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Leibniz

Posted by Andrew Giddings On October - 12 - 2009
I’m going to try and trim this closer to 500 words…

Leibniz

Leibniz is introduced by Russell as being the polar opposite of Spinoza: “One of the supreme intellects of all time but as a human being he was not admirable.”  It is made clear early on that Leibniz offered two systems of philosophy; one which he published to “win the approbation of princes and princesses,” and another which was published posthumously. This second system was held secret due to the outrage he imagined it would cause. Russell makes it clear that the controversial one is his favourite.
If anyone can offer an antonym of ‘posthumous’ I’ll change the title of this first section…
“Friendly” System
Leibniz claimed that this is the best of all possible words. He spoke of a rather complicated system built around the idea that the universe consists of an infinite number of substances he called ‘monads’ which, he concluded, are actually souls. Each monad is given its own nature by God, and they form a hierarchy “in which some are superior to others in the clearness and distinction with which they mirror the universe”.  The physics described are difficult to follow, though Russell occasionally hints that he’s not impressed by some of the theory (though this is not surprising when he made it so clear which is his preferred system). He points out, for example, that modern theologians no longer rely on the “proofs” of God’s existence, and refers to “his peculiar metaphysic”. (pp.536, 537)
One point which I found particularly interesting is the suggestion on p.538 that God isn’t omnipotent, just a being “vastly and more powerful than we are,” I am surprised that this wasn’t reported to have stirred up more controversy.
But the most intriguing idea is the suggestion of multiple worlds, also on p.538. Leibniz put forth the idea that there are “an infinite number of worlds, all of which God contemplated before creating the actual world,” and that ours is the best possible. The bad things in the world are necessary for us to appreciate the good things, though this can be countered by the suggestion that the good things make the bad things seem worse.
Posthumous System
“Here I have made enormous progress,” Leibniz said of the work that wasn’t published until he’s been dead for two hundred years. Sadly, this work included mathematical logic that would have been groundbreaking at the time, and the decision to keep it quiet may have dealt quite a blow to the progress of mathematics.
He had a fantastic ambition to develop something called Characteristica Universalis, a system of maths so refined that it would replace thought. “If controversies [between philosophers] were to arise… it would suffice to take their pencils in their hands…and say to each other: ‘Let us calculate.’”
Russell focuses on one of the most hard-hitting ideas in this system on p.541. He also describes it as one of the most definite statements (this is interesting as it would therefore suggest that some of the other statements are less than definite): “That the individual notion of each person involves once and for all everything that will ever happen to him.” To understand the gravity of this, we must first understand what is meant by ‘notion’ in the philosophical sense. All web results of any use seemed to life the description from Wikipedia, which is as follows: ‘A notion in philosophy is a reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their essential features and relations.’ So a notion is how you see the world, and how your mind works according to various causes and their effects. Perhaps we can loosely relate this to Freud’s idea of the Ego. Leibniz was saying that everything we are and everything we do and experience in life is already ‘in us’. This means not only is everything pre-ordained, but our minds and souls already have those experiences and their effects. This is another example of philosophy butting heads with the Church; how could the clergy speak of sin and damnation if this were the case?
My favourite part if this system is Leibniz’ idea of how things come to exist. We must first accept the idea that things that exist and things that do not are still, for want of a better word, entitative.  They hang in a kind of limbo or void and battle for existence. The things that we see and experience in this world are the teams of essences which are strongest and win through to form a stable and balanced world. This is a strange idea of a kind of Darwinian system with species replaced with essences of reality. Like Darwin, “there is no mention of God, no act of Creation” (though this does not necessarily mean Leibniz didn’t believe in God).

The key thing here is that Leibniz argues that the world we live in is built on logic. All of his arguments are the result of an attempt to put a system or formula on existence which is naturally occurring and self-regulating. Russell ends the chapter by offering his opinion which also summarises one facet of Leibniz’ philosophy: “What I, for my part, think best in his theory of monads is his two kinds of space, one subjective, in the perceptions of each monad, and one objective, consisting of the assemblage of points of view of the various monads. This, I believe, is still useful in relating perception to physics.”


