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The Mind-Body Problem - An Exposé and Critique of Leibniz's Contributions
The Mind-Body Problem - An Exposé and Critique of Leibniz's Contributions
The Mind-Body Problem - An Exposé and Critique of Leibniz's Contributions
LEIBNIZ’S CONTRIBUTIONS
BY
MATTHEW-MARY S. F. OKEREKE
okereke3@yahoo.com
PMB 5361 SAMONDA, IBADAN NIGERIA.
OUTLINE
1.0 INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................1
7.0 CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................7
1.0 INTRODUCTION
science and theology, and in the conception of human life. The scholastic philosophy of the
universities was challenged, and many themes still at the centre of philosophical debate were
initiated. It is at the centre of all these that Descartes through his Meditations introduced a
1
strong dichotomy between body and mind albeit also propounding an interaction between
them. This theory of dichotomy on one hand and its interaction on the other grasped the
attention of many philosophers if not all and has (and is) being grappled with by philosophers
worldwide either with a bid to support Descartes, to modify Descartes’ view or even to invent
their own radically different stance. Despite the differences inherent in the theories that these
philosophers have proffered to solve this Cartesian dichotomy, most of the solutions/theories
can be broadly grouped into two: materialist and dualistic theories/solutions on the mind-
body problem. In furtherance to our aforesaid, it is apt to assert here that it is among the
theories/solutions that the solution of Leibniz can be placed and rightly so. The philosophical
import of Leibniz under this group is enormous and thus, it is our aim in this work, to
concisely expose the solution he proffered to the mind-body problem and further give the
chosen to briefly discuss the background which produced Leibniz, his stance on materialism
problem and then the logical implications of his theory of pre-established harmony.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in 1646 into a family of Bohemian origin at
Leipzig. It is recorded that his father was a professor of moral philosophy in the University of
Leipzig. Of the many books we used in our search on the life of Leibniz, one description of
the young Leibniz seems to be recurring and this is the fact that the young Leibniz is often
described as a precocious person.1 It will not be out of place to infer that Leibniz must have
tapped greatly from his father’s library—that which must have contributed greatly to his early
mental development. Apart from this, Bertrand Russell asserts that four successive influences
1 1 Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy Vol. 4 (New York: Image Books, 1994), p. 264; Mary
Morris, Philosophical Writings by Leibniz ( London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1934), p. 1.
A precocious person is one who becomes developed or matured, especially mental, at an unusually early age.
2
contributed to his education and these are: Scholasticism, Materialism, Cartesianism, and
Spinozism.2
Imbued with the spirit of discovery and that of method, Leibniz attained the status of a
genius by his contemporaries and his works encompasses not only philosophy and
mathematics but also law, diplomacy, theology, politics, history, philology and physics.
“With Descartes he shares the merit of having a more authoritative insight into the method
and value of mathematics and physics than any other philosopher of the first rank. And with
Hume he shares the honour of setting the stage for the rejuvenation of modern philosophy in
the critical philosophy of Kant.”3 Having contributed that which his lifetime permitted him
materialism, one of the main groups that was and is still involved in the quest for providing
an answer to the mind-body problem. Leibniz was strongly against materialism. For Leibniz,
the realms of the mental and the physical form two distinct realms but though, not in a way
conducive to dualism. Leibniz was opposed to materialism since according to him, perception
and consciousness cannot be possibly explained mechanically, and, hence could not be
represented in a true unity, perception cannot be brought about by that which is not a true
unity—that which is divisible and so, it follows for Leibniz that if matter is infinitely
divisible, matter cannot form a true unity; it cannot explain perception and this for Leibniz
consequently render materialism false. This system of argument by Leibniz has found even
2 2 Cf. Bertrand Russell, A Critical Exposition of The Philososphy of Leibniz ( London: George Allen & Unwin
Ltd, 1958), p. 5.
3 3 Mary Morris, Philosophical Writings by Leibniz (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1934), p. VII.
3
objected to some versions of materialism on the basis of thought experiments like Leibniz's,
furthermore, experiments designed to show that qualia and consciousness are bound to elude
certain materialist conceptions of the mind are preponderant today. Leibniz further asserted
intelligence since no matter how complex the inner workings of a machine may be, nothing
about it reveals that what is running in it are the inner workings of a conscious being.
One would have ordinarily thought that a rejection of materialism by Leibniz should
have led him to an embrace of the Cartesian dualism but the opposite is the case since he
pours as much aversion on the Cartesian dualism as he did on materialism. According to the
Cartesian dualism, the world fundamentally consists of two disparate substances: extended
material substance (body) and unextended thinking substance (mind).4 Leibniz declared
dualism false on the grounds that the existence of genuine extended material substance is
actually not correct. For Leibniz, “being” and “one” are equivalent and in order for something
to count as a real being—a substance—it must be “truly one,” or an entity endowed with
genuine unity. Furthermore, he argues that for something to be genuine unity, it must be a
simple and indivisible entity. “Substantial unity,” he writes, “requires a complete, indivisible
and naturally indestructible entity” (to Arnauld, 28 November 1686).5 But matter is extended,
and thus, Leibniz believes it is infinitely divisible. Hence, there is no such thing, for Leibniz,
as material substance.
