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Jeffrey K. McDonough [30]Jeffrey Keegan Mcdonough [1]
  1.  35
    A Miracle Creed: The Principle of Optimality in Leibniz's Physics and Philosophy.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2022 - New York,NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    "This book introduces Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Principle of Optimality and argues that it plays a central role his physics and philosophy, with profound implications for both. Each chapter begins with an introduction to one of Leibniz's ground-breaking studies in natural philosophy, paying special attention to the role of optimal form in those investigations. Each chapter then goes on to explore the philosophical implications of optimal form for Leibniz's broader philosophical system. Individual chapters include discussions of Leibniz's understanding of teleology, the (...)
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  2. Leibniz on Natural Teleology and the Laws of Optics.Jeffrey K. Mcdonough - 2009 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (3):505-544.
    This essay examines one of the cornerstones of Leibniz's defense of teleology within the order of nature. The first section explores Leibniz's contributions to the study of geometrical optics, and argues that his "Most Determined Path Principle" or "MDPP" allows him to bring to the fore philosophical issues concerning the legitimacy of teleological explanations by addressing two technical objections raised by Cartesians to non-mechanistic derivations of the laws of optics. The second section argues that, by drawing on laws such as (...)
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  3. Berkeley, human agency and divine concurrentism.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2008 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (4):pp. 567-590.
    This paper aims to offer a sympathetic reading of Berkeley’s often maligned account of human agency. The first section briefly revisits three options concerning the relationship between human and divine agency available to theistically minded philosophers in the medieval and early modern eras. The second argues that, of those three views, only the position of concurrentism is consistent with Berkeley’s texts. The third section explores Berkeley’s reasons for adopting concurrentism by highlighting three motivating considerations drawn from his larger philosophical system. (...)
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  4.  62
    Somethings and Nothings: Śrīgupta and Leibniz on Being and Unity.Allison Aitken & Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2020 - Philosophy East and West 70 (4):1022-1046.
    Śrīgupta, a Buddhist philosopher in the Middle Way tradition, was born in Bengal in present-day India in the seventh century. He is best known for his Introduction to Reality with its accompanying auto-commentary,1 in which he presents the first Middle Way iteration of the influential "neither-one-nor-many argument."2 This antifoundationalist line of reasoning sets out to prove that nothing enjoys ontologically independent being.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born some one thousand years later, in the city of Leipzig, situated on the outskirts of (...)
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  5.  68
    Leibniz: Creation and Conservation and Concurrence.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2007 - The Leibniz Review 17:31-60.
    In this paper I argue that the hoary theological doctrine of divine concurrence poses no deep threat to Leibniz’s views on theodicy and creaturely activity even as those views have been traditionally understood. The first three sections examine respectively Leibniz’s views on creation, conservation and concurrence, with an eye towards showing their sys­tematic compatibility with Leibniz’s theodicy and metaphysics. The fourth section takes up remaining worries arising from the bridging principle that conservation is a continued or continuous creation, and argues (...)
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  6. (1 other version)The Heyday of Teleology and Early Modern Philosophy.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2011 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 35 (1):179-204.
    This paper offers a non-traditional account of what was really at stake in debates over the legitimacy of teleology and teleological explanations in the later medieval and early modern periods. It is divided into four main sections. The first section highlights two defining features of ancient and early medieval views on teleology, namely, that teleological explanations are on a par (or better) with efficient causal explanations, and that the objective goodness of outcomes may explain their coming about. The second section (...)
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  7. Leibniz's philosophy of physics.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    entry for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) This entry will attempt to provide a broad overview of the central themes of Leibniz’s philosophy of physics, as well as an introduction to some of the principal arguments and argumentative strategies he used to defend his positions. It tentatively includes sections entitled, The Historical Development of Leibniz’s Physics, Leibniz on Matter, Leibniz’s Dynamics, Leibniz on the Laws of Motion, Leibniz on Space and Time. A bibliography arranged by topic is also included. (...)
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  8. Leibniz's two realms revisited.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2008 - Noûs 42 (4):673-696.
    Leibniz speaks, in a variety of contexts, of there being two realms—a "kingdom of power or efficient causes" and "a kingdom of wisdom or final causes." This essay explores an often overlooked application of Leibniz's famous "two realms doctrine." The first part turns to Leibniz's work in optics for the roots of his view that nature can be seen as being governed by two complete sets of equipotent laws, with one set corresponding to the efficient causal order of the world, (...)
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  9. Leibniz's Optics and Contingency in Nature.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2010 - Perspectives on Science 18 (4):432-455.
