Leibniz

Ken Taylor
Coming up on Philosophy Talk…

John Perry
The life and thought of Leibniz—the last so called “universal genius.”

Ken Taylor
Gottfried Leibniz was a jurist, a courtier, a diplomat, and a librarian.

John Perry
He made huge contributions to logic, geometry, physics, botany, physiology, linguistics, and of course calculus.

Ken Taylor
So why is he so little known?

Narrator
He had, it is true, the virtues that one would wish to find mentioned in a testimonial to a prospective employee. He was industrious, frugal, temperate, and financially honest. But his best thought was not such as would win him popularity, and he left his records of it unpublished in his desk.

John Perry
What was so great about his ideas anyway?

Daniel Garber
Even the most attentive reader of Leibniz’s published writings could hardly guess the full depth of his metaphysics.

Ken Taylor
Our guest is Daniel Garber from Princeton University.

John Perry
Tune in to learn about the most important philosopher you know the least about.

Ken Taylor
The life and thought of Leibniz—coming up on Philosophy Talk.

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco.

John Perry
Continuing conversations that began at Philosophers Corner at Stanford University, where Ken teaches philosophy and I did for many wonderful years.

Ken Taylor
Today it’s Gottfried Leibniz—the most important philosopher you probably know the least about.

John Perry
Yeah, I mean, Leibniz may have had more impact on Silicon Valley than any other philosopher in history.

Ken Taylor
How could that be John? He died in 1716, well before the American Revolution, let alone the computer revolution.

John Perry
He was the father of computer science nonetheless.

Ken Taylor
No, John, that was Alan Turing. And that was in the 40s and 50s.

John Perry
But Leibniz anticipated many of Turing’s ideas. He invented binary arithmetic, the basis of all computing. His advances in logic paved the way for the idea of a Turing machine. He designed and built a mechanical device that could do arithmetic. And until the digital calculator, well into my life, his ideas were the basis of most calculating machines.

Ken Taylor
Okay, so let’s call him the grandfather of the computer revolution. How about that?

John Perry
And while he was added, he invented calculus.

Ken Taylor
No, John, wrong again—that was Sir Isaac Newton.

John Perry
Well, Newton gets a lot of the credit, but Leibniz may well have gotten there first. And his notation is the one we still use. While he was at it, Leibniz invented library science, and he had a successful career in law and also one in diplomacy. He was an engaged and practical philosophical genius.

Ken Taylor
I’ll give you the genius, I’ll give you engaged and practical. But you know, for an engaged practical guy, he had one of the most harebrained philosophical ideas ever: that this is the best—this mess!—is the best of all possible worlds.

John Perry
Ken, you sound like Voltaire. Voltaire poked endless fun at Leibniz’s optimism. It his novel “Candide” the airhead character Dr. Pangloss is directly modeled on Leibniz.

Ken Taylor
This is a serious question, John: did Leibniz even notice the disease, pestilence, earthquakes, and human evil that were all around him in his travels about this “best of all possible worlds?”

John Perry
Well, I’m sure he did. But when it comes to philosophy, the logical Leibniz dominated the practical, empirical Leibniz. He logically deduced the conclusion that this is the best of all possible worlds from a premise widely accepted among European philosophers of the time.

Ken Taylor
You mean that Christian view of God as all powerful, all knowing, and perfect in every way, all that jazz, ight?

John Perry
Exactly. If the world is the intentional creation of a perfect God, then that God must have had good reasons—Leibniz would say sufficient reasons—for everything that happens. God’s motives were pure and beneficent, his powers unlimited, and he knew exactly what he was doing. Ergo, by logic alone, it follows that the world he created is the best of all possible.

Ken Taylor
John, logic be darned—didn’t he open his eyes? The world is so not perfect! It’s full of evil, t’s full of defects that a perfect God could have easily avoided if he chose, ergo—I’ll give you a little logic—ergo, his premise that God is perfect, well, that must be rejected. Now you tell me what’s wrong with that logic?

John Perry
Well, there’s nothing wrong with your logic. But there’s nothing wrong with Leibniz’s logic either.

Ken Taylor
No, no—how could that be if we disagree?

John Perry
Well, you basically agree: you agree on the conditional that if God is perfect, then this is the best of all possible worlds. He accepts the antecedent, that God is perfect, and draws the conclusion: it’s the best of all possible worlds. You reject the consequent, that the world is best, and so you reject the antecedent. He uses modus ponens, you use modus tollens. You use logic to conclude that God cannot be perfect, he uses the same logic in the other direction to conclude that the world is the best.

Ken Taylor
No, John, but look, surely common sense—common experience—sides with me. It gives the lie to Leibniz’s logic and it supports my logic.

