Benson М. The Philosophy of Leibniz

240 The

Philosophy

of

Leibniz

together,"

or of

"considering them

one at a

time"—locutions

that more prop-

erly

apply

to the

realm

of

phenomena than

to

abstract mathematical entities

or the

real world

of

monads.

So his

efforts

in

geometry

are

relevant enough

to

his

physical

and

metaphysical

views

about space, time,

and

motion; but,

though

relevant, they

are

obviously

far

from

successful.

Leibniz comes

nowhere near establishing that

the

propositions

and

concepts

of

geometry

can in

general

be

reduced

to the

concept

of

distance,

nor

does

he

ever explain

how

the

basic relations

of

congruence

and

similarity

can be

analyzed

in

terms

of

qualities

of

whatever occupies

the

positions

concerned.

56

Before

leaving this topic,

we

must mention

a

curious historical

fact

about

the use of the

terms

analysis

situs, geometria

situs,

and

calculus

situs,

which

Leibniz employed

as

synonyms. Although

for him the

situs

of a

sequence

of

points

is

completely determined

by the

distances between them

and is

altered

if

those distances

are

altered,

his

admirer

Euler,

in the

famous

1736

paper

solving

the

Konigsberg

Bridge problem

and its

generalizations, used

the

term

geometria

situs

in

such

a

sense that

the

situs

remains unchanged under topo-

logical

deformations.

He

mistakenly credits Leibniz with originating this con-

cept. Eventually, "analysis situs" became

the

standard name

for

what

we now

call

"topology,"

and it is

sometimes

not

realized that Leibniz used

the

term

in

an

entirely

different

sense

and

hence

can

hardly

be

considered

the

founder

of

that part

of

mathematics.

57

56

C9:...

distance

and the

degrees

of

distance involve

the

degree

of

expressing

in

itself

the

remote thing,

of

affecting

it or

receiving

an

affection

from

it.

57

Freudenthal

(1954),

616.

On the

question

of the

relation between

Leibniz's

analysis situs

and

the

Geometrische

Analyse

of H.

Grassman,

see

Echeverria

(1979).

XIV

Concluding Thoughts

In

this book

I

have attempted

to set

forth

what appear

to me to be the

metaphysical

foundations

of

Leibniz's philosophy.

As

philosophers our-

selves,

however,

we are

interested

not

only

in

finding

out

what

our

illustrious

predecessors have thought

and

said,

but

also

in

considering whether,

or to

what

extent, their doctrines

are

acceptable—that

is, not to

mince words,

whether what they said

is

true.

Of

course, some historians regard such

an

atti-

tude

as the

height

of

naivete, even though,

from

the

time

of

Socrates

on, it has

clearly

been

the

attitude

of

nearly

all the

major

philosophers themselves.

Historians

of

this

type,

who

naturally

consider

themselves

more

sophisti-

cated than

the

rest

of us,

hold that there

are no

objective criteria

in

philo-

sophy;

each philosopher's outlook

is

supposed

to be

determined

in

large part

by

the

intellectual

and

social environment; each must

be

"understood

in his

own

terms";

only

our

contemporaries

can

properly

be

subjected

to a

scrutiny

that makes

use of

modern distinctions

and

insights.

It

is

noteworthy that when these relativists

set

about considering

a

philo-

sopher

"in his own

terms," they

usually

focus

their attention

on

everything

but

his own

terms. Instead, they treat

us to

speculations

on

"where

he

got"

this

or

that idea,

and

whom

he

influenced

by

passing

it on.

(For ideas

are

themselves assumed

to

have

a

history,

to

exist through long periods

of

time;

even

if you are an

Aristotle

or a

Leibniz

or a

Newton,

you

can't

just

think

up

an

idea

on

your own;

you

have

to

"get"

it

from

somewhere

or

somebody,

or at

least

you

have

to put it

together

from

pieces that

you get

from

these outside

sources.) This point

of

view places much emphasis

on

classifying

the

philo-

sopher:

was he a

rationalist

or an

empiricist?

a

nominalist

or a

realist?

a

monist

or a

pluralist?

In

short, where does

he

stand

in the

stream

of

Western

thought?

Indeed, some people seem

to

think that

is all

there

is to the

history

of

philosophy.

