Leibniz's Fifth Letter (Editing Now).
To Clarke’s 1 and 2 <here>
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1 This time around, I’ll give my answers more fully and broadly, so as to clear away the difficulties. I’m trying to find out whether Clarke is willing to listen to reason, and to show that he is a lover of truth; or whether he will only pick holes in what I am saying, without throwing light on anything.
2 He often goes out of his way to impute to me necessity and fatality; though in my Theodicy I have explained—perhaps better and more fully than anyone else—the true difference between
liberty, contingency, spontaneity,
on the one side; and
absolute necessity, chance, compulsion,
on the other. I still don’t know whether Clarke does this •because he is determined to hang this charge on me, whatever I say; or whether he does it sincerely, which means that he does it •because he hasn’t yet thought hard enough about my views. I’ll soon discover what I should think about this, and will act accordingly.
3 It is true that reasons in the mind of a wise being, and motives in any mind whatsoever, work in a way that corresponds to the effect produced by weights in a balance. Clarke objects that this notion leads to necessity and fatality. But he says it without proving it, and without paying any attention to the explanations I have given at other times [presumably meaning ‘in some of my earlier publications’], in order to remove any difficulties arising about this.
4 He seems also to play with ambiguous terms. There are necessities that ought to be admitted. ·To get straight about this· we must distinguish between •absolute necessity and •hypothetical necessity. We must also distinguish between •the necessity something has because its opposite implies a contradiction (called ‘logical’, ‘metaphysical’, or ‘mathematical’ necessity) and •the moral necessity that is at work when a wise being chooses the best and when any mind follows its strongest inclination.
5 Hypothetical necessity is what future contingent truths have—they get it from God’s •foresight and •pre-ordination, considered as an hypothesis or presupposition (·which why it is called ‘hypothetical’·). We have to admit this kind of necessity unless we follow the Socinians in denying that God has any •foreknowledge of future contingents, and denying that •his providence regulates and governs every particular thing.
6 But neither God’s foreknowledge nor his pre-ordination take anything away from liberty. For God is moved by his supreme reason to choose, out of many •series of things or •possible worlds, the one in which free creatures would make such and such decisions, ·making them freely· though not without his concourse [= ‘deciding freely, but with God going along with the decision’]. In this way he has made every outcome certain and determined, without thereby taking anything away from the freedom of those creatures: God saw the free natures of his creatures in his ideas of them, and his simple decree of choice merely actualises their free natures—it doesn’t alter them.
7 As for moral necessity: this doesn’t detract from freedom either. For when a wise being chooses what is best, and especially when God, the supremely wise being, chooses what is best, that choice doesn’t make him any less free. On the contrary, •not being hindered from acting in the best manner is •the most perfect freedom! And when a more ordinary person chooses on the basis of what good is most evident to him and inclines him most strongly, he is imitating—more or less closely, depending on his character—the freedom of a truly wise being ·choosing what is actually the best·. Without this, the choice would be blind chance.
8 But true or apparent good—i.e. the motive—inclines without necessitating, i.e. without making it absolutely necessary for the person to act as he does. Take the case of God, for instance: when he chooses the best, the less perfect options that he doesn’t choose are nevertheless possible. If his choice were absolutely necessary, any alternative would be impossible—which contradicts the fundamental idea that God chooses among possibles, i.e. among many options none of which implies a contradiction.
9 But the inference God can’t NOT choose what is best; so anything that he doesn’t choose is impossible is just a case of conceptual muddle, confusing
- power with will,
- metaphysical necessity with moral necessity,
- essences with existences.
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9. Quinto escrito de Leibniz (18 de agosto de 1716)
A la 1 y 2 de Clarke
1 Esta vez, daré mis respuestas de manera más completa y amplia, para eliminar las dificultades. Quiero averiguar si Clarke está dispuesto a escuchar la razón y demostrar que es un amante de la verdad, o si sólo va a buscar agujeros en lo que yo estoy diciendo, sin arrojar luz sobre nada.
2 Él a menudo se sale de su camino para imputarme necesidad y fatalidad; aunque en mi _Teodicea_ he explicado (tal vez mejor y más cumplidamente que nadie) la verdadera diferencia entre
libertad, contingencia, espontaneidad, por un lado; y
necesidad absoluta, coincidencia, coacción, por el otro. Todavía no sé si Clarke hace esto •porque está decidido a amarrarme esta cargo, diga lo que yo diga; o si lo hace sinceramente, lo que significa que •todavía no ha meditado mis concepciones con suficiente cuidado. Pronto descubriré lo que debo pensar sobre esto, y actuaré en consecuencia.
3 Es cierto que las razones en la mente de un ser sabio, y que los motivos en cualquier mente en absoluto, obran de la misma manera que los pesos en una balanza. Clarke objeta que esta noción conduce a la necesidad y la fatalidad. Pero lo dice sin probarlo, y sin prestar atención alguna a las explicaciones que he dado en otras ocasiones [presumiblemente quiere decir: "en algunas de mis publicaciones anteriores"] a fin de eliminar cualquier dificultad que surja sobre esto.
4 También parece jugar con términos ambiguos. Hay necesidades que tienen que ser admitidas. {Para aclarar esto, debemos distinguir entre la •necesidad absoluta y la •necesidad hipotética. También debemos distinguir entre •la necesidad que algo posee porque su opuesto implica una contradicción (llamada necesidad "lógica", "metafísica" o "matemática") y •la necesidad moral, que opera cuando un sabio elige lo mejor y cuando cualquier mente sigue su más fuerte inclinación.
5 La necesidad hipotética es la que poseen las verdades contingentes futuras; la obtienen de la visión anticipada de Dios y de su •pre-ordenación, considerada como una hipótesis o presuposición ({por lo que se llama 'hipotética'}). Tenemos que admitir este tipo de necesidad a menos que sigamos a los socinianos, quienes niegan que Dios tenga un •conocimiento anticipado de futuros contingentes y que •su providencia regule y gobierne cada cosa particular.
6 Pero ni el conocimiento previo de Dios ni su pre-ordenación le quitan nada a la libertad. Porque Dios está motivado por su razón suprema a elegir, entre muchas •series de cosas o •mundos posibles, aquél en que las criaturas libres toman tales y tales decisiones, {tomándolas libremente} aunque no sin su concurrencia [= 'decidiendo libremente, mas con Dios acompañándolos en la decisión']. De esta manera Él ha hecho seguras y determinadas a todas las consecuencias, sin por ello quitar ni un ápice de libertad a esas criaturas: Dios vio la naturaleza libre de sus criaturas en su idea de ellas, y la su decreto simple decreto de elección no hace sino actualizar sus naturalezas libres, sin alterarlas.
7 En cuanto a la necesidad moral, ésta tampoco menoscaba la libertad. Porque cuando un sabio escoge lo que es mejor, y especialmente cuando Dios, el ser sabio por excelencia, elige lo que es mejor, esa elección no lo hace menos libre. Por el contrario, •no verse impedido de actuar de la mejor manera es •la libertad más perfecta. Y cuando una persona más ordinaria elige sobre la base del bien que resulta más evidente para ella y la inclina de la manera más poderosa, está imitando (más o menos de cerca, según su carácter) la libertad de un ser verdaderamente sabio {eligiendo lo que de hecho es mejor}. Sin esto, la elección sería una ciega casualidad.
8 Pero el bien verdadero o aparente (es decir, el motivo) inclina sin coaccionar, es decir, sin hacer que sea absolutamente necesario para la persona actuar como actúa. Tómese el caso de Dios, por ejemplo: cuando elige lo mejor, las opciones menos perfectas que Él no elige son sin embargo posibles. Si su elección fuera absolutamente necesaria, cualquier alternativa sería imposible; lo que contradice la idea fundamental de que Dios elige entre posibles, es decir, entre muchas opciones, ninguna de las cuales implica una contradicción.
9 Pero la inferencia de que "si Dios no puede NO elegir lo que es mejor; entonces cualquier cosa que no elija es imposible" es sólo un caso de desaseo conceptual, que confunde:
•el poder con la voluntad,
•la necesidad metafísica con la necesidad moral,
•las esencias con las existencias.
Pues todo lo que es necesario, lo es por su esencia, debido a que su opuesto es auto-contradictorio; pero un contingente que existe debe su existencia al principio de lo que es óptimo [es decir, al principio de que Dios siempre elige lo óptimo], que es una razón suficiente para la existencia de las cosas. Por eso digo que los motivos inclinan sin coaccionar, y que las cosas contingentes implican certeza e infalibilidad, mas no necesidad absoluta. Más acerca de esto en 73 y 76, en la página 41.
10 Ya he demostrado suficientemente bien en mi _Teodicea_ que esta necesidad moral es algo bueno, que conviene a la perfección de Dios, y también al gran principio de las existencias, a saber, la necesidad de una razón suficiente; mientras que la necesidad absoluta o metafísica depende del otro gran principio de nuestros razonamientos, es decir, al principio de las esencias, es decir, el principio de identidad o contradicción; porque lo que es absolutamente necesario es la única opción posible, y su contrario es auto-contradictorio.
11 También he demostrado que nuestra voluntad no siempre sigue exactamente al entendimiento práctico, porque puede tener o encontrar razones para retrasar una decisión hasta que haya tenido tiempo para pensar más.
12 Será una obstinación insensata de parte de Clarke si, después de todo esto, todavía me atribuye la noción de una necesidad absoluta, a menos que tenga algo que decir contra las razones que acabo de ofrecer, razones que llegan al fondo de las cosas, tal vez más de lo que haya hecho cualquiera.
13 En cuanto a la noción de _destino fatal_, con la que Clarke también me acusa {de estar comprometido], éste es otro caso de ambigüedad. Hay destino musulmán, destino estoico y destino cristiano. El destino turco implica que tal-y-tal _ocurrirá_ incluso si se evita su causa, como si fuera absolutamente necesario. La voluntad fatal estoica le dice a un hombre que se mantenga calmado, aguantando pacientemente el curso de los acontecimientos porque sabe que no puede resistirse a él. Pero se conviene [¿Clarke?] en que existe el destino cristiano, un cierto destino que todas las cosas tienen, y que está regulado por el conocimiento y la providencia de Dios. El término "destino" deriva de {el latín} _fari_ = "pronunciar", "decretar"; y en su sentido propio significa el decreto de Dios {sobre lo que va a pasar}. [Eso es cierto de la palabra inglesa 'destino’, que es la que Clarke ha utilizado, y también de la palabra francesa que usa Leibniz.] Y aquellos que se someten al destino cristiano a través de un conocimiento de las perfecciones de Dios… tienen más que simplemente la •paciencia estoica, sino que también están •contentos con lo que Dios ordena porque saben que todo lo que Él hace es lo óptimo; para el mayor bien en general y también el mayor también particular para quienes lo aman.
14 He tenido que desarrollar en detalle con el fin de eliminar las acusaciones malintencionadas de una vez por todas; y espero que mis explicaciones _efectivamente_ las extirpen de la mente de las personas imparciales. Ahora vengo a la objeción de Clarke contra mi deseo de comparar los pesos en una balanza con los motivos en la voluntad. Él objeta que una balanza es meramente •pasiva, y que se mueve por los pesos; mientras que los agentes pensantes que tienen voluntad son •activos. A esto respondo que el principio de la necesidad de una razón suficiente es común tanto a las cosas que actúan como a las que reciben la acción pasivamente: ambas necesitan una razón suficiente para su actuación así como para su afectación. No es sólo que •la balanza no actúe cuando se tira de ella por igual de ambos lados, sino también que •los pesos iguales no actúan cuando están en un equilibrio tal que ninguno puede bajar a menos que el otro suba el mismo tramo.
15 También debe tenerse en cuenta que los motivos, estrictamente hablando, no actúan sobre la mente de la misma manera en que los pesos actúan sobre una balanza. Lo que realmente sucede es que la mente actúa en virtud de sus •motivos, que son sus •disposiciones a actuar. Y así, exigir, como Clarke hace aquí, que la mente a veces prefiera los motivos débiles a los fuertes, e incluso que a veces tenga preferencia por algo que es indiferente, poniendo eso por delante de cualquier motivo; exigir eso, repito, es tratar de dividir la mente de los motivos, como si •estuvieran afuera de la mente y fueran distintos de ella, como los pesos son distintos de la balanza, y como si •la mente tuviera, así como los motivos, otras disposiciones a actuar, en virtud de las cuales podría rechazar o aceptar los motivos. Considerando que, de hecho, los motivos incluyen todas las disposiciones que la mente puede tener para actuar voluntariamente; no sólo sus •razones, sino también cualquier •inclinación que tenga a causa de las pasiones o de otras impresiones anteriores. Por lo tanto, si la mente prefiriera una inclinación débil a una fuerte, estaría actuando contra sí misma, actuando de manera distinta a esa en la que está dispuesta. Lo que muestra que las nociones que Clarke opone a las mías son superficiales; cuando uno las piensa completamente, parecen carecer de toda solidez.
