PHL 205 Leibniz Final

Individual substances

• the complete notion of the individual substance contains all of its predicates 

Modes

• the complete concept of a mode does not contain all of its related predicates 

• Alexander the Great is a king: we can understand that Alexander the Great is a king by only knowing who Alexander the Great is, making the concept of Alexander the Great an individual substance, we cannot understand the concept of Alexander the Great just by knowing what a king is though, so king is a modification of other individual substances.

Concept containment

• the complete concept of the subject contains all of its predicates, so one can arrive to the predicates logically just by analyzing the idea of the subject

All actions are certain to occur

Complete concept contains all of its predicates, and God has the complete concept of our individuals: God has foreknowledge of all of our actions because he has the complete concept of our individual substance, so our actions are certain to occur because God knows that they will happen.

Our actions are contingent while being certain

• Propositions are contingent if their contrary does not create a logical contradiction → God uses his free decrees when creating and maintaining the universe, allowing him to choose which contingencies will be true in reality. 

• God’s nature ensures that he will choose the best possible world, so contingencies are generally positive. There are possible worlds where I do not have brown hair, but it happens to be that the world where I have brown hair is the best possible one.

Pre-established harmony

• There is no real interaction between the mind and body. The mind is an individual substance, and all of its thoughts/ perceptions arise from its own essence. The mind corresponds with movements of bodies because God has created the world in a way that our perceptions align with what is seen in the exterior world and what other think and see as well 

• The culmination of all of these perceptions then creates the entirety of the universe as each person is perceiving the universe in a slightly unique way