But no

philosopher worth

his

salt,

and

least

of

all,

one of the

major

241

242 The

Philosophy

of

Leibniz

historical

figures,

would wish

to be

treated

in

this rather insulting,

socio-

anthropological

way, that

is, to

have

his

doctrines merely

recorded

and

made

ready

for

museum exhibition

as

curiosities

to

amuse

the

casual visitor.

No

philosopher wishes

his

readers, contemporary

or

future,

to be

deflected

from

the

philosophical issues

by

questions

as to

what

circumstances—psychologi-

cal,

social, political,

economic—could

have

led him to say the

things

he

says.

In

short,

no one

wishes serious philosophical thoughts

to be

treated

as of

"purely historical" interest.

We owe it to a

Plato,

an

Aristotle,

a

Leibniz,

or a

Hume

to

subject

his

ideas

to the

most

careful

and

penetrating scrutiny

of

which

we are

capable, using every distinction

and

insight,

no

matter what

its

source, that

has any

merit.

In my

opinion,

if he is not

worth reading that way,

he is not

worth reading

at

all.

It

needs

to be

added,

I

suppose, that

in

taking this attitude toward

the

historical

figures

in

philosophy,

we do not

propose

to

deprive ourselves

of

any

information that would

aid us in

understanding what they meant

by

what

they said. Sometimes attention

to the

views

and

usages

of

their contempo-

raries

or

predecessors

can be of

some help

in

this regard.

But the

yield

from

this

sort

of

information

is

always

miniscule

in

comparison with what

one

gains

from

a

really

careful,

thoughtful, critical reading

of the

author himself.

Now,

as the

Germans say,

zur

Sachel

The

first

thing that

has to be

acknowledged

in a

critique

of

Leibniz's metaphysics

is

that

it

shares

the

vulnerability

of all

metaphysics

to the

logical positivists' charge

of

Nonsense.

If

paradigm cases

of

absolutely unverifiable propositions

are

wanted—

propositions that

are not

even

in

principle

confirmable—this

is the

place

to

look.

The

Leibnizian

hypotheses,

one and

all,

are so

constructed

as to be

completely

immune

to any

possible refutation

or

disconfirmation.

"This

is the

best

of all

possible worlds,"

he

says,

and if it

seems

to

some

of us (or

indeed

to

any

number

of

mortal observers

in a

finite

time) that

in at

least

a few

respects

things could have

been

better,

that

is

irrelevant.

For

only

God

sees

the

whole

picture,

the

beauty

of

which

is

actually increased

by the

features that appear

evil

to a

more limited view.

Further, this best

of all

possible worlds,

the

real world that lies behind

what

appears

to

sensory perception,

is

composed

of (of all

things!)

souls;

it is

chock-full

of

souls.

How

does Leibniz know

that?

Not by

looking around,

not by

deriving testable consequences

from

the

hypothesis.

He

knows

the

existence

of his own

mind

by

introspection;

as for the

others,

he

concludes

their existence

from

the

goodness

of

God, which requires

the

existence

of

everything

that

is

compossible with what exists. Nothing that

can be

observed

would

ever

be

accepted

by

Leibniz

as

casting

the

slightest doubt

on

this

ontology.

The

same holds

for the

Identity

of

Indiscernibles,

the

principles

of

Sufficient

Reason

and of

Continuity,

and all the

rest

of the

story.

There

is a

certain

irony

in

this because,

as we

have seen

in

chapter

13,

Leibniz's

own

arguments against absolute space

and

time come very close

to

invoking

a

verifiability

criterion

of

meaning.

He

says that "the fiction

of a

Concluding

Thoughts

243

material

finite

universe moving forward

in an

infinite

empty space cannot

be

admitted,"

"is

altogether unreasonable

and

impracticable,"

for it

would

be

"acting without acting";

that

is,

"there

would

happen

no

change that could

be

observed

by any

observer."

1

In

another formulation

he

concludes that "when

there

is no

change that

can be

observed,

there

is no

change

at

all."

2

And in an

opuscule

of

1675

he

goes

so far as to

assert

in

general that

"to be

[esse]

is

nothing

else

than

to be

capable

of

being perceived

[percipi

posse]."

3

But

either

he

never thought

of

applying this

to the

fundamentals

of his

philo-

sophy,

or,

what

I

hope

is

more probable,

he is

using

"perceive"

and

"observe"

in

that very abstract

sense

in

which

we are

perceiving everything that happens

in

the

universe, whether

we

know

it or

not.

