|
IX Since writing my Princeton doctoral dissertation on Leibniz's philosophy of science in 1949-1951, now well over fifty years ago... People sometimes ask if my thinking about Leibniz has changed over the fifty-plus years that I have concerned myself with his work and thought. The answer to this question is negative.
[JLJ - Rescher has researched Leibniz for over 50 years. Let's save some time and learn what he has to say.]
p.20 Time, for Leibniz, is conceptually coordinate with space; both are aspects of the descriptive structure of a world: one could not have space in an atemporal context, nor conversely. For space is the order of co-existence - that is, the order among the mutually contemporaneous states of things; while time is the order of succession, that is, the order among the various different mutually coexisting states of things which, qua mutually coexisting, must of course have some sort of spatial structure.
p.41 Leibniz's theory of possible worlds is something of a model of philosophical workmanship... Like everyone else - ourselves included - Leibniz had to do his philosophical work from the vantage point that he occupied in place, time, culture, and basic intellectual commitment.
p.68 His theory of relations represents a crucial component of Leibniz's philosophy.
p.71 Leibniz espoused a metaphysical theory of "(real) existence": according to which only substances and their properties ar real. Other things - preeminently including relations between substances - are accordingly "things of the mind" (entia ranonis), mental products belonging to the realm of phenomenal appearance rather than that of existential reality.
p.72 There are accordingly two sorts of relations: Relations of comparison... and relations of connection
p.79 This reducibility of relations is a matter of how substances are conceptualized, and turns crucially on the completeness of conceptualization.
p.82 A relation... is a syncategorematic compound of predictional facts, but not something further, with an independent status of its own.
[JLJ - From Wikipedia, The distinction between categorematic and syncategorematic terms was established in ancient Greek grammar. Words that designate self-sufficient entities (i.e., nouns or adjectives) were called categorematic, and those that do not stand by themselves were dubbed syncategorematic... Words such as 'all', 'and', 'if' are examples of such terms. In my opinion, a relation is simply a practical invention of the mind, a useful hallucination, because we have to 'go on,' and predictions of how the current predicament will unfold critically depend on the predispositions of the real forces, and the relations among the forces.]
p.82 Relations have no standing apart from the existence of the relata and their properties... a relation lies wholly in the mind of the beholder... Relations are (or can be) perfectly real: they are phenomena and indeed well-founded phenomena. But though real, relations are not real things. For they are not literal things at all - not substances. In the system of Leibniz, to be a phenomenon is to be real without being a thing. (Only substances are real things and relations are not substantival.)
p.92 For Leibniz, space and time are simply relational orders of being... The mutual attunement of whatever is included in a common world is the foundation for space and time, which have no existence apart from the concordance of the mutual "perceptions" of substances
p.93 In every world-setting space answers to the same conception: it is "the order of coexistence" - and time "the order of succession."
p.99 For Leibniz, the concept of space arises from the relations among possible coexistents, and these will invariably be embraced within a common world.
p.100 As Leibniz explicitly says in the Jagodinsky passage quoted above, spaces arise out of relationships of "distance," which (with Leibniz), in turn, root in the perceptions of substances, and there are no cross-world perceptions.
p.102 Time, for Leibniz, is conceptually coordinate with space: one could not have space in an atemporal context, nor conversely. For space is the order of coexistence - that is, the order among the mutually contemporaneous states of things; while time is the order of succession, that is, the order among the various different mutually coexisting states of things which, qua mutually coexisting, must of course have some sort of spatial structure.
p.103 For Leibniz, space and time thus stand in an inseparable coordination with one another in the overall ordering process that begins from that starting point of the particular states of individual substances and arrives at an all-comprehending spatio-temporal order.
p.108 in the second half of the seventeenth century... "System" came to be construed as a particular approach to a certain subject - a particular theory or doctrine about it as articulated in an organized complex of concordant hypotheses, a nexus veritatum... The prime promoter of this new usage was Leibniz. He often spoke of his own philosophy as "my (new) system"
p.110 Leibniz's philosophy, more than that of any other thinker, bristles with principles. Their name is legion: we are presented with principles of sufficient reason, of contradiction, or perfection, of the identity of indiscernibles, of harmony, and many others adhere to that presentation as a fabric of interrelated principles that is the quintessential hallmark of a system.
