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Pioneering Philosophers of Mind: Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz

5 important questions on Pioneering Philosophers of Mind: Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz

How did Leeuwenhoek's microscope lead to Leibniz's theory about the contents of the universe?

Leibniz had viewed the teeming population of microorganisms within the drop of pond water through van Leeuwenhoek's microscope. Leibniz conceived of the universe as a vast hierarchy of living organisms residing within other, larger organisms.

How does Leibniz's apperception, and sentient and rational mondas relate to Descartes and Avicenna, and Aristotle respectively?

Apperception also involves the reflexivity, the subjective sense of “I-ness” or “self” that Descartes and Avicenna had noted. When we apperceive something, we quite literally and consciously “think about it” with full attention. In a general sense, Leibniz’s sentient and rational monads had mental capacities similar to those of Aristotle’s sensitive and rational souls.

How is Leibniz's supreme monad related to Spinoza's pantheism and to Aristotle's final cause?

Pantheism: the notion that God is not an independent being who controls the universe but rather that God is the entire universe.

Relation: The idea of the all-encompassing supreme monad owed a debt to Spinoza’s equation of “god” with the totality of nature, while also echoing Aristotle’s ancient notion of a purposeful “unmoved mover” as provider of the “final cause” of the creation and development of the universe.

How did a veined marble block illustrate Leibniz's preferred metaphor for the mind?

This veined block of marble has internal fault lines that predispose it to be sculpted into some shapes more easily than others. Such shapes pre-exist in the marble, even though a sculptor’s work is required to expose and clarify them. For Leibniz, “ideas and truths are innate in us. . . . as inclinations, dispositions, tendencies, or natural potentialities, and not as actions.”

What does Leibniz mean with the necessary truths, which relate to Aristotle's categories as the innate organizing principles of the rational psyche?

Leibniz called all of these innate ideas and predispositions necessary truths; in his larger scheme, they were prime tools in the process of apperception as opposed to simple perception.

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Pioneers of Psychology

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