Forgive me, for this post I must include a reading list. Contact me for assistance if you cannot find the required texts for this post, but they are necessary for your understanding.

REQUIRED:

1. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Monadology.
2. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics
3. William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience, esp. Lectures I, II, & XX
4. David Hume: Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
5. (https://www.youtube.com/@penelopeslectures)Professor Penelope Haulotte’s lectures on:
   • Spinoza
   • Leibniz
   • Locke
   • Hume
6. THE POEM WRITTEN UPON ONE’S OWN SOUL

OPTIONAL:

1. Rene Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy
2. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Theodicy
3. David Hume: Dialogues concerning Natural Religion
4. Plato: Meno
5. Margaret Wise Brown: Goodnight Moon
6. Robert Musch: I Love you Forever
7. Douglas Wood: Old Turtle

PRE-READ TONAL ATTUNEMENT FOR THE APPETITE OF ONE’S MONAD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi33SvaDfB4

A final note: I am aware this argument is shaky on it’s own. I am aware of a multitude of sound objections, most especially that of subjectivity, to William James’s work as well as the concept of an empirical basis of metaphysics. Further, this paper is in no way fully mature. It should be edited. In the future it may be, in another volume, another time. Finally, YES I KNOW KANT EXISTS, I’M DOING SOMETHING ELSE.

It’s a start. My endeavor is not finished. My argument is perfect, you just don’t know it yet.

Without further ado

TO BE READ TO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0MPZgfu93c&t=1368s

In listening to Professor Haulotte’s lecture on Hume’s skeptical empiricism, I was stricken by his comparison and classification of humans to and as animals. This is true, and I do not intend to try and refute, rather to build upon it in a way which undermines Hume’s conclusions which he draws from it. In short, I believe that dismissing the truth of human reason on the grounds that animals live by habit, and thus humans live by habit by extension is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As professor Haulotte points out in her lecture, Pavlov did in fact succeed in proving this scientifically in his famous dog experiments. Indeed the entire school of behaviorist psychology exists upon the foundation that human psychology can be explained via observation and training of behavior. However, and permit me to flex my humble and wholly journeyman-level education in the field of psychology, this school is simply that – a school. It is not the whole picture of human psychology (as much as it’s adherents try to say it is). While compelling, I ultimately cannot accept Hume’s epistemic assertion that reason, and thus metaphysics, is naught but a continual habit. As time, scientific inquiry, especially the field of psychology, and philosophy itself have progressed, I believe that a more Leibnizian view of epistemology and metaphysics both is beginning to win out as a more sound view of truth and its nature.

In order to lay out my argument concerning this assertion, it is prudent that I lay out first my own understanding of the two systems of metaphysics (or, more accurately, acceptance and rejection of metaphysics) laid out by Leibniz and Hume. Both are deeply intertwined with their respective philosopher’s epistemic convictions, so it is thus also necessary that I lay out my understanding of their respective epistemologies. After I have done so, I will lay out my argument thus: that modern, though not necessarily mainstream, psychological and physical theories, as time has progressed, lend themselves more to a Leibnizian view of reality than a Humean view. In the coming decades, I believe that a shift in scientific thinking may take place which moves away from pure empiricism, and towards a more “compatibilist” (to borrow from free-will terminology) theory of knowledge.

Beginning with Leibniz’s epistemology, which extends to become the foundation of his metaphysics, to my understanding he asserts that truth falls into two camps: truths of reason and truths of fact. Truths of reason are a priori truths, truths that are necessarily true in order for reality to be coherent. Leibniz classifies Logic, Mathematics and Metaphysics into this category because for them to be otherwise would not constitute a world at all. My favorite example of this is the logical principle of non-contradiction. Something cannot be both true and false at the same time, that’s absurd and doesn’t make any sense. So we can say that this principle is necessarily true, for if it were otherwise reality wouldn’t exist at all in a coherent manner. The second, and subordinate type of truths are truths of fact, or contingent truths, meaning truths that are true by virtue of our observing them, but do not necessarily have to be true in order for reality to be coherent. One of Leibniz’s examples of such a truth is Caesar crossing the Rubicon in the way he did in our world. It is not impossible for such an event to have happened differently, so this truth is contingently true and of the second type.

