever the body does involves natural laws? (What I mean here, at least, is the sort of adaptation that enables animals to use natural laws to fly, swim, jump, balance etc. It is pretty implausible to assume a dragon fly could explain aerodynamics, but its existence as a dragon fly, and its activities, do involve some rather amazing uses of natural laws in the context of which it evolved and survives, and the same holds for all other kinds of animals. None of the non-human animals could explain their adaptations and skills, but even so it seems somehow to be built into them.) As to (ii): This smacks of paradox, for the proof of a necessary truth must include the assumption of a necessary truth, if only modus ponendo ponens. The only answers to this seem to be either that necessary truths are such as hold in all possible worlds or that necessary truths are such as reiterate or restate some part of what has been assumed as true already or else, perhaps, that the supposed truth appears self-evident. (Note these are three different approaches to necessity. The last, apart from other objections, such as that different people at the same time or the same person at different times may have contradictory ideas about what is self-evidently necessary, suffers from the problem that ever longer necessary combinations of necessary truths get less and less perspicuous and, therewith, less self-evident.) Two: And what does Leibniz mean by "necessary truths"? Only abstractions and generalizations? What about the principles or capacities that are necessary to language (whatever they are)? Or those that are necessary mathematical truths? Or those necessary principles, if any, that are involved in nature, where it must be remarked that there is a fine distinction between necessary facts and facts that hold always and everywhere, if at all. And what about whatever produces experience, say the mind: is there any necessary tie between the mind and experience; is it causal; and, if neither, what has the mind to do with experience? Incidentally, answers to these questions will be given in the rest of the text. Three: The opposition suggested by "from experience or from observation" is not clear. Are these two different sources of empirical knowledge, or one source used in two ways (non-critically or anecdotically and experimentally, say)? UP Four: "Our mind is capable of knowing truths of both sorts" - presumably, but how? And what about the possibility that the mind is bound to believe in falsities, like e.g. the relative size of the moon close to and high above the horizon, or to conclude the existence of things it generates itself, like colours? And if these are admitted, how many kinds of truths can the mind be aware of? Incidentally, I cannot recall reading any discussion of the thesis that the human mind necessarily must either believe or strongly incline to some falsities, and such falsities we cannot help but believing may manifest themselves e.g. in visual illusions - or in common religious or political illusions, such as the very common belief that "my country" or "my leader" (or boss) must be right, or that the person I am currently in love with must be someone somehow extra-ordinarily special, or that my children are extra-ordinary. (Surely, the exalted opinions nearly all human beings have of their country, their leaders, and their own family must be mostly illusions, and yet are very human indeed, just as they stand at the basis of very much that is good and and very much that is evil in human experience.) If there is a case for the thesis that the human mind necessarily knows certain truths (mathematical, logical or moral ones, say), the history of ideas suggests there also is a case for the thesis that the human mind is disposed to certain kinds of falsehoods (like those at the basis of political or religious totalitarianism, for example, or those at the basis of procreation). Indeed, such falsehoods may serve survival of the group and procreation, and again cause much that is good and and much that is evil. Anybody who knows something about the history of ideas must have a certain amount of skepticism about the possibility of any average man reaching much of the truth about the real world by his own thinking and strength of mind, and must have noticed that even the greatest geniuses, such as Leibniz, were capable of misleading themselves in many kinds of ways, and generally were a genius not because what they believed was mostly right, but only because a few things they believed were not mostly wrong, and they were the first to believe them, or at least make them public, and their genius consisted in a great facility for producing clear and interesting ideas or formulations (rather than in an ability to arrive at true original ideas: mankind is capable of arriving at the truth, but generally only by the efforts of a few geniuses, that formulate the important ideas, and many intelligent followers, that test, develop, reformulate and extend these ideas). UP Five: "the source" - again, presumably so, but how? And supposing e.g. that it is necessary - mathematically or physically - that pi is the ratio of a circular circumference to its radiance, why could the mind not have to incorporate such truths? And that not because of the mind's resourcefulness but because such truths are necessary in a physical