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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/2/2019, SPi
Leibniz’s Naturalized
Philosophy of Mind
Larry M. Jorgensen
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/2/2019, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© Larry M. Jorgensen 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018965179
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/2/2019, SPi
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Bibliography 291
Index 301
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/2/2019, SPi
Acknowledgments
¹ Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press,
1933), v. The first edition was printed in 1918.
² Ibid., 1.
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x
I emphasize to my students the need for a strong community of philosophers, and this is
my community.
But my community extends much wider than this. I presented portions of this work
at the X Leibniz Congress in Hannover, Germany; the Second Arctic Circle Seminar in
Early Modern Philosophy in Finland; the “Force Forschung: Modern Philosophical
Conceptions of Force” at Cornell University; the Second and Sixth Biennial Margaret
Dauler Wilson Conferences at UCSD and Dartmouth; the Scottish Seminar in
Early Modern Philosophy in Aberdeen, Scotland; “Early Modern Conceptions of
Consciousness” at Humboldt University, Berlin; the Midwest Seminar in Early Mod-
ern Philosophy at Marquette University; the First Annual Leibniz Society Conference
at Rice University; the Houston Early Modern Group; and the Central Canada Seminar
for the Study of Early Modern Philosophy at the University of Guelph. I am grateful for
the many conversations I had with participants at each of these conferences.
I would like to acknowledge the Department of Philosophy and the administration
of Skidmore College and an NEH Summer Grant for support of this project. The
writing groups at Skidmore College were an invaluable source of encouragement.
Colleagues and students at Skidmore College and Valparaiso University and friends
in Saratoga Springs have been endlessly supportive of my work, and I find it a real
boon to work and live amongst these amazing and wonderful people.
At a more fundamental level, this book took shape around a rich and complicated
life with my family. For Lillian, this book has taken shape around cooperative full-
time childcare, a brief life in London, and concerts ranging from chamber ensembles
to Imagine Dragons. From the beginning of this project—naming a neighborhood cat
“Light Miss” (after Leibniz)—until today, Lily has become a fellow traveler out of The
Cave, full of insight and a passion for justice. For Evan, this book took shape around
trampolines and ADK fire towers. He is the only kid I know who is enticed into
drinking his milk by Zeno’s paradox. Through his unending curiosity and question-
ing, Evan has shown the polymath drive that Leibniz himself had: science, philoso-
phy, math, history, theology, and literature all have a space in Evan’s head (and often
in unexpected ways!). And, finally, Caitlin’s encouragement and grace infuse this
book with meaning. She has been my full partner in exploring with wonder the life of
the mind, and we are together building something that we merely glimpsed twenty
years ago. She is our local superhero (seriously!), and she persists.
* * *
Portions of this book have been published previously, although most of the work has
been revised and reworked for this volume. A part of chapter 2 overlaps with “By
Leaps and Bounds: Leibniz on Transcreation, Motion, and the Generation of Minds,”
The Leibniz Review 23 (2013): 73–98. Chapters 3 and 7 make use of material from
“The Principle of Continuity and Leibniz’s Theory of Consciousness,” Journal of the
History of Philosophy 47 (2009): 223–48. Chapters 5 and 6 make use of material from
“Leibniz on Perceptual Distinctness, Activity, and Sensation,” Journal of the History
of Philosophy 53 (2015): 49–77. Chapters 8 and 9 revisit material from “Leibniz on
Memory and Consciousness,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2011):
887–916 and “Mind the Gap: Reflection and Consciousness in Leibniz,” Studia
Leibnitiana 43 (2011): 179–95. The conclusion draws in part from “Consciousness
in Western Philosophy” in The Routledge Handbook of Consciousness, ed. Rocco
Gennaro (New York: Routledge, 2018), 24–37.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/2/2019, SPi
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
The moderns have cut the Gordian knot with Alexander’s sword, and have
introduced miracles into a natural thing, like gods in the theatre at the denoue-
ment of an opera.¹
My aim was to explain naturally what they explain by perpetual miracles.²
even as these minds provide an image of the divine. As stated in the epigraph, what
the others sought to explain by means of an appeal to the divine, Leibniz sought to
explain in a natural way.
