Leibniz’s Arguments for the Existence of God II;  Monadic Causation

1. The ontological (onto-logical) argument.

A variant form is due to Plantinga.  See handout.

Leibniz questioned the premiss that we have an idea of God. 

L. does say that there is always a presumption in favor of the possibility of an idea. 

However, L. thinks he’s got a positive argument.  All simple, i.e., primitive, ideas are compossible.  There can be no logical conflicts between them, because if there were, how could we possibly prove such a conflict?  Only by breaking them down further.  But we can’t break them down further.

Thus, it is possible that God exists.

Does this argument work? 

Discussion.

Let’s try to construct a counterexample.  Consider a notion of a being who has all the perfections of God other than omniscience, and who has non-omniscience.  This being has necessary existence, since that perfection we haven’t removed.  If omniscience is compatible with all the other simple properties, so is non-omniscience, it seems, on exactly the same logical grounds: can’t decompose the other properties to show they are incompatible with non-omniscience.  So, does it follow that there necessarily is such a being?  And an infinitude of others?

Maybe not.  Maybe there is no such concept as non-omniscience simpliciter.  Maybe instead we need to specify more precisely the degree of non-omniscience, and maybe in specifying this we will end up specifying something incompatible with other divine attributes.  Presumably, to specify what a non-omniscient being is like, we need to specify what knowledge it lacks, and perhaps in specifying this we also end up specifying that it lacks some powers.

2. God creates the universe continually by fulguration: as it were, flashes of lightning continually issuing from him.  The point here is that things always depend on God.

3. Now we get an account of causation in sections 49 and following of the Monadology. 

Sections 49-50: read.

L. closely ties causation to explanation.  Something causes something if and only if it explains it.  Thus, if we can explain what is happening in one place in terms of what is happening in another, we’ve got causation going.

Recall that L. ties explanation to predictability.

So maybe the picture is this.  Suppose first we see in the central monad a representation of the arm moving—this is what philosophers call intentional knowledge, i.e., the knowledge of what we are going to do.  And then the arm moves.  The movement of the arm can be predicted from, and hence explained by, the central monad’s representation (L. seems to tie explanation to prediction: that is why he is a determinist).

Problem: Can’t the central monad’s representation be predicted from the arm’s movement?  If someone moved the arm, then his central monad must have had intentional knowledge of this ahead of time. 

But no!  There could be many causes of the arm’s movement, and the central monad is only one of them.  The monads in the arm do not have a clear perception of where the cause of the arm’s movement lies.

We are also told that the more perfect causes the less perfect.  A being is more perfect than another provided its perceptions are more distinct than those of the other.  Higher monads have spiffier perceptions.  So, here is how my moving an arm might work.  My central monad has several representations.  One is of the arm moving and the other is of itself intending to move the arm.  Yet another is of the nerves that send information to the arm muscles, and this is a much more precise representation than that of the arm-monad, perhaps.  A monad somewhere in the nerves has several representations: once again, a representation of the arm moving—perhaps an even clearer one than my central monad’s representation, because the monad in my arm has more detailed data as to how the arm is to move (we don’t care about the exact velocity, but the nerves have to specify that)—as well as a representation of itself moving, and a representation of my central monad.  The last representation is quite unclear: it probably doesn’t know what moves it, since one of quite a number of things could move it.  So the nerve-monad’s representation of the central monad is less clear than the central monad’s representation of the nerve monad.  In this sense, the central monad causes the nerve monad’s state.  But now the arm monad has several representations, too.  It has a very fuzzy representation of my central monad.  It has a somewhat less fuzzy representation of the nerve monads.  And a fairly nice representation of itself.  The arm monad’s representation of the nerve monad is less clear than the other way around, and hence the nerve monad’s action causes the arm monad’s action.  Likewise, the central monad’s action causes the arm monad’s action.

•   But isn’t this a travesty of what causation is?  When we say that A causes B, don’t we mean that B happens because of A, that were it not for A, B would not happen.  A lit match causes a gasoline explosion.  Were it not for the match, there would be no fire.  The explosion is there because of the match.  What does this have to do with the match monads having a clearer representation of the explosion monads (i.e., the monads in the expanding air shockwave) than the explosion monads have of the match monads?

•   Well, here’s a story.  Imagine God planning the world.  If the match monads have a clearer representation of the explosion monads than the explosion monads do of the match monads, then it is more likely that God made the explosion monads to fit the match monads than the other way around.  Remember the doctrine of pre-established harmony: God has coordinated all the monads there are.  How is God going to plan?  First, he will decide on some monads and their details, and then on others.  Of course, this is all metaphorical, since God does it all in an instant, but we can figurtively speak of God as doing it in time, in the sense that some things in the plan are logically prior to other things in the plan, even if there is no temporal priority.  So, L.’s picture of God’s planning has God first fitting in the more distinct representations--those of the match--and then fitting in the less distinct ones because of the clearer ones.  After all, one can’t as well explain why the clearer ones are as they are in terms of the less clear ones than the other way around. 

•   But don’t the less distinct ones encode the same information that the more distinct ones encode?  Doesn’t L. say that from any one monad one can read off everything else that happens?  Yes, but can one do it in full detail?  That is not completely obvious.

•   But can’t God first decide to put in the less distinctly representing monads, and then choose the more distinctly representing ones?  For instance, imagine God first choosing to put in a monad that represents an explosion.  Then, God has a choice as to what cause the explosion had.  A match, a lighter, an electric fuse...  God decides on the precise details of the cause after he has made an in principle decision as to the exact effect to be produced.