John Perry
Well, you can’t always trust experience. Perhaps we experience only a small slice of an incomprehensibly vast cosmos. There is, for example, heaven and hell—maybe they’re out there. Maybe what appears to us as terrible evils or intolerable defects or terrible injustices only appear that way because of our inability as finite and imperfect beings that we are to grasp God’s whole plan. That’s certainly what Leibniz would ha was.

Ken Taylor
Well bully for Leibniz. But you know, call me unconvinced. But unlike Voltaire. I don’t think of Leibniz as an airhead for thinking that way.

John Perry
Well, airhead isn’t the worst thing he was called. In England they call him a scoundrel because they thought he plagiarized from Newton.

Ken Taylor
Now who knows where the truth lies in that controversy between Leibniz and Newton about the discovery of the calculus—who knows that?

John Perry
Our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Shuka Kalantari, that’s who. Shuka sets out to integrate the facts and differentiate them from the fictions in this strange episode in the history of thought. She files this report.

Shuka Kalantari
A little over 300 years ago, a German guy by the name of Gottfried Leibniz was embroiled in an intellectual battle with a Britain named Isaac Newton both claimed to have discovered calculus, and they wanted the world to know it.

Jason Bardi
They were writing reviews of each other’s papers and appealing to scientific societies.

Shuka Kalantari
That’s Jason Bardi, author of “The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz, and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Time.” It seems a very public fight ensued between Leibniz and Newton in late 1600s. And it went on for over a decade.

Jason Bardi
A lot of the friends of Newton and the friends of Leibniz were entering the fray and writing nasty things about the other person.

Shuka Kalantari
It’s a battle that still rages today. Just ask Sheldon from a Christmas episode from “The Big Bang Theory.

Big Bang Theory
Hi, look, Sir Isaac can go right next to this little candy cane. No, Isaac goes at the top of the tree. No, he doesn’t. I understand—you dispute Newton’s claim that he invented calculus and you want to put Gottfried Leibniz on the top. Yeah, you got me—I’m a Leibniz man. Perhaps when your mother gets here, she’ll talk some sense into you.

Shuka Kalantari
Here’s what happened. Newton did discover calculus first in 1666, but he never published his findings. 20 years later, Leibniz independently discovered calculus and published his findings. People started pointing fingers.

Jason Bardi
The accusation from Newton and his supporters was that Leibniz actually got a hold of some of these unpublished manuscripts and stole the ideas.

Shuka Kalantari
LEibniz defended himself, saying he discovered calculus on his own, but the odds were Newton’s favor. Isaac was the intellectual darling of London,

Jason Bardi
He was more than Einstein. He was more than Steve Jobs. He was he was a super hero, and a great intellectual rolled into one. And so the people—his minions, as it were—they were willing to do anything.

Shuka Kalantari
Newton’s minions—other scientists and mathematicians—built a case against Leibniz that supposedly proved he stole manuscripts from Newton.

Jason Bardi
And by the end, Newton had sort of won in a sense: he became recognized as the original inventor of calculus. And that’s, you know, basically, how it how it was left for many decades.

Shuka Kalantari
Both men are now considered to be the inventors of calculus. They discovered it on their own, just at different times. And of course, Leibniz wasn’t just a mathematician. He also studied law, geology, physics, theology, and philosophy.

Jason Bardi
He really did have mastery of many, many different fields and in fact pushed the boundaries of many fields in his lifetime in ways that just simply doesn’t exist today.

Shuka Kalantari
Gottfried Leibniz died in Hanover in 1716 at the age of 70. Virtually nobody attended his funeral. He was so out of favor with British royalty and intellectuals at the time that his funeral was held at night, and his grave wet unmarked for 50 years. Author Jason Bardi says today, historians have uncovered over 50 volumes of work by Leibniz in German, English, French. And in 1985, the German government created the Leibniz prize for scientists. Leibniz may have died in disgrace. But today his reputation soars. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Shuka Kalantari.

John Perry
Thanks, Shuka. Gosh, poor Leibniz—midnight funeral unmarked grave. But at least now we know the truth about this great debate about calculus. I’m John Perry with me is my fellow Stanford philosopher Ken Taylor.

Ken Taylor
And today we’re thinking about the life and thought of Leibniz. We’re joined now by Daniel Garber. He’s a professor of philosophy from Princeton University. He’s author of “Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad.” Dan, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Daniel Garber
Thank you very much. I’m delighted to be here.

John Perry
Daniel, you’re an expert on what we call, oddly enough, modern philosophy—16th 17th, early 18th century—modern then, yes, exactly. So this includes Descartes and Spinoza, you know, Hume, and towards the latter end Kant, as well as Leibniz.. These are all dead white guys, mostly believing Christians. Do you really find that—I mean, why do you find this so fascinating? I don’t want to sound critical, because I do too. But why do you find that so fascinating, and particularly Leibniz in particular?