p.110 As Leibniz sees it, philosophy is - or ought to be - an architectonic structure built up systematically on the basis of various key theses or principles.
p.110 The real can only be properly understood in terms of an appropriate system of rational principles.
p.113-114 Historically, a deductive (Euclidean) system has always been taken as the quintessential paradigm of a cognitive system capable of yielding an endless variety of results on a cognitive basis. This geometric model of cognitive structure holds that the organization of knowledge must proceed in the following manner. Certain theses are to be basic or foundational: like the axioms of geometry, they are to be used to justify other theses without themselves needing or receiving any intrasystematic justification.
p.115 With Leibniz, however, we see a new turning. For him, the ideal model of a cognitive system was provided not by the geometry of the ancient Greeks but by the physics of seventeenth century Europe. In his view, the calculus was not just a convenient mechanism for solving mathematical problems, it provided a new model of rational systematization
p.127 To be sure, it would be rather unrealistic to suppose that humankind will last forever.
p.139 in the later years of the twentieth century... Scientists of the first caliber found their way back into a Leibnizian state of mind; simplicity, fertility, and lawful order are now, once again, at the fore of scientific theory.
p.150 There just is no real prospect of local tinkering with the world without wider ramifications. In this world - and indeed in any possible world - states of affairs are interconnected and local changes always have pervasive consequences. Any local "fix" always has involvements throughout, and in consequence no tweaking or tinkering may be able to effect an improvement.
[JLJ - This statement is possibly a beginning for an investigation into developing a philosophy useful for game theory. We 'play' a game by creatively examining the consequences of the interesting moves and the moves and counter-moves that threaten to upset the 'house of cards' tension present in the current predicament. Also see notes below for additions to this 'philosophy.']
p.151 The world is something too complex to be remade in our thought.
p.154 well-intentioned readjustments... what would need to be shown is that such a repair would not yield unintended and indeed altogether unforeseen consequences resulting in an overall inferior result. And this would be no easy task - and indeed could prove to be one far beyond our feeble powers.
p.155-156 You cannot change one without changing innumerable others... A world is an infinitely complex arrangement of interrelated features and factors. And it is bound to have these coordinated in a complexly interrelated harmony. Modify this and you disturb that... changes to the existing order of things do not come free of cost. [JLJ - italics are mine]
p.156 The world we actually have - and indeed any possible alternatives to it - is a coordinated whole. Once one starts to tinker with it, it disappears on us. For in seeking to change it, we create conditions where there is no longer any anaphoric "it" to deal with. To tinker with the world is to annihilate it.
p.159 Authentic worlds do and must accordingly have a wholly definite character. And just here lies the problem. For we can never manage to identify such a totality... No matter how much we say, the reality of concrete particulars will go beyond it.
p.160 A further salient consideration is that, with worlds, perfection is not in prospect. Whenever the overall merit of a complex whole requires a harmonization among different and systematically competitive aspects of merit, it makes no sense to require perfection... We will have to settle for optimization - the optimal harmonization among those different aspects represented by their holistically best-achievable combination.
p.166 Nature dictates an optimal arrangement for stacking logs and for packaging cannon balls. The most efficient and effective means of reaching specified ends are often dictates by nature's laws.
p.180-181 [Leibniz]
probability or likelihood... must be drawn from the nature of things; and the opinion of weighty authorities is one of the things which can contribute to the likelihood of an opinion, but it does not produce the entire likelihood by itself. Even at the time Copernicus was almost alone in his opinion, it was still incomparably more likely than that of all the rest of the human race. I suspect that establishment of an art of estimating likelihoods would be more useful than a good proportion of our demonstrative sciences
p.205 To determine the extent to which a part contributes to a whole we must begin by setting before our minds just what this whole actually is.
p.247 At this stage of his career - as at the others - Leibniz would (and perhaps could) only undertake small-scale special studies and sketches that gave an exposition of his views on particular issues of detail in matters of science and scholarship. In matters of science and learning he worked on big issues - but only by way of little studies.
p.248 Here necessity coincided with inclination.