In any

case,

it is

clear enough that

the

Leibnizian

metaphysics

is a

network

of

completely unverifiable principles,

and

hence that

it

would

qualify,

on the

basis

of the

Verifiability

criterion,

as

"devoid

of

cognitive

content."

Now,

by

"verifiable" most

of the

positivists mean "verifiable

in the

given,"

and it is not

exactly news that Leibniz

did not

regard conscious sensory

experience

as the

only source

of

knowledge

and

meaning.

So the

foregoing

comments

may

seem little

more

than

an

elaboration

of the

obvious

fact

that

he was no

empiricist.

But

what

if the

sense

of

"verifiable"

and

"confirmable"

is

extended

to

include other methods

of

verification

and

confirmation?

After

all,

there

are

relatively well-determined methods

by

which mathematicians

establish

the

truth

of

their theorems, although such theorems make

no

pre-

dictions about what will

be

seen, heard, touched, tasted. When

a

mathemati-

cal

hypothesis

is put

forward, everyone considers

it

open

to

refutation until

it

has

been proved true.

There

is an

undeniable vagueness about

the

notion

of

proof,

but, roughly speaking,

we can say

that

to

prove

a

mathematical state-

ment

is to

deduce

it

from

other statements that

are

taken

as

self-evidently

true

(where which statements

are

taken

as

self-evident varies, within reasonable

limits,

from

person

to

person

and

from

time

to

time).

The

"experience"

of the

positivist, therefore, could

be

enlarged

to

include

the

experience

of

proof,

so

that

on

this basis

one

could

be

said

to

know

the

meaning

of a

grammatically

well-formed

sentence

to the

extent that

one

knew what would count

for or

against

its

truth.

Even

on

this relaxed standard, however,

it is

doubtful

that Leibniz's

metaphysics

will

qualify

as

meaningful.

He

does purport

to

deduce

his

main

principles from certain theological propositions that

he

plainly regards

as

self-evident.

But

here, unlike

the

situation

in

mathematics, there

is

little

agreement

on

what

is

self-evident,

and the

rigor

of

Leibniz's metaphysical

"proofs"

is far

below

the

minimum normally required

in

mathematical dis-

course. Still,

he did

find

correspondents with whom

he

shared enough

theological assumptions

to

permit rational argumentation,

and in

some

instances

he was

even able

to

prove

a

metaphysical point

to an

opponent's

satisfaction.

1 GVII 395-96(L 700

2 G VIi 403(l 705

3 Jag14

244 The

Philosophy

of

Leibniz

Consequently,

if we

relaxed

the

meaning criterion still

further

by

adding,

as

parameters,

the set of

shared assumptions

and the

group

of

persons

who

share them,

we

could

concede

at

least

a

certain sort

of

content

to the

Leib-

nizian

principles.

If S is a

well-formed

sentence,

we

might

say

that

any

member

of a

group

G of

persons

who

accept

a set A of

propositions

as

self-

evident knows (for purposes

of

discourse

on

that subject within

G) the

mean-

ing

of 5 to the

extent that

he

knows what experience

or

proofs

(on the

basis

of

A)

would count

for or

against

the

truth

of

S.

Something like this

is the

best

I can do for

Leibniz,

but

unfortunately

those

of us who

cannot accept

the

fundamentals

of his

theology

are

left

with

the

conclusion that

we

have

at

most

a

very

provisional understanding

of

what

he is up to.

In

this book

I

have

not

attempted

to

give

a

systematic account

of

Leibniz's

theology

and its

implications, but,

as

suggested above,

an

essential feature

of

his

reasoning

on

matters metaphysical

is its

dependence

on a

background

of

assumed truths about

the

existence

and

nature

of

God.

So far as I can

see,

he

has

no

doubt whatever about

the

existence

of

God, whom

he

considers

to be

in

essence

a

being that

is

omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent,

and

com-

pletely rational.

Sometimes

the

dependence

is a

fairly

straightforward relation

of

implica-

tion between

the

theological principles (usually supplemented

by

some other

assumptions, tacit

or

expressed)

and the

metaphysical thesis

in

question. This

is

the

best

of all

possible worlds, because

God

created

it, was

completely

benevolent,

and had the

power

to do

anything possible.

There

are

"other

minds"—indeed,

the

actual world contains every soul that

is

compossible

with

yours

or

mine—because

existence

is

better than nonexistence

and God

wouldn't have

left

out any

good that could have

been

included. Time

and

space

are not

absolute, because

if

that were true

of

either

of

them,

God

would

have done something, (namely, created

the

world when

or

where

he did

rather than otherwise) without

a

sufficient

reason;

but God is not

irrational.

