•  62
    Leibniz on the Divine Preformation of Souls and Bodies
    Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (2): 327-342. 2019.
    For the mature Leibniz, a living being is a created substance composed of an infinitely complex organic body and a simple, immaterial soul. Soul and body do not interact directly, but rather their states correspond according to a harmony preestablished by God. I show that Leibniz’s theory faces challenges with respect to the question of whether substances need to possess knowledge of how they bring about their effects, and I argue that, to address these challenges, Leibniz turns to a concept of …Read more
  •  59
    The young Spinoza and the mature Leibniz both characterize the soul as a self-moving spiritual automaton. Though it is unclear if Leibniz’s use of the term was suggested to him from his reading of Spinoza, Leibniz was aware of its presence in Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Considering Leibniz’s staunch opposition to Spinozism, the question arises as to why he was willing to adopt this term. I propose an answer to this question by comparing the spiritual automaton in both …Read more
  •  24
  •  23
    Pauline Phemister, Leibniz and the Environment, Oxford/new York: Routledge 2016, xii + 196 pp (review)
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 100 (2): 232-235. 2018.
    Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 100 Heft: 2 Seiten: 232-235.
  •  21
    Immaterial Mechanism in the Mature Leibniz
    Idealistic Studies 49 (1): 1-21. 2019.
    Leibniz standardly associates “mechanism” with extended material bodies and their aggregates. In this paper, I identify and analyze a further distinct sense of “mechanism” in Leibniz that extends, by analogy, beyond the domain of material bodies and applies to the operations of immaterial substances such as the monads that serve, for Leibniz, as the metaphysical foundations of physical reality. I argue that in this sense, Leibniz understands “mechanism” as an intelligible process that is capable…Read more
  •  21
    This paper analyzes Leibniz’s use of analogies in both natural philosophical and metaphysical contexts. Through an examination of Leibniz’s notes on scientific methodology, I show that Leibniz explicitly recognizes the utility of analogies as heuristic tools that aid us in conceiving unfamiliar theoretical domains. I further argue that Leibniz uses the notion of a self-moving machine or automaton to help capture the activities of the immaterial soul. My account helps resist the conventional imag…Read more
  •  19
    Possibility or necessity? On Robert Watt’s “Bergson on number”
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 32 (1): 207-217. 2023.
    This paper seeks to highlight the importance of spatial cognition in Bergson’s Données immédiates by engaging with Robert Watt’s reconstruction of Bergson’s argument that every idea of number involves the idea of space. We focus on the second stage of Watt’s reconstruction, where Bergson argues that only space can provide the distinction required for our counting of otherwise identical items. Watt bases his reconstruction on a premise regarding the possibility that identical objects, in the abse…Read more
  •  8
    Following Leibniz through the labyrinth (review)
    Metascience 31 (3): 431-434. 2022.