or mathematical sense? UP Six: "one could never know inductively" - indeed, and before Hume. Note that as Leibniz puts it this gets the form of a quantification about times. (One way of putting the point clearly is: ((t<n)(At ==> Bt) does not entail ((t)(At ==> Bt): what has always happened up to now does not entail it will continue to happen always. This formulation has the merit of suggesting the possibility that (AeK)(EBeK)(t)(At ==>Bt), which clearly is an assumption that would - in principle - validate the inference, in that it says that any A (perhaps of a certain - natural - kind K) at all times (and all places, in all conditions) is followed by certain conditions B), and this may be true, and we may know it to be true (e.g. "all men die"). In any case, Leibniz's opposition between experience and understanding relates to this point: Experience can only yield particular truths and limited generalizations, for all generalizations that go beyond experience, and also all necessary truths that hold not only in this but in other worlds as well, require more than sense experience to be established. Seven: "one knew through reason": but here Hume's problem about natural laws arises: if they are necessary they are not empirical; if empirical not necessary; and if not necessary then possibly false and no laws. My solution (apart from my solution to the problem of induction) is: each empirical property is a property only by including/excluding some other property. This including/excluding is necessary (and defines the property), but the existence of the property, or of an object that has the property, is not, if indeed the property is empirical. So, referring back to the previous remark, I do presume that (A)(EB)(t)(At ==> Bt), if A is a condition of something supposed to be real. This does not prove the validity of induction, because it doesn't solve which conditions are, in fact, real and invariably or necessarily followed by B - but this was already obvious to Aristotle. In any case, if such generalities exist, one may come to know some of them, and at least give evidence and reasons why some such generalization is more probable than its opposite generalization, on present rational knowledge or belief. UP On the understanding, Leibniz says
Well, yes, but terms like "a disposition, an aptitude, a preformation" don't precisely dispel all unclarity, while introducing the possibility that there is something underlying experience that differs from it and produces it - with which I agree, and defend by insisting (i) we have to make assumptions, if
we want to explain anything whatsoever, and On p. 82 verities like "the square is not a circle", "to be yellow is not to be sweet" and "It is impossible for the same to be and not to be at the same time" are discussed by Locke's mouth-piece, to which Leibniz remarks
All of this is sketchy, and the principle involved seems to be not the one stated (which seems to concern identity) but "it is impossible for any thing to both have and lack any property at the same time". UP In any case, one may ask: Why could such a principle not be a convention? My point is a rather deep one, and amounts to the following. In one sense, language as well consists of objects (subjects: words standing for objects) and properties (predicates: words standing for properties), but the difference between language and what it represents is that in language combinations can be made that represent things that do not occur (or cannot occur) in the reality the language is about - which makes it possible to exhibit these combinations and add a sign of negation. This is connected with the fact that we can very easily and quite self-consciously assert a contradiction (even if it represents something we believe or know to be completely impossible, like "Leibniz used to consume square circular croissants for breakfast") - which means there is nothing impossible about asserting impossibilities. And this is a very important point, also in connection with self-reference, self-representation, and paradoxes, for it shows that language L can contain representations of impossible facts i.e. there are expressions in L such that their referents are not in whatever reality R that language L represents. So in this sense, language (or anything that provides information about anything by virtue of a code) is more powerful than what it may stand for, and this is due to the relation of representation: if certain combinations in L represent certain combinations in R, certain other combinations in L fail to represent combinations in R. This should be contrasted with things one really cannot do, like smelling colours, seeing smells a.s.o. (a few people say they can - "synaesthesia" - and may be speaking the truth), from which it follows: there are truths about our mental capacities which correctly say that we cannot conceive certain things - except as linguistic possibility. (Hence there are things that can be said but that can be neither imagined nor be real: the combinations possible in language in one sense outrun those of the imagination and reality. And since I am on the topic: evidently, things can be said that cannot be thought, or understood, simply because the sentences with which it is said are too long or complicated. But it appears these are all cases of, say, mental inability to decipher an unknown or complicated code.) UP