There

must have been

a

unique best world,

for

otherwise

God

would

not

have

created anything, since, again,

he

does nothing without

a

reason.

The

Identity

of

Indiscernibles

must hold,

for if

there were

an

individual that

was not in

principle distinguishable

from

some other individual, there would

be

things

that

God

could

not

know.

In

other cases, Leibniz seems content

to

argue that

his

doctrines

are

more

consistent with

the

assumed theology than

are

those

of his

opponents.

He

boasts that

his

theory

of the

preestablished

harmony ascribes greater wisdom

and

power

to the

Creator than does occasionalism

or the

other rival theories;

the

artisan

who can

make

a

pair

of

machines that

will

stay synchronized inde-

finitely

is

more skilled than

one who has to

adjust

them

on

occasion

or

who,

still

worse,

has to

depend

on a

series

of

miracles. Leibniz

says

that

his

doc-

trine that each monad mirrors (perceives)

the

entire universe, though

confu-

sedly,

while

God

perceives everything with complete clarity, gives

sense

to

Concluding

Thoughts

245

the

theological claim that

man was

created

in the

image

of

God.

In

general,

he

argues

that

his

universe, running completely smoothly according

to

deter-

ministic

laws

that

are

maximally simple

in

relation

to the

immense variety

of

events,

is

much more beautiful

and

more worthy

of God

than would

be the

relatively

chaotic universe conceived

by his

opponents.

There

is

another, more interesting, pattern

of

Leibnizian

argument

in

which

metaphysics

and

theology

are

interwoven.

In a

typical case

it

goes

as

follows.

He

first

distinguishes what

in

effect

are two

kinds

of

partial order-

ings,

that

is, of

such relations

as

"greater than" among

the

integers, "faster

than" among moving objects,

or

"taller than" among

people.

For

relations

of

the

first

kind

a

maximum

is

possible;

for

those

of the

second,

it is

not.

The

notion

of a

greatest integer,

he

says,

is

self-contradictory,

as

there

is

always

a

greater;

and, likewise,

it is

impossible that there

be a

fastest-moving point

on

a

rotating disk that

has no

boundary, since

for any

point

p

there

will

be

another point

p'

that

is

farther

from

the

center

and

hence moving

faster.

On

the

other hand,

the

notion

of a

tallest

person

is not

self-contradictory, even

if

there happens

not to be

such

an

individual.

Now,

the

partial orderings that

are

connected

with

the

fundamental pro-

perties

of

God, namely,

the

relations "know more than,"

"is

more benevolent

than,"

"is

more

powerful

than,"

"is

wiser than," are,

all of

them, relations

of

the

first

type. Some minds know more than others

do, and

this relation

is

clearly

asymmetric

and

transitive, but, unlike

the

cases

of

"greater than"

and

"faster

than," there

is no

inconsistency

in the

notion

of a

mind that knows

the

most (which, remarkably, Leibniz seems

to

equate

with

a

mind that knows

everything).

Otherwise put,

his

claim

is

that

it is in

principle possible

for

some

mind

to

know everything that

is the

case.

From this,

he

thinks, several important metaphysical principles

follow.

One

such,

as we

have mentioned above,

is the

Identity

of

Indiscernibles.

For

if

there were

two

individuals that were

in

principle indiscernible,

it

would

no

longer

be

possible

for any

mind

to

know everything true

of

either

of

them.

Another

is the

principle

of

Sufficient

Reason,

for

knowing implies knowing

why;

if

something happened without there being

a

sufficient

reason

why it

happened, even

an

all-knowing mind would

not

know that

it

happened.

In

short,

if it is

possible

for

some mind

to

know everything about

the

world,

the

world

has to be

such that this

is

possible.

(Of

course,

we

recognize

that

this sort

of

reasoning

is of

dubious validity, because

of the

oblique con-

texts

generated

by "it is

possible that"

and

"knows that";

but

neither Leibniz

nor

most other philosophers

who

have argued along these lines seem

to pay

much

attention

to

that.)

God

helps Leibniz

with

his

philosophy

in

still

another way.

He

allows

him

to be a

nominalist

and yet to

enjoy

some

of the

theoretical

advantages

of

realism.

A

nominalist believes that only concrete individuals exist, that there

are no

such things

as

abstract entities, whether numbers, geometric

figures,

sets,

properties, concepts, propositions,

or

whatever.