500 Word Target Fail…
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Philosophy/HCJ

Spinoza

Posted by Andrew Giddings On October - 8 - 2009
Don’t confuse this philosopher with spumoni or spinoni.
I have decided to try something here. Rather than writing a huge ream of notes for all of the chapters in one lump, which would make for a long read (though this one is longer than I intended), I’m going to post one chapter at a time. So here’s Spinoza, who was neither a dog, nor an ice cream.
Spinoza
Russell begins by stating that Baruch Spinoza was the most ethical of the great philosophers, but was intellectually inferior to many of them. Russell’s reasoning for this is one thing that needs to be explored. He was born in Amsterdam and was around eighteen when Descartes died. Spinoza only lived until the age of forty-three; Russell gives the cause of death as phthisis, which is a rather archaic name for tuberculosis.
It is interesting to note that he was accused of being an atheist, even though “his whole philosophy is dominated by God” (p.521).  It seems as though this is because his faith wasn’t enough, and so he was shunned for not practicing religion in the orthodox way.
Russell recommends that before discussing his major work, Ethics, we look at two of his other books, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Theologico-Political Treatise) and Tractatus Politicus (Political Treatise), in order to understand some of the beliefs and ideas around which Ethics was written. I first thought the books were the reason for him becoming unpopular, but I found a website chronicling the events of his life which says he was accused of heresy before he published anything, so it may have simply been due to Spinoza vocalising his views. Russell notes that Spinoza’s political theory is rather like that of Hobbes.
These books expressed much opposition to the content of the Bible and the Torah. Russell says “He endeavours throughout to show that the Scriptures can be interpreted so as to be compatible with a liberal theology.” (p.522) This is important as it rather reflects the role of Christianity today. The Bible, for instance, contains a lot of advice that would be unacceptable in the Western World of the 21st Century, and so in most cases religious teachings are adjusted to suit the changing world.
Some key points on page 522 include the idea that “in a state of nature, there is no right or wrong.” At first, it seems as though he is simply saying that morals are a fabrication of man, but there is more to it than that, which we shall see shortly. Russell also notes that he was a secularist and that the sovereign can do no wrong; this is a clear link to Hobbes. Spinoza also placed much importance on freedom of opinion, and it was this opinion that made him so unpopular.
Ethics
“He accepted from Descartes and his contemporaries a materialistic and deterministic physics, and sought, within this framework, to find room for reverence and a life devoted to the Good.” (p.522) This quote gives the impression that Spinoza was a man who was fascinated by science believing it to be so important that he had to find a way of reconciling it with his faith. It could be suggested that this was the reason for his efforts in this area; to find some way of allowing his two loves to co-exist.
Spinoza believed that God is everything. This should not to be confused with the idea of omnipresence  (God is everywhere). He taught that the Earth, space and even peoples’ thoughts and feelings were attributes of God. This is called pantheism. This would mean that there is no free will and no good or bad. The churches took issue with this, as if the idea took hold it meant people could no longer be called sinners and be threatened with damnation, everything is part of a whole and that no one was in control of their actions. He also said that, presumably due to this ‘single substance’ theory, people didn’t need to try to know or understand God. After all, all knowledge and considerations are those of God.
Spinoza believed that self-preservation is our most fundamental driving force, an idea upon which Abraham Maslow built his Hierarchy of Needs model in 1943. “No can be conceived as prior to this endeavour to preserve one’s own being.”  (p.524) But he went on to say that fear of death is senseless (as everything is pre-determined, more on that later), and so this self preservation is simply one of the passions which clouds the truth. A passion, he said, is an emotion which has sprung from an inadequate idea (p.524).
One of Spinoza’s more interesting ideas is that time is unreal (p.525), and therefore thinking about the future is as nonsensical as thinking about the past, as you can’t influence one any more than the other. He also said that ‘the knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge’ (p.525). By this, he meant that if you know evil, then that is more than nothing, but it is not the whole picture; evil is simply another part of the universe, which is God. On the same page, Russell says that Spinoza was attempting to free people from fear, that if they accepted the universe, including themselves, to be part of a single entity with no past or future, there could be nothing to be afraid of. Once someone accepts this to be true, they are free.
He held that loving God must always be in the front of our minds (p.526), after all, we are a part of God. We do this by understanding ourselves and our emotions (not passions). In addition to this, he pointed out that God cannot love us back.  He said that unhappiness stems from loving things which are variable, which is difficult to argue against. If you love God, who is eternal, you could never lose the object of your love or have it taken from you.
Russell closes by enthusiastically debunking Spinoza’s claims or refusing to accept them.  This brings us back to his opening: Russell thought that the arguments and theories themselves were deeply flawed, but the results from them, if they were accepted, would be largely positive. Living nobly, free from fear and doubt and anger without resorting measures such as those suggested by Hobbes. He ends the chapter by saying: “Such reflections may not suffice to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of despair”
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Philosophy/HCJ

