Leibniz on Causation - Part 2

Leibniz holds that created substances do not causally interact with each other but that there is causal activity within each such creature. Every created substance constantly changes internally, and each of these changes is caused by the substance itself or by its prior states. Leibniz describes this kind of intra‐substance causation both in terms of final causation and in terms of efficient causation. How exactly this works, however, is highly controversial. I will identify what I take to be the major interpretive issues surrounding Leibniz's views on causation and examine several influential interpretations of these views. In ‘Leibniz on Causation – Part 2’ I will then take a closer look at final causation.

In the early modern period necessity was tied to each of a clutch of interlocking notions: causation, laws of nature, essence, demonstration, logical inference, mathematical proof, etc. So, for example, some argued that if existence is of the essence of God, then God exists necessarily. Again, some argued that if the laws of motion are not known a priori but are discovered by experience, then they are not necessary. There was, however, no attempt to develop a typology of necessities, such as our contemporary distinctions among logical necessity, epistemic necessity, metaphysical necessity and nomic necessity. Indeed, a central concern of current-day interpreters of early modern texts is to disentangle claims about necessity in one domain, say, causation, from those in another, say, logic. Nor was the problem of necessity a desideratum for early modern philosophers to solve. There is a sense then in which it is slightly anachronistic even to speak of the problem of necessity in early modern philosophy. Nevertheless, the modal notion of necessity features prominently in early modern philosophy and it is important that we as modern-day interpreters of early modern texts find ways to understand and explain how it was understood. To that end, it will be helpful to find a general way of framing the problem of necessity in early modern philosophy. What I offer here is a two-stage analysis that aims to capture the broad contours of a cluster of problems that we would now call problems of necessity. As such, it provides a reference point against which different philosophers’ accounts of modal notions can be compared and assessed. The chapter has two sections. Section 1 presents a general heuristic for studying the problem of necessity in the early modern period, including a crucial development in the early modern view of necessary facts about the world. Section 2 applies that heuristic, by way of example, to the philosophy of John Locke. The General Problem of Necessity in Early Modern Philosophy Most early modern philosophers admit that some propositions are true irrespective of the way the world is and would be true even if there were no world.

The problem of teleology is the question whether all natural processes can be adequately explained in terms of efficient causality. In contemporary philosophy and science there is a strong aversion to explanations by final causation; most approaches consider teleological processes as a special kind of mechanical processes, and try to reduce teleological explanations to explanations based solely on efficient causation.1 Typical examples of such reductionist strategies are the system theoretical and cybernetic approaches.2 Furthermore, there are the approaches of certain evolutionary biologists who maintain on the one hand that biology cannot do without teleological language, but on the other hand insist that the explanations of biological processes need to be based on nothing but efficient causation.3

Spinoza enjoys a widespread reputation as the early modern philosopher who makes the most thoroughgoing and principled attack on teleology. Descartes, for example, limits his attack on final causation to the ques tion of its usefulness in physics.1 Spinoza, according to the standard story, accepts Descartes's rejection of teleological explanation in physics, but he also boldly pushes further and denies the legitimacy of teleologi cal explanation even with respect to God. That is, he denies divine provi dence. This standard picture, Jonathan Bennett has notoriously argued, does not go far enough. Not only, according to Bennett, does Spinoza reject final causation in physics and theology, but he also rejects-or at least is committed to rejecting, whether or not he lives up to this commit ment-teleological explanations of human actions. That is, he is com mitted to denying that human actions are goal directed. According to Bennett, Spinoza is committed to holding that if content-bearing states for example, beliefs and desires-explain human actions, they do not do so in virtue of their content. On a commonly accepted account of the goal-directedness of human action, the exclusion of mental content from psychological explanation would entail that psychological explana tions are not teleological. Of course, Bennett admits, Spinoza frequently