Having rejected the materialist position by arguing that consciousness and thought
cannot be captured by purely mechanical principles and the dualist position by discrediting
their bifurcation of the universe into two different kinds of substances and the later
4 4 Cf. Nicholas Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James, The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Second Edition
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2003), pp. 650-651.
5 5 Mary Morris, Philosophical Writings by Leibniz ( London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1934), pp. XI-XV
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interaction of these two different kinds of substances, Leibniz went ahead to posit that that
which is consists solely of one type of substance, though there also exist infinitely many
substances of this one type. These substances are partless, unextended entities, some of which
are endowed with thought and consciousness, and others of which are found the
phenomenality of the corporeal world. Although Leibniz argued in favour of the existence of
only one type of substance as we have shown above, it is interesting that we note that he also
held that the mind and body are metaphysically distinct. What he meant by this metaphysical
distinction has been a debate over the years “but on any plausible interpretation it is safe to
assume (as Leibniz seems to have done) that for any person P, P’s mind is a distinct
substance (a soul) from P’s body. With this assumption in hand, we may formulate the
central issue in the form of a question: how is it that certain mental states and events are
coordinated with certain bodily states and events, and vice-versa?” It is to this poser that
Leibniz proffered his pre-established harmony theory in which he asserted that each created
substance is programmed at creation such that all its natural states and actions are carried out
in conformity with all the natural states and actions of every other created substance and it is
in accordance to this that he argues that what normally appear to us to be real causal relations
between mind and body are, in metaphysical reality, the mutual conformity or coordination of
mind and body with no interaction or divine intervention involved. Furthermore, in this
According to the former, no state of a created substance has as a real cause some state of
another created substance and according to the later, every non-initial, non-miraculous, state
of a created substance has as a real cause some previous state of that very substance.
It appears to us that one of the important motivations for Leibniz assertion of intra-
complete concept, that is, a concept which contains within itself all that will ever be true of
that substance. In view of this, the changes that occur in a substance are simply the result of
5
the unfolding of its complete concept, a process that occurs through the spontaneous activity
of the basic force of appetition that each substance possesses. Since each substance contains
all of its predicates within itself, there is no need for the causal activity of other substances
(i.e., no need for inter-substantial causation).6 This explanation reveals why it is fitting for
Leibniz to use the term "pre-established"; all the predicates that will ever be true of a
Leibniz describes arises because God has created substances that mirror each other
observe that his theory somewhat coheres with religion since it emphasizes God’s perfections
(for example, necessary existence, free agency, providence, power and knowledge). Flowing
from this theory is the belief of the existence of a God: a God that is brought in to solve the
problem in view. A critique to this would be that Leibniz brings a God, his supernatural pre-
the validity of his theory is dependent on the existence of this supernatural being whose
this necessary supernatural being of Leibniz exists, his theory may still not solve the problem
of interaction since this supernatural unextended being would still be presented to be the pre-
programmed causation of effects later observed and thus taking us back to the original
problem: where and how can an unextended substance interact with an extended substance?
Another thing which may falsify Leibniz’s claims would be a submission of his
theory to that which is known as the law of parsimony or Ockham’s razor for with this
methodological tool, Leibniz’s theory which introduces a third entity (that is, God) in its bid
6 6 Cf. Mary Morris, Philosophical Writings by Leibniz ( London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1934), p. XI-XII
7 7 Peter Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy (1981), s. v. “dues ex machine.”
6
to provide solution to the mind-body problem would be knocked out by theories with lesser
entities
Again, we must note here that Leibniz’s rejection of materialism using the analogy of
the impossibility of artificial intelligence can be faulted for if he asserts that no matter how
complex the inner workings of a machine may be, nothing about it reveals that what is
running in it are the inner workings of a conscious being, then the question to him by
proponents of artificial intelligence may be: what are those inner workings of a conscious
Besides the above, Leibniz’s theory also seems compatible to the nature of human
beings since its denial of inter-substantial causation gives emphasis to the independence of
human beings from other creatures and its assertion of intra-substantial causation highlights
7.0 CONCLUSION
here that no critical mind would deny Leibniz’s attempt to build a coherent system.
Nonetheless, we are of the opinion that Leibniz's Pre-established Harmony does not
satisfactorily explain the union of the mind and the body. In other words, Leibniz’s theory
does not clarify or solve the problem of interaction between the mind and the body
introduced by Descartes’ Meditations. If this is the case, then we can categorically posit that
despite the contributions of Leibniz’s pre-established harmony to the mind-body problem, the
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Angeles, Peter. Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1981.
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Collins, James. A History of Modern European Philosophy. Milwaukee: The Bruce
Publishing Company, 1954.
Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy Vol. 4. New York: Image Books, 1994.
Morris, Mary. Philosophical Writings by Leibniz. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1934.
Russell, Bertrand. A Critical Exposition of The Philosophy of Leibniz. London: George Allen
& Unwin Ltd, 1958
Stokes, Philip. Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers. New York: Enchanted Lion Books, 2002.