16 Clarke dice aquí que la mente puede tener 'buenas razones' para actuar cuando no tiene motivos y cuando las opciones son absolutamente 'indiferentes'! Ésta es una contradicción obvia; porque si la mente tiene 'buenas razones' para la opción que selecciona, entonces las opciones no le son 'indiferentes'.
17 Y decir que la mente actuará cuando tenga razones para actuar, incluso si las maneras de actuar le son absolutamente indiferentes: esto es hablar de nuevo superficialmente y de manera indefendible. Porque no tienes razón suficiente para actuar a menos que tengas una razón suficiente para actuar exactamente de tal y cual manera; pues cada acción es un {evento} •particular; no algo general, algo abstraído de sus circunstancias; y la acción siempre necesita alguna manera particular de ser ejecutada. Así que cuando hay una razón suficiente para hacer una cosa particular, también hay una razón suficiente para hacerla de cierta manera particular, lo que significa que las diversas formas alternativas de hacerlo no son indiferentes…. Véase también mi 66, en la página 40.
18 Estos argumentos son totalmente obvios; y es muy extraño acusarme de presentar mi principio de la necesidad de razón suficiente sin ninguna prueba extraída de •la naturaleza de las cosas o de •las perfecciones de Dios. Porque •la naturaleza de las cosas requiere que cada evento vaya precedido de sus condiciones, requisitos y disposiciones adecuados; todos los cuales conforman la razón suficiente para el evento.
19 Y •la perfección de Dios requiere que todas sus acciones sean adecuadas a su sabiduría, y que nunca puede reprochársele a Él por actuar sin razón o incluso por preferir una razón más débil a una más fuerte.
20 Al final de este documento [página 49] tendré más que decir sobre la solidez e importancia de este gran principio de la necesidad de una razón suficiente para todo evento; principio cuya negligencia echaría por tierra también la mejor parte de la filosofía. Por lo tanto, es extraño que Clarke diga que, al {aceptar yo} este principio, soy culpable de usar un principio sin haber demostrado antes que tengo derecho a él. Su negativa a permitirme usar uno de los principios más esenciales de la razón es una señal de cuán decidido está a aferrarse a sus opiniones insostenibles. [Leibniz nombra a su supuesta falta 'petitio principi', aunque Clarke no había usado esa frase. Se traduce normalmente como "petición de principio", lo cual quería decir "defender la conclusión a partir de premisas que tienen esa misma conclusión implicada entre ellas". (En los últimos años, la ignorancia y las pretensiones de los periodistas han llevado a que signifique "plantear la cuestión".) Pero está claro que Leibniz, aquí y más especialmente en su 125 de la página 48, lo utiliza para significar "ayudarse uno a sí mismo mediante un principio sin mostrar un derecho a él". La respuesta de Clarke en la última frase de este texto utiliza tanto _petitio principii_ como "dar por supuesta la cuestión" en su sentido habitual.]
A la 3 y 4 de Clarke
21 Tengo que admitir que aunque este gran principio haya sido reconocido, no se ha hecho uso suficiente de él. Ésta es gran parte de la razón por la que la "primera filosofía" [= 'metafísica'] ha sido hasta ahora mucho menos fértil y rigurosa de lo que debería haber sido. Una de las cosas que yo infiero del principio es ésta:
La naturaleza no contiene ningún par de cosas reales que sean indiscernibles una de la otra; porque si lo hiciera, Dios y la naturaleza actuarían sin razón al tratar a una de manera distinta de como tratan a la otra; por lo que Dios nunca produce dos piezas de materia que sean equivalentes e iguales.
Clarke responde a esta conclusión sin refutar la razón de ello, y su respuesta es una objeción muy débil. 'Si este argumento fuera correcto,' dice, 'probaría que Dios no pudo crear ninguna materia en absoluto! Pues las partes perfectamente sólidas de toda la materia, si las consideras como teniendo las mismas formas y tamaños (lo que en teoría siempre es posible), son exactamente iguales." Pero él está claramente obviando la pregunta al "suponer" la semejanza perfecta, que según yo no puede ser aceptado. Esta suposición de dos indiscernibles (e.g., dos piezas de materia que son perfectamente iguales) ciertamente parece ser abstracta, pero no es coherente con el orden de las cosas, ni con la sabiduría de Dios, que no permite nada sin razón. Las personas comunes y corrientes se imaginan tales cosas porque están contentas con nociones incompletas, {por lo tanto, considerar a algo como evidentemente posible sobre la base del argumento de que es posible en abstracto}. Ésta es también una de las fallas de los atomistas.
22 Además, no acepto que la materia tenga partes perfectamente sólidas, partes que sean las mismas por completo, sin variedad ni movimiento entre sus partes, que es lo que se piensa que son los llamados "átomos". La suposición de tales cuerpos es otra opinión popular mal fundamentada [es decir, una opinión ampliamente aceptada por personas relativamente no instruidas]. Mis demostraciones indican que cada parte de la materia está subdividida en partes que se mueven diferenciadamente, sin que ninguno de ellos sea perfectamente como cualquier otro.
23 He dicho que no se pueden encontrar dos cosas perceptibles por los sentidos que sean exactamente iguales; por ejemplo, que no se puede hallar dos hojas perfectamente iguales en un jardín ni dos gotas de agua. Clarke acepta esto por lo que respecta a las hojas y "tal vez" por lo que respecta a las gotas de agua. Pero también podría haberlo admitido sin vacilación, sin un "tal vez", en lo que respecta a las gotas de agua.
24 Creo que estos hechos generales sobre cosas sensibles también son hechos con respecto a cosas imperceptibles (aunque en una escala diferente) … . Y que cuenta bastante contra los indicernibles {grandes o pequeños} que no encontramos ningún ejemplo de ellos {entre las cosas que son lo suficientemente grandes para ser vistas}. Pero Clarke se opone a la inferencia porque (dice) los cuerpos perceptibles son •compuestos, mientras que sostiene que hay cuerpos imperceptibles que son •simples. Repito que no admito cuerpos simples. En mi opinión no hay nada simple excepto monadas genuinas, las cuales ni tienen partes ni son extensas. Los cuerpos simples, y los cuerpos perfectamente semejantes (sean simples o no), son consecuencia de la falsa hipótesis de los átomos y del espacio vacío, o de la filosofía perezosa que no empuja el análisis de las cosas a un nivel suficientemente profundo,
lo que Leibniz escribió: _et s'imagine de pouvoir parvenir aux premier elements corporels de la nature, parce que cela con-tenterait notre imagination._
La precisa traducción de Clarke: y se imagina que puede alcanzar a los primeros elementos materiales de la naturaleza, porque nuestra imaginación estaría satisfecha con ella.
lo que Leibniz puede haber querido decir: y cree que el nivel que ha alcanzado en el mundo material es _básico_, porque satisface a la imaginación.
25 Cuando niego que haya dos cuerpos (gotas de agua o lo que sea) que sean perfectamente iguales, es decir, inseparables entre sí, no digo •que es absolutamente imposible suponerles, pero •que tal cosa es contraria a la sabiduría de Dios, y que por consiguiente no existen.
A la 5 y 6 de Clarke
26 Estoy de acuerdo en que si existen dos cosas perfectamente indiscernibles entre sí, serían dos; pero esa suposición (la cláusula "si") es falsa y contraria al gran principio de la razón, {me refiero al principio de razón suficiente}. Los filósofos del montón se han equivocado al pensar que hay dos cosas que difieren solamente en número, es decir, que difieren porque son dos, y ésa es la fuente de sus rompecabezas sobre el llamado "principio de individuación". La metafísica se ha manejado generalmente como un mero estudio sobre •palabras, como un diccionario filosófico, sin llegar al análisis de las •cosas. Filosofía superficial como la de las personas que creen en los átomos y el vacío sueña cosas que el razonamiento más profunda condena. Espero que mis demostraciones cambien el rostro de la filosofía, a pesar de débiles objeciones como las que Clarke plantea contra mí aquí.
27 Las partes del tiempo y del lugar, consideradas en sí mismas, son cosas ideales; por lo que se parecen perfectamente entre sí como dos •cosas abstractas; como en la declaración de que uno más uno hace dos. Pero esto no aguanta ninguno de los dos •cosas concretas; como dos veces o dos espacios llenos de cosas y, por lo tanto, realmente reales.
28 Clarke parece acusarme de decir que dos puntos del espacio son uno y el mismo punto, y que dos instantes del tiempo son uno y el mismo instante; pero yo no digo ninguna de esas cosas. Pero alguien podría pensar erróneamente que hay dos instantes diferentes donde realmente hay uno solo, {y en tal caso yo le diría: 'En cuanto a esos dos instantes x y y que piensas que tienes: aquí está la evidencia de que todas las características de x, y sólo ellas, son también características de y, lo que muestra que x y y no son dos instantes sino uno}.' Como señalé en el 17 de la páginas 16-17, en geometría solemos suponer •dos cosas, para representar por su medio el error de un oponente, y entonces encontrar solamente una; como cuando alguien piensa que una línea recta corta a otra en dos puntos, y mostramos que estos supuestos 'dos puntos' deben coincidir, de modo que 'ellos' son realmente un punto … .
29 He demostrado que el espacio no es más que un orden de la existencia de cosas consideradas como coexistentes, de modo que la ficción de un universo material finito que se mueve todo junto hacia adelante, en un espacio vacío infinito, no puede ser admitida. Esta ficción es totalmente irrazonable, es algo que no podría suceder. Para empezar, no hay ningún espacio real fuera del universo material; y de todos modos no tendría sentido mover el universo de esa manera; tal acción estaría operando sin producir nada. No se produciría ningún cambio que alguien pudiera observar. Éstas son imaginaciones propias de filósofos de nociones incompletas, quienes hacen del espacio una realidad absoluta. Tales nociones son aptas para ser forjadas por los devotos de las matemáticas puras, cuyo único asunto es el juego de la imaginación, pero son destruidas por un razonamiento más elevado.
30 No parece ser absolutamente imposible para Dios hacer que el universo material sea finito en extensión, pero no hacerlo parece ser más acorde con su sabiduría.
31 Yo no estoy de acuerdo en que todo lo finito sea movible. Según la hipótesis de mis adversarios {Clarke y Newton}, una parte del espacio es algo finito y aún así, inamovible. Cualquier cosa movible debe ser capaz de •cambiar su lugar en relación con algo más, y de •venir a estar en un nuevo estado [aquí significa 'una nueva situación en general'; la referencia no es a su estado intrínseco] que es discernible de aquél en que comenzó; de lo contrario el 'cambio de lugar' sería solamente una ficción. Para que el movimiento de una cosa finita pueda producir algún cambio que sea observable, la cosa debe ser parte de alguna otra cosa finita.
32 Descartes sostiene que la materia es ilimitada, y no creo que esto haya sido refutado adecuadamente. E inclusive si él tuviera razón sobre eso, todavía no se seguiría de ello que la •materia es necesaria, o que •exista desde la eternidad; porque si la materia se diseminara sin límite a través del universo, eso sólo sería porque Dios habría escogido hacerlo así, juzgándolo ser mejor {que cualquier alternativa}.
A la 7 de Clarke
33 Dado que el espacio en sí es una cosa ideal, al igual que el tiempo, el espacio •fuera del mundo debe ser imaginario, como los eruditos [aproximadamente = 'aristotélicos académicos católicos romanos'] mismos han reconocido. El caso es el mismo con el espacio vacío •en el mundo, que tomo también como imaginario, por las razones que ya he dado.
34 En mi contra Clarke menciona el vacío que Guericke descubrió, que se hace bombeando el aire de un frasco; y afirma que realmente hay un vacío perfecto, un espacio sin materia, en al menos una parte del frasco. Los aristotélicos y los cartesianos, que no aceptan que haya un verdadero vacío, han dicho en respuesta al experimento de Guericke… que no hay vacío en el frasco, porque el vidrio tiene poros pequeños a través de los cuales los fluidos muy delgados pueden entrar en el frasco; fluidos como los rayos de luz, las emanaciones de un imán, etc. Estoy de acuerdo con ellos. Creo que el frasco puede compararse con una caja con muchos agujeros en, que contiene peces u otros cuerpos brutos, y se coloca en agua; cuando se quitan los cuerpos brutos, el agua fluiría a través de los agujeros y tomará su lugar. La única diferencia es que
•aunque el agua es fluida y más fácil de empujar que el pescado, etc., es al menos tan pesada y masiva como lo son, mientras que
• El asunto que entra en el frasco de Guericke en lugar del aire es mucho más sutil que el aire.
Así es como los nuevos amigos del vacío manejan este experimento. Según ellos,
lo que hace que algunas materias resistentes {al ser empujadas alrededor} no es el tamaño de su grano sino su cantidad total; de manera que dondequiera que haya menos resistencia hay {menos materia y por tanto} más vacío.