Russell’s rejection in 1898 of the doctrine of internal relations — the view that all relations are grounded in the intrinsic properties of the terms related — was a decisive part of his break with Hegelianism and opened the way for his turn to analytic philosophy. Before rejecting it, Russell had given the doctrine little thought, though it played an essential role in the most intractable of the problems facing his attempt to construct a Hegelian dialectic of the sciences. I argue that it was Russell’s early reading of Leibniz, in preparation for his lectures on Leibniz given at Cambridge in 1899, that most probably alerted him to the role the doctrine was playing in his own philosophy. Leibniz defended a similar doctrine and extricated it from difficulties like those faced by Russell by means of devices that were not open to Russell. Russell would have come across these views of Leibniz in writings by Leibniz that he read in the summer of 1898, just before he rejected the doctrine of internal relations.ReferencesF. H. Bradley. Appearance and Reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. Originally published 1893.Nicholas Griffin. Russell’s Idealist Apprenticeship. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.Nicholas Griffin. Russell and Leibniz on the Classification of Propositions. In Ralf Krömer and Yannick Chin-Drian, editors, New Essays on Leibniz Reception. Basel, Birkhäuser, pp. 85–127, 2012.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0346-0504-5G. W. Leibniz. Die Philosophischen Schriften von Leibniz, 7 Volumes. Edited by C.I. Gerhardt. Berlin, Weidman, 1875–90.G. W. Leibniz. The Philosophical Works of Leibnitz. Edited by G.M. Duncan. New Haven, Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor, 1890.G. W. Leibniz. New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, Translated by A.G. Langley. London, Macmillan, 1896.G. W. Leibniz. The Monadology and other Philosophical Writings. Edited by R. Latta. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898.G. W. Leibniz. Philosophical Papers and Letters, 2 Volumes. Edited by L.E. Loemker. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1956.G. W. Leibniz. New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, Translated and Edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981.Massimo Mugnai. Leibniz’ Theory of Relations. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1992.Massimo Mugnai. Leibniz’s Ontology of Relations: A Last Word?. In Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Volume IV. Edited by Daniel Garber and Donald Rutherford. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659593.001.0001Walter H. O’Briant. Russell on Leibniz. Studia Leibniziana, 11: 159–222, 1979.B. Russell. An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. New York, Dover, 1956.B. Russell. My Philosophical Development. London, Allen and Unwin, 1959.B. Russell. The Principles of Mathematics. London: Allen and Unwin, 1964.B. Russell. The Monistic Theory of Truth. In Philosophical Essays New York, Simon and Schuster, pages 131–46, 1968.B. Russell. A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz. London, Allen and Unwin, 1975.B. Russell, The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 1, Cambridge Essays, 1888–99, edited by Kenneth Blackwell, et al. London, Allen and Unwin, 1983.B. Russell. The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 2, Philosophical Papers, 1896–99, edited by Nicholas Grif?n and Albert C. Lewis. London, Routledge, 1989a.B. Russell. On the Relations of Number and Quantity (1897). In Russell [1989a], pages 70–82, 1989b.B. Russell. An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning (1898). In Russell [1989a], pages 163–241, 1989c.B. Russell. The Classification of Relations (1899), in Russell [1989a], pages 138–46, 1989d.B. Russell. The Fundamental Ideas and Axioms of Mathematics (1899). In Russell [1989a], pages 265–305, 1989e.B. Russell. The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 3, Towards “The Principles of Mathematics”, 1900–02, edited by Gregory H. Moore. London, Routledge, 1993a.B. Russell. The Principles of Mathematics, 1899–1900 Draft. In Russell [1993a], pages 13–180, 1993b.B. Russell. The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 11, Last Philosophical Testament, 1943–68. Edited by John G. Slater. London, Routledge, 1997.