The main argument of this book is easy to state: Leibniz offers a fully natural theory
of mind. In today’s philosophical climate, in which much effort has been put into
discovering a naturalized theory of mind, Leibniz’s efforts to reach a similar goal
300 years earlier will provide a critical stance from which we can assess our own
theories. But while the goals might be similar, the content of Leibniz’s theory
significantly diverges from the majority of today’s theories. Many philosophers
today are working towards an account of mind in fully physical terms. In contrast,
the most fundamental elements of Leibniz’s mature theory of mind are indivisible,
unextended substances, which he terms monads to identify them as the true unities of
nature. Despite this stark difference in the basic elements of the system, or perhaps
because of it, Leibniz provides us with a valuable alternative and a possible way
forward amidst otherwise intractable debates. Indeed, it is helpful in at least this
sense: it allows us to distinguish a broad naturalizing project from the more narrowly
conceived physicalist project.
Of course, I recognize that the term “naturalism” is deeply disputed. Leibniz
himself used the term “naturalism” in a negative sense, although, at the same time,
he described his theory as “more natural” than the competitors. Given that, I think
there is something important captured in viewing Leibniz’s theory as a naturalized
theory of mind. Although the term “naturalism” is a slippery one even today, it is
widely regarded as a desirable goal. But it remains unclear just what the goal is.
One way to state the goal of contemporary theorists is this: a naturalized theory
will be one that has no irresolvable “mysteries”—mysteries like those presented by
phenomenal consciousness (i.e., the qualitative aspect of our experience), which
David Chalmers has famously called a “hard problem” because it is fundamentally
mysterious and it is unclear how to resolve the mystery.⁷ Thomas Nagel thinks the
mysteries will remain until we have retooled our conceptual framework.⁸ But natur-
alists of many stripes offer theories that purport to explain consciousness, removing
the mysteries. As Fred Dretske has put it, a naturalized theory may not “remove
all the mysteries [but] it removes enough of them . . . to justify putting one’s money
on the nose of this philosophical horse.”⁹
So, one way to recognize a naturalized theory is that it provides plausible or
satisfactory explanations of all mental states and events in a way that is intelligible
to human beings. Naturalism is about discharging explanatory demands. In this,
Leibniz was extraordinarily prescient, defending an account of the mind that pro-
vides fully natural explanations for mental states and events and providing an
explanatory framework that removes any residual mysteries, or at least “enough of
them,” to echo Dretske.
⁷ David J. Chalmers, “Consciousness and its Place in Nature,” in Philosophy of Mind: Classical and
Contemporary Readings, ed. David J. Chalmers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
⁸ Thomas Nagel, “Conceiving the Impossible and the Mind–Body Problem,” Philosophy 73 (1998).
⁹ Fred Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), xiii.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/2/2019, SPi
There is also a way in which the historical context of Leibniz’s theory reflects our
own situation. In the seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution was well under-
way, and numerous previously arcane aspects of nature were being explained in
increasingly mechanical terms. But at the same time there were persistent questions
about how far these mechanical explanations could extend. Some, like Descartes,
limited mechanical explanations to bodies—minds were excluded from that sort of
explanation. Others, like Hobbes, were fully prepared to incorporate minds into the
material machine, causing some anxiety among philosophers and theologians that
important moral and theological categories would be eliminated. Leibniz’s response to
this situation was to carve out a middle ground: minds are fully a part of the natural
system, but they are not merely material machines. His naturalism is one that, he
plausibly thought, is consistent with central moral and theological positions. While this
might be seen as an important historical consequence, it also provides a framework for
evaluating for ourselves how naturalized theories might cohere with moral and reli-
gious philosophical views. This is an issue that has captured popular attention even
today—Leibniz stood at the nexus of many of the important debates then and now.