Daniel Garber
First of all, they weren’t all Christian. I think Spinoza was certainly not Christian. And it’s debatable, in fact, whether whether he was an atheist or not, but why do I find these guys Interesting? Well, I began as an undergraduate studying physics, actually. And that’s what I thought I would do. But I grabbed it, I find myself gravitating more and more toward the very basic questions that went beyond what it is that we were treating in physics classes, and began to wonder how it is that we discovered things about the world that we now take for granted that seem so obvious to us like that there are laws of nature, and what specifically they are, and began to look back at some of these historical figures. And the way in which they were facing a world in which people just simply didn’t know these things, and how it is that we came to discover them. And that’s what it is that I find fascinating in this group of figures, and you know, they’re all dead white guys, but it’s not really their fault. They were living in a society in which it was extremely difficult for a woman to enter the, the intellectual world, there were a very few for example, in physics, suddenly, who was actually Voltaire’s mistress for a while, was the first translator of Newton into French, and somebody who wrote important philosophical and scientific works.

John Perry
Well, my tastes are, my tastes are very similar. Although I can’t I can’t appeal to a solid background. It’s physics is a motivation. Now, Linus is most famous maybe for the idea that Ken and I talked about, and Voltaire ridiculed and candy that this is the best of all possible worlds. But was this really his most important idea?

Daniel Garber
To say whether it was his most important idea, but I think that there’s something behind that commitment in light netstat. John, I think you gestured at in your and your defensive him earlier. And you talked about how God because he’s perfect, has got to choose the best of all possible worlds. Behind that is the idea that the world has meaning that there’s a reason why it is that things are the way they are. And Spinoza excuse me, like this was reacting against Spinoza in particular, but also to a certain extent Descartes. For whom God either has no purposes in nature, or has purposes that are unintelligible to

Ken Taylor
Dan, Dan, this is really good stuff. It’s profound. I don’t want to give it short shrift, so I’m gonna hold off and we’re gonna dig into it after a break. Okay, you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about the most important philosopher you know the least about—that’s Gottfried Leibniz.

John Perry
We’ll dig into evil freedom, sufficient reason, and the best of all possible worlds in the next segment—20 minutes should be enough. Ha ha!

Ken Taylor
Disease, pestilence and philosophy—plus your calls and emails, when Philosophy Talk continues.

John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
On Monday, October 5, we’ll be performing another episode on the campus of Reed College.

Ken Taylor
More information at our website Philosophy Talk dot ORG.

Candide
The best of all possible worlds!

John Perry
From Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide,” a song from Dr. Pangloss, who is modeled after our subject today, Leibniz. I’m John Perry. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor, we’re thinking about the most important philosopher you know—and probably most people you know know—the least about. That’s Gottfried Leibniz.

John Perry
Our guest is Dan Garber from Princeton University author of “Leibniz: Body, substance, Monad.”

Ken Taylor
So Dan, I want to go back to the thing we were saying at the end, about how Leibniz believed that the world has meaning and it’s intelligible meaning, because I just want to underline the importance of that in this period, because we’re talking, we’re talking at the height, gaining great steam of the scientific revolution, where the world comes to be viewed as a mechanism. And these questions, it’s not like the existentialist day, where these questions are on everybody’s mind and all that sort of stuff. Where does meaning come from? But these questions are starting, it seems to me that come to the forefront, and the and the disturbing conclusion, let’s see that the world is just a mechanism raises a lot of issues, right? Am I right or wrong about that?

Daniel Garber
No, absolutely. But as I was saying, I think you know, Spinoza, may be perhaps the second most important philosopher, about which people know nothing. Because he is he is also very difficult in his way, but he presented this idea that God is, you know, God is perfect. God exists but God is completely unintelligible to us. And God does not make any choices. God just does. The world follows from God in a way that doesn’t involve choice doesn’t involve reason doesn’t involve meaning, things just are the way they are. And this was considered an enormously dangerous idea. Because if the world has no meaning, in particular, if there is no objective good and bad, then people can do anything. And you know, the foundation of society, the foundation of people behaving well, just simply goes out the window.

Ken Taylor
But let me ask you, okay, you know, I love Candide, I think Voltaire is a great thinker and a greater wit. And, and his implicit rejections way of putting his rejection of the live Nitze in pangloss, Ian paradigm, as people have come to call, it seems to me spot on. I mean, and I don’t get out. I mean, tell me the argument that’s supposed to overcome are better than John did. I know he did. Okay, but I want you to go deeper, is what’s supposed to overcome the evidence of our eyes that the world is vastly screwed up?