Law and Fora

Posted by Andrew Giddings On October - 6 - 2009

During Media Law today, we spent some time discussing when a case becomes active. Pinpointing this moment is very important as it affects what can be published (as we know, publishing anything which could be seen to influence the outcome of the trial will get you told off). So I have found a website explaining this very clearly, in my opinion more clearly than McNae’s. There’s quite a lot of good stuff about media law on there actually, so I’d recommend a browse, but the linked page is particularly relevant to today’s lecture.

In the afternoon we enjoyed a seminar led by Cara, who wrote a cracking essay which did a great job of getting a conversation moving about the Renaissance, Reformation and the tipping point between pre-modern and modern philosophy with Descartes’ decision to wipe the slate of philosophy clean by rejecting Aristotle, along with everything else he couldn’t be 100% sure of, before starting again with the one thing he could guarantee: Cogito ergo sum.

It was the first seminar of that kind that we’ve had, and I have to say I found it enormously helpful and would like to thank everyone in Group B for such a great discussion. I think when you’re constantly trying to absorb facts and information during lectures and private study it can become difficult to really digest everything. Group discussion seems to help the mind make sense of everything as you put it into your own words as well as and processing several other people’s ideas and points of view. The only sad thing is, I don’t think that an hour every other week is enough to properly get one’s teeth into the discussion.

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Media Law, Philosophy/HCJ

Prison Showers and Descartes

Posted by Andrew Giddings On September - 29 - 2009

Today’s lectures were Media Law and History and Context of Journalism

Media Law was an introduction to give students an idea of what to expect over the coming weeks, though my inquisitive mind, spurred on by a fear of prison showers, prompted me to ask questions which weren’t due to be answered for some time. I shall be paying much attention to Media Law, not only to avoid incarceration but also to work out exactly what a journalist can get away with.

The afternoon held the lecture for HCJ. A rapid-fire history of Renaissance philosophers may seem to have little to do with journalism, but in fact the connections are numerous. Firstly, one role of a philosopher is to make sense of the world, condense their observations into some snappy and understandable text before flinging it at anyone who’ll pay attention and/or money. Sounds familiar. Also, intensive philosophy study puts a sharp edge on the mind (albeit less in the manner of a barber with a strop and more like Hephaestus with a big hammer) . The ability to take an idea and discuss it in detail from several angles is a useful thing not only in journalism, but in everyday life. Finally, in the introduction to ‘History of Western Philosophy’, Bertrand Russell says that, “The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy.” This can be applied to the work of a journalist also. Though if the challenge is along the lines of exposing leathery ties between a senior politician and Max Mosely’s favourite “nightclub”, I’ll do my best to disremember a certain libel case and provide an answer.
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Media Law, Philosophy/HCJ

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