494 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:3 jULY 199a man. Only a few can do this sort of work, and because of their concerns, they are generous, and no threat to a sovereign. This Hobbesian conclusion, according to Herbert, anticipates our current situation in which political power and moral authority rest in modern technological sciences rather than in political institutions. Today we can see the dangers in this outcome, as well as its antecedents and benefits. Of course Hobbes could not have foreseen our situation, but it is enough of a claim for this study, Herbert concludes, if it "reintegrates Hobbes into the philosophical, scientific and political history of his own time," as a systematic philosopher in the great tradition of that noble endeavor. There is much here to chew, reread, and discuss. One might question Prof. Herbert 's interpretation of what Hobbes meant by "imitate the creation," or his notion of "opposition" in characterizing conatus to the exclusion of Hobbes's concepts of act, cause, and power--and perhaps other issues as well. What needs to be emphasized, however, is that he has given us a careful reading of virtually all of Hobbes's philosophical works, a fair consideration of the secondary literature, and an overall account of Hobbes's system, emphasizing the unifying threads. Readers interested in either the particulars or the whole of Hobbes's work will benefit by study and discussion of this much-needed and often eloquent work. CRAIG WALTON University of Nevada, Las Vegas R. C. Sleigh, jr. Leibniz and Arnauld: A Commentary on Their Correspondence. New Haven: Yale University Press, t99o. Pp. xv + 237. Cloth, $~8.5o. The exchange of letters between Leibniz and Antoine Arnauld in 1686-87 is one of the great intellectual events of the seventeenth century. In the correspondence we find two of the most brilliant minds of the period discussing pressing philosophical and theological issues, such as freedom, providence, causation, substance, and miracles. Thus it is somewhat surprising that until now there has been no extended and detailed treatment of the correspondence itself (although it certainly surfaces in more general discussions of Leibniz's philosophy). Sleigh's book, then, is a welcome and longoverdue addition to the literature on Leibniz and on early modern philosophy. His main concern is with an analysis of the letters constituting the correspondence--which was initiated by Leibniz's soliciting Arnauld's comments on a summary of the Discourse on Metaphysics--insofar as they may clarify doctrines held by Leibniz at the time. But Sleigh approaches the correspondence in the context of, and thus also illuminates, both Leibniz's broader system(s) (the correspondence plays a crucial role in the development of Leibniz's later metaphysics) and the philosophical and theological climate (including Cartesianism, occasionalism, Scholasticism, Jansenism, etc.). Two introductory chapters provide some background for understanding the correspondence , particularly regarding Leibniz's ecumenical project of reconciling the Catholic and Protestant churches. To this end, he sought from Arnauld, a Catholic theologian, confirmation that Leibniz's views on certain fundamental but disputed BOOK REVIEWS 495 questions wcrc not heretical from the Catholic point of view. Unfortunately, Arnauld was not so obliging, and immediately accused Lcibniz of undermining God's freedom and providence. In Chapter 4, Sleigh examines Arnauld's objections and then defends Lcibniz against the charge of heresy. The question, in brief, is whether Leibniz's conception of an individual substance is inconsistent with God's freedom. This turns on the issue of whether or not Leibniz's acceptance of"superintrinsicalness"--the view that all of an individual's properties are intrinsic--commits him as well to "superesscntialism ," or the view that for every property of an individual, it is metaphysically impossible for that individual to exist and yet lack that property (or, in other words, that every property of an individual is a metaphysically necessary property). Arnauld reasons that if Lcibniz holds the former doctrine, then he also holds thc latter. Hence, whatever properties an individual has it has necessarily--and this claim, for Arnauld, implies that if God creates that individual then God is not free with respect to the properties possessed by it or the consequences that follow...

This chapter offers an account of the history and central issues in feminist philosophical engagements with early modern philosophy. The chapter describes a “first wave” of feminist scholarship on early modern philosophy, beginning around the 1990s, that involved examining the work of canonical male philosophers from a feminist perspective, as well as a “second wave” that focuses on the early modern women philosophers themselves. Projects involved in this second wave include (1) explaining why and how these works dropped out of view in the first place; (2) finding, editing, translating (when necessary), and publishing neglected or lost writings; (3) contextualizing, analyzing, and critiquing these works; and (4) theorizing about and experimenting with ways to integrate these works into narratives of the history of philosophy. The chapter ends with discussion of an emerging “third wave” of opportunities for publishing, presenting at conferences, and teaching about these women philosophers.

Teleological theory is shown to rely upon final causation, which in turn also makes use of formal-cause patternings as the ‘that’ for the sake of which events are being intended. In the rise of science over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the belief crystallized that it was possible to explain events by reducing them to underlying material and efficient causation. Cartesian mathematics made it appear that motion caused patterns to come about and hence was basic to patterns. Modern physics has changed all this, placing the formal cause at the center of explanation. The unseating of material and especially efficient causation in science makes it possible for psychology to formulate telic theory. Formal causation is germane to meaning, and human beings can be seen to behave for the sake of such meaningful patterns. Mechanism is shown to be an instrumentality rather than a basic cause of behavior. Logical learning theory is presented as an example of telic theorizing. It is argued that unless psychology meets the challenge of teleological description it will never emerge as a distinctive area of study with a unique contribution to the family of the sciences.