Daniel Garber
Well, there is there is a very strictly logical argument, if the world obviously exists. And if God can only do things, if he has reason for doing it, there must be a reason why this world exists, and other worlds don’t. And because God is good, it must be because this is the best world that could be created. Now, this excludes even the possibility that there are a multiplicity of word worlds that are equally good, right? Because if there were a multiplicity of worlds that were equally good, then God would have no reason to choose one over the other. So there’s got to be a uniquely best possible world where else God could not have created any world.

Ken Taylor
But this is what I worry about. Okay, now, me philosophically serious and not flippant. This is what I really worry about about this. There’s many things I worry about. But here’s one of the main things you say part of the premise is that God is good. Okay. Yeah, but I think good for whom? Right? Good for me. Well, if God is indifferent to my good, my well being, I mean, he might like me, he might love me, but he might not think my my well being is all that important in the grand scheme of things. I mean, is this argument supposed to comfort me when I’m faced with all this evil and all this razor? Oh, yeah, it’s it’s the best overall. But yeah, but I’m not worried about the world being best. Overall, I’m worried about whether it’s good for me and humans to live in. Right? That’s the difference between you and God? Yeah, those are gods and from my point of view, just a bastard. So what do you mean he’s good?

John Perry
Not not the only difference?

Daniel Garber
That’s a very important question. Yeah. Is what does like Miss mean by good? And what does he mean when he talks about the best of all possible worlds? And the criterion is actually not one of you know, what is the most pleasant world for human beings to live in? That’s our parochial right perspective. It is good in a much broader, more metaphysical sense. It is got the greatest order together with a greatest diversity. That’s what Leibniz means by good. And you’re in a certain sense, it does mean that there is no particular comfort and discovering that we live in the best of all possible worlds. And this is perhaps where does it Voltaire goes wrong in seeing, you know, good and bad in human terms, because I’m not sure that God thinks in that way, on the other hand, Leibniz does believe—

Ken Taylor
Dan, I’m gonna interrupt you just for a second, just back up. Okay, because I think we’re going quick right now, when we need to go slowly over 1.0 I think I understand that the the medieval Christian view is that God loves us. And that this goodness, overall, is is is a is includes our good includes the good for him, I don’t see why Leibniz’s view includes any reference to what’s good for us as humans, is it good for us as human that the world be this way that live in? It’s fine, so wonderful, and there’s nothing to guarantee that. So I just don’t see how his argument is supposed to. I mean, is it a Christian argument is a fee? Is it a pantheist? Argument mean, what kind of god is this that makes what what kind of good that’s really puzzles me about?

Daniel Garber
I mean, that’s an excellent question. It’s, it’s, it is not a Christian God specifically, although Leibniz was a Christian. But it is not specifically a Christian god, this is a philosophical god, this is this is. And five minutes will say that God loves us, and that we do have a special relationship with God, and that we are all part of community. And presumably, he does think that this metaphysical choice for the best of all possible worlds, will benefit benefit us in some way. But I admit, it’s not obvious, given his definition of what the best of all possible worlds means.

John Perry
So Dan, and I want to talk a little bit about the world and God, but I want to talk a little bit about us. Now, we said that Leibniz is a philosopher that people know very little about the one from your from, from this period that people know the most about his day card, everybody read a card, an introductory philosophy course, except not everybody takes an interest. Now, now, Descartes, who was a little bit before lipids, thought that I was an immaterial substance that had a body from which it got information which you can control. I mean, forgive my crudity. Live minutes, thought I was a mon ad? Or is a mon ad just an immaterial substance? What in the world? Did he mean by a mon ad? And how was how did he think he was improving on Descartes?

Daniel Garber
Actually, I’m not sure that I think he thought of it as an extension of Descartes in a way and addressing what he saw as imperfections in de cartes, and de cartes. Metaphysical system, a monad really is modeled on the human soul. Well, let me go back a little bit, and say, Where does it motorheads come from? Because that’s it. This is really one of the very, most puzzling aspects of likenesses philosophy. If I may take just a few minutes to do this.

Ken Taylor
Can you do it briefly?

John Perry
it’s up to God.