Añaden que la sutilidad de la materia no tiene nada que ver con ello, y que las partículas de mercurio líquido son tan sutiles y finas como las del agua y, sin embargo, el mercurio líquido es más de diez veces resistente. A esto respondo que lo que hace la resistencia no es tanto la •cantidad de materia como la •dificultad de poner a la materia en movimiento. La madera flotante contiene una cantidad más pequeña de materia pesada que un volumen igual de agua, pero da más resistencia a un barco que el agua.
35 En cuanto al mercurio líquido: es cierto que es aproximadamente catorce veces más pesado que un volumen igual de agua, pero eso no implica que contenga catorce veces más materia. Por el contrario, el agua contiene tanta materia {como un volumen igual de mercurio líquido}, si no contamos sólo su propia materia, que es pesada, sino también la materia extraña no pesada, que atraviesa sus poros. Note que el mercurio líquido y el agua son masas de materia pesada que está llena de poros a través de los cuales hay un montón de materia que no es pesada y no crea resistencia sensible. Los rayos luminosos parecen ser de ese tipo, y otros fluidos insensibles {son ejemplos de ella}, especialmente la cuestión que •causa la gravedad [aquí = 'peso'] de cuerpos grandes •alejándolos del centro y, por ende, conduciendo a los cuerpos hacia el centro. {Newton tiene una explicación rival del peso}, una ficción extraña según la cual toda materia gravita hacia cualquier otra materia, lo que implica que cada cuerpo atrae a cada otro cuerpo de acuerdo con sus masas y sus distancias. Esto implica una atracción, estrictamente llamada, {un verdadero tirar de cuerpos entre sí}, no el resultado de empujones inadvertidos entre cuerpos. La explicación correcta para el peso de los cuerpos sensibles (su gravitación hacia el centro de la tierra) es en términos de movimiento de algún fluido {y en términos de empujar, no de tirar}. Lo mismo debe ser cierto para otras "gravities", por ejemplo, los movimientos de los planetas hacia el sol y entre sí. La única forma en que un cuerpo se mueve de forma natural es por estar en contacto con otro cuerpo que lo empuja, después de lo cual se mueve hasta que está bloqueado por otro cuerpo que entra en contacto con él. Cualquier otra clase de operación en los cuerpos es milagrosa o imaginaria.
A la 8 y 9 de Clarke
36 Yo había objetado que el espacio, tomado como algo real y absoluto al margen de los cuerpos, tendría que ser una cosa eterna, incapaz de sufrir acción y no dependiente de Dios. Clarke intenta esquivar esta dificultad diciendo que el espacio es una propiedad de Dios. En respuesta a eso dije, en mi cuarto escrito, que la propiedad de Dios es inmensidad, pero que el •espacio (que a menudo es proporcional a los cuerpos) y la •inmensidad de Dios no son lo mismo.
37 También objeté que si el •espacio es una propiedad, y si el •espacio infinito es la inmensidad de Dios, entonces el •espacio finito tendrá que ser la extensión … de algo finito. De esto se desprende que •el espacio ocupado por un cuerpo será •la extensión de ese cuerpo. Esto es absurdo, ya que un cuerpo puede cambiar de espacio [significa 'cambiar su ubicación'] ¡pero no puede dejar su extensión!
38 También pregunté: Si el espacio es una propiedad, ¿de qué cosa va a ser un espacio vacío y limitado de una propiedad? (Quiero decir un espacio limitado y vacío como Clarke imagina en el frasco de Guericke.) ¡No parece razonable decir que este espacio vacío (tal vez esférico o cúbico) sea una propiedad de Dios! ¿Será una propiedad de las sustancias inmateriales, extendidas e imaginarias que Clarke parece querer ver en los espacios imaginarios?
39 Si el espacio es una propiedad o estado [la palabra de Leibniz es afecto] de la sustancia que está en el espacio, el mismo espacio a veces será un estado de un cuerpo, a veces de otro cuerpo, a veces de una sustancia inmaterial; y quizás a veces, cuando no contiene otras sustancias, materiales o inmateriales, un estado de Dios. ¡Esto es una propiedad o un estado muy extraño, que pasa de ser tenido por una cosa a ser tenido por otra! Las cosas en cuestión se quitarían sus cualidades [la palabra de Leibniz es accidentes] como si fueran ropas, para que otros sujetos puedan vestirse con ellas. A este ritmo, ¿cómo podemos distinguir las cualidades de las sustancias?
40 Todos los espacios finitos juntos conforman espacio infinito; por lo tanto, si los espacios finitos son estados de sustancias finitas que están en ellos, y el espacio infinito es una propiedad de Dios, se sigue que una propiedad de Dios está hecha de estados de cosas creadas; ¡un resultado extraño!
41 Si Clarke negara que el espacio finito es un estado de cosas finitas, eso socavaría su tesis de que el espacio infinito es un estado o propiedad de una cosa infinita. Señalé todas estas dificultades en mi cuarto escrito, pero aparentemente Clarke no ha {siquiera} intentado contestarlas.
42 Tengo otras razones en contra de esta extraña fantasía de que el espacio es una propiedad de Dios. Si fuera así, el espacio entraría en la esencia de Dios. Pero el espacio tiene partes; así que {en esta teoría} habría partes en la esencia de Dios. _¡Spectatus admissi!_ [Esa frase viene de una línea del poeta latino Horacio, que significa aproximadamente 'Mira qué gran tonto está él haciendo de sí mismo!']
43 Y de nuevo: los espacios a veces están vacíos, a veces llenos. Así que la esencia de Dios tendrá partes que a veces están vacías y a veces llenas, lo que significa que la esencia de Dios cambiará perpetuamente… Ese Dios con partes será muy parecido al Dios de los estoicos, que era considerado como un animal divino.
44 Si el espacio infinito es la inmensidad de Dios, el tiempo infinito será la eternidad de Dios. Así que tendremos que decir que lo que sea en el espacio está en la inmensidad de Dios y, por consiguiente, en su esencia, y que lo que sea a tiempo también está en la esencia de Dios. Extrañas expresiones, que muestran que Clarke está abusando del lenguaje.
A continuación, una muestra de los datos del documento: God's immensity makes him present in all spaces. But given that God is in space, how could it be that space is in God, or that space is a property of God? Entonces estamos en el medio de todo esto que esta completamente conectado, a cada objeto en la pequeña astilla de conexión que tiene. Similarly, God exists in each time; so how can time be in God, and how can time be a property of God? G: Sí, las bendiciones no dejan de llegar.
46 Clarke seems to have confused the immensity or the size of things with the space by which that size is measured. Infinite space isn't God's immensity; finite space isn't the size of bodies, any more than time is their duration [= 'how long they last', 'their temporal size']. Los empleados deben archivar su trabajo todos los días y siempre mantener su espacio de oficina libre de obstáculos. No incluye rutina de propagación propia, pero se ha difundido por correo electrónico. [The five occurrences of 'size' in this section translate etendue, which is more usually translated as 'extension'.]
47 Así es como los hombres vienen a formar por sí mismos la noción de espacio: Consideran una serie de cosas existentes a la vez, y encuentran en ellos un cierto •orden de coexistencia, según el cual las cosas se relacionan entre sí más o menos simplemente. This •order is their situation or distance; {i.e. when you know how things are inter-related in terms of this 'order', you know where each thing is, i.e. how far it is from each other thing}. When •one of those coexisting things x changes its relation to a number of others that don't change their relations among themselves, and •another thing y comes to have the same relation to the others that x previously had, then we say that y has 'come into the place of x, and we call this change a 'motion' of the body containing the immediate cause of the change. And when many (or even all) of the coexistent things change at once, if this happens according to certain known rules of direction and speed, we can always work out the spatial relation of each of the things to each of the others; and can also work out how this or that one would have spatially related to this or that other one if the former hadn't changed at all or hadn't changed in the way it did. And supposing (or taking as an invented case) that a large enough number of those coexisting things underwent no change in their relations to one another, we can count these as fixed, and can say that anything y that comes to relate to those fixed things in the way that x used to is now in 'the same place' that x used to occupy. El tao, concebido como algo sin límite e inagotable constituye la totalidad de lo que hay. This shows that all we need in order to have an idea of place (and consequently of space) is to consider these relations amongst things and the rules of their changes; we do not need to imagine any absolute reality beyond the things whose location we are considering. Parece una broma.
place is what we say is first A's and then B's if: •how B relates to the coexisting things C, E, F, G etc. is exactly the same as •how A previously related to C, E, F, G, etc.; supposing there has been no cause of change in C, E, F, G, etc.
Él indicó que qui
place is that which is had first by x and then by y when •x relates in a certain way to various existing things and then, while those things remain fixed, •y comes to relate to them in exactly the same way; fixed existents are those in which there has been •no cause of any change in how they relate to other things, or (the same thing:) in which there has been •no motion.
Así los hacedores cosechan la tecnología de nuestro alrededor.
It might be as well here to mention the difference between •the place that is had first by x and then by y and •the relation to other things that is had first by x and then by y. The difference is this:
It is strictly, literally, exactly the same individual place that is occupied first by x and then by y; but y doesn't come to have the same individual relation to
Tres confirmaron que X había sido objeto de abusos sexuales. Hay otras dos islas en el archipiélago, Ustö y Knarrskär, pero no están incluidas en la reserva.
Pero en esa misma fecha se reúne el Consejo en Berlín, y la Comisión no puede estar en dos lugares al mismo tiempo. [Some philosophers had thought that in various causal transactions what happens is that some property of one thing goes across to another: e.g. that when a red hot poker is plunged in cold water, it's not just that the water gains as much heat ('agreement') as the poker loses, but it gains the very heat ('identity') that the poker loses; this is treating that heat as an 'individual accident', or an 'abstract individual'. The thought was that as well as •the poker (concrete individual) and •heat (abstract universal) there is •the heat of that poker at that time (abstract individual).] But the mind, not contented with an •agreement, looks for an •identity, i.e. for something that is truly the same, and it conceives this as outside these subjects; and that's what we here call 'place' and 'space'. But this can only be an ideal thing, {a conceptual construct}, containing a certain order that the mind conceives in terms of relations {between things}. Así que, este es un ejemplo del tipo de cosas que hago en mi trabajo diario.
The mind can give itself a picture of genealogical 'lines', whose 'size' would consist purely in the number of generations, with each person having his place on one of the lines. Add to this ({for purposes of the illustration}) the fiction of soul-migration, so that
a single human soul could turn up a second time further down the line; if that were to happen, someone who was a father or a grandfather might become a son or a grandson, and so on.
Yet those genealogical places, lines, and spaces, though they would express real truths, would only be ideal things. And here's another example to show how the mind is prompted by accidents that are in subjects to invent for itself something that •corresponds to those accidents but •is outside the subjects. The ratio or proportion between two lines L and M may be conceived three ways:
4) Como proporción del número de personas con respecto a la población en edad de trabajar( con edades comprendidas entre 15 y 64 años).
4) Como proporción del número de personas con respecto a la población en edad de trabajar( con edades comprendidas entre 15 y 64 años).
(3) as something abstracted from both, i.e. the ratio between L and M without considering which is the subject and which the object.
…. In (1) {we have 'L is longer-than-M', which means that} the longer line L is the subject. In (2) {we have 'M is shorter-than-L', which means that} the shorter line M is the subject. Cual de las 2 It can't be said that both of them, L and M together, are the subject of such an accident; because that would yield an accident in two subjects, with one leg in each, and that's contrary to the notion of accidents. So we have to say that in (3) this relation is indeed out of the subjects; but because it is neither a substance nor an accident it must be a purely ideal thing, (a conceptual construct) though a useful one. A final couple of remarks: What I have done here is quite like a procedure that Euclid adopted. He couldn't give his readers a firm grasp of the geometricians' concept of a ratio taken on its own, offered instead a definition of same ratio. Pero para poder explicar de qué se trata necesito dedicar unos minutos a hablar del cáncer. [Then a final few sentences about traces considered as ideal things.]
48 If Clarke's supposed space with no bodies in it is not altogether empty, then what is it full of? ¡Está lleno de abejas! {They would presumably be} immaterial substances that can expand and contract, move around, and easily penetrate each other in the way the shadows of two bodies can penetrate one another on the surface of a wall. I think I see the revival of the funny ideas of Henry More (otherwise a learned and well-meaning man) and of some others who fancied that these spirits can make themselves impenetrable whenever they please. Some have even fancied that man in his state of innocence also had the gift of penetration, and that his fall (the sin of Adam in the garden of Eden) made him become solid, opaque, and impenetrable. Isn't it overthrowing our notions of things to give parts to God and extension to spirits? Ahí radica el desafío que hay que afrontar para que la responsabilidad de proteger no se convierta en un mero espantajo. Men easily blunder into fictions through not properly using that great principle.
A la 10 de Clarke
49 It's wrong to say that a certain duration is eternal; it is all right to say that things that always stay in existence are eternal, always gaining new duration. Anything temporal or durational that exists keeps going out of existence. Ahora sé que no es tan grande como pensaba, y tal vez ni siquiera existe . ¿Cómo logar integrarse en Europa sin perder sus características específicas? The only temporal items that ever exist are instants, and an instant is not a part of time. Anyone who thinks about these remarks will easily grasp that time can only be an ideal thing. And the analogy between time and space helps one to see that the one is as ideal as the other. (I have no objection to the statement that a thing's duration is eternal if it means only that the thing stays in existence eternally.)
