Notes for 10/13/2026

  

10/13/2026

 

[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.]

 

 

Descartes thought some ideas are innate. Locke thought there are no innate ideas. With whom do you think you agree?

 

 

 

 

 

Leibniz residua

 

 

 

Different views exist regarding what, exactly, L’s account of perception is.

 

 

My view:

      L defines perception as “the representation of multiplicity within unity.”

 

I take L to be adopting a version of Descartes’ theory that perception is confused intellection. (Some of L’s own examples support this. E.g., waves on the shore.)

 

 

On my view, every perception is a confused intellection of the infinite collection of monads making up the entire universe. Parts of every perception are more confused than others, which is what explains our perception of the world as made up of different material things, at various distances from one another, etc.

 

 

(This fits with his rejection of space & time as absolute, etc.)

 

 

Analogy = pixels.

 

 

When we look at a digital picture of a hamster, what we really see is a bunch of pixels of varying hues. But we don’t see it AS this. We see a hamster.

 

Our minds process the information from the pixels so that we lump them together in different ways. Some belong to the background, others make up the hamster.

 

Or:

 

When you look at a table which is made of nothing but atoms, do you see anything but atoms?

 

 

(Exercise: Write & then discuss.)

 

 

 

 

What we call the material world is foundationally made up of groupings of monads.

 

Some of these groupings are natural. Others are artificial.

 

 

Leibniz is largely tracking a distinction found in previous philosophers, such as Aquinas. This is the distinction between an ens per se (thing-as-such / grouping making up a substance) and an ens per accidens (thing-by-accident / mere grouping). The former was sometimes explained by the concept of a “substantial form.”

 

 

Leibniz’s similar idea was that monads are arranged into what I call “fractal hierarchies.”

 

(1)       An animal (living being) consists of a dominant monad (the soul of the animal) and an infinitely recursive cascade of subordinate monads (making up (or rather “founding”) the body of the animal).

(2)       Every region of matter contains not only monads, but other animals. So, every ens per se contains other ens per se.

(3)       Every monad is dominant in relation to an infinite number of subordinate monads (but apparently Leibniz does NOT hold that every monad is subordinate to some dominant monad; human souls occupy a top tier and are not subordinate to any other monad (including God, because God stands apart from all monadic hierarchies, though all are dependent on him).

 

 

Yes, Leibniz’s view is very weird.

 

“New Way of Ideas”

 

 

Thinking is the operation of the mind on ideas.

 

Ideas are the “stuff of thought.” (to think is to have ideas, to manipulate those ideas or process them in various ways to derive more ideas)

 

 

Empiricism about ideas :  ALL ideas ultimately begin with experience. (Rejection of innate ideas.)

 

 

Knowledge begins in sense experience:

 

Locke divides ideas into two main categories (each of which is divided into two further main categories):

 

Ideas of sense

      Simple – correspond to individual sensory qualities (color, texture, odors, sounds)

      Complex – combination of simple ideas lumped together to form the ideas of objects of sense (e.g., apple)

 

Ideas of reflection

      Simple – comparison (noticing similarity and difference) but also perhaps larger or smaller

      Complex – combination and abstraction

 

 

 

 

Avicenna’s “falling man”

Ibn Sina