But at the

same time

he

recognizes that there

are

many true statements that appear

to be

about such

246 The

Philosophy

of

Leibniz

entities.

To

account

for

this,

he has to

find

a way of

reformulating such state-

ments

as

statements that more clearly concern individuals only.

To use

Leib-

niz's favorite example: statements apparently concerning

the

abstract entity

Heat

are to be

recast

as

statements involving, instead,

the

predicate

"is

hot,"

as

applied

to

individual things.

Now,

Leibniz's philosophy itself

is

full

of

talk about abstract

entities,

some

of

which

are

even original with him.

There

is the

complete individual

concept

of

Alexander, which involves everything that

has

ever happened,

is

happening,

or

will

happen

to

him,

and

which even bears

within

it

signs

of

everything that

has

ever happened,

is

happening,

or

will

happen

in the

entire

universe.

So, as a

nominalist, Leibniz

has a lot of

explaining

to do.

This

is

where

God

comes

in.

Leibniz emphasizes time

and

again that

all of

these indi-

vidual

concepts,

and the

rest

of the

"realm

of

ideas"

are

"ideas

in the

mind

of

God";

and he

explains further than

an

idea, unlike

a

thought (which

is an

actual

occurrence

at a

given time),

is a

disposition

to

have certain thoughts

if

certain conditions

are

met.

In

other

words,

to

have

an

idea

is to be

disposed

to

think

in a

certain way.

Hence,

the

"reality" upon which statements like that about Alexander's

concept

are

grounded

is not a

shadowy collection

of

abstract entities "sub-

sisting" somewhere between Being

and

Nothing,

but a

particular though very

special

individual, God,

with

all his

qualities, capacities,

and

dispositions.

I

think

it

clear enough that this

is

Leibniz's underlying view

or

attitude, even

if

he

never states

it as

explicitly

as I am

doing now.

He

gives

us

very

few

indi-

cations

of how

specific cases

are to be

analyzed,

but

there

can be

little doubt,

it

seems

to me,

that

in

ascribing

the

aforementioned attributes

to the

com-

plete individual concept

of

Alexander,

he

understands himself

to be

really

talking

about

the

state

of

God's

mind when Alexander

was

created.

Those

of us who

have what might

be

called

an

"extensional"

view

of the

world

are

inclined

to

postulate, behind every dispositional property, some

nondispositional properties that

are the

ground

of its

application.

The

para-

digmatic

lump

of

sugar that

is now

soluble

in

water, even

if it

will

never

be

dis-

solved, possesses this dispositional property

by

virtue

of the

nondispositional

property

of

having

a

certain crystalline structure. Presumably

God's

capacity

to

create this

or

that kind

of

world

is

similarly based upon

his

knowledge,

motives,

and

skills.

And the

same assumption would lead

to the

conclusion,

I

suppose, that

a

disposition

of God or of

anyone else

to

think

in

certain ways

must

be

grounded

in the

nondispositional qualities

of his

mind.

It is not

difficult

to see how the

same reductive strategy would apply

to

other statements about individual concepts

and to

statements about other

abstract entities.

In

sum, Leibniz's belief

in

this very special individual, God,

permits

him to

remain

a

nominalist while using

the

whole philosophical

apparatus

of

concepts, propositions, ideas, possible worlds.

Doubts

about

the

cognitive content

of

metaphysics

in

general,

or of

Leib-

niz's metaphysics

in

particular,

need

not

prevent

us

from

indulging

in

some

Concluding

Thoughts

247

meta-metaphysical

speculation about

the

origin

of

these kinds

of

doctrine.

The

first

thing that meets

the eye is the

remarkable similarity

of

structure,

no

matter

how one is

going

to

account

for it,

between

the

sentences

of our

lan-

guage,

on the one

hand,

and the

elements

of the

realms postulated

by the

metaphysicians,

on the

other. Philosophers have often noticed

this

close

relationship

and

have sometimes exploited

it. It led

Carnap,

for

instance,

to

his

distinction

of the

material

and

formal modes,

and to

such suggestions

as

that

the

cognitive content

of

"pseudo

object" sentences (for example,

"A

rose

is

a

thing

and not an

event") could

be

expressed less metaphysically

by

sen-

tences about language ("The word

'rose'

is a

noun

and not a

verb").

The

isomorphism

is

especially

striking

in

Leibniz.