50 If •the reality of space and time is necessary to the immensity and eternity of God, if •God must be in space, if •being in space is a property of God, then God must be in some way dependent on time and space; he must stand in need of them. As for the escape-hatch which says that space and time are in God, and are like properties of God, I have already slammed that shut. Eso es parte de la eficiencia que tanto nos preocupa en esta Comisión.
A la 11 y 12 de Clarke
51 I had objected that space can't be in God because it has parts. This leads Clarke to look for another escape-hatch, by using 'parts' in something other than its ordinary sense, maintaining that because space's part can't be pulled apart from one another they aren't really parts. But {for my point to hold good} it is sufficient that space has parts {in the ordinary sense of that word}, whether or not they can be separated from one another. We can specify those parts of space in terms either of the bodies it contains or of the lines and surfaces we can trace on it.
A la 13 y 14 de Clarke
52 In order to prove that space without bodies is an absolute reality, Clarke objected against me that a finite material universe might move around in space. I answered •that it doesn't seem reasonable that the material universe should be finite, and •that even if it were finite it's unreasonable that it should have any motion except what has its parts changing their locations relative to one another, because such a motion would produce no change that could be observed, and would be done without any purpose. As for parts changing their locations among themselves; that's a quite different thing, for in that case we would recognize a motion in space, but what would be changed is just the order of relations. Clarke now replies that the reality of motion doesn't depend upon its being observed, and that a ship can go forward while a man inside it isn't aware of its motion. McINTOSH (ED). - (EN) Gracias, señor Comisario, por su amable respuesta. No existe cambio disponible El ejemplo se basa en el supuesto de que, para calcular el ajuste de los márgenes de garantía, se tienen en cuenta los intereses devengados sobre la liquidez concedida y se aplica un umbral del 1 % de dicha liquidez.
53 I don't find in the eighth definition of Newton's Mathematical Principles of Nature, or in the note attached to it, anything that proves or could prove the reality of space in itself. I do agree that •an absolute genuine motion of a body is different from •a mere change of its location in relation to another body. When the immediate cause of the change •is in body x, that body is truly in motion, and in that case the locations of other bodies in relation to x will be changed as a result, though the cause of that change •is not in them. Strictly speaking, no one body is ever perfectly and entirely still, but we form an abstract notion of stillness by considering the thing mathematically. Thus, I have answered everything that Clarke has offered in defence of the absolute reality of space. And I have given a knock-down proof that space is not an absolute reality, using a fundamental principle, one of the most reasonable and well-supported, against which no exception or counter-example can be produced. So one may judge from what I have said that I ought not to admit a movable universe, or any place outside the material universe.
A la 13 y 14 de Clarke
No tengo conocimiento de alguna condición médica que pudiera provocar que mi participación sea insegura. As for the objection that space and time are quantities (it ought to be: 'are things that have quantity'), and that situation and order are not, I answer that order also has its quantity; there's what goes first and what follows; there's distance or interval. La primera cuestión es si el principio general abarca tanto edades relativas como edades absolutas. For example, ratios or proportions in mathematics have their quantity, and are measured by logarithms; yet they are relations. Thus, although time and space consist in relations, they still have their quantity.
Dios creó el mundo. Creo que con que se entiendan bien, perfectamente, eso nos sirve a todos. I have demonstrated that time without things is merely an ideal possibility; so it obviously follows that the statement 'This world that has been actually created could have been created sooner while being otherwise exactly the same' is just unintelligible. That's because there is no differentiating mark by which one could know that this world was created sooner (or, more accurately, by which one could know that this world was created at one time rather than another). And therefore (I repeat) the idea of God's having created the same world sooner than he actually did is a chimerical one; it involves making time an absolute thing that is independent of God, whereas time must coexist with created things and is conceived only in terms of the order and quantity of their changes.
56 But yet, absolutely speaking, we can make sense of the idea that a universe might have begun sooner than it actually did. Ya no lo necesitamos. The possibility he is talking about is that our actual universe might have had an earlier stage; a sequence of events that haven't actually occurred, running on into the events that were actually the first in the actual world. Por tanto, los barcos tendrán que pagar pero también estarán protegidos. But whether such an enlargement of our world is reasonable and fitting to God's wisdom is another question, to which I answer No; otherwise the enlargement would have been actual; God would have done it… . No existe certeza respecto a la duración de la actual afectación del mercado. Un globo podemos entenderlo como un continente de alientos, de esfuerzos o gases poco pesados. Se designaría también un relator.
57 This shows us how we should understand the statement 'God created things at what time he pleased', for it's just a matter of what things he chose to create. Once he had decided on the things, and on how they were to relate to one another, there was no further choice to make concerning the time and the place, which have no intrinsic reality, nothing that can distinguish them, nothing discernible.
58 So one can't say, as Clarke does here, that the wisdom of God may have 'good reasons' to create this world [Leibniz then repeats it in English: this world] at such and such a particular time; because that particular time, considered without the things, is an impossible fiction, and there can't be 'good reasons' for a choice where everything is indiscernible.
59 When I speak of 'this world', I mean the whole universe of material and immaterial created things, taken together, from the beginning of things. But if Clarke meant to be speaking only of the beginning of the material world, and was supposing that immaterial created things existed before that, he would be in better shape. For in that case the time {when the material world began} would be marked by things that existed already, so the choice between one starting-time and another would no longer be indifferent, and there might be a choice to be made. But this merely pushes the difficulty back; for we still have the point that there is, again, no choice about the time at which God would place the beginning of the whole universe of immaterial and material created things.
60 So one shouldn't say as Clarke does here that God created things in what particular space and at what particular time 'he pleased'. Given that all times and all spaces are in themselves perfectly uniform and indiscernible from each other, no one of them can 'please' more than any other.
61 I don't want to spend time here presenting my opinion, which I have explained elsewhere, that there are no created substances that are wholly destitute of matter. I hold (in agreement with the ancients, and in accordance with reason) that angels or intelligences, and souls separated from any large lumpy body, always have finely divided fluid bodies, though they themselves aren't bodies. The vulgar philosophy easily admits all sorts of fictions; mine is more strict.
Ahora, no estoy diciendo que equivocarse es lo mismo que ser creativo. No hay duda de que la transparencia tiene importancia en sí misma. y en la forma en que su fidelidad But although these things (space and matter, time and movement) are different, they are inseparable.
63 But it doesn't at all follow that matter is eternal and necessary, unless we suppose space to be eternal and necessary; a supposition that is ill-grounded in every way.
A la 17 de Clarke
64 I have answered all of this, I think, and especially the objection that space and time have quantity while order has none. See my 54 two pages back.
65 I showed clearly that the contradiction lies in the hypothesis that I was opposing; the one that looks for a difference where there isn't one. And it would be plain bad behaviour to infer from this that I have acknowledged a contradiction in my own opinion.
66 Here we find an argument that I have overthrown (see my 17 on page 30). According to Clarke, God may have good reasons to make two cubes that are perfectly equal and alike, and then (he says) God must has to assign them their places, even though there is nothing to choose between any two places. Los menores de 14 años sólo pueden ser separados de sus padres en circunstancias extraordinarias. Todo archivo de comandos PHP se compone de una serie de sentencias. God's resolutions are never abstract and incomplete, as they would be if God decreed first to create the two cubes, and then made another decree about where to place them. Men can proceed in that way; (indeed they have to), given what limited creatures they are. They may decide on something and then find themselves perplexed about means, ways, places, and circumstances (for the thing they have abstractly decided on). Al mismo tiempo, cualquier evaluación de toda la información disponible actualmente abarcará el contexto histórico de la inclusión en la Lista y, en particular, las circunstancias en que se produjo la designación original. Indeed, I have shown in my Theodicy that strictly speaking there is only one (divine) decree for the whole universe; the decree in which God resolved to bring this universe out of •possibility into •existence. So God won't choose a cube without at the same time choosing where to put it; and he will never choose among indiscernibles.
67 The parts of space are fixed and differentiated only by the things that are in it; and the variety of things in space leads God to act differently on different parts of space. But space considered without things has nothing by which it can be fixed; indeed it isn't anything actual.
68 If God has resolved to place a certain cube of matter somewhere, he has also resolved where to put it. But that 'where' is a set of relations to other parts of matter, and not a relation to bare space itself…
69 But God's wisdom doesn't allow him to place at the same time two cubes that are perfectly equal and alike, because there is no way to find any •reason for assigning them different places. Pero hoy puedo comprobar que la mayor contribución concreta a nuestra defensa, la contribución de la que más tendremos que felicitarnos en el futuro, acaba de realizarla un solo país.
70 I had compared •this act of will without motive that superficial reasoners think God performs with •Epicurus's chance. La casualidad epicúrea no es una elección de voluntad, sino una necesidad ciega del destino. I reply that Epicurus's chance is not a necessity, but something indifferent. Localizar y orientar las tubinas de viento a fin de evitar residencias It's true that his chance is blind; but an act of will without motive would be just as blind and just as much a product of mere chance.
A la 19 de Clarke
71 Clarke repeats here something that I refuted in my 21 on page 31, namely that God can't create matter without choosing among indiscernibles. He would be right about this if matter consisted of atoms, particles that are exactly alike, or other such fictions of superficial philosophy. But the great principle that rejects choice among indiscernibles also destroys these ill-contrived fictions. Me refiero, por supuesto, a la cuestión de Gibraltar.
A la 20 de Clarke
72 Clarke had objected against me in his 7, 8 on page 14 that if God were determined by external things, he wouldn't have a source of action in himself. Alega que el autor no evaluó adecuadamente todos los hechos del caso y la aplicación a esos hechos del artículo 13 de la VEA y que, por ello, no puede fundar su demanda en el hecho de que el no haber obtenido la pensión de conformidad con la VEA obedece a una distinción basada en su orientación sexual, lo que vulnera lo dispuesto en el artículo 26. No quieres comprender cómo sufro.
A la 21 de Clarke
73 In his objections against me, Clarke frequently mixes up what God •won't do with what he •can't do. Véase mi 12 en la página 11 y mi 29 y 32 justo arriba. For example, God •can do everything that is possible, but he •will do only what is best. So I don't say, as Clarke here alleges, that God can't limit the extension of matter; I say only that he seems not to want to do that, having found it better to set no bounds to matter.
74 From extension to duration: invalid inference! Even if the extension of matter were unlimited, it wouldn't follow that its duration was also unlimited; it wouldn't even follow that it had no beginning. If it is the nature of things, taken as a whole, to grow uniformly in perfection, the universe of created things must have had a beginning; so we have there a reason to limit the •duration of things, a reason that would hold even if there were no reasons to limit their •extension. Furthermore, the world's having a beginning still leaves it possible that it has no ending, and therefore has an infinite duration; whereas {spatial} bounds of the universe would undercut the infinity of its extension. So it is more reasonable (and more in tune with God's character) to admit a •beginning of the world than to admit •any {spatial} bounds of it.
75 But those who have admitted the eternity of the world, or at least (as some famous theologians have done) the possibility of the world's being eternal, haven't been denying that it depends on God, as Clarke here groundlessly implies that they have.
A la 22-23 de Clarke
76 He here further objects, without any reason, that according to me God must have done everything he was capable of doing. It's as if he didn't know that •I have solidly refuted this view in my Theodicy, and that •I have overthrown the opinion of those who maintain that the only things that are possible are the ones that really happen… Clarke muddles •moral necessity, which comes from the choice of what is best, with •absolute necessity; he muddles God's •will with his •power.
God can produce everything that is possible, everything that doesn't imply a contradiction; but he wills only to produce what is the best among things that are possible. Véase mi 12 en la página 11 y mi 29 y 32 justo arriba.
77 So God is not a necessary agent in his production of created things, because {in doing this} he is acting with choice. Not that there's any basis for Clarke's assertion that a necessary agent wouldn't be an agent at all. He frequently comes out with confident pronouncements that he has no grounds for, advancing against me theses that couldn't be proved.
A la 24-28 de Clarke
78 Clarke says that what Newton said was not that space is God's sensorium, but only that space is 'as it were' God's sensorium. Sin embargo, me parece que éste es el camino equivocado.
A la 29 de Clarke
El espacio es el lugar de las cosas y no el lugar de las ideas de Dios. If it were, it would be a thing co-eternal with God, and independent of him; indeed, if he needs to have a place, he would be dependent on it.
80 And I don't see how it can be said that space is the place of ideas; for ideas are in the understanding.
El alma del hombre queda sepultada con el cuerpo The images that are in the understanding are •in the mind; but if the mind was the soul of the images, they would then be •outside the mind. And if Clarke is talking only about corporeal images (i.e. the brain states corresponding to mental images) how can he think that our mind is the soul of those, when they are only transient impressions in a body belonging to that soul?
