Hi Craig Weinberg You hit on a weak point. There is no agreed-upon version of Leibniz's definition of substance.
Here's two versions, which do not contradict each other when adjusted (see below). 1. Leibniz [snip] considers substance as "a being gifted with the power of action". 2) L's substances are "complete concepts" , those being corporeal (extended) bodies, so are not ideas and such inextended subjects. L's substances are similar in that respect to Aristotle, except that while Aristotle's substances are of the same stuff, Leibniz says that they must all be different, and not only that, they keep changing. L's MONADS are substances without parts (with no internal boundaries). Two rocks cemented together would have an internal boundary, and each part would be a substance, the whole body being a composite monad or two substances. IMHO mannekins are not wholes, as, say, Caesar is whole, and they also have internal boundaries. By whole subject I mean that to which predicates can be attached. Below an author discusses five versions Leibniz gives of substance and allows for them if the fifth, conflicting version, is omitted. http://www.ditext.com/russell/leib1.html#4 "4. His premisses The principal premisses of Leibniz's philosophy appear to me to be five. Of these some were by him definitely laid down, while others were so fundamental that he was scarcely conscious of them. I shall now enumerate these premisses, and shall endeavour to show, in subsequent chapters, how the rest of Leibniz follows from them. The premisses in question are as follows: Every proposition has a subject and a predicate. A subject may have predicates which are qualities existing at various times. (Such a subject is called a substance.) True propositions not asserting existence at particular times are necessary and analytic, but such as assert existence at particular times are contingent and synthetic. Thc latter depend upon final causes. The Ego is a substance. Perception yields knowlcdge of an external world, i.e. of existents other than myself and my states. The fundamental objection to Leibniz's philosophy will be found to be the inconsistency of the first premiss with the fourth and fifth; and in this inconsistency we shall find a general objection to Monadism. 5. Course of the present work The course of the present work will be as follows: Chaptcrs II.-V. will discuss the consequences of the first four of the above premisses, and will show that they lead to the whole, or nearly the whole, of the necessary propositions of the system. " [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 11/18/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-17, 09:58:35 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding oftheintelligenceofcomputers On Saturday, November 17, 2012 6:26:12 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg But not ONE field. Neither is the brain or body held together by one field. [Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net] 11/17/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-16, 15:57:06 Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding of theintelligenceofcomputers On Friday, November 16, 2012 8:42:24 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg When I say that all bodies live, I failed to state that they must be monads, which means that that they must be of one part. I don't think mannekins would qualify, nor cartoons, which aren't even bodies. " Of one part" I think means that there is something holding the thing (then a substance) together in some way, like life. Or an electromagnetic, biological, or chemical field. But mannequins are held together by chemical and electromagnetic fields. [Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net] 11/16/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-16, 07:16:17 Subject: Re: Re: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding of the intelligenceofcomputers On Friday, November 16, 2012 5:55:41 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg I agree with what you say, but there's no need to humanize the coffee filters nor humanize intelligence or consciousness. I'm not talking here about IQ. My point (speaking here as Leibniz) is that nature down to the lowliest beings (a grain of sand) has intelligence of some sort. Nature is alive, and life is intelligence. My point though is just because we put fibers into a mold or dots on a page into a form we can recognize doesn't mean that we have created new life and intelligence. There is a difference between assembling something from tiny spatial-object parts and something reproducing itself from teleological-experiential wholes. A mannequin is not a person. The plaster and steel the mannequin is made of may certainly have a quality of experience, and although it is hard to speculate on exactly what kinds of experiences those are or what level of microcosm or macrocosm they are associated with, one thing that I am quite certain of is that the plaster and steel mannequin is not having the experience of a human person, no matter how convincing of a mannequin it looks to us to be. The same goes for cartoons, drawings, photos, movies..those things aren't alive or intelligent, but they are made of things which, on some level, are capable of sense participation. Computers are just a more pronounced example. As they improve they may be more convincing imitations of our human intelligence, but that quality of awareness is only a recorded reflection of our own, it is not being generated by nature directly and it is neither alive nor intelligent. Craig [Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 11/16/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-15, 13:53:48 Subject: Re: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding of the intelligence ofcomputers On Thursday, November 15, 2012 9:42:25 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi Craig Weinberg Everything has at least some intelligence or consciousness, according to Leibniz's metaphysics, even rocks. But these "bare naked monads" are essentially in deep, drugged sleep and darkness, or at best drunk. Leibniz called such a state the unconscious way before Freud and Jung. I believe that there is an experience on the micro-level of what the coffee filter is made of - molecules held together as fibers maybe, bit I don't think that it knows or cares about filtering. It's like if you write the letters A and B on a piece of paper - I think there is an experience there on the molecular level, of adhesion, evaporation, maybe other interesting things we will never know, but I don't think that the letter A knows that there is a letter B there. Do you? I don't think the letters have a consciousness because they aren't actually beings, the patterns which they embody to us are in our experience, not independent beings. Craig [Roger Clough], [rcl...@verizon.net] 11/15/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-11-12, 09:54:53 Subject: Re: My embarassing misunderstanding of the intelligence of computers Doesn't mean that a coffee filter is intelligent too? If so, is a series of coffee filters more intelligent than one? What about one with a hole in it? Craig On Sunday, November 11, 2012 8:14:05 AM UTC-5, rclough wrote: Hi I was wrong. According to my own definition of intelligence-- that it is the ability of an entity, having at least some measure of free will, to make choices on its own (without outside help)-- a computer can have intelligence, and intelligence in no small measure. The ability to sort is an example. To give a simple example, a computer can sort information, just as Maxwell's Demon could, into two bins. Instead of temperature, it could just be a number. Numbers larger than A go into one bin, smaller than A go into another bin. It does it all on its own, using an "if" statement. Roger Clough, rcl...@verizon.net 11/11/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/4uRvNZH9oIsJ. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-li...@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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/Ewl6J7rU8jgJ. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. 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