For

him,

the

elements

of

the

real world

are

individual substances

with

accidents.

The

simplest

thoughts

or

propositions, correspondingly, consist

of a

subject concept

joined

to a

predicate concept,

and the

simplest sentences consist

of a

subject

expression joined

by the

copula

to a

predicate expression.

(Incidentally,

the

copula, since

it

does

not

correspond

to any

individual

or

concept,

is

often

thought

to be

dispensable, that

is,

replaceable

by

mere juxtaposition.)

In the

Leibnizian

scheme, therefore,

it

appears that

our

subject-predicate language

is

admirably

well

suited

to

providing pictures

of our

thoughts, which

in

turn

are

pictures

of the

constituents

of the

world.

For

example, when

I

tell

you

truthfully

that Socrates

is

wise,

what

happens

is

that

I

utter

a

sentence

'A

is

B\

where

A and

B

are

words

or

other

linguistic

expressions

for

concepts under which Socrates

falls.

In the

real

world

there

is the old man

himself,

with

certain individual accidents that

we

•may

amalgamate under

the

heading "the wisdom

of

Socrates."

The

word

"Socrates" expresses

a

complete individual concept under which

our man

Socrates

and

nobody else

falls

(or

even could

fall),

and the

word "wise"

expresses

a

concept under which

he

also

falls,

this time

by

virtue

of the

afore-

mentioned collection

of

individual accidents.

So, in my

assertoric utterance

of

the

sentence "Socrates

is

wise,"

I am

expressing

the

thought

or

proposition

that

Socrates

is

wise, that

is,

that

the

unique individual

in the

real world

who

comes

under

the

concept expressed

by the

word

"Socrates"

comes also,

by

virtue

of his

accidents, under

the

concept

expressed

by

"wise."

Of

course,

in all of

this

I do not

succeed

in

conveying

the

full

individuality

of

Socrates' wisdom;

in

effect

I

only

inform

you in

that

it

lies within

a

certain

range.

But the

range

can be

narrowed down,

if

desired,

for our

language

offers

a

variety

of

further

predicate expressions under which Socrates

but not

other wise

people

will

fall

by

virtue

of

their particular brands

of

wisdom.

We

have seen that although

the

accidents

of

individuals

are

individual, things

fall

under various concepts

by

virtue

of

those accidents

and

hence,

to the

extent

that

they come under

the

same concepts,

are

thought

of as

similar.

By the

principle

of the

Identity

of

Indiscernibles

we are

assured that

if

individuals

A

and B are

different,

there

is

some concept under which

one

falls

but not the

other.

In

other

words,

it is in

principle possible

for a

mind

(by

means

of

con-

cepts,

of

course)

to

tell

them apart; they cannot

be

completely similar.

248 The

Philosophy

of

Leibniz

At

least

two

ways

of

accounting

for

this admirable isomorphism

of

lan-

guage,

thought,

and the

world present themselves.

One is

that somewhere

back

in the

most remote history

of the

Indo-European languages

our

fore-

bears,

in

their

efforts

to

deal with

the

world

of

individual substances-with-

accidents, were

led by the

structure

of

this world

to

develop ways

of

thought

and

speech reflecting that structure.

For

what could

be

more

natural

than

to

represent

the

existence

of a

fact

or

state

of

affairs

by a

picture, model,

or

some

other moderate-sized, easily reproducible representation

of the

fact

or

state

of

affairs?

On

this hypothesis,

the

origin

of the

subject-predicate

form

of our

simplest sentences,

as

well

as

that

of the

corresponding thoughts,

is due to the

fact

that

the

world—"everything

that

is the

case"—is

made

up of

components

that

are

structurally similar

to the

sentences

or

thoughts.

The

other hypothesis

is

less

flattering

to

metaphysics.

It is

that

the

causal

connections

are the

other

way

around: what inclines

us to say

that

the

real

world

consists

of

substances-with-accidents

is

that

our

native language

is one

in

which sentences have subjects

and

predicates.

The

metaphysician's insight

into

the

most general features

of

Being

qua

Being

is

nothing more than

a

pro-

jection

of the

structure

of

language onto

the

world.

The

speaker

of a

language

in

which sentences

do not

have

the

subject-predicate form does

not

need

to

be

pitied

as

having

to

work with

a

tool that

is

poorly adapted

to its

function;

there

is no

reason whatever

to

suppose that

the

world

fits

our

language

in

some

way

that

it

does

not fit

his.