82 If it's by means of a sensorium that God senses what happens in the world, it seems that things act on him, making him what we call 'a soul of the world'. Clarke charges me with repeating objections and ignoring his answers; but I can't see that he has answered this difficulty. Haría mejor en no asistir.
A la 30 de Clarke
83 Clarke speaks as if he didn't understand how it is that on my view the soul is a representative principle [= 'source of representations']. Era como si acabara de escuchar su propia sentencia de muerte.
84 I don't accept the vulgar notions according to which the images of things are 'conveyed' [Leibniz uses the English word] by the organs {of sense} to the soul. There's no conceivable •vehicle in which, and no conceivable •gate through which, these images can be carried from the organ to the soul. The new Cartesians have shown well enough that this notion in the vulgar philosophy is not intelligible. It can't be explained how •immaterial substance is affected by •matter; and basing an unintelligible notion on that is having recourse to the chimerical scholastic notion of I know not what inexplicable 'intentional species' passing from the organs to the soul.
['Intentional species' were supposed items broadly like the 'individual accidents' sketched in the note on page 36.] Those Cartesians saw the problem, but they didn't solve it: they dealt with it by a special concourse on God's part, which would be miraculous. Creo que tengo la solución ¿Sabes?
85 To say that God discerns what happens in the world because •he is present to the things, and not because •their continued existence involves a dependence on him (a dependence that could be said to involve a continual production of them), is to say something unintelligible. A mere •presence, or •existence-alongside, isn't enough to make us understand how what happens in one being could correspond to what happens in another.
Siempre me he pronunciado contra el refrán «el mundo sa nará por la naturaleza alemana». It says that God senses things not through •their dependence upon him (i.e. his continual production of what is good and perfect in them), but through a kind of feeling like the one through which some people think that our soul senses what happens in the body, This is a tremendous downgrading of God's knowledge. Como muchos de nosotros, estoy aquí, sentada, sintiéndome inútil. The word can also mean 'opinion' and other things, but 'feeling' goes best with the repeated verb 'senses' (regarding which, see the long note on page 1.)
La cuestión es que esto está permitido. Como tampoco debería contaminar aquello que ocurre en ese espacio a lo que sucede fuera del mismo. They do this by virtue of the harmony that God has pre-established, in the most beautiful and most admirable of all his productions, through which every simple substance is by its nature a concentration [here roughly = 'perfect small-scale model'] and a living mirror (so to speak) of the whole universe, according to its point of view. This is also one of the most beautiful and undeniable proofs of the existence of God, because such a harmony of things couldn't be produced by anything except God, the universal cause. But God himself can't sense things by the same •means by which he makes other beings sense them. He does sense them; {he must do so} because he is able to produce that •means. He couldn't make •things so that they could be sensed by other beings if he didn't have a representation of them in himself, this being needed for his work of creating them so that they harmonize {with one another}. It's not a representation coming from the things {that are represented}; he represents them because they come from him, and because he is their efficient… cause. He senses them because they come from him; if it's all right to say that he 'senses' them; and it isn't all right unless we divest that word of its implication that things act on him. They exist and are known to him because he understands and wills them, and being willed by him is tantamount to existing. Hemos reflejado todo eso más aún en las directrices estratégicas. And in how he does this: he makes them sense one another as a consequence of the {intrinsic} nature •that he has given each of them, once for all, and •that he merely maintains according to the laws {governing the histories} of the individual things; with a different law for each thing, but with each law resulting in a series of states that exactly correspond to the states of everything else. This surpasses all the ideas that men have generally formed regarding God's perfections and his works. Exactitud al Grado más Alto
88 It's a serious misuse of the biblical passage in which God is said to have 'rested' from his works to infer from it that there is no longer a continual production of them. It's true that there is no production of new simple substances; but it would be wrong to infer from this that God is now in the world only in the way Clarke thinks the soul is in the body, governing it merely by his presence, without his help being needed for its continued existence.
A la 31 de Clarke
89 The harmony or correspondence between the soul and the body is not a •perpetual miracle; it's the effect of the start-up miracle that God performed in the creation of things. Todas las cosas naturales son reflejos o imitaciones de las formas. The soul-body harmony is indeed a •perpetual marvel, and so are many natural things.
90 The phrase 'pre-established harmony' is indeed an invented technical term; but it isn't one that explains nothing, since I have presented it very intelligibly, and Clarke hasn't said anything pointing to any difficulty in it.
91 The nature of every simple substance (or soul or true monad) is such that its state at any time is a consequence of its preceding state: voila! Causa del conflicto All God needs to do is to make each simple substance, right from the outset, a representation of the universe according to its point of view. This (just this) guarantees •that the substance will be such a representation perpetually, and •that all simple substances will always have a harmony among themselves because they always represent the same universe.
A la 32 de Clarke
También es importante que cumplamos las leyes existentes en los distintos países. Y yo solamente pude estar de acuerdo.
the •soul acting •freely, according to the rules of •final causes [= 'purposes and intentions'], the •body acting •mechanically, according to the laws of •efficient causes [i.e. what you and I would simply call 'causes'.]
No resta al Estado nacional, sino que suma al Estado nacional, a su configuración clásica. Every agent that acts according to final causes is free, even though it happens to agree with something that acts only by efficient causes (acts without knowledge, acts mechanically). That is because God foresaw what the free cause would do, and set up the machine, from the outset, in such a way that it couldn't fail to agree with that free cause I'll return to this topic in 124 on page 48.
A la 33 de Clarke
33 En la naturaleza de las cosas, cada acción es la entrega de una nueva fuerza a eso sobre lo que se actúa. It often happens in collisions that each body preserves its force—e.g. when two equal hard bodies collide head-on. In that case, only their directions are changed, without any change of force: each body receives the direction of the other, and bounces the way it came, with the same swiftness.
94 But I am far from saying that it is supernatural to give a new force to a body, for I realize that it often happens that one body receives a new force from another, which loses that same amount of force. All I say is that it is supernatural for the whole universe of bodies to receive new force so that one body acquires new force without an equal loss of force in other bodies. That's why I say that it is an indefensible opinion to suppose that the soul gives force to the body; for then the whole universe of bodies would receive a new force.
95 Clarke faces me with a dilemma: I must say either than a man acts supernaturally or that he is a mere machine such as a watch. No hay ciencia exacta para esto. A man doesn't act supernaturally; and his body is truly a machine that acts only in a mechanical way, yet his soul is a free cause.
A la 34-35 de Clarke
96 I refer here to my 82 and 86 a couple of pages back, and to my 111 on page 47, concerning the comparison between God and a soul of the world, and how Clarke's position against me brings God too close to being the soul of the world.
A la 36 de Clarke
97 I refer here to my 89 a page back, etc., concerning the harmony between the soul and the body.
A la 37 de Clarke
98 Clarke supone que la {mera} _presencia_ del alma es suficiente para tomar conciencia de lo que sucede en el cerebro. But taking it that the sensorium is extended, as I believe Clarke thinks it is, the same difficulty still remains, and the question faces us again: Is the soul diffused all through that extended thing? The sensorium can be big or small; that makes no difference, because size is irrelevant to our difficulty here.
A la 38 de Clarke
99 I don't undertake to establish here my •dynamics, i.e. my •doctrine of forces; this isn't the right place for that. Still, I can appropriately answer the objection that Clarke brings against me here. I have maintained that active forces are preserved in the world (meaning that the amount of them is constant). Clarke objects that when two soft or un-elastic bodies collide they lose some of their force. I say that they don't. It's true that their •wholes lose it with respect to their over-all motion; but their •parts receive it through being shaken internally by the force of the collision. Parece que hay un error. The forces aren't •destroyed, but •scattered among the small parts. That isn't losing force; it's more like exchanging a gold coin for its equivalent in small change. I agree, however, that the quantity of motion doesn't remain the same, and I approve what Newton says about this in his Optics, which Clarke here quotes. y recuerda que hay una diferencia entre los tipos saludables y no saludables de grasas.
A la 39 de Clarke
100 Clarke had maintained against me (13, 14 on page 11) that the amount of force in the material universe does naturally decrease, and that this arises from the dependence of things. 39 ¿Cómo van a demostrar que esta pérdida-de-fuerza sea una consecuencia de la dependencia de las cosas? He avoids answering my challenge, by merely picking on one (supposed) example and denying that it is a flaw. 39 ¿Cómo van a demostrar que esta pérdida-de-fuerza sea una consecuencia de la dependencia de las cosas?
101 And anyway, something that would make the machine of the world as imperfect as that of an unskilful watchmaker surely must be a flaw.
102 Clarke says now that it is a consequence of the inertia of matter; but he isn't going to prove that either. This inertia that he talks about (mentioned by Kepler and by Descartes in his letters, and given a certain role in my Theodicy… ) amounts only to this: velocities go down when the quantities of matter go up; it doesn't involve any lessening of the forces.
A la 40 de Clarke
1031 had maintained that •the world-machine's dependence on its divine author is what prevents it from having this flaw, that •God's work doesn't need to be corrected, that it •isn't liable to go out of working order, and •can't lessen in perfection. How Clarke can get from this that I am committed to saying that the material world is infinite and eternal, with no beginning, and that God must have created as many men and other kinds of creatures as can possibly be created; that is anybody's guess! 12] Ver Nota 12) en la pág. 4
A la 41 de Clarke
104 I don't say that space is an order or situation which makes things able to be situated: this would be nonsense. A reader needs only to consider my own words (in 41 on page 20), and add them to what I said in 47 on pages 35-37, to see how the mind comes to form to itself an idea of space, with no need for any corresponding space that is real and absolute; not owing its existence to anything in the mind or to any relations. ––No puedo asegurarlo. I say that it is an order of situations, i.e. an order in which situations are laid out; and abstract space is that same order of situations conceived as being possible. Europa no parece querer seguir esta dirección. I have already answered the objection that order is not capable of quantity (see my 54 on page 38).
105 Clarke objects here that time can't be an order of successive events, because what Leibniz wrote: la quantite du temps peut devenir plus grande ou plus petite, l'ordre des successions demeurant le meme.
what those words mean: the amount of time can become greater or smaller, with order of the successions remaining the same.
what Leibniz seems to have meant by them: the amount of time occupied by a sequence of events may be long or short, independently of how many events the sequence contains and of the order in which they occur.
Pero no es así. The •longer the stretch of time is, the •more successive and alike events will occur in it, and the •shorter the •fewer. That is because there is no •vacuum or •condensation or •penetration (so to speak) in times any more than there is in places.
106 I maintain that if there were no created things, God would still have his immensity and eternity, but those attributes would not depend either on times or on places. No es un problema que pueda resolverse mediante una ayuda paternalista, sino que requiere una movilización de los propios interesados. Alá, ciertamente, puede prescindir de las criaturas. The only spatial and temporal aspects of these two attributes are these: if any other things do exist, God's immensity will make him present to them all, and his eternity will make him co-existent with them all. So I don't agree with Clarke's statement that if God existed alone there would be time and space as there is in actuality. As against that, I maintain that if God existed alone, space and time would be only in his ideas, ideas of mere possibilities. God's •immensity and •eternity are attributes of a higher order than the •extension and •duration of created things; not only greater but also of a higher nature than them. Those divine attributes don't need there to be anything other than God ; e.g. actual places and times. These truths have been pretty well recognized by theologians and philosophers.
A la 42 de Clarke
107 I had maintained that if, as Clarke claimed, the machine of the material world naturally tended to slow down and stop, God's work of keeping it up to speed would be a miracle. Las delegaciones acogieron con agrado la decisión de posponer el examen del tema sobre la regionalización y se mostraron satisfechas al saber que formaría parte del plan estratégico del Fondo para el período 2008-2011. I replied that •what makes something a miracle in the proper sense of 'miracle' (or a miracle of the highest sort [see Leibniz's 44 on page 20]) is not its being unusual but its surpassing the powers of created things, that •this is the opinion of theologians and philosophers; and that •therefore the {divine world} energising} operation that Clarke believes in and I don't is a miracle of the highest sort, i.e. one that surpasses all created powers, which is the very thing that everyone tries to avoid in science. 42 Esto atrae de la razón a la opinión vulgar, lo que los filósofos no deberían hacer, porque no es la regla de la verdad. But I answer back that this 'vulgar opinion' (that in science we ought to avoid as much as possible anything that surpasses the natures of created things) is a very reasonable one. Otherwise nothing will be easier than to account for anything by bringing God into the story as a Deus ex machina [= 'a god trundled onstage by the scenery-shifting machinery'], without paying any attention to the natures of things.
108 Besides, the common opinion of theologians oughtn't to be regarded as merely 'vulgar opinion'. We shouldn't venture to contradict it unless we have weighty reasons for doing so, and I don't see any here.
109 As for Clarke's view that a miracle has to be unusual: he seems to drop that in his 31 on page 25, where he scolds me (though with no basis for doing so) for accepting a preestablished harmony that would be 'a perpetual miracle'. Or perhaps he {isn't deserting his own notion of miracle, but} is arguing against me ad hominem. [An ad hominem argument against x's opinion that P merely argues that x isn't in a position to accept P; the Latin phrase means 'against the man'.]
