Short Intro to Leibniz' Monadology

[@EndingSimple]

Leibniz said each monad had a 'soul.' I think that by this he had in the back of his mind the idea of what we would today call a computer program or a algorithm. The one thing that is not a biological being that is self-directing. We know that he was a pioneer in creating mechanical calculators. I think he was trying to express the idea of something that could be self-directing, but not physical, so he fell back on saying 'soul.' But his idea was that simple monads had simple programs, while more complex monads had more complex programs. I think this is very close to the idea of cellular automata ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton). Things like John Conway's Game of Life (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life). A set of small monads (cells) with small programs, goes on to create patterns that look like things seen in nature. This is what Stephen Wolfram's New Kind of Science (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science) is built on. Robert Wright's book "Three Scientists and their Gods" has a section where Ed Fredkin (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin) talks about his theory of Digital Physics, and it goes on to show how you could arrive at a theology from it, which has a lot of echoes of Leibniz, I think. Just goes to show how massively ahead of its time his intellect was. Its really a shame that such an intellect lived in such a technologically limited time that constrained him so. The idea of what he would have come up with in the present day just boggles the mind.

[@PulsatingShadow]

Might have something in common with the Gnostic Spark.

[@Pasopjeroen]

Thank you for explaining!

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

My pleasure, and thanks for watching!

[@sterlingbuck967]

Do you think that with Leibnizs views on spirituality in reference to numbers that theoretically a Mathematical expression for the Monad could be represented.

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

I know nothing. Anyone out there have an answer?

[@jimmyfaulkner1855]

I recently began studying Leibniz’s metaphysical views best expressed by his ideas of monads. I would like some philosophical aid and guidance in understanding his position and whether it makes sense (since I’m a newcomer). Why does Leibniz exactly conclude that whatever substances are, they must be mind-like? It appears to me (so far) that Leibniz is either a type of pluralistic idealist or a panpsychist (or perhaps both). It also appears to be a mentalistic form of atomism (if my concept or idea of a monad is wrong, please correct me). Is it accurate to describe monads as dimensionless mathematical points or singularities? A big claim that stood out to me from Leibniz is that we know from our experience that the mind is unified and indivisible. Is this really an accurate claim though? Does that we really fit with our own conscious experience of reality? Leibniz also seemed to believe that monads never interact with the body or one another (being established by God in a pre-established harmony - a modified version of Occasionalism). This feels to me like infinite solipsism (since Leibniz said there could potentially be infinite monads that don’t interact with the body or each other) and isn’t this a reductio ad absurdum? Surely monads can’t be windowless like he claimed but windowed? Overall, does Leibniz make some good points with his theory or is it just bad? An interesting modern theory of consciousness today is a model developed by the American cognitive and neuroscientist Donald Hoffman. His model is called ‘Conscious Realism’ and he argues that conscious agents are fundamental and give rise to space, time and matter. These conscious agents also continuously interact with one another. This seems to me to be a modern day interactive version of Leibniz’s monadology and seems a lot more tenable to me. Thanks for reading and I hope I didn’t come across as stupid.

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

I'm not sure I know Leibniz well enough to answer myself! A mentalistic form of atomism, a pluralistic idealism, and panpsychism all seem like pretty good descriptions to me; I'm not so comfortable with the dimensionless mathematical points description. --- "Why does Leibniz exactly conclude that whatever substances are, they must be mind-like?" Well, we _have_ minds. (Or we _are_ minds.) So minds exist. They aren't matter, but they must be _something_ . Is there a better way than to classify them as substances? --- "A big claim that stood out to me from Leibniz is that we know from our experience that the mind is unified and indivisible. Is this really an accurate claim though? Does that we really fit with our own conscious experience of reality?" What would part of a mind be like? --- "This feels to me like infinite solipsism (since Leibniz said there could potentially be infinite monads that don’t interact with the body or each other) and isn’t this a reductio ad absurdum?" Why would it be a _reductio_ ? And I don't see how it could be solipsism either: There is more to the world than just my mind; I just don't have direct access to it. --- "Surely monads can’t be windowless like he claimed but windowed?" He does give an argument that they can't have windows. "Overall, does Leibniz make some good points with his theory or is it just bad?" --- I think it's terrific. The argument that mind cannot be matter seemed like a good argument to me, for example. Probably a number of other good points, although I wouldn't say his theory is entirely correct either.

[@TheJohnnyCalifornia]

It is an interesting question and does somewhat require a perspective that is difficult to imagine since it grew up in the context of the time. Essentially I’d suggest the idea is that since minds are designed to perceive the world in some specific ways then it is not too much of a stretch to suppose the world is structured in a similar way. As far as the interaction between monads or more accurately the absolute absence of any real interaction, that seems to suggest that what we perceive as existence is actually the Supreme Monad or God basically imagining many different possible interactions in a kind of simulation. The supreme monad contains the knowledge of all other monads and so it basically runs the program of existence and then outputs the results into the minds of the separate monads. It’s odd how the monadology seems to resonate with an information based view of reality.

[@SamMcDonald83]

I've been studying functional programming recently and monads come up a lot there (category theory too). Curious how that relates to Leibniz's view

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

Awesome. But I don't know.

[@SamMcDonald83]

Well it's interesting because there's a notion in functional programming of "purity". It's a rather complicated topic but basically it's means the values in a program never change once they're assigned. This creates an issue because any interaction with the"real world" typically involves changing values. Function programmers get around this issue by using monads. In this context monads are data structures that can separate the pure part of the programme from impure parts. I guess they took the concept of monads from Leibniz but applied it in a different way🤔

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

Cool!

[@billyblim1213]

Sounds like a variety of idealism.

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

Yes. Or something very similar at least.

[@johncracker5217]

No duh.. it’s rehashed Platonism that Leibniz used to organize his own thoughts about the subject. Monads are an iteration of forms but reworked to account for the antinomies provided by Descartes Aristotle and Spinoza

[@Joargeh]

thank you for this

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

My pleasure, and thanks for watching!

[@maxqubit]

As there can be only, and exactly, 1 Everything ... that Everything (aka our Universe incl us) is ... an Atom

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

That could be very Leibniz, if you mean one Supermonad that, in a sense, contains everything. Or not Leibniz at all if you mean there is just one thing that exists. That's more Spinoza.

[@maxqubit]

@@TeacherOfPhilosophy Both wondered about God. Well, ... God=Nothing (Nothing cannot Exist, (therefor) Everything MUST Exist ... map Creator/Creation/Creativity onto this you get Creation=Everything, Creator(aka God)=Nothing, Creativity=DynamicChange of Everyting with Time=Change)

[@TeacherOfPhilosophy]

Not following, sorry.

[@maxqubit]

@@TeacherOfPhilosophy Sorry, it is very condensed. Anyway it's a longer story ... you might be interested. No hurry. 👍

[@maxqubit]

@@TeacherOfPhilosophy ... anyway, if Leibniz was alive today, you probably would have loved to interview him👍 cheers, keep up the work, Max