Brandom's Leibniz

I discuss an objection by Margaret Wilson against Robert Brandom's interpretation of Leibniz's account of perceptual distinctness. According to Brandom, Leibniz holds that (i) the relative distinctness of a perception is a function of its inferentially articulated content and (ii) apperception, or awareness, is explicable in terms of degrees of perceptual distinctness. Wilson alleges that Brandom confuses ‘external deducibility’ from a perceptual state of a monad to the existence of properties in the world, with ‘internally accessible content’ for the monad in that state. Drawing on Leibniz, I develop a response to Wilson on Brandom's behalf.     

Leibniz Filters Revisited

Leibniz filters play a prominent role in the theory of protoalgebraic logics. In [3] the problem of the definability of Leibniz filters is considered. Here we study the definability of Leibniz filters with parameters. The main result of the paper says that a protoalgebraic logic S has its strong version weakly algebraizable iff it has its Leibniz filters explicitly definable with parameters.     

The Leibniz project

A language for quantum physics is derived from set theory by replacing the classical predicate algebra (Boolean) by a certain quantum predicate algebra (rational projective), time space and the Hamilton-Schroedinger dynamics by a Feynman-like graph dynamics, and the Dirac spin operators by topological switching operators on the graph. The development is described from the basic level of elementary monadic processes to the level of the free Dirac equation. Young Men's Philanthropic League Professor of Physics. Supported by the est Foundation and the National Science Foundation.     

莱布尼兹与技术

莱布尼兹不仅是哲学家、数学家,而且还在科学技术上拥有许多重要发明.特别是他所发明的二进制,是所有计算机技术的基础.因此,把莱布尼兹看作信息时代之父并不是没有道理的.本文阐述了莱布尼兹在他的科学技术发明中所体现的系统论思想、科学工具化思想和他关于机器的比喻.作者进一步提出,在科技高度发展的今天,人作为具有自由本质的存在者,必须对自己的行动和技术后果负有责任.我们必须追问技术带来的弊端,并给予技术哲学以应有的地位.     

Definability of Leibniz Equality

Given a structure for a first-order language L, two objects of its domain can be indiscernible relative to the properties expressible in L, without using the equality symbol, and without actually being the same. It is this relation that interests us in this paper. It is called Leibniz equality. In the paper we study systematically the problem of its definibility mainly for classes of structures that are the models of some equality-free universal Horn class in an infinitary language L_κκ, where κ is an infinite regular cardinal. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Leibniz and the English-Speaking World

The problem of self-deception lies at the heart of Nietzsche's account of the slave revolt in morality in the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morals. The viability of Nietzsche's genealogy of morality is thus crucially dependent on a successful explanation of the self-deception the slaves of the first essay are caught in. But the phenomenon of self-deception is notoriously puzzling. In this paper, after critically examining existing interpretations of the slaves’ self-deception, I provide, by drawing on Alfred Mele's work on self-deception, a deflationary account of the slaves’ self-deception; an account which explains the slaves’ self-deceived predicament but without either the attribution of contradictory mental states or an intention to produce or to facilitate the production of the belief the self-deceived subjects end up holding. In light of my account of self-deception, I interpret Nietzsche's intriguing claim that the slaves’ revaluation of ressentiment amounts to their ‘most mendacious artistic stroke’.     

Heidegger's Leibniz and abyssal identity

When Heidegger pursues his destructive interpretation of Leibniz's doctrine of judgment, he identifies a principle of abyssal ground and a concealed metaphysics of truth that undermine the priority of logic with respect to ontology. His reading turns on an account of Leibniz's methodological generation of metaphysical principles and the relation between reason and identity, which, I argue, is at once deeply flawed and extremely productive. This essay pursues the implications of Heidegger's quickly abandoned suggestion that Leibniz's principle of identity is reflexively self-grounding, arguing that this claim makes possible a rigorous interpretation of Leibnizian method as an abyssal logic of repetition. I hold that the identification of such a methodology requires a modified account of the metaphysics of truth operative in Leibniz that reinvigorates Heidegger's reading even while moving beyond his now exhausted trope of a hidden presupposition of subjectivity.     

Leibniz on Memory and Consciousness

In this article, I develop a higher-order interpretation of Leibniz's theory of consciousness according to which memory is constitutive of consciousness. I offer an account of Leibniz's theory of memory on which his theory of consciousness may be based, and I then show that Leibniz could have developed a coherent higher-order account. However, it is not clear whether Leibniz held (or should have held) such an account of consciousness; I sketch an alternative that has at least as many advantages as the higher-order theory. This analysis provides an important antecedent to the contemporary discussions of higher-order theories of consciousness.