p.257 He was set on seizing the opportunities of the moment
p.277 But the best-laid plans of mice and men - and even philosophers - gang aft agley. [JLJ - go often askew]
p.296 Nicholas Rescher... had become interested in Leibniz via Bertrand Russell's book even before writing his Princeton doctoral dissertation on Leibniz's cosmology during 1949-1951
p.314 Leibniz likens the type of reasoning involved in decipherment to finding good moves at playing chess.
p.314 That everything can be said by the use of numbers is a key thesis of Leibniz's universal characteristic.
p.314 Leibniz saw what he called "the method of hypotheses" as a key tool of scientific inquiry
p.320-321 Wallis's communication presented the decipherment of two encrypted French diplomatic communications. The ciphers were different but functioned similarly, the symbols in each being either single objects or groups of two or three, with some standing for letters of the alphabet and others encoding syllables or words. The encipherment was accordingly fairly complex through combining several distinct elements.
[JLJ - Such is the problem of breaking codes. The person constructing an operational code of importance will do it in such a way that the standard analytical techniques for breaking codes will not work, and in fact, any functional attempt to find any histogram of variation in the characters themselves will not produce a result either. Where should code breaking efforts begin? What is known of the code author? Perhaps a paper written a few years earlier by the author of such code, perhaps anything written while still a student will give insight. Maybe such a code author bragged to a colleague, or in a lecture to what were perceived as 'only students' referred to a certain 'unbreakable' technique, or was personally goaded at a conference into revealing specifics. Perhaps someone can be bribed or a debt paid off, or a drinking habit or affair concealed from a spouse, in exchange for code details. Maybe there is a bar not far from such a coding center where encoders meet and relax after work, and talk a little more freely than they are aware - bartenders can be planted or paid for information. Perhaps a prisoner will talk of details if threatened. But raw analysis of a well-constructed code will likely yield little useful, unless mistakes are made in the preparation or transmission.]
p.364-365 What Leibniz envisioned here represents a tectonic shift in conceptual point of view. Confronted by the operations of a machine such as the windmill, we can ask, "what is it doing?" and look to answers of the format, "it is Xing." Now with ordinary machines the appropriate X will be something mechanical: "it is grinding" or "it is cutting" or even "it is keeping time." But - so Leibniz believed - with those machines that he himself envisioned the answer is something very different because now we can reply: "it is adding " or "it is translating." That is, we can now fill in that X with something that is a cognitive and thereby mental operation. And at this point - so it appears - we have taken a large step toward an entirely new conceptual realm, the field of artificial intelligence.
p.369 Physically, monads are centers of force or activity - loci characterized by a dynamic impetus to change.
p.370 In a monadology, to be is to be the bearer of a unique descriptive identity.
p.370-371 to identify... an object within this actual world of ours we do not require complete descriptions: very incomplete descriptions will do... objects can also be identified ostensively by pointing or using some other suitable ostensive gesture... To be sure, ostensive indication can in many cases be exchanged for emplacement in a coordinate system. For when something is positioned within a preexisting or pregiven space-time framework, one can again proceed with object identification on the basis of partial and very complete descriptions.
p.374 to have any chance of being effective, the descriptive approach to individual identification has to take account of the element of the inherent temporality of concrete existence.
p.375-376 there being two distinct... versions of process philosophy. In its stronger version, process philosophy is an ontological reductionism that sees all physical things as reducible to physical processes. In its weaker versions, process philosophy is a conceptual reductionism that sees the explanation of the idea of a "thing" as necessarily involving a recourse to processual ideas.
p.397 Bertrand Russell's The Philosophy of Leibniz... Louis Couturat's La Logique de Leibniz... It was two figures of a past generation (Russell and Couturat) that led me to Leibniz, but it was Leibniz himself who held me there.
p.399 In closing, I would like to add a few words about Leibniz's influence on my own philosophical work. I do not view myself as an adherent of his teaching or doctrine, but rather of his mode of philosophizing. Leibniz is to my mind the master of us all in the use of the formal resources of symbolic thought in the interest of the clarification and resolution of philosophical issues - a role-model for the way in which one wants to do one's philosophical work.
|
