Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical ExpositionDewey, John
Philosophy
Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding: A Critical Exposition
Dewey, John
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716
This leaves one class, that of co-existence, to be examined. Here,
if anywhere, must knowledge, worthy of being termed scientific, be
found. This class, it will be remembered, comprehends our knowledge
concerning substances. But this extends, according to Locke, "a
very little way." The idea of a substance is a complex of various
"simple ideas united in one subject and co-existing together." When we
would know anything further concerning a substance, we only inquire
what other simple ideas, besides those already united, co-exist with
them. Since there is no _necessary_ connection, however, among these
simple ideas, since each is, by its very simplicity, essentially
distinct from every other, or, as we have already learned, since
nothing is essential to an individual, we can never be sure that any
idea really co-exists with others. Or, as Locke says, in physical
matters we "can go no further than particular experience informs us
of. . . . We can have no certain knowledge of universal truths
concerning natural bodies." And again, "universal propositions of whose
truth and falsehood we have certain knowledge concern not existence;"
while, on the other hand, "particular affirmations are only concerning
existence, declaring only the _accidental_ union or separation of ideas
in things existing." This particular knowledge, it must be recalled,
is, in turn, only sensitive, and thus extends not beyond the time when
the sensation is had.
We are not surprised then at learning from Locke that regarding bodies
"we are not capable of scientific knowledge." "Natural philosophy is
not capable of being made a science;" or, as Locke elsewhere states it,
knowledge regarding the nominal essence is "trifling" (Kant's analytic
judgment); regarding the real essence is impossible. For example,
when we say that all gold is fusible, this means either simply that
fusibility is one of the ideas which we combine to get the general
idea of gold, so that in making the given judgment we only expand
our own notion; or it means that the "real" substance gold is always
fusible. But this is a statement we have no right to make, and for two
reasons: we do not know what the real substance gold is; and even if we
did, we should not know that fusibility _always_ co-exists with it. The
summary of the whole matter is that "general certainty is to be found
only in our ideas. Whenever we go to seek it elsewhere, in experiment
or observations without us, our knowledge goes not beyond particulars."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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