On 14 Aug 2012, at 19:14, Roger wrote:
Hi Jason Resch
You got it right. Descartes never troubled to explain how two
completely different substances--
mind and body-- could interact. And Leibniz was too hard to
understand.
And it was also easy to follow Newton, because bodies acted "as if"
they transferred energy or momentum.
In Descartes' model, God was external to the mind/body issue, being
essentially left out.
Not in the meditation. God is needed, actually the goodness of God is
needed to avoid the dream argument consequence. When you feel
something real, it is real, because God will not lie to you,
basically. I don't follow Descartes, on this, but his text "In search
of the truth" makes me think that Descartes was himself not quite glad
with this.
So using the Descartes model, God (or some Cosmic Mind), who
actually did these adjustments,
could be left out of the universe. And mind was then treated as
material.
At the time of Descartes and Leibniz, there was a fork in the
road, and science took the more convenient path of Newton and
Descartes (materialism),
which works quite well if you gloss over the unsolved mind/body
problem ---
until you look for a self or a God or a Cosmic Mind. Not there, as
in Dennet's materialism.
No wonder scientists are mostly atheists, since God doesn't fit into
their model
of the universe. While in Leibniz, God is necessary. for the universe
In my opinion, Descartes too, but was perhaps willingly unclear to
avoid problems with the authorities.
Bruno
Roger , [email protected]
8/14/2012
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Jason Resch
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-08-11, 14:53:26
Subject: Re: pre-established harmony
As I understand it, the燣eibniz's爎ational for advocating the pre-
established harmony idea was Newton's discovery of conservation of
momentum. 燚escartes knew that energy was conserved, but not
momentum. 燭his would have permitted a non-physical mind to alter
the trajectories of particles in the mind so long as the speed of
the particles remained unchanged. 燦ewton's revelation however was
that in order for the motion of one particle to be changed, another
physical particle must have an equal and opposite change in
momentum. 燭his does not permit a non physical force to change the
motion of particles, and hence Leibniz concluded that the mental
world does not affect the physical word, or vice versa. 燫ather,
they were made to agree beforehand (you might think of it as a
bunch of souls watching a pre-recorded movie of the physical world,
but this pre-recorded movie also agrees with the intentions of the
souls watching it).
In Monadology, published in 1714, Leibniz wrote 揇escartes
recognized that souls cannot impart any force to bodies, because
there is always the same quantity of force in matter. Nevertheless
he was of opinion that the soul could change the direction of
bodies. But that is because in his time it was not known that there
is a law of nature which affirms also the conservation of the same
total direction in matter. Had Descartes noticed this he would have
come upon my system of pre-established harmony.�
Jason
On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 6:37 AM, Roger <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Stephen P. King
�
As I understand it, Leibniz's pre-established harmony is analogous to
a musical score with God, or at least some super-intelligence, as
composer/conductor.
�
This prevents all physical particles from colliding, instead they
all move harmoniously together*. The score was composed before the
Big Bang-- my own explanation is like Mozart God or that intelligence
could hear the whole (symphony) beforehand in his head.
�
I suppose that this accords with Leibniz's燽elief that God,
whoc is good, constructed the燽est possible world where
as a miniomum, that least physics is obeyed.� Hence
Voltaire's 爁oolish criticism of Leibniz in Candide that how
could� the volcanic or earthquake disaster in Lisbon be
part of the most perfect world ?
�
Thus, because physics must be obeyed, sometimes crap happens.
�
* As a related and possibly explanatory爌oint, L's universe
completely is nonlocal.
�
Roger , [email protected]
8/11/2012
----- Receiving the following content -----
From: Stephen P. King
Receiver: everything-list
Time: 2012-08-11, 01:56:41
Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware
of stuff ?
Hi Roger,
牋� I have noticed and read your posts. Might you write some
remarks about Leibniz' concept of pre-established harmony?
On 8/10/2012 8:53 AM, Roger wrote:
Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say
contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your
monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling
agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and
neurophilosophy.
--
Onward!
Stephen
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
~ Francis Bacon
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