On 12/8/2012 6:49 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Stephen P. King
The supreme monad is as necessary as the CPU of a computer,
for Leibniz's world is a system, and systems need a control unit.
Dear Roger,
Is this a postulation, a conjecture or an authoritative claim? The
way that the physical systems that humans have created to perform
computations are arranged is merely for convenience of how we are
accessing the results of those computations. What I am considering is
more like how a nucleus in a living cell is the CPU of the cell and many
cells are combined into a body that has another CPU at that level. Going
further, humans compose into societies and form governments that are the
CPU of the society. Do you see the pattern of this?
The centralization of governorship is not imposed from the outside,
but from within! It is more like the 'center of mass' that arises when
ever a collection of entities have a mutual relationship of motions.
BTW, the materialist mind/brain has no such governor.
Could you point to one claim of this by a materialist philosopher?
Marx tried to claim this but was only able to make the governor vanish
in some perfect future 'utopian' state.
I could go on and on,
Please do. I would like to understand how these claims follow from
some as of know unknown postulates and how do you chose those postulates
as inevitable.
for every part of Leibniz's metaphysics is necessary.
and follows logically from his concept of a monad.
Here's just a two of many reasons for there being a supreme monad:
1) A supreme monad is needed, for one thing, because monads have no
windows
to see out of. Their "perceptions" are supplied by a third party,
the supreme monad.
NO! This is inconsistent with L's definition of a monad! Let me
quote
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/leibniz.htm:
17.It must be confessed, however, that/perception/, and that which
depends upon it,/are inexplicable by mechanical causes/, that is to say,
by figures and motions. Supposing that there were a machine whose
structure produced thought, sensation, and perception, we could conceive
of it as increased in size with the same proportions until one was able
to enter into its interior, as he would into a mill. Now, on going into
it he would find only pieces working upon one another, but never would
he find anything to explain perception. It is accordingly in the simple
substance, and not in the compound nor in a machine that the perception
is to be sought. Furthermore, there is nothing besides perceptions and
their changes to be found in the simple substance. And it is in these
alone that all the/internal activities/of the simple substance can consist.
18.All simple substances or created monads may be called/entelechies/,
because they have in themselves a certain perfection. There is in them a
sufficiency which makes them the source of their internal activities,
and renders them, so to speak, incorporeal Automatons.
Leibniz proposes God as the coordinator of percepts, not as the 'supplier':
51.In the case of simple substances, the influence which one monad has
upon another is only/ideal/. It can have its effect only through the
mediation of God, in so far as in the ideas of God each monad can
rightly demand that God, in regulating the others from the beginning of
things, should have regarded it also. For since one created monad cannot
have a physical influence upon the inner being of another, it is only
through the primal regulation that one can have dependence upon another.
52.It is thus that among created things action and passivity are
reciprocal. For God, in comparing two simple substances, finds in each
one reasons obliging him to adapt the other to it; and consequently what
is active in certain respects is passive from another point of
view,/active/in so far as what we distinctly know in it serves to give a
reason for what occurs in another, and/passive/in so far as the reason
for what occurs in it is found in what is distinctly known in another.
53.Now as there are an infinity of possible universes in the ideas of
God, and but one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason'
for the choice of God which determines him to select one rather than
another.
It is what is delineated in #53 that find important and that which
I seek to elaborate upon in my thinking. This "sufficient reason" I take
to be mutual consistency of pairs of percepts (in a combinatorial and
concurrent sense) in the sense of satisfiability for a Boolean Algebra.
But as to your claim above let us look further:
60.Besides, in what has just been said can be seen the/a priori/reasons
why things cannot be otherwise than they are. It is because God, in
ordering the whole, has had regard to every part and in particular to
each monad; and since the monad is by its very/nature representative/,
nothing can limit it to represent merely a part of things. It is
nevertheless true that this representation is, as regards the details of
the whole universe, only a confused representation, and is distinct only
as regards a small part of them, that is to say, as regards those things
which are nearest or greatest in relation to each monad. If the
representation were distinct as to the details of the entire Universe,
each monad would be a Deity. It is not in the object represented that
the monads are limited, but in the modifications of their knowledge of
the object. In a confused way they reach out to infinity or to the
whole, but are limited and differentiated in the degree of their
distinct perceptions.
Here Leibniz is discussing the Pre-established Harmony idea that
I find to be mathematically unsound as it assumes that what is
equivalent to the result of an infinite computation can be accesses
without actually performing the computation!
2) Another reason is that monads are ideas, and so are not physical and
cannot physically interact with other monads. Also, mind and
brain cannot physically interact. The Supreme monad is the
third party for such situations who can direct the interactions
theoretically (not physically).
All notions of physicality are purely perceptual, there is no
exterior to monads except in an imaginary sense.
[Roger Clough], [[email protected]] <mailto:[email protected]]>
12/8/2012
"Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen
--
Onward!
Stephen
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