Hi Bruno Marchal Thanks for the information.
Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/16/2012 Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so everything could function." ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-15, 04:31:23 Subject: Re: Misusing Descartes' model On 14 Aug 2012, at 19:14, Roger wrote: Hi Jason Resch You got it right. Descartes never troubled to explain how two completely different substances-- mind and body-- could interact. And Leibniz was too hard to understand. And it was also easy to follow Newton, because bodies acted "as if" they transferred energy or momentum. In Descartes' model, God was external to the mind/body issue, being essentially left out. Not in the meditation. God is needed, actually the goodness of God is needed to avoid the dream argument consequence. When you feel something real, it is real, because God will not lie to you, basically. I don't follow Descartes, on this, but his text "In search of the truth" makes me think that Descartes was himself not quite glad with this. So using the Descartes model, God (or some Cosmic Mind), who actually did these adjustments, could be left out of the universe. And mind was then treated as material. At the time of Descartes and Leibniz, there was a fork in the road, and science took the more convenient path of Newton and Descartes (materialism), which works quite well if you gloss over the unsolved mind/body problem --- until you look for a self or a God or a Cosmic Mind. Not there, as in Dennet's materialism. No wonder scientists are mostly atheists, since God doesn't fit into their model of the universe. While in Leibniz, God is necessary. for the universe In my opinion, Descartes too, but was perhaps willingly unclear to avoid problems with the authorities. Bruno Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/14/2012 ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Jason Resch Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-11, 14:53:26 Subject: Re: pre-established harmony As I understand it, the?eibniz's?ational for advocating the pre-established harmony idea was Newton's discovery of conservation of momentum. ?escartes knew that energy was conserved, but not momentum. ?his would have permitted a non-physical mind to alter the trajectories of particles in the mind so long as the speed of the particles remained unchanged. ?ewton's revelation however was that in order for the motion of one particle to be changed, another physical particle must have an equal and opposite change in momentum. ?his does not permit a non physical force to change the motion of particles, and hence Leibniz concluded that the mental world does not affect the physical word, or vice versa. ?ather, they were made to agree beforehand (you might think of it as a bunch of souls watching a pre-recorded movie of the physical world, but this pre-recorded movie also agrees with the intentions of the souls watching it). In Monadology, published in 1714, Leibniz wrote ?escartes recognized that souls cannot impart any force to bodies, because there is always the same quantity of force in matter. Nevertheless he was of opinion that the soul could change the direction of bodies. But that is because in his time it was not known that there is a law of nature which affirms also the conservation of the same total direction in matter. Had Descartes noticed this he would have come upon my system of pre-established harmony. Jason On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 6:37 AM, Roger <rclo...@verizon.net> wrote: Hi Stephen P. King As I understand it, Leibniz's pre-established harmony is analogous to a musical score with God, or at least some super-intelligence, as composer/conductor. This prevents all physical particles from colliding, instead they all move harmoniously together*. The score was composed before the Big Bang-- my own explanation is like Mozart God or that intelligence could hear the whole (symphony) beforehand in his head. I suppose that this accords with Leibniz's?elief that God, whoc is good, constructed the?est possible world where as a miniomum, that least physics is obeyed. Hence Voltaire's ?oolish criticism of Leibniz in Candide that how could the volcanic or earthquake disaster in Lisbon be part of the most perfect world ? Thus, because physics must be obeyed, sometimes crap happens. * As a related and possibly explanatory?oint, L's universe completely is nonlocal. Roger , rclo...@verizon.net 8/11/2012 ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Stephen P. King Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-11, 01:56:41 Subject: Re: Where's the agent ? Who or what does stuff and is aware of stuff ? Hi Roger, ? I have noticed and read your posts. Might you write some remarks about Leibniz' concept of pre-established harmony? On 8/10/2012 8:53 AM, Roger wrote: Hence I follow Leibniz, even though he's difficult and some say contradictory. That agent or soul or self you have is your monad, the only (alhough indirectly) perceiving/acting/feeling agent in all of us, but currently missing in neuroscience and neurophilosophy. -- Onward! Stephen "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." ~ Francis Bacon -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.