In contemporary Peirce scholarship, there is a consensus that Peirce conceived semeiosis or sign-action as a teleological process, that is to say, as a process directed toward the complete interpretation of the sign.2 If semeiosis is indeed some sort of teleological process, then it must, according to Peirce, involve a combined action of final causation, efficient causation, and chance.3 However, the secondary literature on Peirce's semeiotic does not provide a clear and unambiguous view of the roles of these causal elements within semeiosis. The objective of this chapter then is to clarify the roles within semeiosis of, respectively, final causation, efficient causation, and chance. For the sake of clarity, I will use the expression 'semeiotic causation' for the role of causal elements within semeiosis.4

It is a challenge in teaching early modern philosophy to balance historical faithfulness to the arguments and concerns of early modern philosophers and interpreting them as relevant to the kinds of thinking that contemporary undergraduate students find plausible. Early modern philosophy is unique, however, in applying modern scientific method directly to problems concerning nonphysical aspects of reality that our contemporary scientific thought, and with it mainstream contemporary culture, no longer find amenable in their own, independent right to reliable reasoned approaches. At the same time, early modern philosophy often also takes seriously purely conceptual or logically consequential thought in the investigation of these topics, as our mainstream contemporary culture does not. This kind of thought, we argue, is distinctive of philosophy in general and appropriate to nonphysical aspects of reality. Early modern philosophy, then, offers a bridge between the kind of reasoned, objective thought our mainstream culture finds plausible and thought about nonphysical reality or, in general, the thought that characterizes philosophy.

This article argues that early modern philosophy should be seen as an integrated enterprise of moral and natural philosophy. Consequently, early modern moral and natural philosophy should be taught as intellectual enterprises that developed hand in hand. Further, the article argues that the unity of these two fields can be best introduced through methodological ideas. It illustrates these theses through a case study on Scottish Newtonianism, starting with visions concerning the unity of philosophy and then turning to a discussion of how methodological ideas figure in those visions. Finally, the article argues that methodological considerations can serve as good starting points to introduce and discuss central topics and canonical figures of the early modern period.

Disentangling Leibniz's Views on Relations and Extrinsic Denominations Anja Jauernig (bio) 1. Introduction Most commentators agree that Leibniz advocates some version of a doctrine of the ideality or reducibility of relations, but there is considerable disagreement on the question of what exactly this doctrine is supposed to amount to. This question is pressing because of the central place that Leibniz's theory of relations occupies in his philosophy. How one understands Leibniz's views on relations will influence how one understands Leibniz's complete concept doctrine, his (super)essentialism, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, his account of compossibility, and his theory of space and time, to name just a few examples.1 [End Page 171] The most divisive question in this context is whether Leibniz is what I will call a "reductionist," i.e., whether he advocates some form of "reductionism" about relations. There are several ways in which this question could be understood, depending on how the term 'reductionism' is explicated. A reductionist about relations could be said to hold that all there is in the world are individuals and their intrinsic properties, or that a complete description of the world is possible in purely non-relational terms, or that all relations and extrinsic properties (strongly) supervene on intrinsic properties—which are popular ways in which Leibniz's views on relations and extrinsic denominations have been interpreted. The question of whether Leibniz is a reductionist splits commentators into two camps: those who answer the question in the affirmative,2 and those who answer it in the negative.3 Despite much good work on this topic, the proponents of the two camps have been talking past each other to a considerable extent. One of the main factors [End Page 172] hampering the discussion is the widespread, if only implicit, assumption that there must be one unified thesis, or, at most, a small number of closely related theses, that Leibniz is trying to articulate in his various pronouncements on relations and extrinsic denominations. On my view, this assumption is clearly false.4 Another obstacle to exegetical progress is the frequent inadequate appreciation of Leibniz's division of reality into different ontological levels. The failure to take this level distinction into account tends to obscure the complex and multi-faceted nature of Leibniz's views on relations and extrinsic denominations. Once Leibniz's various theses about relations and extrinsic properties have been sorted out, it becomes clear that both camps of commentators are correct about some aspects of Leibniz's views, even though the overall flavor of Leibniz's position on relations remains non-reductionist. The argument of this paper will proceed as follows. Section 2 covers some preliminaries and background material, including a sketch of Leibniz's tiered ontology. In section 3, I discuss Leibniz's thesis of the ideality of abstract relations. Section 4 explicates the sense in which all phenomenal extrinsic properties can be reduced to the perceptions of monads, and addresses the question of whether monads have irreducibly extrinsic properties. In section 5, I analyze Leibniz's notorious claims that there are no purely extrinsic denominations and that every extrinsic denomination has a foundation in the thing denominated, which I take to be concerned primarily with the phenomenal level of reality. I argue that these claims do not commit Leibniz to reductionism, but they warrant ascribing to him five other weaker theses about extrinsic denominations and their relation to intrinsic denominations. In the sixth and final section, I revisit Leibniz's much discussed project of reformulating relational sentences into non-relational ones, and identify two more Leibnizian theses about relations and extrinsic properties. 2. Preliminaries and Background The main focus of this paper is on Leibniz's views on relations and extrinsic properties in his mature philosophy, which I take to have been in place by the mid-1680s, at least as far as its main doctrines and principles are concerned, several changes in emphasis and presentation style notwithstanding.5 An important step toward disentangling these views is a careful appreciation of Leibniz's division of reality into several ontological levels. This level-distinction is widely acknowledged in the literature, but there are different views...