A la 43 de Clarke
110 If a miracle differs from what is natural only in appearance and in relation to us, so that we reserve the term 'miracle' for {kinds of events} that we seldom see, there won't be any intrinsic real difference between the natural and miraculous: fundamentally, either •everything will be equally natural or •everything will be equally miraculous. Malik resultó muerto y Riad herido.
111 Also, won't this doctrine tend to make God the soul of the world, if all his operations are natural like those of our souls on our bodies? VEN A FORMAR PARTE DE LA GRAN FAMILIA LAND ROVER.
112 In good science and sound theology we ought to distinguish •what can be explained by the natures and powers of created things from •what can't be explained without bringing in the powers of God, the infinite substance. We ought to make an infinite difference between •operations of God that go beyond the extent of natural powers and •operations of things that follow the laws God has given them; laws that he has enabled them to follow by their natural powers, though not without his help.
113 This overthrows 'attractions', properly so} called [i.e. pulls that aren't disguised pushes], and other operations that can't be explained through the natural powers of created things. Those who believe in such operations must either •think they are brought about miraculously or else •resort to absurdities in their attempts to make them look natural. Me refiero al mar.
Some people have started to {revive those and to} palm them off on us under the glittering title of 'forces'; but where they lead is into the kingdom of darkness. Bringing those into science now is eating acorns when corn has been discovered
[Leibniz says this in Latin, probably quoting].
114 [In this paragraph Leibniz deplores the tendency of physics to fall away from the heights to which 'Boyle and other excellent men' brought it, and especially from the thesis that in the province of physics 'everything is done mechanically'. An analogous flight from reason towards romantic glitter, he adds, has also been occurring in literature. Clarke in his fifth and final paper doesn't mention this section.]
115 As for motions of the heavenly bodies, and also as for the formation of plants and animals, there's nothing in any of them that even looks like a miracle except for their beginning. The organism = organisation of animals is a mechanism that had to be shaped up in the first place by God, but with everything after that being purely natural and entirely mechanical.
116 Everything that happens in the body of man or of any animal is just as mechanical as what happens in a watch. The only difference between the two is the difference there ought to be between •a machine invented by God and •one made by such a limited craftsman as man is.
Todos conocemos sobre el milagro de la miniaturización. Le preocupa el uso de la palabra 'puta": We can say that angels •perform miracles though not in the most proper sense of that word, or that they •perform miracles though not ones of the highest order… .
118 I had objected that 'attraction' properly so called, 'attraction' in scholastic-speak, would be an operation at a distance, without means. [Regarding 'means', see note on Clarke's 45 on page 27.] ¿Podría confirmar me si se ha solicitado realmente? ¡Bien! Pero ¿a qué se refiere realmente cuando afirma que la Comisión Europea tiene la facultad de imponer una multa de 20 millones de euros? LOS MEDIOS Sería un milagro si realmente pudiera suceder.
119 Or perhaps the means of attraction are •some immaterial substances or •spiritual rays, or some •accidents without a substance [see note on page 36], or some kind of 'intentional species' [see note in 84 on page 42], or some other who-knows-what? Clarke seems to have retained a good stock of such things in his head, without explaining himself adequately.
120 This means of interaction, he says, is 'invisible, intangible, not mechanical'. Cuando hablamos de la contaminación atmosférica en las ciudades, llego a la conclusión de que no tenemos sencillamente el valor de convertir esta contaminación en gastos de medio ambiente y en reflejarlo en los precios.
No necesariamente a ciertas hora, sino que está constante. I answer that it can't be regular if it isn't reasonable, and it can't be natural if it can't be explained through the natures of created things.
122 If genuine attraction is brought about by genuine means that are constant and at the same time not explainable through the powers of created things, then that is a perpetual miracle. If it isn't miraculous then it isn't genuine; it's a chimerical thing, a scholastic 'occult quality'.
123 The same thing would hold for a body whirling around in a circle without shooting off along the tangent, although there is nothing intelligible blocking it from doing so. I produced this example before, and Clarke hasn't seen fit to answer it because it shows too clearly how •what is truly natural differs from •a chimerical occult quality such as the scholastics believe in.
124 All the natural forces of bodies are subject to mechanical laws, and all the natural powers of spirits are subject to moral laws. En 1840, es nombrado Caballero de la Orden de Cristo y Caballero de la Rosa. The former operate without liberty, like a watch; the latter operate with liberty, though they exactly agree with {the corresponding body, i.e.} the machine to which they have been adapted in advance by {God}, a free and superior cause. I have already spoken of this in 92 on page 44 [including notes on 'efficient cause' and 'final cause'].
125 An objection that Clarke brought against me at the start of his fourth paper has been answered in 18-20 [page 30]; but I want to say more about it, and have saved that up until now, at the end of my fifth paper. Presidente, dado el muy poco tiempo que se me ha asignado para hablar, me tengo que limitar a unas consideraciones sobre el famoso punto 29 de Wathelet. Dímelo por favor. Pero es el principio de la cuestión.
•a thing to exist, •for an event to happen, •for a truth's being a truth.
El genocidio no es algo que tenga que ser demostrado. Clarke had granted it, or made a show of granting it, in his 2 on page 12, perhaps because it would have seemed too shocking to deny it. But {now he challenges my right to it}; so •he is contradicting himself, unless either •he means to retract his earlier acceptance of the principle or •that 'acceptance' was only verbal.
126 I venture to say that without this great principle one can't prove the existence of God, or account for many other important truths.
Hice uso de esta buena oportunidad. Admittedly on many other occasions it has been carelessly neglected, but that neglect {isn't evidence that the principle is unreliable or limited in its scope. Pero desde entonces Bulgaria ha sido causa de creciente preocupación.
Vacío
en el sentido literal de la palabra,
•real influence of the soul over the body, and a thousand other fictions, either carried over from the ancients or recently invented by modern philosophers.
128 Why did the ancients mock Epicurus's groundless theory about atoms' {randomly} 'swerving'? (2) Aquí hay un segundo argumento, basado en la necesidad de una razón suficiente. And I venture to say that scholastic 'attraction', equally mocked about thirty years ago {when Newton's Principia was first published} and now undergoing a revival, is no more reasonable.
129 I have often challenged people to produce a counterexample to that great principle; i.e. to point to Just one uncontroversial case where it fails. Y no cambiarán nunca. Señálese también si la Convención es directamente aplicable y si ha habido casos en que los tribunales nacionales la hayan aplicado. This makes it reasonable for us to judge that it will succeed also in unknown cases, and in ones that can't be known except with its help. So we get support for the principle by following the method of experimental philosophy [here = 'empirical science'], which proceeds a posteriori, even if the principle weren't otherwise justified by pure reason, or a priori.
130 To deny this great principle is to do what Epicurus did; he was reduced to denying that other great principle, namely the principle of contradiction, which says that every intelligible statement must be either true or false. * parece haber desaparecido. What he has stated is the 'principle of excluded middle'; nothing in the middle, between true and false. The principle of contradiction (as Leibniz himself says on page 3) says that no statement can be both true and false.]… Anyway, I believe reasonable and impartial people will grant me that having forced my adversary to deny the principle of the need for a sufficient reason I have shown his position to be absurd.
10. Quinta respuesta de Clarke (29 de octubre de 1716)
Él murió dos semanas después.
Le invito a que dé hoy una clara indicación de que habrá una respuesta positiva a este llamamiento. Torrents of words aren't evidence of clear ideas in the writer, nor are they a proper way of conveying clear notions to the reader.
A la 1-20 de Leibniz
There is no (3) similarity between a balance's being moved by weights (moved because pushed) and a mind's moving itself (acting on motives). The difference is that the balance is entirely passive, i.e. is subject to absolute •necessity; whereas the mind, as well as being acted on, also acts, which is the essence of •liberty. Leibniz supposes (14) that
If the alternative ways of acting appear to be equally good, that deprives the mind of all power of acting
in any of those ways, just as an equality of weights keeps a balance necessarily at motionless.
Ello representa un motivo de alivio en sí. It confuses •the mind's power of acting with •its passively receiving an impression from the motive. The motive (i.e. the thing considered as in view [Clarke's phrase]) is external to the mind, and when it makes an impression on the mind, the mind is passively receiving a certain perception; but what happens then, as a result of that perception, involves the power of self-motion or action, which… is what we call 'liberty', strictly speaking. The failure to carefully distinguish these things (15) … .leads men to think that the mind is no more active than a balance would be if the balance had a power of perception (which is wholly taking away the very notion of liberty… . A free agent, when confronted by several perfectly alike and reasonable ways of acting, has within itself, by virtue of its source of self-motion, a power of acting; and it may have very strong and good reasons not to not act at all… To affirm, therefore, (16-19, 69) that
if two different ways of placing certain particles of matter were equally good and reasonable, God could not wisely (and therefore could not) place them in either of those ways, because there would be no extra weight to settle which way he should choose, is to make God not an active being but a passive one, and thus not to be a god or a governor at all. And in support of his thesis that there can't be two equal parts of matter that could switch locations without anything's being made better or worse, all Leibniz can offer is the (20) petitio principii [see note on page 60] that if that happened Leibniz's notion of sufficient reason would not be well-grounded. What other basis could anyone have for saying (16, 17, 69, 66) that it is impossible for God to have wise and good reasons to create many particles of matter exactly alike in different parts of the universe? Leibniz maintains that if such a thing occurred, God would be acting with (16, 69) mere will but no reason in putting the particles in one set of locations rather shuffling them into different locations that would have been just as good. Esto es falso. If God had wise reasons to create many particles of matter exactly alike, he would also have a motive (a reason) to do what a balance couldn't do, namely put them in one of the sets of locations, although any other would have been as good. In philosophical contexts 'necessity' always refers to absolute necessity (4-13) . The phrases 'hypothetical necessity' and 'moral necessity' are mere figures of speech; what they refer to is not, strictly speaking, any kind of necessity. The real question about something's necessity is not about hypothetical necessity: •Given that x exists, or that it will exist, does it follow that it must exist?
¿DE QUÉ TRATA?
Tampoco es cierto que un Consejo más pequeño sería necesariamente más eficiente. De esa manera, se potencian las capacidades de todo el sistema para promover el mantenimiento del estado de derecho, al mismo tiempo que siguen estando vinculadas y se basan en las normas y reglas de las Naciones Unidas. that a truthful person cannot act tell a lie while continuing to be truthful?
The true and only question in philosophy concerning liberty {and necessity} is of this type:
•When we regard someone x as an agent, is the immediate physical cause or principle [= 'source'] of action in x himself or is the real cause of the 'action' something external to x that acts on him?
11 También he demostrado que nuestra voluntad no siempre sigue exactamente al entendimiento práctico, porque puede tener o encontrar razones para retrasar una decisión hasta que haya tenido tiempo para pensar más. Desafortunadamente, por razones internas, el representante no ha podido asistir a las dos últimas reuniones del Consejo Científico.
A la 21-25 de Leibniz
If it is possible for God to make two pieces of matter exactly alike so that there would be nothing to choose between locating them in one way and locating them in the switched way, Leibniz's notion of a sufficient reason collapses. What his position requires him to say in response to this is that it isn't possible for God to make two pieces exactly alike; but what he says is just that it wouldn't be wise for God to do that. ¿Cómo sabe que esos toneles de desechos tienen plutonio apto para hacer bombas? Can he prove that it isn't possible for God to have wise reasons for creating many parts of matter exactly alike in different parts of the universe? The only argument he gives for this is that then there wouldn't be a sufficient reason to settle God's will on one set of locations rather than some other…. Creo que se trata de una pregunta abierta. As for my similar argument concerning the absolute indifference of the direction of the first shove given to the universe, Leibniz hasn't replied to that.
A la 26-32 de Leibniz
Las categorías podrían ser estas. •Leibniz allows 26) that two things exactly alike would really be two; and yet he alleges that there would be no principle of individuation for them, and in his fourth paper (6) he says outright that 'they' would be merely a single thing with two names. No se me permite marcharme. •The parts of time and space are allowed to be exactly alike in themselves (27) , but not so when bodies exist in them. [After a tremendously point-missing criticism of Leibniz's 28, Clarke continues:] •Leibniz says that (29) space is nothing but the order of things co-existing; and yet 30) he admits that the material universe may be finite; but in that case there would have to be empty space all around it. [Then a poor objection to things Leibniz says (30, 8, 73) about the possibility of the material world's being finite. Then:] •He says that that the motion of the material universe would produce (29) no change at all; but he doesn't answer my point that a sudden increase or stopping of the motion of the universe would give a perceptible shock to all the parts, and that a circular motion of the universe would produce a centrifugal force in all its parts…. •Leibniz asserts that motion necessarily implies a (31) relative change of situation of one body in relation to other bodies; but he doesn't show any way to avoid the absurd consequence that the mobility of one body would depend on the existence of other bodies, so that a single body existing alone would be unable to move… Lastly, •Leibniz asserts that the (32) infiniteness of matter is an effect of God's will; but he endorses Descartes's notion {of matter as infinite} as irrefragable [= 'impossible to refute'; actually what Leibniz says is 'I don't think it has been properly refuted'], and everyone knows that Descartes's sole basis for his view was that it would be a contradiction to suppose matter to be finite. If that is so, then it never was in God's power to determine the quantity of matter; and consequently he didn't create it and can't destroy it… .