Daniel Garber
Basically, the idea is that the only things that are real in the world are genuine individuals. That, for something to be real, it has to be a something, I think. And originally, when he posits his metaphysics, he thought of those things as Cartesian animals, bodies and souls. And these were the genuine individuals that made up the world. So he thought, for example, that the table, if you could look at it through a powerful microscope, would be a collection of tiny animals. And just the way that microscopes were discovering that in a drop of water, there were there were an infinity or very large number of tiny creatures. He then later came to realize that the genuine individuals were not that these tiny creatures were not genuine individuals, because you could divide them up. And he eventually got rid of them in favor of basically Cartesian souls.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, so that’s a lot to chew on. There’s there’s a lot of And then I’m gonna let our listeners digest that a little bit. I’m gonna remind them that we’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re talking about gut, Gottfried Leibniz, who is one of the most important philosophers in history. He’s a very deep thinker, but one people know a little about. And Laura from San Francisco is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Laura.

Laura
Hi, thanks. I have a historical question won’t go back to the whole controversy about calculus. And someone said earlier that we likenesses patients wondering if you the credit at the time, were they using his notation for a while? Was there a switch? Or how are people thinking about it back then? And maybe if you could say something about what the difference is between two ways that they notated calculus?

Ken Taylor
Yeah, Dan, can you help it? Thanks for the call. Okay. With that, I mean, how did live? It’s the one thing, how does Leibniz? If he was reviled by all these Brits, how does this notation come to be so widely used? And did they start out—

Daniel Garber
We basically use Leibniz’s calculus notation. He was widely reviled by the Brits, but not on the continent. This was partially a nationalistic dispute. And on the continent, it was like That’s who was who was adopted. And one of the most interesting things was Newton’s Principia was rewritten by Continental scientists, which certainly did not please Sir Isaac.

Ken Taylor
So did Leibniz and Newton ever, like, directly communicate with each other?

Daniel Garber
Yeah, there’s a certain number of letters. And actually, initially, they were sort of cordial. And in the first edition of the Principia, it was actually a very flattering reference to like, it was only later on, when I think Newton got irked at the fact, that likeness was getting all of the credit for what he knew. He had invented, invented it first. Yeah, Dan, right. This is was very, very awkward. And was I think, outside of England, not not really adopted.

John Perry
So we’ve got an interesting email from someone who calls himself Spinoza in Sacramento.

Daniel Garber
So that’s where Spinoza went!

John Perry
Right, yeah. So he says, Look, I like spinouts. His idea, which as I understand it, is that I am just a ripple in a great single thing, being or the universe or God, whatever you want to call it, just a ripple, like a ripple on the sea. But they cart and lightness think I am something called a substance isn’t get spinouts a lot more plausible.

Daniel Garber
In a certain way, I think I think, you know, Spinoza was Einsteins favorite philosopher, from the period. And in a certain sense, it does fit rather nicely with some contemporary ideas about the world. But on the other hand, I think that that, that Descartes and lightness also have a great deal of possibility. If you think that there are sort of individual substances in the world, you’re going to be driven away from Spinoza and toward a position much more like—

Ken Taylor
So one of the things I like about the notion of a monad, which I don’t kind of claim to fully understand. I don’t claim to fully understand anything in Lebanon. But but one of the things I do like is that each mon ad is like a total reflection from a perspective of the universe as a whole. And I read something about now why did God I mean, and, and one of the things that God did is it created lots of mon ads, lots and lots and lots and lots of them. Why? Well, you know, I don’t think anybody else has some, as has a real reason to explain that. But because Leibniz believe in the principle of sufficient reason, he’s got to have God having some reason. And the thing I think I understood from something I read is that God wanted the universe each of these mon ads is finite. God wanted each of these mon ads to reflect the whole universe. But to get that done, he has to have lots and lots of Monet’s you have to create an infinity of mon ads, because because the only way because the universe as a whole kind of reflects God. But the only way a bunch of finite things can do it is from each reflecting God from their imperfect perspective. But if you get lots of them, you kind of sneaking up on God’s God’s point of view it himself. Is that sort of right?

Daniel Garber
Something like that, but in addition, in addition to that, and again, this is principle of sufficient reason. Why if these things are not interfering with one another, why should they why Should God create fewer than and then more so so a consequence of the principle of sufficient reason is the principle of plenitude, which is more is better. And infinite number is better than a finite number. And in that way, God’s glory will be reflected, you know, much more extensively. And if only there are a finite number of them.

John Perry
So, we’ve got an email here, that’ll be a good lead into our next segment. It’s amazingly enough from Australia. And Fred in Australia says, you guys say Leibniz was a universal genius. Is there something a hall this is education like this is education account for the universality of his genius?

Daniel Garber
Actually, I don’t think so. He was, he was self taught. He taught himself Latin at age four or five. So he could so that he could read the book. His father died when he was very young, but had a very extensive library. And he was just curious about everything. He had studied philosophy, of course, he has studied mathematics. Well, he was an autodidact in mathematics as well. And it wasn’t until he when he was young, in his 20s. He went to Paris, where he met some of the great mathematicians of his age, and actually visited visited England as well, where he met some English petitions. But he also has a law degree. But basically, he was interested in everything.