•   But L. thinks this isn’t how it works.  For, the monads with the more distinct perceptions are in fact more perfect.  The more distinct perceptions are better.  And God is good: he intends to create a good world.  Thus, putting in the spiffier stuff is a priority.  God wants to fit in the things with the more distinct perceptions first.  Thus, the match, being more perfect, gets fit in first, and then the other stuff is built around it.  Now, it may not be clear to us how the match is in fact more perfect than the explosion.  But that is only because we fail to look into its little monadic heart and see the exquisite perfection of its representation of the explosion--of course, exquisite only relative to the explosion’s confused “memories” (actually, only higher level monads have memories--so they’re not even that!) of the match. 

•   This may well seem clearer when we look at the arm and the soul.  The soul is more perfect as a being than the arm--it has more perfections, since it thinks.  But that’s not the point here.  The point isn’t which is the more perfect being, but which is the more perfect perception.  After all, sometimes the arm causes things in the soul.  When you stick the arm in the fire, the arm’s burning causes a sensation in the soul.  The arm then has a clearer perception of the soul’s state than the soul has of the arm’s.  How is this?  Well, for one, the soul’s state is just the state of perceiving a burning.  The arm knows what the burning is like quite well.  But the arm, as it were, knows the details of how the soul is going to feel, since it causes these details.  On the other hand, the soul doesn’t know the details of how the arm feels--there are many possible states of the arm that could produce the same effect in the soul, while there is only one effect in the soul that can be produced by the state of the arm.

•   Causation is thus what L. calls an ideal relation, i.e., a relation between ideas.  It is a relation between ideas in the mind of God.  A is the cause of B only if God put in B because of putting in A: if and only if the reason for God having the thought to make B is God’s having the thought to make A.  This is like occasionalism--all causation is mediated by God--but God sets it up once and for all, according to invariant laws of nature in each thing.

•   But strictly speaking, the causal relation is more symmetrical than the above makes it seem.  In reality, often what we have is a coordination: God often decides on both A and B coordinately, rather than on one before the other.  It’s both or neither.  Thus, if I bang against the wall with my head, there are the vibrations in the wall and the pressure against my head.  One can’t say one is prior to the other causally.  Rather, the two are coordinate.  For every action there is an equal an opposite reaction, physics says.  God doesn’t decide first to put in the vibrations in the wall and then the pressure against my head.  My head’s representation of the wall may be no more vivid than the wall’s representation of my head: the one hurts and the other reverberates.  If so, then the causation is reciprocal.  And isn’t this kind of thing going to be quite common?  Isn’t it usually going to be that the cause is matched up to the effect and the effect to the cause, especially if the two are at the same time, so that one can’t really say which is the cause and which is the effect?  Of course, it isn’t so in human action, but it might be true in physical events.  Wouldn’t we expect God to coordinate things in this manner: creating the universe is a complicated task, one involving much mutual coordination.

•   The mutual coordination of things in the world is the metaphysical reason for the physical law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  In those cases where this law applies, the two things are coordinately chosen by God.

•   Another complication.  L. probably doesn’t really want to say that A is a cause of B always if God put in B because he put in A.  God, after all, makes plans.  Thus, you might be debating whether to help a friend or not.  God wants your friend, who is hungry, to get some food.  To accomplish this, he gives you grace: he gets you to think about how much you love your friend.  He does this because he knows that if you think about this, you will feed him.  Here, in God’s plan, your friend’s eating is the event God wants to actualize.  He then sets things up so you feed your friend.  But we don’t want to say that your friend’s eating is the cause of your feeding your friend, even though it was because God was inserting into actuality your friend’s eating that he included in actuality your feeding him.

•   Here is how I think L. could analyze this situation.  Your friend’s eating is the final cause of your feeding your friend.  It is that for the sake of which it happens.  This is just as when I come to class, the coming to class is the final cause of my getting on the Metro.  However, an efficient cause of your friend’s eating is your feeding him.  We can then say this.  The two are in fact coordinate in God’s plan.  Because God has decided that your friend should eat, he has made you feed your friend.  However, the details of what you feed your friend determine the details of what your friend is fed.  Thus, speaking roughly and generally, yes, your friend’s eating causes your feeding him--but only as a final cause.  But your friend’s eating isn’t the cause of the details of what God has you feed him, since any number of things that you could feed your friend would just as well fulfill God’s plan that your friend should be fed. 

•   What we see here are two causal relations going in opposite directions.  But only one of these causal relations has the property that the cause has a clearer representation of the effect than the effect does of the cause.  You have a clearer understanding of how the ingredients in your food will make your friend feel than does your friend of what the ingredients in your food are.  So, we can say this.  When God produces B because of producing A and the reason for this production is that A has the clearer representations, then we have efficient causation.  Otherwise, what we have is final causation.

•   This still seems a strange concept of causation.  This isn’t, surely, what we intuitively think of as causation.  After all, the relations are not between concrete things, me and my friend, but in the ideal order, the order of ideas, between the idea of me and the idea of my friend.  So is this causation?

•   Imagine someone who says: “Copernicus is wrong about the earth going around the sun, because then the sun doesn’t rise, and plainly the sun rises.”  Copernicus could answer: “When you say ‘The sun rises’ what you are talking about is the phenomenon of the earth spinning on its axis in such a way that relative to the surface of the earth at your location the sin moves ‘upward’.”  This may not be exactly what we meant by “The sun rises” before Copernicus came along, but after he has come along we now see how we can keep on talking in our ordinary vulgar way about the sun rising, and how this can be made sense of within the copernican theory.  Likewise, L. is telling us how to make sense within his theory of talk of causation.  How to make this talk true.