Hi What is a Substance ? What is a Man ? COMMENT: Leibniz talks of corporeal substances in the 1680s but mostly drops talk of aggregate substances by monadology and focuses on indivisible simple substances - the monads. The soul is the substance that gives the brain, or in fact whole body, real individuality. Where I think he goes wrong is like everyone else, in assuming that there is only one such encompassing substance per creature. Otherwise I think he is remarkably close to target.
RESPONSE: Everybody has trouble with L's lack of definition of what he means by substance. One commentator on L says that he still doesn't understand what L means by "substance". I like this definition, substance= entity: entity /'entity/Noun 1. A thing with distinct and independent existence. 2. (too vague) Existence; being: "entity and nonentity". where 1 is closest to what L means by "substance". Elsewhere he and Russell define a substance as a complete concept, so we are not talking things here, we are talking about an idea, a concept, that can stand alone (is independent). By independent I think one must use the double aspect theory of mind, meaning that it has an independent function. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-aspect_theory BTW the double aspect theory of mind, widely acceptable to neuroscience, is also the closest you can get to L's understanding, because the function does not directly cause the brain's operation nor does brain's operation directly cause the function. There is not a causal link, simply a bridge, between the two. Now, having said that, each monad must by definition have a soul (its identity). And you can have monads within monads since you can have functions within functions. So you can have a man as the outer monad, within that body and mind monads, each having a soul, and within body the nervous system monads (both voluntary and involuntary and so forth). Not sure how this all links up with the body at present. - Roger Clough Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 4/6/2013 http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.