This theory of truth is then extended into Leibniz’s metaphysics, which we might describe as “rationalist monadism.” What this means is that the world boils down to indivisible rational substances, called monads, which make up the foundation of reality and whose existence are necessarily true. To Leibniz, the world must be made up of indivisible substances in order to be coherent. All predicates, that is all properties, activities and relations, things we observe, must have something upon which they rest which they are acting upon. It makes no sense to say “something is moving” if there is no something to do the moving. So monads are those indivisible substances which make up reality as we know it. It is important to note that these monads are decisively different from the classical belief around the atom. Monads are explicitly not physical things, but rational things, meaning they have no extension. Leibniz believed that the atom made no logical sense on its face, in the same way the “largest number” is a contradiction, the “smallest piece of extended physical matter” is a contradiction in that so long as something physically exists in space, the space in which it is extended can be divided and it is thus not a truly indivisible. By contrast, Monads occupy no physical space and thus, to Leibniz are truly simple in that they have no other constituent parts. This is important, as it essentially rejects materialism entirely, opting for a world which at its foundation is rational, not material. In this way, the existence of monads, to Leibniz, is a necessary truth, as without it, reality wouldn’t make sense. Finally, because substances, to Leibniz, are ideas which satisfy the “concept containment” theory of truth, or they are ideas which contain all that was, is and will be true about a given idea, each monad is the “complete concept” of an individual substance, meaning it contains all truths that were, are and will be true about it. In this way we can call them “monads” in that they contain all that is true about something in a single (mon-) indivisible substance.

Monads have two qualities: perception and appetite. Perception, as Leibniz defines it is the monad’s mode of expressing the world from it’s own point of view. Because of the way that Leibniz views and defines “substances” at a basic level, each monad is expressing the reality in which it exists insofar as it is in relationship with every other monad in that reality by virtue of being within that same reality. So in this way, each monad reflects, or corresponds to at a very basic level, every other monad in a given reality. Next, monads have appetite, which Leibniz describes as their capacity and “desire” for change of perception. Now, he uses the word desire, in my opinion, to differentiate this from actual causality in the sense of two objects having a direct effect on each other. This will be important later, as it is superficially similar to Hume’s view on causality, but ultimately comes to a completely different conclusion. For now, it is sufficient to say that appetite is an internal quality of monads, in that it is actually causing itself to change in harmony with all other monads in its reality. The change is internally caused in a certain direction, not externally caused based on the movement of other monads. These two qualities give rise to a reality that, to Leibniz, is in a “pre-established harmony.”

The way I understand Leibniz’s monadic harmony is akin to an orchestra (I used to play viola, so this is analogy comes naturally). The orchestra is made up of tens, sometimes hundreds of different people all playing a distinct part with a desire to perfectly play their distinct part. The 1^st violins play one piece of sheet music, which is completely different from the 2^nd violins, which is in turn written in a completely different clef to the bass and cello sections. Each distinct player is most inclined towards their specific expression of the piece, and each specific player’s playing compliments and is in service of each other specific player’s piece, otherwise the sound which the orchestra as a whole plays is disharmonious and may become incoherent and discordant. While each individual player (or monad) acts independently of each other player and is inclined to play their own part to the best of their ability without actually interfering with those other players, Each player is dependent upon the larger whole for the piece to be coherent. In this way too do monads exist both completely independently of each other, while at the same time preserving what we observe as causality and the cohesion of reality.

Next I’ll lay out Hume’s epistemology and metaphysics (or lack thereof). Hume believed truth was reducible to two things. Either truth is a sensory impression, what he calls matters of fact, of something in the world, or it is a relation of ideas which, while consistent and logical, tell us nothing about reality itself. It is necessary to note that, to Hume, sensory impressions are what give way to those abstract ideas upon which we base logical truths. To Hume, even something like 2 is nothing more than the mental representation we create of a sensory impression we once had of two physical objects. From here, we get to Hume’s rejection of metaphysical claims, as although we are able to think about metaphysical things, they are by definition unable to be perceived in the real world as impressions. On this ground, he rejects metaphysics entirely as baseless. This line of belief (I hesitate to call it reasoning for fear of attracting a Humean ire) even gets applied to causality itself. Hume uses two billiard balls to illustrate this. If we look at a billiard ball from a “frame by frame” perspective, there is no point at which we can actually observe, or take a sensory impression of, one ball “causing” another to move. To Hume, this means that our expectation of causality is nothing more than that: an expectation produced by our minds by virtue of our always having observed it to be true. If we take our orchestra analogy from earlier, Hume sees himself (indeed all of us) not as an orchestra player, but a skeptical audience member who, having looked backstage and found no score, followed the orchestra tour bus around town and seen no practice sessions, concludes that all he can be sure of is that there are players playing in sequences which we, as audience members, have come to expect as sounding correct. As Professor Haulotte analogizes in her lecture on the subject, Hume reduces causality and even metaphysics itself to nothing more than Pavlov’s bell.