Ken Taylor
You know, the guy sounds very smart guy sounds pretty darn intimidating. I don’t think I would want to have been in the end of—on the other side of an argument in a faculty meeting with that guy.

Daniel Garber
Must have been very charming at a dinner party,

John Perry
I got one advantage on him: at my age Leibniz was dead. So maybe a few extra years maybe to teach myself Latin, or teach myself how to play pool or something.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re thinking about the life and thought of Godfried Leibniz with Daniel Garber from Princeton University.

John Perry
In our next segment, we’ll try to understand how there could have been such a universal genius as Leibniz. Could anyone in this day and age pull off such a feat? And would she be a philosopher?

Ken Taylor
Physics, philosophy and finite tude—when Philosophy Talk continues.

John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
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We’re thinking about a man who really seemed to know it all: Godfried Leibniz. I’m John Perry. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor, I guess is Daniel Garber from Princeton University. We’re thinking about the last of the so-called universal geniuses. That’s Gottfried Leibniz.

John Perry
Dan, by all accounts Leibniz was a genius who made significant contributions to many different fields. But it all came out of his interest in philosophy, or maybe philosophy wasn’t such a distinguishable thing in those days. Is anything like that gonna happen again? Well, it looks like it’s gonna be the last philosopher that universal genius or the last anybody using universal genius?

Daniel Garber
Yeah, I think I think what you said a moment ago is, it’s important to keep in mind, philosophy meant something different than it does now. What we think of as philosophy, as we teach in our philosophy departments, in a certain sense, did not exist as a discrete subject. And in the period, it was mixed in with what we think of as physics, with all sorts of other things. Could there be another one like lightning? I think it would be very, very difficult the closest perhaps, that we’ve come if somebody like Einstein, who was important that certainly important as a physicist, and because of that had authority in a number of other areas. But in a certain way, I think Leibniz goes beyond so what it is that Einstein—

Ken Taylor
So I want to go I wanted to follow up on that with a thought that one of the so you know, people complain about philosophy, as obsessed with dead white guys, and I get the complaint. It’s an important complaint, but just just partly because of what you said and because of the historical circumstances in which people did this stuff then and who was doing it, really plunging into these Old philosophers is gives you the opportunity to do something that you can’t do by plunging into anything contemporary, you can’t by, you can’t get a single mind, comprehensive integration of thought and knowledge from these vast and separate well, they weren’t cognizing as vast and separate domains, what we now cognize is vast, separate, separated domains you can’t get, there’s no way into. And I tell these people because when they lived and what they were and the nature of inquiry, then there’s a really a unique opportunity that’s present by plugging into their work.

Daniel Garber
It’s true, but also you got to remember, among his contemporaries, Leibniz was remarkable. It’s not like there were a lot of other like that running around.

Ken Taylor
I agree, I grant you that. But given, given what a genius could know, what a singular genius could know, and what they could do with what was known then, given that they had the scope, to just integrate distinct realms of what we know regardless, deep, distinct realms of thought, reading these old dead guys, is an experience the like, of which you can’t replicate by reading most living things. I mean, do you agree with that or no.

Daniel Garber
I do, but I mean, they’re, they’re two things. One of them was, as you said, they’re capable of integrating a whole bunch of different areas that today have gotten to be separate, because things become so much more technical, that it’s next to impossible for a single person to master them all. But another another reason why it is that it’s so incredible, something I alluded to earlier, which is you’re watching a lot of things that we now take for granted, as people are discovering them, as people are, right, finding things that we know, see as as obvious, but nobody did before them. And that is so exciting. is looking back at the moment, in a certain sense, the creation of the modern world.

John Perry
So your mention of Einstein connects was an email we have in this is all the way from Ireland from Lily. So we’re really getting out there today. Lily says Newton enlightenments also disagreed about whether space was absolute, or relative. Can you talk a little about that? Just let me add to our listeners, the Leibniz Clark controversy or correspondence is a great introduction in my opinion to live in. So you can get it online for free, I’m sure. And so So what what was this dispute and did likenesses relativism anticipate Einstein?

Daniel Garber
I am not in a position to say anything about that. But I can say a little bit about what the above what the dispute was about. And the dispute was, excuse me, Newton believed that there was an absolute space, which is to say space was a kind of something in which events happened. So there was an absolute rest. And there was an absolute motion. But we could not tell, which was which lightness, on the other hand, thought that there was no such thing as space as such. But that space was just simply a system of relations among bodies. But it didn’t actually have a genuine existence. But ultimately, what it came down to is different conceptions of God for likeness. There had to be a reason why God chooses this or that. And if there was an absolute space, there’d have to be a reason why it is that God created things in this way, and not say two inches to the left. And there could be no reason why it is that he did that. Therefore, there could be no absolute space.