This suggestion, that

the

basic outlines

of

traditional metaphysics,

to

which

Leibniz adheres

in the

main, have

no

objective

validity

but are

merely

projections

of

certain grammatical features common

to

Indo-European

languages,

will,

of

course, remind

the

reader

of the

so-called Sapir-Whorf

hypothesis

of

"linguistic

relativity."

4

By

considering

the

grammars

of

Semitic,

Chinese, Tibetan, African,

and

American Indian languages,

all of

them

fundamentally

different

from

our

own, Whorf

and

Sapir were

led to "a new

principle

of

relativity, which holds that

all

observers

are not led by the

same

physical

evidence

to the

same picture

of the

universe, unless their linguistic

backgrounds

are

similar,

or can in

some

way be

calibrated."

5

The

"unless"

clause applies,

of

course,

to our

modern European languages.

Here,

Whorf

explains, there

is an

apparent unanimity

of

major

pattern; "but this unanimity

exists

only

because these tongues

are all

Indo-European dialects

cut to the

same basic plan, being historically transmitted

from

what

was

long

ago one

speech community; because

the

modern dialects have long shared

in

building

up

a

common culture;

and

because much

of

this culture,

on the

more intellec-

tual

side,

is

derived from

the

linguistic backgrounds

of

Latin

and

Greek."

But

speakers

of

languages with grammars radically

different

from ours cannot

be

expected

to

share

our

conceptualization

of the

world

as

consisting

of

objects

that

"have" properties

and

"stand

in"

relations

to one

another.

The

whole matter

is

undeniably

as

puzzling

and

confusing

as it is

4 See In particular Whorf (1956), especially the last four papers, aand Ssapir (1949)

5 Whorf (1956), 214.

Concluding

Thoughts

249

apparently important

to

philosophy.

6

We are

admonished

that

even

in our

attempts

to

consider

the

relation

of our

language

and our

world picture,

we

are

still

looking

at

things through

our own

language,

as it

were;

we are in the

position

of a

person

who

cannot remove

his

glasses

and yet is

trying

to

find

out,

by

peering intently

at the

environment,

to

what extent

his

visual

percep-

tion

is

distorted

by the

glasses. When Whorf tells

us

that

a

certain Nootka

sentence,

of

which

the

English translation

is "He

invites people

to a

feast,"

has

no

subject

or

predicate,

7

we are

strongly inclined

to

think

that

there

must

be a

subject.

If, as in

Whorf

s

example,

the

element

of the

Nootka sentence that

justifies

the

"he"

in the

translation

is

itself

a

Nootka sentence translatable

as

"He

does"

or "He

acts,"

we try to

save

the

subject-predicate structure

by

tak-

ing

that element

as

subject anyway, arguing that there

is no

reason

why one

sentence should

not be the

subject

of

another.

But are we

doing

anything

more than insisting that

if "He

invites people

to a

feast"

is

true, there

has got to

be a

state

of

affairs

with

a

component that

is

denoted

by

"He"

and

that

has an

attribute

expressed

by

"invites people

to a

feast"?

So

that

if the

Nootka sen-

tence

doesn't appear

to

have elements representing this component

and its

attribute,

we

should conclude only that

we

haven't analyzed

it

correctly?

After

all,

we are

told

by the

philosophers

of

language that

the

only

way you

can

make

a

statement

is to

"identify"

an

object

and

then predicate something

of

it. Yet

surely this point

of

view hints

of

provinciality

and

question begging.

It

is

indeed

very

difficult

to

know what moral should

be

drawn

from

the

thought-provoking

linguistic data

put

forward

by

Whorf

and

others.

There

is

surely

some philosophical

significance,

if

only

of an

admonitory nature,

in

such

facts

as

that

the

Nootka translations

of

"The boat

is

grounded

on the

beach"

and

"The boat

is

manned

by

picked men"

not

only

fail

to

have

the

same

grammatical structure

but

even

do

not—either

of

them—contain

any

unit

corresponding

to our

word

"boat,"

8

and in

general that grammatically

similar

sentences

of one

language

frequently

have

grammatically

dissimilar

translations

in

another. Whorf notes also that

it is

practically impossible

to

explain

the use of

basic metaphysical terms like "substance," "attribute,"

"event," "object,"

"relation,"

without what

he

calls

"a

circuitous return

to the

grammatical

Benson М. The Philosophy of Leibniz

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