Additionally, liberal societies have long been committed to the natural sciences
and to religious pluralism. It is a source of much grief that these two positions are
now regarded, by people on both sides, as incompatible. The incompatibility is
having bad effects on our ability to live together in community, to talk civilly, and
to make progress in both science and theology. And so a Leibnizian harmony
between nature and the domain of faith is not merely theoretical.
This book is an effort to see how the Leibnizian harmony holds up from the
perspective of his philosophy of mind. Granted, many of the details of Leibniz’s
philosophy of mind would need to be updated in order to make it a plausible
candidate theory of mind in today’s discussions, a task I don’t intend to do in this
volume, but the overall metaphysic is one that might cast some light on our own
thinking. Indeed, as I have worked through Leibniz’s system, I have seen some ways
in which I might depart from what he has presented (not all of which are noted in this
volume), but this benefit of vision comes only through the hard work of seeing things
through his eyes for a bit.
Of course, by identifying a broader motivation for this project in the introduction,
I open myself to various charges: of taking Leibniz’s metaphysics out of its historical
context, of anachronism, or of pressing Leibniz into my own mold. But, for me, this
intersection of currents—those that motivate Leibniz’s thinking and those that
motivate our own thinking—animates the project all the more. And I suspect that
Leibniz would have welcomed the project. Remember that Leibniz is known for
continuously revisiting key conclusions, trying out new avenues of thought and
revising his thinking in light of the evidence. And it is clear that Leibniz never did
finish his project. And so, even a statement of Leibniz’s views will be of a dynamic
position, one that was still responding to the worries of his time and the challenges of
his own thinking. This dynamics of thought makes Leibniz difficult to interpret, but it
also gives us a picture of a highly intelligent person wrestling with difficult issues, and
it invites us to do the same.
Narrowing in from this broader set of issues, the more specific argument of this
book is that Leibniz’s philosophy of mind meets the standards of what he would
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/2/2019, SPi
mind actually lays claim to explaining more than merely higher-order mental
phenomena. It aims to explain much that goes by in minds entirely unnoticed, and
which explains how it could be that the basic elements of nature are non-extended.
No one (to my knowledge) has brought forward these three commitments—the
commitment to a natural theory and the commitments to substances as essentially
active and as representational—in an adequate way. These will be the three pillars
upon which the theory rests.
consider carefully how the use of terms, the historical context, and the systematic
connections within the theory itself might be distinctive in the seventeenth century.
With that in mind, this book will start by considering what, for Leibniz, it means
for a theory to be a natural theory. How does he use the term “nature” and what does
the division between natural and non-natural amount to? What are Leibniz’s criteria
for a natural theory, and why is it that the Cartesian theories do not pass the test?
Once we grasp Leibniz’s own account of a natural theory, Part I of this book, only
then can we consider how (or whether) his own theory of mind is itself fully natural.
This book is in four parts. The first two parts provide the systematic and historical
context for the philosophy of mind that is developed in the second half of the book.
Readers who are primarily interested in Leibniz’s philosophy of mind may discover
that the second half of the book could stand largely on its own. However, the full
defense for the systematic constraints I apply in defense of the interpretation
developed in the second half of the book is presented in the first half of the book,
and so the full picture emerges only with this background in place.
The structure of the book will follow this story line. In Part I, I will outline
Leibniz’s naturalism. Chapter 1 investigates Leibniz’s concept of “nature,” which
focuses on the demand for explanation. Chapters 2 and 3 outline two principles
that Leibniz believes will aid in our discovery of natural explanations: (1) the
principle of continuity, and (2) the principle of the best. Both of these principles,
according to Leibniz, derive from the nature of God’s activity. Since, according to
Leibniz, God does nothing without a reason, this gives us confidence that there is a
reason or explanation available for any given phenomenon. But beyond a mere
promise of explanation, the principle of continuity and the principle of the best
prove to be useful heuristics in discovering natural explanations. Part I shows that
Leibniz has a clear conception of the requirements of a fully natural theory and that
such a theory does not immediately undermine the sharp species distinctions that he
argues for in his theory of mind.
