Notes for 10/1/2026

  

10/1/2026

[Philosophy Club every Wednesday, 5-6 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave")

Bioethics Club Tuesdays from 4:30-5:30 in CAS 436.]

 

In a universe with only one thing, would it make sense to ask whether that thing was moving or at rest?

 

 

A variation of the Principle of the Best is the “Principle of Perfection” = “whatever is more perfect or has more reason is true.”

 

 

For God, himself, his perfection includes (or implies) his existence (ontological argument).

 

 

For everything else, whether or not it exists depends on (i) God’s reckoning of its comparative perfection across all possible worlds, and then (ii) God’s “decree” that it exists.

 

 

There are places where L seems to imply that things somehow tend toward existence by themselves.

“Because something rather than nothing exists, there

is a certain urge for existence—a claim to existence,

so to speak—in possible things or in possibility or

essence itself. In short, essence in and of itself strains

towards existence.”

 

This has been called L’s “theory of the striving possibles.”

Can you see the problems with this view?

 

Theodicy

 

Leibniz rejects Spinoza’s necessitarianism:

 

1.           Some things are possible that are never actual (there are possible worlds different from this one).

2.           If necessitarianism were true, then only what is actual would be possible.

3.           Therefore, necessitarianism is false.

 

Which premise do you think Spinoza would reject?

 

 

I think the answer has to be (1). For Spinoza, whatever is possible is actual, and only what is actual is possible (that is, possible = actual).

 

Defending this seemingly requires either:

-      Playing with the meaning of “actual” so that some things (like trolls) only have some kind of ersatz actuality, or

-      Playing with the meaning of “possible” so that nothing is meaningfully possible in itself, but rather is always and only possible relative to the conditions that would produce it.

 

On Leibniz’s view, the 2^nd of these confuses ‘absolute’ with ‘hypothetical’ necessity (and possibility).

 

The difference is:

      X is necessary.

versus

      X is necessary given W.

      (X is necessary relative to conditions W.)

 

Correspondingly:

      X is possible.

versus

X is possible given W (relative to the conditions specified by W).

 

For example, it is possible to levitate in an absolute sense, but not in a relative sense (given the laws of physics).

 

Or:

If you don’t have any carrots, it is not possible to make carrot cake in the relative sense, but it is still possible in the absolute sense.

 

Leibniz would say Spinoza is mistaken to think only hypothetical possibility and necessity exist, or that hypothetical P&N imply absolute P&N.

 

Leibniz thinks existing things are proof of this.

 

God’s existence is absolutely necessary because denying God’s existence is explicitly contradictory: Necessarily, an absolutely perfect being exists (it is impossible that an absolutely perfect being does not exist). Or: Necessarily, a necessary being exists (it is impossible for a necessary being to not exist).

 

But denying the existence of any finite thing is not explicitly contradictory. Rather, it is only contradictory when taken together with the principle of perfection (or principle of the best): It is necessary that given God’s perfection as a creator, x exists.

 

Problem:

 

Leibniz sometimes define “essential” as follows:

 

A property P is essential to something S iff S could not exist without P.

 

But if existence is a property (as seems to be required by the ontological argument), then on this definition of ‘essential’, existence turns out to be essential to anything, because it couldn’t exist without having the property of existence.