Leibniz's World-Apart Doctrine

In Brown Gregory & Yual Chiek (eds.), Leibniz on Compossibility and Possible Worlds. Cham: Springer. pp. 37-63 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Leibniz's World-Apart Doctrine states that every created substance is independent of everything except God. Commentators have connected the independence of substance asserted by World-Apart to a variety of important aspects of Leibniz's modal metaphysics, including his theory of compossibility and his notion of a possible world (including what possible worlds there are). But what sort of independence is at stake in World-Apart? I argue that there is not a single sense of "independence" at stake, but at least three: what I call "causal", "phenomenal", and "ontological" independence. Further, I distinguish two versions of each type of independence: what I call "basic" and "strict" versions. I argue that only basic versions can be legitimately attributed to Leibniz. In light of this result, I conclude, pace previous commentators, that World-Apart has little impact on Leibniz's modal metaphysics.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Leibniz’s Theory of Universal Expression Explicated.Ari Maunu - 2008 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 38 (2):247-267.
Divine mathematics: Leibniz's combinatorial theory of compossibility.Jun Young Kim - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 106 (C):60-69.
Wittgenstein on the substance of the world.Ian Proops - 2004 - European Journal of Philosophy 12 (1):106–126.
Leibniz's palace of the fates: A 17th century virtual reality system.Eric Steinhart - 1997 - Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 6 (1):133-135.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-10-19

Downloads
551 (#51,164)

6 months
120 (#45,414)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Adam Harmer
University of California, Riverside

Citations of this work

Leibniz on determinateness and possible worlds.Adam Harmer - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (1):e12469.
Leibniz's Causal Road to Existential Independence.Tobias Flattery - 2023 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 27 (1):93-120.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references