Leibniz And Locke

 

In NE 290, Leibniz objects that there is no precise way to determine what a particular is, for him a particular is at once an individual thing and connected to a whole series of monads which connexion is essential to being a particular. Hence he says in order to understand a particular entity we will have to understand an entire infinity (since all attributes are essential to a substance and given its connexion of harmony with infinite monads, by Identity of Indiscernibles this result follows). Here we should note that Locke believes that we know a particular Idea by the testimony of our consciousness but Leibniz too believes that senses bear testimony to a system of particulars whose harmony we find in the thinking subject. Leibniz further says that abstraction proceeds from species to genera and not from individuals to species. So the question comes down to this: a) Can there be a particular without species? and b) Can a particular be known without knowing the species it belongs to, if it belongs to one? The former is an ontological question and the latter an epistemological one.

NE 292, Leibniz says that for him generality too is a consequence of resemblances between particulars but he takes resemblances to be real or something in the particular itself. Rationalists and Empiricists were both nominalists rejecting universals, but we will see that their nominalism differed from each other.

NE 293-294, raises a very interesting objection. Leibniz says that the way understanding combines Ideas does not have any bearing on the topic of essences and hence he is surprised by Locke’s new nomenclature of nominal essences, definitions according to Leibniz can be real and nominal, not essences:

“Essence is fundamentally nothing but the possibility of the thing under consideration. Something which is thought possible is expressed by a definition; but if this definition does not at the same time express this possibility then it is merely nominal, since in this case we can wonder whether the definition expresses anything real - that is, possible - until experience comes to our aid by acquainting us a posteriori with the reality (when the thing actually occurs in the world). This will do, when reason cannot acquaint us a priori with the reality of the thing defined by exhibiting its cause or the possibility of its being generated. So it is not within our discretion to put our ideas together as we see fit, unless the combination is justified either by reason showing its possibility or by experience, showing its actuality and hence its possibility, to reinforce the distinction between essence and definition, bear in mind that although a thing has only one essence, this can be expressed by several definitions, just as the same structure or the same town can be represented by different drawings in perspective depending on the direction from which it is viewed.”

 

According to Locke (3.4.2), Simple Ideas and Complex Ideas of substance partly so, signify real existence and not just possible existence. It is questionable how simple could simple Ideas be if they also represent something apart from themselves but the basic point of view of empiricism is the priority of existence over essence. For Locke and more so for Berkeley, our consciousness acquaints us with real particulars, or the real concrete singulars and this is so by definition because we cannot probe the possibility of a particular in order to regard it as a particular first, the question of possibility has to be made to depend on particular existence and cannot gain precedence over it. So in the content of the concept or what is thought through the concept, is what the mind puts within it, Locke resisted this intrusion of mind in the case of Simple Ideas but Berkeley did away with it completely.

But when it comes to modal notions of ‘necessity’ and ‘possibility’ matters are not so simple. The essence or the Idea is the source of necessity and possibility of something. Something is possible if it is thinkable and it is thinkable if it does not violate the Law of Non-Contradiction. Hence within a concept, there is a content of thought that strictly depends on a rational law of a-priori reason (since PNC is not derived through empirical induction), and this content is regarded as objectively valid since it applies to all objects in general irrespective of what particular predicates may belong to it. So the empiricist has two options, a) to deny that particular Ideas it has access to is governed by a formal law of non-contradiction, which as a matter of fact is derived from the Idea or b) to allow objective validity to PNC in case of analytic propositions which depend on identity of terms while restricting possibility in case of synthetic propositions to possible experience. Locke seems oblivious to this issue, Berkeley only imperfectly grasped it, and Hume took the first option while Kant took the second.

NE 296, Leibniz gives a Foucher like argument, anticipating Berkeley, against taking simple Ideas of primary qualities like extension, motion etc. to provide us with notions of real existents outside us. The argument comes from parity of reasoning in case of secondary qualities like colour and primary qualities. If representation is denied in case of one, then what is so distinctive about the second, that it should have the privilege of providing us with ideas of real existents?

Replying to 3.4.16-17, referred to above regarding words of simple Ideas, substances and mixed modes, Leibniz says in NE 301 that if Ideas are taken to be actual thoughts then the mind may combine them at will, but Ideas are something different from actual thoughts. Here one should read this passage together with NE 109:

“If the idea were the form of the thought, it would come into and go out of existence with the actual thoughts which correspond to it, but since it is the object of thought it can exist before and after the thoughts.”

 

This is further based on Leibniz’s distinction between truths of facts and truths of principles. For Leibniz, Locke makes the same mistake that Descartes did. The latter takes the existence of the soul in consciousness to be a basis of a principle i.e. he conflates a fact with a principle. Locke too takes his immediate access to Ideas to be a fact and at the same time a principle. This is the reason he urges against the rationalists that a child need not explicitly form axioms of PNC and other principles in order to deal with empirical objects. Ideas, Leibniz regards as analogous to muscles and tendons that make movement possible:

 

“For general principles enter into our thoughts, serving as their inner core and as their mortar. Even if we give no thought to them, they are necessary for thought, as muscles and tendons are for walking. The mind relies on these principles constantly; but it does not find it so easy to sort them out and to command a distinct view of each of them separately, for that requires great attention to what it is doing, and the unreflective majority are hardly capable of that.” (NE 84)

 

Principles are prior in the order of existence but particular truths are prior in order of familiarity. In NE 475, Leibniz says that principles are the cause not only of the judgement but of the truth itself. In the realm of things, the cause corresponds to reason while in the realm of truths (or what Leibniz also likes to call the region of essences), the cause especially the final cause is the reason. Philosophy is not about facts but the significance of facts - the reason that binds them together. Empiricists like Locke want to dispense with principles, countenancing only the facts, but isolated facts combined on the basis of psychological laws of an empirical psychology, do not allow us to dispense with metaphysics which studies reality as a whole and not as anything in particular, while empirical psychology which itself is a fact cannot study reality as a whole, being a fragment it needs to be supplemented by another fragment and thereby cannot become the whole.