I had argued against the thesis that all of space is filled with matter on the basis of the lack of resistance in certain regions. Leibniz answers that those regions are filled with a matter that has no (35) gravity [= 'weight']. But my argument had to do not with •gravity but with •resistance; and resistance must be proportional to the amount of matter, whether or not the matter has gravity…. To head off this reply, Leibniz claims (34) that resistance arise not so much from the amount of matter as from the difficulty of pushing it aside. But this utterly misses the target, because the question related only to fluid bodies that have little or no stickiness, such as water and liquid mercury, whose parts have no difficulty of giving place except what arises from the quantity of the matter they contain. Leibniz gives the example (34) of a floating piece of wood that contains less heavy matter than does an equal bulk of water though it makes greater resistance; that is amazingly bad scientific thinking! If a bulk of water equal to the wood were… frozen into ice, and floating, it would put up more resistance than the floating wood. The point is that the resistance would then arise from the whole bulk of the water, whereas when the water is loose and at liberty in its state of fluidity, the resistance is put up by only a part of it, not the whole, and so of course it seems to make less resistance than the wood.
A la 36-48 de Leibniz
These sections don't seem to contain any serious arguments, but only to represent in an unfavourable light the notion of the immensity or omnipresence of God. [Clarke quickly reels off a list of complaints and rejoinders, which are not of much interest until we come to this:] God does not exist (45) in space or in time; but his existence causes space and time. Véase la nota 23. And when in our somewhat metaphorical common speech we say that 'God exists in all space and in all time', all we mean is that he is omnipresent and eternal, i.e. that boundless space and time are necessary consequences of his existence. We do not mean that space and time are beings distinct from him, in which he exists.
[Clarke goes on to say that he has already said all he needs to regarding Leibniz's 46-8 . ^la cual se explica en detalle en el documento
Comienzo de
The main reason for the confusion and inconsistencies that appear in what most writers have said about the nature of space seems to be their failure properly to attend to a couple of distinctions; distinctions that are easy to miss, but that have to be observed if there is to be any clear reasoning. They are •the distinction between abstracts and concretes, e.g. between immensitas and immensum; and •the distinction between ideas and things, e.g. between our notion of immensity (which is in our minds) and the real immensity (which actually exists outside us). [The two Latin words mean, respectively, 'immensity' and 'the immense thing' or 'that which is immense'. Este equipo, incluyendo su jefe de proyecto y profesionales técnicos se mantendrá durante toda la duración de este proyecto para garantizar la coherencia.
The only ideas that anyone has had (and I think they are the only ones anyone can have) about the nature of space are that it is:
Absolutamente nada.
Un abrazo
Una cosa llevó a otra.
Cuerpo.
propiedad farmacológica de una sustancia
Echemos un vistazo a estas dos. Very obviously space is not absolutely nothing; for there can't be any quantity or dimensions or properties of nothing… .
Por otra parte, doy las gracias a los diputados cristiano demócratas. For no idea of space can possibly be formed larger than finite, but reason demonstrates that it is a contradiction for space itself not to be actually infinite. That space is not a mere relation of one thing to another, arising from their situation or order among themselves, is no less apparent; because space is a quantity and relations (such as situation and order) are not; as I shall show at length in (54) below… .
Ese espacio no es vital. Si este fuera su hijo, ¿estaría así? Also, if space were a body, every space would put up resistance to motion, which we find from experience is not so.
That space is not any kind of substance is no less plain. The reason is that infinite space is immensitas, not immensum; whereas infinite substance is immensum, not immensitas. Just as duration is not a substance, because infinite duration is aeternitas, not aeternum; whereas infinite substance is aeternum, not aeternitas. So space must be a property, since none of the alternatives is tenable… . Final de la nota al pie
[Clarke dismisses Leibniz's 49-51 as verbal quibbling.]
I had argued for the view that •space doesn't depend on body on the grounds that •it is possible for the material universe to be finite and movable. Leibniz doesn't adequately counter that argument when he says that it wouldn't have been wise and reasonable for God to make the material universe finite and movable. He has only two options: to assert that it was impossible for God to make the material world finite and movable, or to admit that my argument succeeds… .
Leibniz is forced here to admit the difference between absolute real motion and relative motion; doesn't that necessarily imply that space is really a quite different thing from the situation or order of bodies? The reader can judge for himself, after comparing what Leibniz says here with what Newton has said in his Principia, book 1, definition 8.
Y otro punto más: el espacio y el tiempo son cantidades, mientras que la situación y el orden no lo son. Leibniz replies to this that 'order has its quantity; there's what goes first and what follows; there's distance or interval.' I answer that 'going first and following' constitutes situation or order; but the distance, interval or quantity of time or space in which one thing follows another is entirely different from the situation or order, and doesn't constitute any quantity of situation or order: the situation or order can be the same when the quantity of time or space intervening is very different. Leibniz further replies that ratios or proportions have their quantity; and therefore time and space can do so as well, even if they are nothing but relations. Mi respuesta a esa pregunta tiene que ser menos rotunda. (1) Even if it were true that some particular sorts of relations (e.g. ratios or proportions) are quantities, it doesn't follow that situation and order, which are relations of a quite different kind, are also quantities. No son contaminadores, sino víctimas de la contaminación. Si estuvieran en continental, los destruirían. Also, if they were quantities they would (like all other quantities) increase always by addition; but the addition of the proportion of 1 to 1 to the proportion of 1 to 1 you get the proportion of 1 to 1. [Clarke elaborates this and related numerical matters at considerable length, and then comes to the main point:] The space of a day bears a much greater proportion to an hour than it does to half a day; and yet it remains, despite these two proportions, the same unvaried quantity of time. So time (and space, by the same argument) has the nature not of a proportion but of an absolute and unvaried quantity with different proportions… .
[Clarke has little to say about Leibniz's 55-72. He says that Leibniz (56) contradicts himself by allowing that God could have created the world sooner than he did and then going on to say that this makes no sense. [Clarke seems regularly to misunderstand Leibniz's use of the reductio ad absurdum form of argument.] Regarding Leibniz's 70, he protests against the claim that 'the will of God when it chooses one out of many equally good ways of acting' is like 'Epicurus's chance'.
'No two things can possibly be more different', Clarke says, 'than •the creation of the universe and •something that involves no will, no thought, no active principle at all'. All he says about the other sections in 55-72 consists of a series of references to earlier sections of this present paper, where he says they are answered.
on the question of whether space is independent of matter, and whether the material universe can be finite and movable, [Clarke mainly repeats what he said about this in his section on Leibniz's 52, 53 above, though his own references are to his comments on Leibniz's 1-20 and 26-32. He also says this:] As for the opinion of those who contend (75) that the world might possibly be eternal through God's exercising his eternal power, this is utterly irrelevant to the matter we are now discussing.
Por ello, no tenemos que añadir nada más.
Everything Leibniz says in 79-80 is mere verbal quibbling. The existence of God (as I have repeatedly said) causes space; and all other things exist in that space. Además es el lugar donde ocurrió una masacre de musulmanes religiosos en 1994. Regarding the idea that the soul of man (81) is the soul of the images of the things that it perceives: I brought this in a comparative way as an instance of a ridiculous notion {I was saying that it was no more absurd than something that Leibniz had said}. Es sólo que puede <usarlo> como si se tratara de una entidad bidimensional. Una palabra aún, Sr. presidente, con relación a la noción de interés vital.
A la 83-91 de Leibniz
No te entiendo por nada.
El alma es un complejo de facultades.
(87) Every simple substance is by its nature a concentration and living mirror of the whole universe;
Eso es, que hay una única función de onda gobernando el movimiento de todas las partículas en el universo de acuerdo con la ecuación guía.
All simple substances will always be in harmony with one another because they always represent the same universe.
[What Clarke says about other sections in this group of nine mostly consists of references to things he'll say later (especially in his comments on Leibniz's 110-16 below), and complaints about Leibniz's asserting things without proving them.]
A la 92 de Leibniz
Leibniz holds that all the motions of our bodies are necessary, and are (92, 95, 116) caused entirely by mere mechanical impulses of matter that are wholly independent of the soul. I can't help thinking that this tends to introduce necessity and fate. It tends to make men be thought as mere {mindless-machines, as Descartes imagined beasts to be; because it cuts the ground out from under any inference from •the actions of men to •the conclusion that a man contains a soul, or indeed anything more than mere matter. 47 — Véanse mis argumentos sobre las cuestiones primera, segunda y tercera (puntos 41 a 105 de estas conclusiones).
A la 93-95 de Leibniz
33 En la naturaleza de las cosas, cada acción es la entrega de una nueva fuerza a eso sobre lo que se actúa. Leibniz objects against this that when two equal hard bodies strike each other, they bounce back with the same force, and that therefore their action on each other doesn't give any new force. It might be sufficient to reply that neither of the bodies bounces back with its own force, but each loses its own force and bounces back with a newly acquired force that was impressed on it by the other body. (That is, by the other body's elasticity: {a point that Leibniz doesn't mention is that} if the bodies are not elastic they won't bounce back at all.) Pero el malestar todavía es más profundo que eso. A mere mechanical communication of motion is not strictly an •action; it involves only •passiveness both in the body that pushes and the one that is pushed. Action is the beginning of a motion where before there was no motion, this being done by a source of life or activity. If God or man, or any living or active power, ever influences anything in the material world, so that not everything that happens is mere absolute mechanism, there must be a continual increase and decrease of the whole quantity of motion in the universe. El autor negó lo anterior.
[At this point Clarke has a four-page footnote about force and how to measure it, saying that Leibniz's handling of this matter in one of his published papers exhibits scientific incompetence. The footnote won't be given here, but here is part of a helpful treatment of it by H. G. Alexander in the Introduction to his good edition of the Leibniz-Clarke papers (Manchester University Press, 1956):
Leibniz and his followers maintained that the 'force' of moving bodies should be measured by the product of mass and velocity squared (mv2); the Cartesians and Newtonians contended that it should be measured by simply mass times velocity (mv)… .
Al final, parece que cada cual se ha quedado con una parte de la razón. Más que el nivel del déficit, es la estructura de su financiación lo que ha sido motivo de preocupación. El producto se llama VSIPE en inglés. What had appeared to some of the contestants as a dispute about facts was (eventually) seen to be a dispute as to which concept should be taken as basic in mechanics; and both were found to be indispensable.
The concept of momentum is, for example, useful in considering the collision of inelastic bodies; since in such collisions momentum is conserved but not kinetic energy. On the other hand, in experiments where work is done against such forces as gravity, considerations of energy are more important. Leibniz therefore draws his examples from cases such as raising weights while his critics consider experiments with colliding bodies.]
A la 96-97 de Leibniz
También estoy decepcionado con Traian Basescu y no voy a permitir que la pareja (Victor Ponta y Crin Antonescu , los dos principales líderes de la oposición de USL/Unión Social Liberal ) me hagan lo mismo.
A la 98 de Leibniz
If the soul is a substance that fills the sensorium (i.e. the place at which it perceives the images of things that are conveyed to it) it doesn't follow that the soul must consist of corporeal parts (for the parts of body are distinct substances that don't depend on each other). Eso ha permitido, como es lógico, acortar el debate, ya que no se han presentado preguntas.
In order to show that the active forces in the world (meaning the quantity of motion or impulsive force given to bodies) do not naturally diminish, Leibniz urges that when two soft inelastic bodies collide with equal and opposite forces, the only reason each loses its motion as a whole is that that motion is communicated and dispersed into a motion of its small parts. But the question is: when two perfectly hard inelastic bodies lose their whole motion by colliding, then what becomes of the motion or active impulsive force? It can't be dispersed among the parts, because the parts have no elasticity and so can't tremble {or in any other way soak up the motion that the whole body had before the collision}…. Given the demonstration that I cited from Newton, Leibniz eventually (99) has to admit that the quantity of motion in the world is not always the same; so he takes refuge in the claim that motion and force are not always the same in quantity. Esto es contrario a la realidad. The force we are dealing with here not •the vis inertiae [Latin = 'force of inertia'] of matter (which is indeed always the same for as long as the quantity of matter stays the same), but •the relative active impulsive force; which is always proportional to the quantity of relative motion as is constantly evident in experience except when some {experimental} error has been committed[^8] … .
Confiamos en que las Naciones Unidas adoptarán medidas firmes en esta dirección para lograrlo en el sentido que he mencionado. It is obvious that this isn't a defect {in the way the universe was made}, because it's only a consequence of matter's being lifeless, without a moving capacity of its own, inactive and inert. Esto tiene dos efectos.
