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51The debate over extended substance in Leibniz's correspondence with de VolderInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 15 (2). 2001.Between 1698 and 1706 Leibniz was engaged in one of his most interesting correspondences, with the Dutch philosopher and physicist Burcher de Volder. The two men were concerned primarily with the question of how the motion of bodies can be explained without appeal to the direct intervention of God. Leibniz presented a naturalistic account of motion to De Volder, but failed to convince him of its adequacy. I shall examine one reason for this failure - the disagreement that arose over the issue of…Read more
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7Leibniz's Notion of an AggregateBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 9 (3): 467-486. 2001.
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1Leibniz's close encounter with Cartesianism in the correspondence with De VolderIn Leibniz and His Correspondents, Uk ;cambridge University Press. pp. 162--192. 2004.
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885Heidegger on the Being of Monads: Lessons in Leibniz and in the Practice of Reading the History of PhilosophyBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (6): 1169-1191. 2015.This paper is a discussion of the treatment of Leibniz's conception of substance in Heidegger's The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. I explain Heidegger's account, consider its relation to recent interpretations of Leibniz in the Anglophone secondary literature, and reflect on the ways in which Heidegger's methodology may illuminate what it is to read Leibniz and other figures in the history of philosophy
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444Leibniz's Mill Argument Against Mechanical Materialism RevisitedErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 1. 2014.Section 17 of Leibniz’s Monadology contains a famous argument in which considerations of what it would be like to enter a machine that was as large as a mill are offered as reasons to reject materialism about the mental. In this paper, I provide a critical discussion of Leibniz’s mill argument, but, unlike most treatments, my discussion will focus on texts other than the Monadology in which considerations of the mill also appear. I provide a survey of three previous interpretations of the argume…Read more
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55Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence (review)The Leibniz Review 22 179-190. 2012.
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50Force and the Nature of Body in Discourse on Metaphysics §§17-18The Leibniz Review 7 116-124. 1997.According to Robert Sleigh Jr., “The opening remarks of DM.18 make it clear that Leibniz took the results of DM.17 as either establishing, or at least going a long way toward establishing, that force is not identifiable with any mode characterizable terms of size, shape, and motion.” Sleigh finds this puzzling and suggests that other commentators have generally been insufficiently perplexed by the bearing that the DM.17 has on the metaphysical issue. He notes that §17 of the Discourse is a prese…Read more
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59The Empirical Grounds for Leibniz’s ‘Real Metaphysics’The Leibniz Review 20 13-36. 2010.In discussion of Leibniz’s philosophical methodology Donald Rutherford defends the view that Leibniz regarded metaphysics as an a priori demonstrative science. In the course of this discussion Rutherford isolates and tries to deflect a significant challenge for his view, namely the observation that in many of his mature writings on metaphysics Leibniz appears to defend his views by means of a posteriori arguments. I present some prima facie difficulties with Rutherford’s position and then offer …Read more
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102Leibniz on Divisibility, Aggregates, and Cartesian BodiesStudia Leibnitiana 34 (1). 2002.Seine Kritik an Descartes' Auffassung vom Körper gründet Leibniz bekanntlich auf Erörterungen zur Teilbarkeit und Ausdehnung. Obgleich jene Argumentation im Fokus einer Auseinandersetzung mit Leibniz' Metaphysik angesiedelt werden muss, ist sie bisher nicht recht verstanden worden. Mein Anliegen hier ist im Kern, Leibniz' Gedankengang zu explizieren und dessen Stichhaltigkeit auszuleuchten. Das Argument, um das es geht, ist wohl am ehesten aus der Darlegung in Leibniz' Korrespondenz mit Antoine …Read more
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59Leibniz’s Commitment to the Pre-established Harmony in the Late 1670s and Early 1680sArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 80 (3): 292-320. 1998.
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852Infinite analysis, lucky proof, and guaranteed proof in LeibnizArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 93 (2): 222-236. 2011.According to one of Leibniz's theories of contingency a proposition is contingent if and only if it cannot be proved in a finite number of steps. It has been argued that this faces the Problem of Lucky Proof , namely that we could begin by analysing the concept ‘Peter’ by saying that ‘Peter is a denier of Christ and …’, thereby having proved the proposition ‘Peter denies Christ’ in a finite number of steps. It also faces a more general but related problem that we dub the Problem of Guaranteed Pr…Read more
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759Theodicy, Metaphysics, and Metaphilosophy in LeibnizPhilosophical Topics 43 (1-2): 27-52. 2015.In this paper I offer a discussion of chapter 3 of Adrian Moore’s The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics, which is titled “Leibniz: Metaphysics in the Service of Theodicy.” Here Moore discusses the philosophy of Leibniz and comes to a damning conclusion. My main aim is to suggest that such a conclusion might be a little premature. I begin by outlining Moore’s discussion of Leibniz and then raise some problems for the objections that Moore presents. I follow this by raising a Moore-inspired problem …Read more
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97Stepping Back Inside Leibniz’s MillThe Monist 81 (4): 553-572. 1998.Leibniz’s reasons for rejecting materialism are complex and often rely on assumptions that are deeply puzzling to contemporary philosophers. However, the discussion of these issues in § 17 of the Monadology has received a lot of attention over the past couple of decades. For it is here that Leibniz presents the most well known version of his “mill argument.”