Ken Taylor
But you said it came down to God. But that sounds to me like it comes down to the principle of sufficient reason. Again, that’s such a fundamental foundation. I don’t think we’ve actually articulated the principle of sufficient reason. Can you do that for us briefly?

Daniel Garber
Actually, Leibniz gives 3, 4, 5—

Ken Taylor
I know, I know.

Daniel Garber
But basically, the idea is to have to be well, certainly for God. But in general, there has to be a reason why it is that things aren’t the way they are and not some other way.

Ken Taylor
You say certainly for God. But doesn’t the principle of sufficient reason also apply to human action? As I understand live, Antonio, I got this wrong. He believes that people are free, but he wonders what freedom means. It can’t mean just unconscious. Freedom doesn’t mean uncaused right. You might think well wait a minute. If it’s not causing it’s caused by something. It’s like determined but you think well, determinism is some people argued determinism is incompatible with freedom. No, he thinks freedom is a kind of determination, right? Because everything has to happen. Right, exactly. So anything that a human does has to be done for a sufficient reason. And if you knew the human fully if you had a full complete concept of you could predict everything that they would do or something.

Daniel Garber
Well, I mean, he certainly Yeah, he does believe in determinism. So one can, on the other hand, is also enlightened, that’s probably the first articulation of the idea of an unconscious. Because I enlighten us, as you said before, for light minutes, we perceive everything that goes on in the world. But we’re not conscious of it all. And sometimes the interactions among these perceptions that we are unconscious of actually determines our behavior. Yeah, yes. So there is a reason why it is that we do what it is, but it may not be a reason that we’re actually conscious.

Ken Taylor
Right. I speak about Leibniz in the mind a little bit more. Because I think of Leibniz. Actually, I use, I usually say to people that Kant is the first great cognitive scientists. But there is an argument between a Leibniz and Locke over innate ideas, but did not believe in innate ideas, and live minutes. I think, slices and dices lock, you just slices and dices. And the idea of the mind as a tabula rasa, and Leibniz gives it, I think, a pretty powerful argument, and only other innate ideas that all ideas are innate. Right. And, and, but we may not, but they’re in our idea. They’re in our mind sort of tacitly. That’s it. That’s a notion that Chomsky picked up on. But so I think that Leibniz wasn’t just a great mathematician, somebody I read somewhere that if Newton hadn’t been around, he would have been regarded as the greatest, greatest physicist of his age, he probably was the second greatest physicist, I also think he was like the first great cognitive scientist. What do you think of that?

Daniel Garber
I think that there’s, I think there’s a case to be made for that. But for me, I’m what I’m most impressed with, is the idea of unconscious determinations of our behavior, which is an idea that, of course, becomes very important, right at the end of the 19th century. Right? It is very clearly there. And it’s this concept. So

Ken Taylor
I said, on our show we did about Freud. Although that particular psychodynamics that Freud endorses, no people no longer believe, but in some sense, we’re all Freudian. Now, because we all believe that all serious students of the mind believe that there’s all these hidden mechanisms, and that we’re not conscious, the mind doesn’t just fully manifest itself to itself as as Descartes thoughts, but you’re, you’re suggesting that instead of saying we’re all Freudians. Now, I should have said to this person, we’re all Leibniz, Ian’s now.

Daniel Garber
Well, I think Freud, Freud’s theory is much better developed. And Leibniz. But but but the idea that there are that there’s stuff that’s going on in the mind, that we are not aware of, is, I think, an enormously important idea. And something that something that certainly Descartes in the Cartesian tradition, were as it were completely unaware of. Right. And that I think is very, very important.

John Perry
So Dan, just let me get your reaction to an idea that I guess I got from a lot, probably from EA Burt, metaphysical foundations of modern science. A classic. Yes. And that’s the idea that that this idea of sufficient reason, coming from the medievals developed by license really morphs into something, really, that’s the basis of science, which we might call a principle of sufficient explanation. Do you think that’s right, this license, play a big role in that?

Daniel Garber
What is the principle the sufficient?

John Perry
Well, that there’s an explanation for everything? Not a reason in the sense of a reason that occurs to a mind finite or infinite? But some kind of explanation in terms of laws and initial conditions?

Daniel Garber
Yeah, I think I think you do get that certainly before Leibniz. I wonder though, in quantum physics, whether or not that idea, well, has been compromised, if not abandoned?

