This paper examines Leibniz’s views on the theistic doctrine of continual creation and considers their implications for his theory of finite substance. Three main theses are defended: (1) that Leibniz takes the traditional account of continual creation to involve the literal re-creation of all things in a successive series of instantaneous states, (2) that a straightforward commitment to the traditional account would give rise to serious problems within Leibniz’s theory of finite substance and his metaphysics more generally, and (3) that (...) Leibniz does not straightforwardly affirm the continual creation doctrine, despite certain texts that initially seem to suggest otherwise. I also present a more speculative interpretive hypothesis about what Leibniz’s considered view of creation might have been, namely that in a single act, God creates and conserves substances that are non-spatial and atemporal at the deepest level of reality. (shrink)

There has recently been a growing interest in the topic of vagueness and indeterminacy in contemporary metaphysics, with two views taking center stage. The semantic view holds that indeterminacy is due to vagueness in the extension of concepts, while the ontological view holds that indeterminacy is due to the vagueness of certain objects. There has, however, been little research on discussions of vagueness and indeterminacy in early-modern philosophy despite the relevance of vagueness and indeterminacy for issues such as real and (...) nominal definitions, clear and distinct ideas, and the principle of complete determination. In this paper, I survey discussions of vagueness in Locke, Leibniz, and Kant and point to ways in which the problem of vagueness and indeterminacy touches on broader issues in their respective philosophies. Although Locke, Leibniz, and Kant all suggest that vagueness is a semantic phenomenon, Kant also appears to countenance an ontological view according to which objects as appearances may sometimes be indeterminate. (shrink)

This is a survey of the concept of continuity. Efforts to explicate continuity have produced a plurality of philosophical conceptions of continuity that have provably distinct expressions within contemporary mathematics. I claim that there is a divide between the conceptions that treat the whole continuum as prior to its parts, and those conceptions that treat the parts of the continuum as prior to the whole. Along this divide, a tension emerges between those conceptions that favor philosophical idealizations of continuity and (...) those that are more readily available for mathematico-scientific use. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper expounds and critically assesses G. W. Leibniz’s mature theory of the cohesion of material bodies. Leibniz’s later view of cohesion was forged in polemical engagement with the views of John Locke and the Dutch natural philosopher Nicolaas Hartsoeker and it is in Leibniz’s response to Locke in his New Essays on Human Understanding, and especially his correspondence with Hartsoeker, that the theory is revealed. After setting out Locke’s theory of solidity and cohesion, the paper examines Leibniz’s response to (...) Locke in the New Essays. It then proceeds to the mechanical theory of conspiring motions developed in the Hartsoeker correspondence. The final section of the paper poses three problems for Leibniz’s theory – explanatory, empirical, and conceptual. (shrink)

In this paper we study the impact of Leibniz’s critique of infinite numbers in his metaphysics of bodies. After presenting the relation that the German philosopher establishes in his youth between the notions of body, extension and infinite quantities, we analyze his thoughts on the paradoxes of the infinite numbers and we claim that his defense of the inconsistency of such numbers is an inflexion point in his conception of body and mark the beginning of his offensive against the res (...) extensa. (shrink)