Now, finally, I shall turn to my initial claim that science and especially psychology have, in their time as scientific projects, lent themselves to a more Leibnizian view of the world than a strictly skeptical empiricist Humean one. I intend to do this in a threefold way. First, I shall undermine Hume’s empiricism by showing its structural incoherence on its own grounds. Second, I shall take Hume’s strict empiricism for fact and show that, even within the bounds of empiricism, there is room for religious/metaphysical experience of some sort by drawing upon the scholarship of William James. Finally, I shall show how these experiences, while not pointing towards a specific religious/metaphysical experience, reinforce Leibniz’s view of reality as opposed to Hume’s, which, if we are going off of evidence alone as our guide for truth, should be adopted, thus casting Hume’s empiricism into his own proverbial flames.

First, on the shakiness of empiricism as a whole. By Hume’s own admission we must reject any and all truth claims about the world which cannot be derived from sensory experience. Either truth is a matter of fact which we observe with our senses or it is a relation of ideas which is logically impossible to contradict, such as the principle of non-contradiction. To Hume there is no other truth aside from these two forking paths, the Humean fork. Hume uses this assumption to make the leap towards skepticism, believing that because of this epistemology, any other claims on truth are meaningless and cannot be accepted. However, this is in itself a conclusion that is neither a matter of fact observable by the senses, nor a tautology which is true by necessity. We cannot observe that the Humean fork is sound via our senses, I don’t even know how you would do that without a perfect, holistic knowledge of reality. Nor is it logical to say that this is true in itself, like A=A. To do so would be to say something like “all truth is either observable or a tautology because all truth is either observable or a tautology.” The reasoning is circular and doesn’t conform to the Humean fork, and thus should be rejected according to Hume himself.

Say we do grant Hume his precious fork. I believe there is an entire category of human experience (sensory perceptions) which Hume completely dismisses in an arbitrary manner. For this portion of my argument I turn to William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience. James was a committed empiricist and psychologist who endeavored to document exactly that: the varieties of human religious experience from an empiricist point of view. The operative word in that title is experience, as James believed that these experiences were admissible as empirical sensory perceptions. To me, his lectures make a compelling argument that such rigid skepticism as employed by Hume and later radical skeptics is entirely too narrow of a worldview, in some cases seemingly opting for doubt for doubt’s sake. James settled on three “broad characteristics of religious life” after examining hundreds of reported religious experiences from across the world. These three characteristics are “that the visible world are part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance,”; “That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end,”; “that prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof – be that spirit ‘God’ or ‘law’ – is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.” (James, 1902/1985, p.418) It is imperative that I stress that James made these assertions after, to the best of his ability, empirically cataloging and collating these experiences. these are the common through lines across disconnected cultures, as James himself admits. From an empirical perspective, the method is sound, whether or not one accepts the metaphysical conclusions James draws. Within a radical empirical framework, the consistency of these experiences across cultures cannot be disputed as they were explicitly observed and documented systematically. These documented experiences, in pointing towards a unified rational reality underlying surface appearances, are, in my opinion, pointing far closer to Leibniz’s metaphysical framework of a pre-established harmony than Hume’s complete abandonment of metaphysics as a project.

At last, we come to my conclusion, thus far I have shown, to the best of my ability, the shaky foundation upon which Hume’s radical empiricism rests within it’s own framework, as well as the fact that an empiricist framework could, if we take James’s writings as fact, account for metaphysical conclusions. Finally, I will now point towards how James’s empirical treatment of metaphysical concepts actually points towards a Leibnizian worldview, as opposed to a Humean. Let us turn back to James’s three features of religious experience. First, that the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance. To me, this is strikingly similar to a Leibnizian monadology. Next, that union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end. Is this not akin to something like pre-established harmony and monadic appetite? Finally, that the spiritual world effects the material world, phenomenal world. This is the Leibnizian rational foundation for reality. I am deliberately avoiding attributing any specific spiritual framework here, my only claim is not the Leibnizian claim to the legitimacy of the Christian view (although this may be where my biases shine through the most). All I am claiming is that James’s writings point towards something metaphysical going on. That something is far closer to a Leibnizian monadology than a complete lack of metaphysical phenomena whatsoever. The evidence just doesn’t point towards a purely empirical epistemology. Metaphysics is too integral to human existence. In this way, I believe, do we differentiate ourselves from Pavlov’s dogs. Yes, on some level we operate based on purely habit and instinct. Behaviorism is a proper and respected school of psychology. But the evidence doesn’t point towards that school having the last word. Perhaps Hume should have taken his own advice when he said “be a philosopher, but amidst your philosophy, still be a man.” The issue, to me, is that Hume has too narrow a view of what “a man” is. An animal, no doubt, but a sapient one. One which provably concerns itself with consistently describable and empirically verifiable abstract concepts which have no place within a purely animal mind. One which consistently has an appetite towards the same things.I leave it up to the reader whether this evidence is sufficient to save Metaphysics, all I’ll say is this: I have found sufficient evidence to cast pure empiricism to the flame.

TO BE ELABORATED IN:

THE ERADICATION OF DOUBT