Ken Taylor
Yeah. And that’s a deep question. So we may not all be like Nitze and when it comes to the fundamental structure of the world anymore. But unfortunately, on that note, this has been a very uplifting conversation. It may be the best of all possible live minutes conversation, but I got to thank you for joining us.

Daniel Garber
Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Ken Taylor
I guess it’s been Daniel Garber. He’s a professor of philosophy from Princeton University. He’s author of “Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad.” So John, what are you thinking these days?

John Perry
Well, I taught modern philosophy for a long time at Stanford course. We’re on the quarter system so we can not cover as many as you can on the semester system, but I always tried to cover Leibniz, particularly the lark, Clarke Leibniz correspondence, because although it’s really about space and time, which sounds kind of a peripheral issue, you do get into the principle of sufficient reason, you’ll learn a lot about what Leibniz is thinking and it’s very readable. So I recommend that to our reader or listener.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, Leibniz is a hard read. But a satisfying read is a really, really deep, systematic, far ranging philosopher and he may be a dead white guy, but he’s worth plunging deep into his system. But you know, this, this conversation, this scintillating conversation continues at philosophers corner, at our online community of thinkers where our motto is get this Cogito ergo Blago, I think, therefore I blog and you too, you too can become a partner a monad in that community of thinkers by visiting our website, Philosophy Talk dot ORG.

John Perry
Now some thoughts from the fastest of all possible worlds—Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales. In 1660, when he was just 14, Gottfreid Leibniz attended the University of Leipzg where he studied philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He eventually got a law degree and leaped into projects, scientific literary and poltical. In an era of big brains, he was a very big brain. He did all sorts of things. He proposed a wind and water powered pump. He invented the world’s first calculator. He devleoped a symbolic logic system. In 1672, he dove into mathematics, and eventually invented infinitesimal calculus. He also reached out to Leuwenhook to talk aobut lenses and really small things. He was obsessed with the tiny ingreidents that made everything. Langauge. Life. Numbers. And Spinoza! He met Spinoza! But he was mainly a diplomat. And supposedly not above altering documents and that sort of thing, if it served German interests. Which may help explain the controversy that arose when he stood accused of stealing calculus from Isaac Newton. It appears now, that they both came up with the idea at the same time, but Newton was a rather prickly person, putting it mildly, and Leibniz was already viewed by some as shady, and was in fact rather cavalier with paperwork. And both of them were not lacking in high self regard. The legcacy of Leibniz was also burdened with being the model for Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s CANDIDE, written shortly after Leibniz died. Voltaire’s scorn was directed at Leibniz’ concept from his work, THE MONADOLOGY, that this is the Best of All Possible Worlds, when in fact it is plagued by well, plagues, war, evil. Dr. Pangloss, in the course of the book, loses his nose to syphilis, but not his optimism! Leibniz himself may have been an optimist, but certainly he knew there was much less than the best in the world. His own final years were bleak. His dustup with Newton was still going on, and Leibniz could not or would not show any paper trail proving he came up with calculus on his own. One gets the feeling that he was always scribbling things on napkins and giving them to his staff to deal with. When Georg, his mentor, became King George, Leibniz was forbidden to enter England. But you get the feeling Leibniz didn’t really care. Apparently, he never thought he was wrong about anything. Which can get you over all sorts of social hurdles. He did not listen to advice, and did not care what others thought. He was also tone deaf socially, dressing for court in outfits twenty years out of style,. He was mocked. But he was generally quite cheerful! Because he knew everything and he was always right. And this IS the best of all possible worlds, thanks to monads. A lesser world would fly apart! A lesser world would explode! Plus, it exists, which is way more perfect than non-existence. Leibniz has become increasingly more influential as time goes on. The monads, his building blocks of the universe, are seen to act very much like subatomic particles of modern physics. And he came up with monads on his own! Just from thinking! With no billion dollar supercollider! He died November 14, 1716. Oh, as a party trick, he could also recite most of the Aenid. No wonder he was a mixed bag among his colleagues. Incredible thinker, but really exhausting to be around I’d think. A combination of Ted Cruz, Robin Williams, and Elon Musk, only never ever wrong. About anything. I gotta go.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is the presentation of Ben Manila productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2015.

Ken Taylor
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John Perry
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Ken Taylor
Thanks also to Ted Muldoon, Merle Kessler, Erica Topete, and Mark Stone.

John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
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Ken Taylor
Not even when they’re true and reasonable. The conversation continues on our website, philosophy talk dot ORG, where you too can become a partner in our Community of Thinkers.

John Perry
I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

And thank you for thinking.

Love and Death
Boris, looks at this leaf—isn’t it perfect. And this one? Oh, yeah. Yes, I definitely think that this is the best of all possible worlds. Eh, it’s certainly the most expensive.