A good point: That A is necessary may be true (i) because our mind's makeup (ii) because it is so in nature or (iii) both. Again note that the necessities of (i) may be simple incapacities, like our inability to smell colours or hear sounds of 100.000 Hz. UP
To me it seems many of these are or may be conventions, of the form "as V(p&q)=1 iff V(p)=V(q)=1 and for all x V(x)=1 or V(x)=0 and V(~x)=0 iff V(x)=1, it follows V(x&~x)=0." Here "V(y)"="the value of y", and the conventions used are those of standard propositional logic. It follows by the same conventions plus V(pVq)=V(~(~p&~q)) and standard assumptions about substituting variables that V(pV~p)=1 - which, since it corresponds to "p is true or not", is an instance of a proposition many people believe to be necessary, but that in the present treatment seems thoroughly conventional. In any case, it seems here is a distinction which needs some light: some apparently necessary truths may be necessary because of terminological conventions only (e.g. "widowers were once married", "there are 10 centimeters in a decimeter") , and others may be necessary because they represent what happens to be necessary in fact (e.g. "elephants have trunks"), and yet others may be necessary because our minds cannot help thinking so (e.g. "sugar is sweet"). UP
Yes, but a problem with this is that it makes "learn" ambiguous, since we apparently must also learn what we know innately i.e. without learning. Also, in what sense "The truth about numbers are in us" is unclear (and moreover: which truths?), while it is also clear that some, then, seem born with more innate truths or innate truths that are easier made conscious, presumably also for innate reasons, than others. Incidentally, this is somewhat of a problem: Extra-ordinary people like Euler, Gauss and Ramanujan could, it seems, somehow intuitively see or feel truths about the natural numbers more common mathematicians do not see or feel, but can, with difficulty, come to understand when it is explained to them, while ordinary non-mathematical people can not understand or see these truths about natural numbers.
Incidentally, as Kant was "woken from his slumbers" by Hume, he probably did not read the Nouveaux Essays before he was thus woken up. UP
Properly put, this concerns the concept of being. But that is normally a very confused notion, and this doesn't help: one may argue in the same way that there must be dragons or square circles, since we find these concepts inside us. A much better example is Chomsky's grammar: it seems the only plausible way to account for childrens' learning a human language in a few years from scratch is to suppose that they are born with something that corresponds to (the outlines of) a grammar. So the point may be restated as "I would like to know how as young children come to speak if we did not, as human beings ourselves, find a human grammar within us." UP Leibniz replies to Locke's
as follows:
See Np. 80. Also, it accordingly seems to follow that the truths of logic are among those of arithmetic or geometry, and that there are no physical necessities that are not at the same time arithmetical or geometrical ones. UP So Leibniz appears to speak rashly here, and overlooks logic. But there is more that may be innate, and in a sounder sense than Leibniz's examples: It seems all human beings know how to distinguish memories, fantasies, and sensations of various kinds, both of their bodies and of their environments, and it also seems these are not mistaken and not confused as long as one is not ill or poisoned, while they might get easily mistaken or confused in some conditions (taking LSD, getting drunk, becoming psychotic, being too long without sleep, to name a few). But apart from such conditions, human beings seem all to be able to sort their own private experiences quite easily and usually quite correctly into memories, fantasies and sensations, to which may be added our private internal linguistic judgments upon them. These judgments can be seen as classifying experiences into memories, fantasies and sensations, which seems to go normally without much conscious thought, and classifying one's fantasies into true and false, probable and improbable, necessary and possible, good and bad, and many more. UP About human thoughts in general, Leibniz has this remark
In any case, that our unused knowledge in some way is stored in us, and that thinking is acting are useful points. Note that the first point also seems required for learning: we have memories, which we can call successfully upon, and which correctly give back what they stored, and in which we can store new items. UP However, I am not fond of calling our ideas or memories "tendencies" or "dispositions", since this suggests they are somehow active when we do not think of them. Of course, this may be the case, but even so I'd rather think of our ideas and memories as schemata, states, structures or settings rather than as tendencies or dispositions, because it seems to me that these tendencies or dispositions derive from these schemata, structures etc. (in the sense that one is disposed to love one's wife only because one has certain ideas about her, rather than conversely). UP
|
|
|
|
Welcome to the Leibniz pages of Maarten Maartensz. See: Help + Map + Tour + Tips + Notes + News + Home |