Part II presents the basic structures of Leibniz’s theory of mind—the things that
minds and simpler substances have in common. In this section, I present a new
interpretation of Leibniz’s theories of perception and mental representation, which
provide the most basic building blocks for his theory of mind. While very good work
has been done on Leibniz’s theory of representation, I argue in Part II that interpret-
ers have not given sufficient attention to two other central concepts for Leibniz’s
theory of perception: (a) activity and (b) mediation. Chapters 5 and 6 develop
Leibniz’s theory of substance, with attention to activity and representation respect-
ively. Chapter 7 supplements Leibniz’s accounts of representation and activity with
an account of the mediation of perceptions via the body. An account of perceptual
distinctness requires all three. The benefit of this new interpretation will be to dispel
some of the oddities (or possible inconsistencies) in Leibniz’s use of the concept of
perceptual distinctness. At the end of Part II, the main underlying structures of the
Leibnizian mind will be in place.
In Part III, I present an account of Leibniz’s theory of what one might call an
animal mind, the aspects of perception, sensation, consciousness, appetite, and desire
that humans share in common with other animals. Here I investigate his theories of
consciousness, memory, and appetite, focusing on how Leibniz explains each of these
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/2/2019, SPi
1.
A kis körútról visszatérve, pár elragadó hetet töltött a két fiú édes
anyja oldalán. Mindegyik érezte, hogy tán megsértette valamivel a
másikat s így felül akarták egymást múlni a szeretetreméltóságban.
Lőrincz annyira ment ebben, hogy még pár estére sikerült néki
udvarát is eltávolítani, úgy, hogy a legszűkebb családi körben
töltöttek el pár boldog estét…
És oly jól esett mindkettőnek ott, így hármasban, a nagy lámpa
körül, a billiárd-szobában, az édes anyai szív melegénél,
elbeszélgetni az utolsó hetekben látott, tapasztalt dolgokról.
Az öreg asszony abbahagyta patience-ait, elhallgatta a két fiú
beszédét, majd maga is hozzá szólott, mindig jósággal, enyhén, nem
ítélve el egyik csudálatos rokonát se, mindeniket mentegetve,
magyarázva kicsinyes hibáik eredetét.
– Látjátok fiúk, ha olyan öregek lesztek, mint a milyen én vagyok,
sok mindent más szemmel fogtok ám látni. Addig majd a szenvedés
megtanít benneteket is az elnézésre. Nevettek a Niki bácsin!… Hej
nékem sok galibát okozott életemben. Már a te atyáddal (szólt
Gáborhoz fordulva) kötendő frigyemet is ellenezte, hát még a
tiéddel… ez az öreg bolond mindig irígykedett a Nifforokra. Ostoba
viszály ez is, a mely két családot tett századokra boldogtalanná… a
helyett, hogy századok boldogságában egyesítette volna. Második
férjem ellen is mindig áskálódott, midőn főispánná nevezték ki, nem
szégyelte az ellenzék élére állni s pártoskodni ellene… csak azért,
mert ő is az akart lenni. De hát én mindezt megbocsájtottam neki.
Mert sajnálom, mert tudom, hogy szerencsétlen ember, ki sokat
szenvedett maga is, és mint a kicsinyes embereket mind, úgy őt is
megviselte a sok kis, való vagy csak álmodott baj, melyek aztán az
önmaga életét csak úgy mint a környezetét tűrhetetlenné tették.
– És a lányok… mit tartasz a lányokról?
– Mit tarthatnék mást, mint ti mind. Szegény, szegény
boldogtalan teremtések. Sötét mult sötét árnyai. Nem e világba
valók.
2.