    Leibniz’s mature philosophical understanding of the laws of nature emerges rather suddenly in the late 1670’s to early 1680’s and is signaled by his embrace of three central theses.1 The first, what I’ll call the thesis of Contingency, suggests that the laws of nature are not only contingent, but, in some sense, paradigmatically contingent; they are supposed to provide insight into the very nature of contingency as Leibniz comes to understand it. The second, what I’ll call the thesis of Providence, (...)
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  10. Leibniz and the puzzle of incompossibility: The packing strategy.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (2):135-163.
    Confronting the threat of a Spinozistic necessitarianism, Leibniz insists that not all possible substances are compossible—that they can't all be instantiated together—and thus that not all possible worlds are compossible—that they can't all be instantiated together. While it is easy to appreciate Leibniz's reasons for embracing this view, it has proven difficult to see how his doctrine of incompossibility might be reconciled with the broader commitments of his larger philosophical system. This essay develops, in four sections, a novel solution to (...)
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  11.  35
    A Rosa multiflora by Any Other Name: Taxonomic Incommensurability and Scientific Kinds.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2003 - Synthese 136 (3):337-358.
    The following paper attempts to explore, criticizeand develop Thomas Kuhn's mostmature – and surprisingly neglected – view ofincommensurability. More specifically, itfocuses on (1) undermining an influential picture ofscientific kinds that lies at the heartof Kuhn's understanding of taxonomic incommensurability;(2) sketching an alternativepicture of scientific kinds that takes advantage ofKuhn's partially developed theory ofdisciplinary matrices; and (3) using these two resultsto motivate revisions to Kuhn'stheory of taxonomic incompatibility, as well as, tothe purported bridge betweentaxonomic incompatibility and some of the traditionalproblems associated (...)
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  12.  94
    Leibniz's Conciliatory Account of Substance.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2013 - Philosophers' Imprint 13.
    This essay offers an alternative account of Leibniz’s views on substance and fundamental ontology. The proposal is driven by three main ideas. First, that Leibniz’s treatment should be understood against the backdrop of a traditional dispute over the paradigmatic nature substance as well as his own overarching conciliatory ambitions. Second, that Leibniz’s metaphysics is intended to support his conciliatory view that both traditional views of substance are tenable in at least their positive and philosophical respects. Third, that the relationship between (...)
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  13. Leibniz and the Foundations of Physics: The Later Years.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2016 - Philosophical Review 125 (1):1-34.
    This essay offers an account of the relationship between extended Leibnizian bodies and unextended Leibnizian monads, an account that shows why Leibniz was right to see intimate, explanatory connections between his studies in physics and his mature metaphysics. The first section sets the stage by introducing a case study from Leibniz's technical work on the strength of extended, rigid beams. The second section draws on that case study to introduce a model for understanding Leibniz's views on the relationship between derivative (...)
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  14. Hume's account of memory.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2002 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 10 (1):71 – 87.
    This essay attempts to provide a sympathetic reading of Hume’s often tangled discussion of memory in the Treatise. It divides into three main sections. The first section isolates three puzzles in Hume’s account of memory. The second section attempts to show how those puzzles arise as a result of Hume’s understandable failure to recognize a necessary connection between memory and causation. Finally, the third section looks at how the reading of Hume’s account of memory offered in the first two sections (...)
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  15.  36
    Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2023 - Philosophical Review 132 (3):495-499.
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  16. Numbers, minds, and bodies: A fresh look at mind-body dualism.John O'Leary-Hawthorne & Jeffrey K. McDonough - 1998 - Philosophical Perspectives 12:349-371.
    In this essay, we explore a fresh avenue into mind-body dualism by considering a seemingly distant question posed by Frege: "Why is it absurd to suppose that Julius Caesar is a number?". The essay falls into three main parts. In the first, through an exploration of Frege’s Julius Caesar problem, we attempt to expose two maxims applicable to the mind-body problem. In the second part, we draw on those maxims in arguing that “full blown dualism” is preferable to more modest, (...)
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  17.  75
    Leibniz, Spinoza and an Alleged Dilemma for Rationalists.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2015 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 2.
    In a stimulating recent paper, “Violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (in Leibniz and Spinoza),” Michael Della Rocca argues that rationalists face a daunting dilemma: either abandon the Principle of Sufficient Reason or embrace a radical, Parmenidian-style monism. The present paper argues that neither historical nor contemporary rationalists need be afraid of Della Rocca’s dilemma. The second section reconstructs Della Rocca’s argument in five steps. The third section argues that Leibniz’s treatment of relations undermines one of those steps in (...)
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  18. Comments on Roger Ariew's “Descartes and Leibniz as readers of suarez”.Jeffrey K. McDonough - manuscript
    Comments on Roger Ariew’s “Descartes and Leibniz as Readers of Suarez," presented at Franscico Suarez, S.J.: Last Medieval or First Early Modern?, London, Ontario, University of Western Ontario, September 2008.
     
