Download Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice by Reginald Osburn Savage PDF
By Reginald Osburn Savage
Within the `Preliminary Dissertation' of his Theodicy, Leibniz announces himself an apologist for the compatibilist doctrines of unique sin, election and reprobation propounded by way of the theologians of the Augsburg Confession. in response to these theologians, man's activities are decided yet guy keeps the ability to act differently and for that reason is chargeable for his activities. Savage argues that Leibniz, in formulating his apology, availed himself of either his doctrine of attainable worlds and his finite-infinite research contrast (the latter being utilized in the former). Savage demanding situations the dogma that Leibniz's metaphysical rules entail that people are powerless to behave differently and that God can't conceive of them appearing another way. He argues that interpreters deduce the dogma from these ideas via doubtful extra-textual premises, for instance, Leibnizian person has just one entire idea or can't be folks except the individual it really is.
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Additional info for Real Alternatives, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Choice
Example text
He distinguished between the "concept of the essence" of an individual thing itself and the concept that results from "adding" to such a concept the concept of time. One demonstrates truths of fact or existence, that is, contingent truths, not from the concepts of the essences of things themselves but from the concept of time. How an individual exists in time depends on divine free decrees not merely on its essence. There is nothing about Adam considered independently of his place in time and in the whole series of things that implies that he will exist with Eve or any other created thing, or that he will exist with them and behave towards them as he does: It is therefore true that I would be able to not take this journey, but it is certain that I shall.
I cannot even imagine that M. Descartes can have been of this opinion, although he had adherents who found this easy to believe ... [T 186; cf. T 242] Leibniz's message in this passage is evident: God cannot will that contradictory states of affairs exist. According to Leibniz, God cannot even will that they don't exist. He ridicules Bayle for hoping that God can. Leibniz also wrote concerning God's power: God is omnipotent. That is, God can do anything that does not imply a contradiction; indeed, the notions of possibility and impossibility consist precisely in this.
Sleigh advances an argument, namely, that Leibniz is a superintrinsicalist. Perhaps, however, Sleigh's superintrinsicalism is consistent with the idea that individuals have more than one complete concept. Sleigh has convinced me by his arguments that Leibniz is a superintrinsicalist. Yet, I do not think, as Sleigh does, that Leibniz's superintrinsicalism forces him to eschew counterfactual identity, and I will explain why I do not in Chapter Three. Sleigh does see Leibniz as seeking a way to preserve the distinction between essential and accidental properties.