Abstract
Evelyn Vargas focuses on the epistemological problems involved in Leibniz´s successive definitions of perception in the context of the development of a theory of the actions and the passions of created substances. Although his first characterization of perceptual experience involves “cogitation” or thought that is related to an object as its requisite his newly developed science of dynamics makes it possible to introduce a teleological approach to perception by which sentience can be extended to animals or even living machines more generally. Insofar as perception can be regarded as an organic function it can be treated within the dynamical framework of the exercise of forces. Despite the advantages of this innovating view of perceptual representation without thought, the scope of such an account beyond the limits of empirical disciplines related to medical practice can be put into question once pre-established harmony enters the picture. If the causal vocabulary ordinarily used in our statements concerning the objects of perception is properly understood, the epistemic connection between sensory experience and external objects has to be reconsidered. However, Vargas argues, Leibniz’s teleological conception of sentience can provide a univocal description of both human and animal perception while preserving its informative role.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the LSNA Conference in Princeton in 2008. Thanks to the organizers, M. Bolton and D. Garber, and to M. Kulstad and G. Brown for their insightful comments.
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Notes
- 1.
Mainly as a response to John McDowell’s views on perceptual content.
- 2.
“Perception is thought of oneself and other simultaneously.”
- 3.
“Sensing is perceiving some change whose cause I do not perceive in me.”
- 4.
In other words, reflection is perception of oneself as opposed to the perception of a variety.
- 5.
“If two bodies resist each other and we perceive one as pertaining to us and the other as alien to us, we call the first body an organ and the second body an object; but the perception itself is called sense.”
- 6.
In a later text cognition is explicitly defined as thought referred to an object (A6.4. 802).
- 7.
“Consequently, the immediate objects of our perceptions or the near causes of these different thoughts differ from each other too (…) and the immediate cause outside of us of our thoughts of extension, colours, etc. (if there is an “outside of us)” is called matter.”
- 8.
“I call these sensations ideas (…) I even call them the effects the external objects produce on us by our senses; and I say that these ideas do not represent those objects to us as they are in themselves; but only what they produce on us.”
- 9.
“… this variety cannot come from that which thinks, since a single thing by itself cannot be the cause of the changes in itself. (…) for we would always have to admit that there is no reason for the particular variety which would have existed in our thoughts from all eternity, since there is nothing in us to have one kind of variety rather than another. Therefore there is some cause outside of us for the variety of our thoughts.” (Translated in AG 3)
- 10.
And this is a sign of existence that abstract or merely ideal things lack.
- 11.
“Affection is the determination of the soul by the thought of good and evil to the progression to some thought.”
- 12.
“Thought occupies the soul because of two causes, or because it diverts itself because of the consideration of an end or good and induces the oblivion of the end, which some single thought makes or contains in itself a lot of different matter of thought; or because it contains an end or good. But for us an end is some will or that which contributes to it.”
- 13.
See Des Chene (1996) for an account of the transformation of the notion of final cause in the context of late Aristotelian and Cartesian natural philosophy.
- 14.
As Michel Fichant has put it, “…la “Réforme [de la dynamique]” a contribué, conjointement avec d’autres justifications complexes, à la rehabilitation des formes substantielles, sur la voie d’un nouveau concept de substance et d’une “correction de la Philosophie première.”” (Fichant 1994, 60).
- 15.
“In every action and passion it is necessary that the agent be expressed in what is acted upon.”
- 16.
“When to be sure a certain inequality has arisen from an external or an internal cause, which happens when an animal’s senses are aroused, thereupon the entire force of the breath pushes either towards a restitution or, when it can not do this, towards an offsetting of very short duration [which, since often, on account of the structure or the present location of the parts, cannot be obtained without tremendous upheaval]. Hence at length there arises from a small cause a great motion in the animal, since the cause of motion is always at hand to the thing to be moved, and awaits release.” Note that I did not quote the complete paragraph. I use “[ ]” to indicate the omitted parts.
- 17.
Leibniz previously wrote “Vim substantiae cuidam incorp …” and “vim activam”.
- 18.
“Since moreover we will at length demonstrate [that] force is one thing, motion quite another, and motion indeed inheres in an extended mass, while motive force inheres in a certain other subject, which is called in common bodies the substantial form, in living bodies the Soul, in Man the Mind, whence in animals the origin of sense as well as appetite, and the union of the soul and the body, and the way in which either the Soul acts in the body, or is acted upon by the body, will be able to be explained with unexpected clarity.”
- 19.
“The substantial form is the principle of action or the primitive active force. But in every substantial form there is some cognition, that is, some expression or representation of the external things in an individual thing, according to which the body is unum per se, that is, in the substantial form itself, representation that is united to a reaction or conatus or appetition to act according to this cognition.”
- 20.
Compare this definition with cognition as true judgment in De afectibus (see Section 3 above).
- 21.
“But it is called representing that which so corresponds, in order to be possible one to be known from the other, although they were not similar, in such a way that by a constant rule or relation all the things which happen in one are referred to something that corresponds to them in the other.”
- 22.
De scribendis novis Medicinae Elementis (1680–1682)
- 23.
For an account of the use of final causes as a methodological tool in the study of living beings see Duchesneau (1998).
- 24.
“In every machine it must be considered their functions or ends, or their way to operate or by which means the author of the machine has achieved his end (…). The primary function of man is perception, but his secondary function (which exists for the sake of the primary function) is to obtain perceptions (…) The organs of sense exist for the sake of perception; the organs of motion exist for the sake of obtaining perception or action.”
- 25.
For Leibniz this behavior would involve the representations of memory, for example when “… a dog runs away from the stick with which he was beaten…” (AG 208; see also AG 216)
- 26.
Note also that the equipollence principle which grounds dynamical processes is a case of the relation of expression (A6. 4. 1371).
- 27.
When we doubt, for example, whether an appearance corresponds to a determinate object, since there is no judgment involved in an act of doubting (A6.4. 1414). Consider also the case in which the perceiver is experiencing an illusion (e.g. the Muller – Lyer illusion) well-known to her, and she refrains from judging that things are as she sees them (i.e., that one line is longer than the other).
- 28.
“So reflection or memory or consciousness is proper to mind. Reflection is properly the memory of the preceding thought. In the perception of oneself consists the divine image given to us. I do not believe that force I experience in myself when I will to think myself as thinking is exerted by any brute, and I admire it and I unfold continuously in me, not by any intervening sign but by an intimate perception, when we exert the force by deflecting the distracting images from this thought.”
- 29.
“The only souls which are minds are those in which a cognition of oneself or consciousness takes place. Only they are capable of reward and punishment and are to be considered citizens of the Republic whose king is God. But among minds the only happy ones are those in which the cognition of God is given. One thing is to perceive, another to perceive that we perceived or to remember. So I acknowledge perception or sense of what happens in brutes (…) but I do not acknowledge consciousness in them.”
- 30.
What we need is a reliable method to elicit distinct knowledge from the content of experience.
References
Abbreviations
A Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Edited since 1923 by various Leibniz Research Centers in Germany. Currently published by Akademie Verlag, Berlin [quoted by Series, Volume, Page(s); e.g.: A6. 4. 217].
AG 1989. Philosophical Essays. Eds. and trs. R. Ariew and D. Garber. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
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Pasini 1996. Appendici: Inediti leibniziani. In E. Pasini. Corpo e funzioni cognitive in Leibniz. Milan: Franco Angeli.
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Vargas, E. (2011). Perceiving Machines: Leibniz’s Teleological Approach to Perception. In: Smith, J., Nachtomy, O. (eds) Machines of Nature and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 67. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0041-3_12
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