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  19. Comments on Sukjae Lee's “Berkeley on the activity of spirits”.Jeffrey K. McDonough - manuscript
    Comments on Sukjae Lee's "Berkeley on the Activity of Spirits," presented at Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Baltimore, MD, December 2007.
     
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  20.  21
    JHP Announcements.Peter Forshaw & Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2008 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (1):185-86.
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  21. Comments on Andy Egan’s "Second-Order Predication and the Metaphysics of Properties".Jeffrey K. McDonough - manuscript
    Comments on Andy Egan’s "Second-Order Predication and the Metaphysics of Properties," presented at California State University Long Beach, CA 2003.
     
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  22. Comments on Daniel Garber's Metaphysics and Theology: The Role of the Monadology in Leibniz's Essais de Théodicée.Jeffrey K. McDonough - manuscript
    In his rich and engaging essay, Professor Garber asks most centrally, “…what was the relation between Leibniz’s metaphysical project as set out in the so-called ‘Monadologie’ and the more theological project in the Essais de Théodicée?” His answer is, in short, that there isn’t much of a relationship between these two great works. Furthermore, he takes this result to be evidence of Leibniz’s not being a systematic philosopher in the spirit of Descartes or Spinoza. In these brief comments, I revisit (...)
     
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  23. Descartes' "Dioptrics" and Descartes' Optics.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2015 - In Lawrence Nolan (ed.), The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press.
    The Dioptrique, often translated as the Optics or, more literally, as the Dioptrics is one of Descartes’ earliest works. Likely begun in the mid to late 1620’s, Descartes refers to it by name in a letter to Mersenne of 25 November 1630 III, 29). Its subject matter partially overlaps with Descartes’ more foundational project The World or Treatise on Light in which he offers a general mechanistic account of the universe including the formation, transmission, and reception of light. Although Galileo’s (...)
     
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  24.  53
    Leibniz: Body, substance, monad (review).Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2011 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 49 (3):380-381.
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  25. Penultimate draft.Jeffrey K. McDonough - unknown
     
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  26.  32
    Rough Drafts without Tears.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2000 - Teaching Philosophy 23 (2):127-137.
    In writing papers, students confront two obstacles. First, they may not know what philosophical writing is, mistaking an extended statement of their opinion for a philosophy paper. Second, some students lack certain key writing skills and so have difficulty organizing and conveying their view on a philosophical issue. In addition to reading good philosophical works, students need practice writing, editing, and revising their work and so rough drafts become a key component in teaching philosophical writing. This paper outlines the traditional (...)
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  27.  28
    Saints, heretics, and atheists: a historical introduction to the philosophy of religion.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2022 - New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    This book offers a historical introduction to fundamental questions in the philosophy of religion. It is divided into twenty-five chapters. The first chapter discusses the nature of piety drawing on Plato's Euthyphro. The next three chapters discuss the nature of evil, free will, foreknowledge, and sin in the context of Augustine's On Free Choice of Will. Chapter Five discusses Anslem's "ontological" argument for the existence of God. Chapter Six explores Ibn Sina's account of the nature of the soul and immortality. (...)
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  28.  65
    Teleology: A History.Jeffrey K. McDonough (ed.) - 2020 - New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    This volume explores the intuitive yet puzzling concept of teleology as it has been treated by philosophers from the time of Plato and Aristotle to the present day. Philosophical discussions are enlivened and contextualized by reflections on the implications of teleology in medicine, art, poetry, and music.
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  29.  66
    Occasionalism: Causation Among the Cartesians. [REVIEW]Colin Chamberlain & Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2013 - Philosophical Review 122 (1):125-128.
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