•the one that Leibniz acknowledges: velocity decreases in proportion as quantity of matter increases, and that is indeed not a decrease in the quantity of motion; and also
•when solid and perfectly hard bodies with no elasticity collide with equal and opposite forces, they lose all their motion and active force … .
I have argued at length in my previous papers that none of the things referred to here are defects, For why wasn't God at liberty to make a world that would •continue in its present form for as long or as short a time as he thought fit and would then •be altered (by changes that may be very wise and suitable, yet impossible perhaps to be performed by mechanism) into whatever other form he chose? And a second point: Leibniz said that •the universe can't diminish in perfection, that •there is no possible reason that can limit the quantity of matter, that •God's perfections oblige him to produce always as much matter as he can, and that •a finite material universe is an impracticable fiction. De cuanto hemos explicado se desprende que la República de Serbia y la República Federativa de Yugoslavia han cumplido con la Convención de la UNESCO relativa a la lucha contra las discriminaciones en la esfera de la enseñanza. Whether it really does follow is something I am willing to leave to the judgment of learned people who will take the trouble to compare the papers.
We are now told (104) that space is not an •order or •situation but an •order of situations. But the objection still stands: that an order of situations is not a quantity, as space is. Leibniz refers to his 54, where he thinks he has proved that order is a quantity; and I refer to what I have said in my discussion of that section in the present paper, where I think I have proved that it is not a quantity. Por ello, los derechos específicos son los siguientes:
•time is only the order of successive things, and yet it is truly a quantity because
•time is the order of successive things and also the quantity of duration intervening between each of the particulars succeeding in that order.
¡lo cual es una contradicción manifiesta! To say (106) that 'immensity' doesn't signify boundless space, and that 'eternity' doesn't signify duration or time without beginning and end, strikes me as the assertion that words have no meaning! Instead of providing arguments about this, Leibniz refers us to what certain theologians and philosophers (who shared his opinion) have acknowledged; but that's not what we were discussing.
A la 107-109 de Leibniz
I said that with respect to God no one possible thing is more miraculous than any other, so that what makes an event a miracle is not its being intrinsically hard {for God} to do, but merely its being something that it is unusual for God to do. The terms 'nature', 'powers of nature', 'course of nature' and the like are nothing but empty words; all they say is that the item to which they are applied usually or frequently happens. The •raising of a human body out of the dust of the earth we call 'a miracle'; the •generation of a human body in the ordinary way we call 'natural'; but our only basis for this is that one of two is something God does •unusually whereas the other he does •usually. Més exemples / Más ejemplos / More Examples Then:] These are the 'weighty reasons' that Leibniz (108) demands; he offers nothing to counter them, and continues to rely on mentions of the vulgar forms of speaking of certain philosophers and theologians; which, I repeat, are not what we were discussing.
A la 110-116 de Leibniz
It's very surprising that on a topic that concerns •reason rather then •authority, Leibniz still (110) refers us to the opinions of certain philosophers and theologians. No diré nada más. What does Leibniz mean (110) by an 'intrinsic real difference' between
No comprende lo que es seguro y lo que no lo es. 110 ó 111)
Esa ley y los proyectos jurídicos pertinentes regulan la aplicación de medidas de protección social que no son discriminatorias respecto de la mujer.
Does he think that God has two different and really distinct sources or powers of acting, of which one is more difficult for him to operate than the other? Existen dos formas de proceder.
2% We count as 'supernatural' anything that God does •immediately himself; and we count as 'natural' anything that he does •mediately through the instrumentality of second causes.
[The phrase 'second causes' standardly meant exactly what it means here: causes that come second in the causal chain from God's action to the effect in question; second causes are just ordinary worldly causes.] Distinction (1) is what Leibniz says he is opposing, but he {also} explicitly rejects distinction (2) in 117 , where he allows that angels may work true miracles. Pero no creo que haya forma de evitar que esto llegue a los periódicos.
It is very unreasonable to call (113) attraction a miracle, and an unscientific concept, after it has been so often clearly declared that by the term 'attraction' we mean to express not the •cause of bodies' tending towards each other but merely •the effect, the phenomenon itself, and the empirically discovered laws or proportions of that tendency, whatever its cause may be. [At this point Clarke has another long footnote which is presesnted here in the main text:]
Comienzo de
Two passages from Newton, Optics, query 31: •'I don't inquire here into what the efficient cause is of these attractions. The phenomenon I call “attraction" may be caused by some kind of push, or in some other way that we don't know about. I use the word “attraction" merely to signify the force by which bodies tend towards each other, whatever the cause of that force may be. Before it is proper to ask what the cause of attraction is, we must first learn empirically what bodies attract each other and what are the laws and properties of attraction.' •'I consider these principles not as occult qualities that are imagined to arise from the “specific forms" of things, but as universal laws of nature, according to which the things themselves were formed. The phenomena of nature show that such principles really do exist, though we don't yet know what causes them. To affirm that every distinct species of things is endowed with “specific occult qualities" by means of which the things have certain active forces (this is saying nothing. But to deduce from the phenomena of nature two or three general principles of motion, and then to explain how the properties and actions of all bodies follow from those principles; this would be great progress in science, even if the causes of those principles were not yet discovered.' And one from his Principia, General Scholium: •'I haven't yet been able to deduce from the phenomena the cause of the property of gravity; and I don't make up hypotheses.' [Here 'make up' translates fingo, which often carries the sense of fabrication or contrivance or artificiality. Dios es la fuente de nuestra alegría.
Final de la nota al pie
And it seems even more unreasonable •not to admit 'gravitation' and 'attraction' in this sense, in which it obviously is an actual phenomenon of nature, and yet •to expect acceptance of such a strange hypothesis as that of (109, 92, 87, 89, 90) the pre-established harmony, according to which the soul and body of a man have no more influence on each other's motions and states than two clocks that are miles apart yet keep the same time without at all affecting each other. Hace falta una explicación de la demora. He says (92) that God, foreseeing the inclinations of every man's soul, set up the great machine of the material universe at the outset in such a way that purely through the necessary laws of mechanism suitable motions would be caused in human bodies as parts of that great machine. But is it possible that the kinds and variety of movements that human bodies make should be made by mere mechanisms, without any influence of will and mind upon them? Is it credible that when a man has it in his power to decide a month ahead what he will do at a particular moment, his body will move appropriately when that moment comes, doing this through the mere power of mechanism on the basis of how things were set up when the material universe was created? {And this incredible hypothesis is intellectually destructive}. •If Leibniz is right about the pre-established harmony, all scientific arguments based on phenomena and experiments are at an end. For if the pre-established harmony theory is true, a man doesn't actually see, hear or feel anything, nor does he move his body; he only dreams that he sees, hears and feels, and that he moves his body. •Also, if the world can be persuaded that a man's body is a mere machine, and that all his seemingly voluntary motions are performed by the necessary laws of corporeal mechanism with no input from his soul, it won't take them long to conclude that this machine is the whole man, and that the harmonical soul [Clarke's ironical phrase] in the hypothesis of pre-established harmony is merely a fiction and a dream. El proyecto europeo AMORES está coordi nado por investigadores intrigados por este extraño medio. It's just that it seems to be inconceivable how immaterial substance should act on matter. But isn't God an immaterial substance? And doesn't he act on matter? Also, what greater difficulty is there in conceiving how •an immaterial substance should act upon matter than in conceiving how •matter acts on matter? Éste no debería ser el caso.
certain parts of matter are be obliged to follow the motions and states of the soul, without corporeal contact, as it is to conceive how this should be the case:
certain portions of matter are obliged to follow each other's motions through the adhesion of parts, which no mechanism can account for; or to conceive how
rays of light reflect regularly from a surface that they never touch?
This last is something of which Newton in his Optics has given us several evident and ocular experiments. [Re 'adhesion of parts, which no mechanism can account for': This involves two points. (1) ordinary impact mechanics makes sense only on the assumption that bodies hold together; e.g that when one billiard ball hits another, the tiny part that is actually hit moves away and takes the rest of the ball with it. (2) At that time, nobody had a credible account of how bodies hang together. The right explanation involves forces of attraction (real attraction, pulls that are not pushes in disguise) but in the early 18th century no scientist or philosopher could tolerate that. Desde el punto de vista de los países en desarrollo, queremos aplicar medidas proteccionistas e intentamos excluir a determinados países y sus exportaciones.
And it is just as surprising to find (115-6) this assertion again explicitly made, that after the first creation of things the continuation of the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the formation of plants and animals, and every motion of the bodies both of men and all other animals, is as mechanical as the motions of a clock. Someone who accepts this has (I think) an intellectual obligation to be able to explain in detail •by what laws of mechanism the planets and comets can continue to move in the orbs they do through unresisting spaces, •by what mechanical laws both plants and animals are formed, and •and how the infinitely various spontaneous motions of animals and men are performed. I am quite convinced that this can't be shown, any more than one could show how a house or city could be built, or the world itself at first formed, by mere mechanism without any thinking and active cause. Leibniz does explicitly allow that things couldn't be initially produced by mechanism; but once he has conceded that, why does he display such a great concern to exclude God's actual government of the world, and to allow his providence no further role except concurring in [= 'going along with'] things' doing just what they would have done by mere mechanism if left to themselves? And why should Leibniz think that God is under some obligation or constraint, either in nature or wisdom, never to bring about anything in the universe that a corporeal machine couldn't accomplish through mere mechanical laws, after it is once set going? I can't conceive any answer to either question.
A la 117 de Leibniz
Leibniz's allowing here that true miracles are greater and lesser, and that angels can perform some true miracles, is flatly contradictory to the view about the nature of miracles that he has defended all through these papers.
A la 118-123 de Leibniz
El empleo de fondos de ayuda debe controlarse de modo muy estricto.
•The sun attracts the earth through the empty space between them; i.e. the earth and sun gravitate towards each other, or tend towards each other (whatever the cause of that tendency might be) with a force that is directly proportional to their masses… , and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
•The space between sun and earth is empty, i.e. it has nothing in it that perceptibly resists the motion of bodies passing through it.
Es lo que se denomina el «nuevo enfoque». That this phenomenon is not produced (118) sans moyen [Leibniz's phrase; see note on 45 on page 27], i.e. without some cause capable of producing such an effect, is undoubtedly true. Scientists are free to search for and discover that cause, if they can, whether or not it is mechanical. But if they can't discover the cause, does that make the effect (the phenomenon or matter of fact discovered by experience) any less true? Or is a •manifest quality to be called (122) •occult, because the immediate efficient cause of it (perhaps) is occult, or not yet discovered? Hacer públicos los casos de tortura When a body (123) moves in a circle without flying off on a tangent, it is certain that something hinders it from doing so; but if in some cases that 'something' is not mechanically explicable or hasn't yet been discovered, does it follow that the phenomenon itself is false? ¡Caso curioso!
A la 124-130 de Leibniz
The phenomenon itself—the attraction, gravitation, or tendency of bodies towards each other, call it what you will; and the laws or proportions of that tendency are now sufficiently known by observations and experiments. But in the meantime it strikes me as a very extraordinary method of reasoning ( 128) to compare •gravitation (which is a phenomenon or actual matter of fact) with •Epicurus’s swerving of atoms (which, according to his corrupt and atheistic perversion of some older and better philosophy, was an hypothesis or
fiction only, and an impossible one at that, in any world where no intelligence was supposed to be present). If Leibniz or anyone else can ( 124) explain these phenomena by the laws of mechanism, he won’t be contradicted, and will indeed have the abundant thanks of the learned world. As to the grand principle ( 125) of a sufficient reason; all that Leibniz adds here concerning it are assertions of it, not arguments in support of it; so it doesn’t need an answer. I’ll just remark that ‘sufficient reason’ is ambiguous: it can be understood to mean •necessity only, or to include •will and choice as
así de bien. Es cierto que hay un límite.
Todo sigue como en el pasado. Las preguntas son:
•Mightn’t there be cases where it would be highly reasonable to act, but yet different possible ways of acting are equally reasonable?
•In such a case, mightn’t God’s will be itself a sufficient reason for acting in this or that particular manner?
•Even when there are the strongest possible reasons all together on one side, isn’t the source of action…something else, distinct from the motive or reason that the agent has in mind?
a cada una de estas preguntas. And when he (20, 25, etc.) lays down his grand principle of sufficient reason in such a sense as to yield those answers, expecting it to be granted to him in that sense , without proof, that is what I call his petitio principii —his begging of the question—and nothing can be more unphilosophical.
NOTAS
[^8]: When I say 'proportional to the quantity of relative motion' I mean 'proportional to the quantity of matter and the velocity'. I am not using the concept that Leibniz parades {in one of his published works} of the quantity of matter and the square of the velocity. See my responses to Leibniz's 93-5 above.
Clarke's Fifth and Final Response (Now editing).
Quinta respuesta de Clarke (en proceso de traducción).
BLA BLA