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443Leibniz'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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851Infinite 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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757Theodicy, 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.”
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9Leibniz Microfilms at the University of PennsylvaniaThe Leibniz Review 6 164-169. 1996.Thanks to the efforts of Paul Schrecker and John W. Nason some half century ago, the University of Pennsylvania is home to microfilm reproductions of over one hundred thousand hand-written pages drawn from the collection of Leibniz’s papers presently housed in the Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Hannover. The microfilms are to be found on the mezzanine floor of the reference section in the Van Pelt Library and are readily accessible to visitors. Xerox copies may be made, although the Van Pelt…Read more
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437Force 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. In this brief paper, I examine the solution t…Read more
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13The 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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Leibniz's heterogeneity argument against the cartesian conception of bodyStudia Leibnitiana 30 (1): 83-102. 1998.Schon in seinen frühen Jahren war Leibniz ein Gegner der Cartesischen Naturphilosophie, ca. 1697 zeigt sich in seinen Texten dann ein Argument gegen Descartes, das ich im folgenden behandle und als ,heterogeneity argument‘ bezeichnen möchte - eingangs wird hier dargestellt, wie Leibniz es im Paragraphen 13 seiner Schrift De ipsa natura expliziert, anschließend diskutiere ich zwei frühere Ansätze, die sich um das Thema drehen und die darin einig sind, daß Leibniz Descartes' Auffassung von der mat…Read more