The purpose of this essay is exegesis. I explicate Nicholas Malebranche’s concept of intelligible extension. I begin by detailing how the concept matured throughout Malebranche’s work, and the new functions it took on within his metaphysical system. I then examine Gustav Bergmann’s (1956. “Some Remarks on the Philosophy of Malebranche.”The Review of Metaphysics10(2): 207–26) “axiomatic” interpretation, as well as the criticism of it offered by Daise Radner (1994. “Malebranche and the Individuation of Perceptual Objects.” InIndividuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Kenneth F. Barber, and Jorge J. E. Gracia, New York: SUNY Press). I argue that Radner’s criticism of the interpretation is only partly successful; some of her objections can be met; others cannot. I then develop a novel interpretation of the concept, given insights from this dispute. I call it the “programmatic interpretation.” I argue that this interpretation coheres well with Malebranche’s famous Vision in God thesis, as well as many of his other commitments. I conclude by considering a certain pertinent objection to my proposal, summarizing the dialectic, and forcefully restating my case.

The Indo-Iranian Journal (IIJ), founded in 1957, is a peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the ancient and medieval languages and cultures of South Asia and of pre-Islamic Iran. It publishes articles on Indo-Iranian languages (linguistics and literatures), such as Sanskrit, Avestan, Middle Iranian and Middle & New Indo-Aryan. It publishes specialized research on ancient Iranian religion and the Indian religions, such as the Veda, Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism (including Tibetan). The Journal welcomes epigraphical studies as well as general contributions to the understanding of the (pre-modern) history and culture of South Asia. Illustrations are accepted. A substantial part of the Indo-Iranian Journal is reserved for reviews of new research. The Journal predominantly publishes articles in English and occasionally in French and German.

This chapter discusses the causation ruling the celestial realm in order to ascertain whether Avicenna's determinism extends to his cosmology. In order to understand how God, necessarily existent by itself, determines the existence of beings that are possible in themselves, necessary through another, one has to have a close look at the emanation process through which the celestial realm that governs everything below the sphere of the moon comes into existence. Causation in the supralunary world can be seen to work in two different, but not contradictory, ways, namely as final causation and as efficient causation. In his theory of divine providence and qadar, God's determination of events, Avicenna combines the metaphysical theory that everything is necessary through the first absolute cause with the Islamic view that God determines all events. Avicenna explicitly affirms that nothing exists without having become necessary through God.Keywords: Avicenna; celestial realm; divine providence; supralunary world